10 Steps to Top Google's Local Business Results

Recently, I noticed that a couple sites I do SEO for start to show up in Google's local business listings on the 1st page of Google's search results. These listings are prime positions not only because they rank higher than the number one organic search listings, they also show your geographic location and phone number on the actual SERP. Potential customers can see your listing and business info before they even have to stroll down.

I'm real excited about these listings because the website owners' excitement has brushed off on me.

Not too long ago I asked on this blog how to achieve local business listings on Google. No one responded or even sent me a link. But, here are 10 things you can do to better your chances at these top positions.

1. Create a Google Local Business Listing Here.
2. Add keywords you are targeting to your profile.
   
3. Get customers to give you reviews and to write you good ratings.
4. Link to that profile from your web site.
5. Make sure your URL in listed.
6. Phone number should be a local number. *important
7. Get some back links to that profile.
8. Make sure physical address and city and zip on your website.
9. List all towns you cover somewhere in your site.
10. Make sure every section is filled. Even pictures, videos and specials... Everything!
    

I went way deeper into this in my other (SEO) blog if you want to understand this a little better. But, pretty much just treat that page as regular web site and SEO the heck out of it!

Hope this helped someone out there.

MojoPages, San Diego & SEO... Well, Almost SEO

Just today I was reminded by an email of this site called MojoPages.com. It's a great site with an awesome idea. The owner pretty much explains it as Youtube meets the Yellow Pages.

Mojo Pages is a social networking Yellow Pages. Businesses can get listed by happy or dissapointed users and everyone can put their '2 cent' in about that company/business. To top it off, you can make friends with others in your city/area and share opinions you may have about different establishments in your town.

Being a SEO in San Diego and working on websites here in San Diego, I thought this might be a good chance to add a couple local San Diego businesses to the site. Afterall, I pretty much do this with typical web 2.0 bookmarking sites & regular yellow pages and directories.

But, before I put much time into anything like this, I normally check for nofollows

ctrl + 'U' (If using Firefox),
ctrl + 'F' : find nofollow

As you can see any link added to this site will not get followed by the robots. The page is indexed, so Mojo Pages with definitely have (your) content. But your links wont get indexed. But, this is only a problem when it comes to SEO and PageRank. Any place to add content about your business for free is a good place to start. The site's Alexa rank isn't bad, so it couldn't hurt to add your local company to the website. Plus, even though bots don't follow links and index them, that doesn't mean they can't read them and associate the 2 pages (linker and linkee).

Post dedicated to my favorite resort in San Diego.

Web 2.0 Tags + SEO = Search Engine Love

TIP 5: SEO & Tags

Tags are very important when it comes to SEO and the web 2.0 world. Tags are labels web users give web pages, pictures, posts, etc. They represent community anchor text votes.

So when submitting sites, posting blogs or uploading pictures, make sure when tagging it, you tag it with the keywords you use in your metas and with the most popular tags people search for on that particular site.

This step focuses on making sure your site is listed under your targeted tags;

If you Google the terms "design" "tags", "graphic design" "tags" or graphicdesign "tags"

This will bring sites with the most relevant lists of websites tagged with graphic design. Add your website and tag it with your keywords and make sure everyone is aware your site is online and that your site deserves to be tagged "graph design" also. Many times these popular tagged-named pages on large web 2.0 sites will show up in the rankings without typing in "tag" or "tags".

Well, this finishes off Google's 4th bullet

"Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site in online."

Just remember one thing, when you have a legit relevant site that people in your field will enjoy, it's only right that you let all of them know you are there for them. Right???

Flickr is SEOable - A Search Engine Optimized Profile

Today I want to show y'all how to optimize a Flickr account. I'll simply show you how to apply basic SEO Techniques to your Flickr account.

First and foremost, Flickr is a Photo account provided by Yahoo! that allows you to create your own photo galleries and sets. So remember, to use this technique, you must have pictures.

Now, when you create a Flickr account, you are given a profile page with your own url within the flickr domain. In other words, Flickr is giving you a page to optimize anyway you please within their website.

So here we go.

When you first start a profile, you are given the option to choose a username. Pick one with your targeted keywords in the the name, for this will be your unique part of your url address.

For example; If you want to rank high for the term 'san diego law firm', pick a username like sandiegolawyer007, this will turn out to look like this; http://www.flickr.com/people/sandiegolawyer007.

So now we have a optimized url.

Next, when it's time to pick a screen name, pick one that is similar to your key phrase. Use one to 3 words relating to your targeted keywords within your sreen name. This is important because this will be your title tag.

When you edit your profile first and last name, whatever you put here will show up right next to your Screen name. (Latent/Relevant content chance)

Scroll down to Describe yourself...

This is your chance to make a keyword rich page full of content relevant to your targeted keyword.

Flickr says "some html ok", so it's ok to give yourself a bold, italicized keyword anchor text link with keyword-rich surrounding content pointing back to your webpage relevant to your new Flickr profile.

But keep in mind, they do give you a chance to add you "Online bits" so you can add your website later if you don't want within the content.

Later down the page they have the "things you like", these sections allow some html also, so you could add more content if desired. I like to look at these pages like equivalents to my sub-pages and add deep links pointing to co-ordinating pages.

Just keep in mind that every box that is editable is SEOable.