In this last year I worked with a client to put up a website for him for La Quinta, California. As usual I added a sitemap( BTW this site makes quick and easy xml sitemap files) and verified the site with Google’s webmaster tools (Which just underwent an awesome Google facelift and gives more data and feed back than ever).

Pay attention to the bones of your Site: File Names

Well, I just went back and checked in to my Google webmaster tools account and discovered something very strange for this real estate and local centric website for La Quinta, CA…

I was totally confused why this site had so many different terms that it ranked for for “Skeleton”… Well I did some digging and realized that when I built the site, I had added the background image with the file name “images/skeleton.gif”. The rest of the site has NOTHING to do with skeletons but here Google is giving rankings for a wide mix of terms related to the main content of the page, as well as for terms related to skeletons! For example Google webmaster tools showed me ranking 48 for [Jack Skeleton] from Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as [skeleton in desert] which seemed to have used the geographic context along with the filename. The lesson here for your site is that filen ames are one of the many factors in how Google understands your website, so do everything you can to name them appropriately!

Just in March Google announced that it would be altering the SERP result page to increase the amount of information that the description would give for long tail searches. It started pulling additional context from the page, in addition to the information it may pull from DMOZ. Google has upped the Ante… Today at Searchology among other new programs the most important change for SEOers and Website owners in my opinion is “Rich Snippets“. Here’s an example of a “Rich Snippet” from Google’s Search Result Page.

So essentially by using RDF markup and Microtagging you can utlize special markup on page and that information will actually be utilized in the Google Serps. These types of Microtags have been used in the past but this is the first time Google has announced that they’re using this information. It will be interesting to see how this change roll out will affect Google’s fortunes. While Matt Cutts says that this change will roll out slowly for specific searches at first, but there’s a form where you can indicate you’d like to participate.

Adopt Early

If you’re a small business website and your trying to get your information displayed more prominently then add the microformats to your address or if you offer online products, be sure to add the proper tags!

When people are searching locally, and getting information specific to an area, quite often they are actually searching for local events. This could be anything from classes and seminars to the latest gig for their friends band.

A Valuable Event

There is a niche type of website that caters to supplying this event information to online sources, and one component of your local search optimization should include the use of these resources. One reason for this is the “Citation” that they can provide your business, because when you list your business as a venue you enter your business name and address and also have an opportunity to get an inbound link to your site. You also have the opportunity of creating your own profile on that website and get another link on that profile. This is in addition to the even listing itself, so all in all you can get 3 quality inbound links all in one go, on top of the exposure to their users!

The Top Event Sites

Doux vintage Eventful profile
Doux Vintage Grand Opening Event

Upcoming Event: Doux Vintage Grand Opening

Doux Vintage Upcoming Profile

Zvents- Doux Grand Opening Celebration

Doux Vintage Zvents Profile

Doux Vintage : Venue Listing

Bonus Event Value!

It turns out that Zvents.com exports to several different platforms! So when you add your business as a venue, it actually gets syndicated to several different authority sites!It exports to Things To Do by MSN and also to the Press Enterprise Events page, and may have other partners, but these two showed up in a Google search very quickly as they are authority domains! Update: It looks like another exported page is on a High Desert News website, once again through Zvents.

What about your events?

Be sure to take advantage of Event Marketing because it has many valuable rewards to give you. Don’t think you have an event worthy of listing? Here’s some quick thoughts for you where you could list yourself. Host a seminar on your industy, create a “coffee group” to discuss your expertise, list your grand opening ( like I did for Doux Vintage…be sure to offer refreshments like cupcakes and wine and you’ve got a win!). You could also host a band, which could also yeild extra links if the band has a blog, since they’ll want to let their groupies and followers know where they’re playing(thanks Alex Guillen for that tip)!  Any way you slice it, there’s tons of value in event marketing so get to it!

Update: Thanks to everyone that attended the Grand Opening of Doux Vintage! Your support was very much appreciated!

I’ve been deeply intrigued by local search ever since attending SMX West 2009 in San Jose.  Matt Mcgee and Steve Espinosa were both big influences that made me re-evaluate my efforts online to consider the large changes that Google has brought to the table in regards to Local Search. It has become clear to me that any business that has a brick and mortar location has hundreds of online opportunities that are accessible, most are free to utilize, positively impact traffic, and have a good result on site rankings and online visibility. In other words, as a small business owner YOU HAVE TO BE INSANE not to take advantage and learn as much as possible about these opportunities.

My Own Case Study: From Online to Offline

My beautiful Wife Michelle has been twittering, blogging about fashion and running an online vintage store. She recently got moved into an art studio and has been diligently working to convert part of the studio into an exhibition room so she can show her collection off on the first Thursday of every month( as part of the Riverside, Ca Art Walk) and by appointment.  It struck me that she would now have an opportunity to take advantage of many online opportunities now that she was going to have a physical location. I decided to use this opportunity to publicly show what steps a small business should take to make an impact on their local search profile. I just hope that this turns out to be helpful, and instructive!

Surveying the Local Landscape

I first started doing Google searches for vintage clothes, accessories, stores and shops to find out what the local landscape was in terms of competitors. Fortunately, there are very few stores that are competing for this particular industry. The search engine results page quite often pulled a “onebox” map result, and the rest of the results of the page were actually listings of shops on 3rd party websites. I bookmarked those sites to come back to see if I could add her business as a listing on those ranked pages.

Hello World: Getting Listed

The first step was to get the shop’s physical location identified as a business listing. Google Local was my first move, so that I could be sure that any citations, reviews and links her listing would get would be credited with that value. Even the reviews that are entered into Yahoo get cited in Google Local, so it was really the only choice.

After you enter your basic information into Google Local you have the option of selecting categories. Now in Google Local, when you enter a search that isn’t in a specific category it will suggest a revision to what it beleives is the closest category that matches that query, so they’ve done a pretty thorough job of narrowing down the categories, so be sure that you enter in up to 5 categories that describe your business.

Google Categories: Clothing Collectible Period Vintage, Clothes & Accessories Consignment & Resale,Vintage Clothing Store, Vintage Accessories, Vintage Dresses

A Google Post Card: Greetings from Mountain View, CA!

Google is at least minimally interested in verifying that entries into Google Local are actual verifiable businesses, so they require either the phone number or physical address be verified. Now the phone verification is pretty much immediate, they’ll call you and you punch in a pin code, but you can also have a post card sent to your listed address to verify your business. Downside is that the post card takes some time to verify, but in this case it was necessary since the number used actually is a voicemail box that sends an email transcript.

My What a Nice Profile You Have!

The Google account that you sign up with for your Google Local listing can also yield a secondary online presence that is searchable, on the Google URL, and fairly customizable. Here’s the Google profile for Doux Vintage and my suggestion is that you tie it into a Picasa or Flickr account. If you use Flickr, then seperate out a set that has the specific pictures you’d like to use otherwise you might end up displaying pictures that aren’t exactly related. Be sure to list your contact information, and take advantage of the Bio area to get some good anchor text links in addition to the Links section.

Be sure to check out these resources on Google Local and Google Profiles and Small Business SEO

The Start of a Good Thing

That’s all for now, as I continue to expand on Doux Vintage, I’ll be continuing this as a series of posts, reporting my tactics and results so that you can learn from the example. Hopefully it’s a helpful one!

I recently had the pleasure of presenting this slideshow presentation to an association of Realtors, and thought that it was content that was worth sharing for small business owners, and people not familiar with Local Search.

So I arrived at my office, to notice all 10 chairs from my department were missing from everyone’s desks in them main area…and found that they had all migrated into my office. Luckily I was able to get through the door and coral them back to the desks. I was then confronted by a vast sea of Balloons. They said it was originally 140..but they had many casualties in blowing them up, so it was around 99…

“Hast du etwas Zeit Fur Mich Dann Singe Ich Ein Leide ur Dich. Vonn Neun und Neuzig Luft Ballon, Auf Eirem Weg Zum Horizont”

Google just released a 2 part update that they have announced through their blog. The first aspect is the addition of related search results to your serp pages and new technology (The Gypsy indicates it’s part of a larger algorithm) for Google to correlate terms, the second is an extension of the Description field in the Google “Snippet”, which should prompt us to review our current SEO practices to make sure it’s still the most rational approach.

Context is Everything

Google hopes to  enhance the search experience by better understanding user intent. First up, a new technology has been deployed to understand the associations of a given search phrase. Google offered up the example of “principles of physics.” With the new technology, Google now understands that “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and “Quantum Mechanic” are all related terms, and will alter SERP behavior accordingly. This is important to bear in mind as you write your content that you need to focus on a broader range of related keywords, because Google isn’t looking just at how many times a single keyword is appearing, it’s looking contextually. Therefore you need to provide a broader context for your content in order for you to show your relevance to that set of related keywords.

Sorry Guys, but Google Says Longer is Better

When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.

Sounds great right? Well, you need to look at this a little bit harder to see how this could impact your search engine optimization of your website. In the past, the limit of approx 140-160 characters for your description was  pretty standard, because that’s what would actually display on the serp. However, this question comes to mind:

Is the expanded Snippet the Meta description or text from the page to provide “context”?

Now I had previously done some research on how Google uses DMOZ information in their snippet results. So I started with that URL to provide a historical sample so we could compare.

Well here’s a query for [http://www.pathaddad.com]

and here’s a much longer query

[Indianapolis real estate services and homes for sale in Carmel, Noblesville, Fishers, Westfield, Geist, Morse, Zionsville and other Hamilton County areas]

From this example we can see that this snippet extension will, for longer query terms, increase the size of viewed characters in the meta description as well as pull in contextual text bits separated by an ellipse. The length can be more double and triple the previous 140 character limit. The good news is that in context it may uncover extra details from a long description, but I would still say that it would be best to provide a 140 character limit meta title and let Google grab extra snippett description from the page to provide content.

The Take Away

It is interesting that Google is taking steps to encourage long tail searches. With the release of the Google suggest, we saw an increase in “Fat Belly” terms…but this change while focused o nthe user experience, shows Google is interested in serving long tail queries more effectively. You need to provide a broader context for your content, and it will lend itself to supporting long tail queries.

The Background

In high school, I was given a bobble head Alf for Christmas. He’s stuck around through the years, adorning the dash of my first car, second car, my 3rd car’s trunk, my closet, my shelf at home, then after a “suggestion” from my wife, my desk at work.  Last year, I got engaged in a contest, a rank race for Content Writing Advice and I decided that the person in the office leading the race would get to have Alf at their desk, as a physical reminder of the contest. He has now gone missing! At first I just believed he would be returned shortly… but then I received a cryptic (and encrypted) note…

The Victim

Have You Seen This Bobble Headed, Cat Eating Alien?

The (Presumably) Ransom Note

This is the cryptic note that appeared on my floor several days after he disappeared.

Please Help!

If you’re familiar with this particular font, can you let me know? If you’re good at cracking codes, give some tips or let me know what it says so I can save Alf!

My assumptions:

• It’s a type of font- but not web dings, or wing dings(at least not ones that were loaded in my MS word
• I don’t even know if I’m looking at the note upside down…
• Most likely the word ALF was used in the note
• The note is most likely in english, transposed into those characters…

UPDATE

I spent my lunch pouring over the note, and used Alf as a clue, and was able to crack the code….Others in my office are now pointing out that it was Kryptonian used for an english translation.

I have ALf if you want him back send email to alftheft gmail

I immediately grabbed the email and sent a message: I beleive it was an auto responder but it says:

I almost sold Alf on Ebay yesterday; he ate my cat and I thought you
were probably glad to be rid of him.

Your next assignment:

http://www.picvalley.net/v.php?p=u/2735/768608741844430896.JPG

Which is another clue in another translated language

Now this one I recognized right away as Klingon!

Off to find a translator!

Update (1:50 Pm March 17): Looks like I’m getting some Twitter help from a twittering Klingon named Qurgh!

So with those clues I think it should read

About time I was thinking you did not want alf back respond with pizza

Aight, so emailing “pizza” back to alftheft… Lets see what’s next!

Ransom Update:

Well done!

I guess Alf on Ebay got you nervous?

This one will reveal the approximate location of Alf; after that you are on your own.

Oh geez…  This one looks a bit more complicated- Post up if you have tips or suggestions, looks like I might get Alf back soon!

Update: Victory is Mine!

I got this message below shortly after Corey in my office sent me a tip that it was the Futurama Alien Language, then about 5 mintures later @shirleytipsy got finished before me and asked if it was under my desk… I looked..but it wasn’t under my desk– but the message read really strange due to being part left, part right, part upside down!

I know the third encryption is harder. It is meant to be. Are the words going up and down? Left to right? All of the above? Do words really merge like that of a crossword puzzle? That is for you to find out and for me to know; truth is, even I have a hard time reading it after I carefully crafted it.

Because this has been an absolute thriller experience for me; whoever cracks this puzzle and e-mails me what it reads, I’ll treat them out to lunch next week. Of course they have to be working at the same company or be willing to come out to Anahiem Hills during my lunch hour to cash in on the prize.

Oh and of course, this only applies if you this entire e-mail message on your blog.

I have figured out the message to be something close to

“I’m impressed with your skills.
Can Find Alf Under desk in Box.”

I did just a little hunting in our office and found my Alf stashed under the spare desk in the office, stored in a box full of random computer parts. Hooray!

Whodunnit!?

I got an email from the Alf Napper, giving me a clue to their identity! This one’s tough though, it looks like it’s in all three of the alphabets that the previous clues were using! Help me solve this one too!

Several months ago Google started offering an additional option for Igoogle account holders. Each igoogle account holder can create a profile, with their contact information and important details. Also, you can add in a website address with your own anchor text! I did this recently for one of my clients who is a mortgage planner in corona, and at the same time I created a Google Webmaster Account, and verified his site.

One of the major benefits of verifying your site via webmaster tools is that it will report recognized links as well as “anchor text” to indicate the relevance of that link. As you can see here in these screen shots, Google’ webmaster tools is recognizing the link from the Google profile, as well as recognized the anchor text utilized. The lessons here are obvious, take advantage of the Google Profiles and Webmaster tools.

Recently I did a guest blog post about Taking your Local Search to the next level of awesomeness. While researching into the impact of local search on small businesses I had the pleasure of talking to Todd Butcher of Pepperjam, who had some great ideas about local search. I did quote some of his thoughts in that article but thought that the rest of his ideas would be very helpful to businesses interested in local search.

Question: Given that fact that Yellow Pages, Super Pages, Yelp and other “yellow page” type services now include geo tagging, address, and often a map of a business location, would you say that getting these entries could
be helpful in your organic rankings, if you have a geographically
centered Keyword?

Todd: If a business cares at all about local search, they have to go after these entries. Here is why: First, if a searcher is sophisticated enough to actually search with a geotargeted term, the local results are the first thing you see on the SERPS. In addition, for many local listings there are sub categories linking off to sites that google feels provide valuable information about that business.

Quality Local Information

This means that sites which are acting as local aggregators of business information are going to motivated to provide thorough and accurate information to be listed there. This will greatly improve the overall search experience.

Google is Getting Geographic

Second, it seems many people simply search a term like “pizza” or “car dealer”. Search on these terms and Google will ask you to enter a zip code to better refine your search locally. This is just another example of the importance that is being placed on local results.

Also, I think Google is trying to take the emphasis away from other aggregators like Superpages and try to keep it all “in house” so to speak. For that reason, I think it’s important now more than ever for the 100% local business to position themselves to take advantage of these local results.

Advice for Local Business Owners

The bottom line is, if you are a local business, it doesn’t make sense to go after broad keywords. Geotarget. Do everything you can to get listed in these results. Of course, to make sure your site shows up in these results is a whole other SEO discussion.