• Add photos of a a logo with contact information
• Source: It’s important to understand that the interaction of a Google Places with photos is different depending on the source of the photo. When you upload your photos logged in to your Places account, then it will gain a stamp
  “From the owner” .
• Add photos of your location from the street, so those seeing your brick and mortar will be better able to pick out your business, in case they have to park elsewhere if parking space isn’t available.
• Add photos of your products and service being fulfilled

They had changed this setting to be “Yes, this business serves customers at their locations”, instead of serving at their location. If you have a brick and mortar, your site/business and citations are treated differently! If you DO have a location, then make sure you play that card for all it’s worth. Otherwise, you need to make sure you’ve got enough area specific keyword references backing up your listed service areas if you don’t have a brick and mortar address.

Get a Feel for the community of Claremont, CA

Oh! By the By, if you’re looking for information and pictures of local businesses in Claremont, California, then stop by my newest project: Around Claremont

Affordable Document Services 

“Query intent can be classified, according to Google, as Action (“Do”), Information (“Know”) or Navigation (“Go”)”

Well, it turns out that Google’s “quality raters” checklist got leaked, and while it wasn’t a bombshell of secret information, it does provide some useful insights (thanks for the 16 points of insight SEOMOZ!)

Do you have information on your website for all 3 different types of intent on your website? Here’s some ideas to be sure you actually cover with content on your website, this example is for a real estate site, but just think it out for your own industry.

Action: Search for a home, Get CMA, List a home, get a buyers agent, get a sellers agent
Information: Learn about community, learn about home buying/selling
Navigation: Your Office/business location, contact info

The in-exactitude of a message is equal to the amount of time taken to write the message multiplied by the expediency of the medium of communication

Words, Words, Words they’re everywhere and everything when it comes to your online marketing!  But, when you get down to the nitty gritty, the down and dirty, you may have realized that the content you so easily spit out in rapid order over IM or a chat window in Facebook seem to be a little less valuable than if you had taken the extra time to put those ideas and expressions of feeling and thought into a blog post, or even a static page of content on your website.

The average human being hand-writes at 31 words per minute for memorized text and 22 words per minute while copying”  -Brown, C. M. (1988).

So much more so the hand written letter, if the average person copies text at 22 words per minute, you can guarantee that most creative writing is more full of creative pauses and thought since you can’t just “backspace” over your error.

You should also consider that even the most well crafted sentence, if said in person, could carry so much more weight as you emphasize different syllables, stress the different nouns and elongate the sounds of a word to make it fit your exact feeling.  Be sure that you’re using all forms of for your business, from expedient chat messages, Facebook posts, emails and face to face conversations be sure to convey yourself and your business’s principles in your dealings with your clients honestly and openly you never know exactly what may turn someone from a client, to a fan and advocate who will help your business much more than a single financial contribution to your bottom line.

Creating a facebook username

So then I jump on the wagon for another one of my pages that hadn’t quite yet reached 25, and while it took me through the first steps it gave me a Whoah, hold on there” error, and now it says I still need to get more fans!

Still neeed facebook fans

Can you give all your of your less than 25 fan pages Usernames? If you can’t post a link, and it’s category maybe we can spot the trend!

<meta property=”og:title” content=”This will be your Title” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”This will be your description” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3217/2762458387_31207c1a81_m.jpg” />

I am still testing this myself, and it seemed to work initially.. Let me know if this works for you!

1. Most businesses have not leveraged their Facebook pages correctly. Either they don’t exist at all, or they don’t post anything useful, just shout at people deals and squeals.
2. Most pages don’t have enough photos. You should have at least a profile picture, and then 4 more so they fill the bar at the top of your profile page.
3. It’s not about likes, it’s about “engagement”. Don’t go begging “we’re trying to get to x # of likes” instead put out pics, comments and try to engage other pages. It’s worth far more to get people commenting on your posts then to get more likes.

Here’s the most helpful site I’ve found for Facebook tips, The MLS App , it’s admin’d by Jimmy Mackin who actually responds to your comments quickly and often uses yoru questions as fodder for video response blog posts. Take some time to read his Facebook guide, or watch a webinar. He rocks!

What Changed?: Search Results

There have been several evolving changes that have slowly eroded the dominance of individual Realtors. The first is a change that came from Google itself, and that’s the rise of Universal Search Results. Based on the type of question you type, instead of just web results, you’ll get a mix of Google Places, Images, Videos, and News articles that match what Google actually thinks you’re trying to locate. Bing and Yahoo have similar changes made to their results as well. The biggest impact is the role of Google Places, and the map result that now makes up searches like [Riverside Realtor], or[ Riverside Real Estate Agent]. This means that for an entire segment of search you must be able to compete as an actual physical location or as being relevant to a specific location. This is completely contrary to most Realtors wishes, who often don’t even put their office address for fear of being “pigeon holed” to that location. The problem being that they so avoid this to the point of now losing out to brokerages who are unafraid of competing locally.

What Changed?: The Competition

Now going back to 2006, there were sites like Realtor.com and Homes.com, but they didn’t have as much clout. Now Trulia, Zillow and Yahoo Real estate have joined the fray and between all them they are drawing out millions of clicks through the search engines. While a number of those are for searches of specific properties, a good percentage of that traffic is people who would have been clicking and accessing IDX (property ) searching through a specific Realtor’s website.

How Should Real Estate Agent Websites Adapt?

Real estate websites for individual realtors need to understand the change in the game, and embrace these changes. They need add themselves to Google Places, as individual agents at their brokerage. I encourage checking with the broker on advertising rules, but you should use your office address(ask if you can have a suite or office number), but NOT your office Phone number in your listing, use your own unique number to avoid a painful process of merging that can happen if all your business info matches another listing. Then you need to take the time to enter yourself as a business at the same places Google/Yahoo/Bing go to verify a local business: local search and yellowpage websites. Yelp, Yellowpages, Local.com etc.

Next these sites need to embrace your local advantage, national based sites may have more “authority” that helps them rank for those searches, but they cannot compete with actual local pictures, or locally focused video! The reality is that reputation and area of service are the 2 key differentiators in Real Estate, so if you’re trying to rank for Riverside Real Estate thenyou need to be locally specific with your content and also show you’re a trusted resource!