Posted on: May 5, 2009 by Syzlak
So for the past 2 months or so Google has been inserting their map based local listings (affectionately referred to as the 10 Pack) into broad search results. Thus, when a non-geographically targeted search was used or even when a user was not logged in, Google would show local results regardless (irregardless for you Steph). While this was certainly helpful for the user, it has become a bit of a headache for the SEO, the business owner and the online marketing director. Today, a top 5 listing does not hold the weight it once did, because for the average user positions 4-10 are now below the fold. While this is a great opportunity for local businesses to thrive, (and in today’s horrendous economic climate, I’m actually a fan of this) it makes it that much harder for the nationwide business to succeed.
Unfortunately, it would appear that Google may have gone one step further.
This morning I checked in on my allergy doctor’s website. He’d recently asked me for a few tips to increase his search rank. I was pleased to see his site in the #2 position on Google for the very broad term: allergy clinic. I was so pleased that I asked the good Hack to perform the search and bask in my pride and glory. His response?
i see some sketchy looking allergy doc at number 5
What the hell?
Undaunted, I ask my old friend Luke to give me a third set of eyes on the situation. He too saw the listing in the 5th position. So, what was going on?
Luke lives in Bend, Hack lives in the nether regions of my mind, neither of them live in Portland. Where does Google draw the “local dividing line?” Is it DMA restricted? If I lived 10 miles away, would it be the same? Was Google honestly giving an organic boost to a local listing based on my location? Yes. In fact, Luke’s company had been noticing this of late as well and even had a rather serious sounding meeting to discuss it. He’d pointed out that because of this, “running reports geographic locations in the U.S. is no longer accurate” and that it even applies “when using google.kr, google.fr, etc.”
Fantastic.
Google has just pushed down organic rankings for even more nationwide companies. It’s one thing to have the 10 Pack show up in the 4th position, but giving local companies organic precedence means that many nationwide companies will fall even further below the fold…perhaps even to the dreaded second page of results.
While this isn’t bad for the local business that wants local customers, it does pose an interesting problem for the semi-local business – the local business that wants outside customers. At the web development agency where I work, one of our clients is Legend Homes, they’re a Portland home builder that focuses on green-built homes. So, naturally we try to target Portland and Oregon keywords, but also “green” keywords. In addition, they are looking at selling homes to people who are moving to the area, not necessarily living in the area. With the vast amount of competition in the housing market (real estate, home builders, private sellers, etc), it’s already a challenge to establish solid footing with a lot of these keywords. Now, throw in the fact that listings will appear differently outside of any given location, and you’ll see the problem with Google’s new approach to local search.
Posted on: April 10, 2009 by Syzlak
So, while I still have a couple SearchFest recaps to post, and a ton of links to hand out to everyone that drank with me afterward – I’d like to take a moment to gripe.
Twitter “users” are beginning to annoy me. Bots are one thing, but the amount of real people that sign up and then fail to use Twitter is driving me nuts. Twitter is not a difficult product, and if you don’t feel like sharing, kindly leave.
If you are feeling like taking the plunge, here’s 5 tips to make it worth your and my time
- Find tons of people
The most daunting thing about Twitter when you first sign up is wrapping your mind around why all your friends have told you to sign up. When it’s just you and 2 of your friends that use Twitter it can be hard to have any other conclusion than all of your friends are mental. This is not the case (for the most part), in reality, we just have a lot of people that interact with us. More people mean more conversations, more opinions, more links, more thoughts and a more interesting tool. Go to Twitter Searchand find people that are talking about things you’re interested in.
- Follow people that interest you even if you don’t know them
What the hell? Really? Yes. This isn’t Facebook or myriad other high school reunion networks, this is a live conversation. Following people you don’t know can be the gateway to finding people that either you do know, or that are uncannily similar to you. All of a sudden you have more people to talk to on Twitter and more people that want to talk to you.
- For God’s sake, stop following the Twitter prompt
While it’s cool once in awhile, do not feel that you must be doing something. The most useless updates to Twitter are the “is brushing his teeth. Gonna get ‘em clean!” Oh? Well, good for you. I don’t give a shit. The problem when I don’t give a shit is that you’ve Tweeted yourself into a corner. If you do this sparingly, that’s fine. Doing it all the bloody time means you’re boring and are going to lose some followers – namely me. Give us something to work with, show us a cool site, tell us what you’re listening to, ask a question, say something witty, funny or depressing.
- Do not use Twitter.com
Twitter’s beauty and strength comes from the countless applications and plugins that allow you to post and read posts how you like. Get Twitterfox if you are on FireFox all day long, get TweetDeck if you want to be really organized, Twitterrific for a simple and functional app, there are hundreds of apps out there – find one and use it, you won’t be avoiding or forgetting about Twitter ever again.
- Make use of the @
You know what made Twitter take off for me? Replying to other users. All of a sudden the quirky thought bubble that Twitter had been turned into a constant conversation. I was no longer in my corner posting about how clean my teeth were going to be, but instead arguing back and forth with new acquaintences about topics that I’d not thought anyone else was interested in.
Oh and above all else, start using the damn thing and you’ll probably see people start following and interacting with you too. Which, in the end, is the point after all.
Posted on: March 12, 2009 by Syzlak
Over the next few days, I’ll be recapping various sessions from SearchFest09. Today, Local & HyperLocal Marketing
Local & HyperLocal Search Marketing
Let’s start by setting the stage a little bit. While most of my work involves being a snarky asshole on a blog and working on Nationwide PPC, Display and SEO, there was once a time when I was strictly a local marketer. It was ages ago back in 2004, before the IYP was a major player, when the world of local was dominated moreso by the “super-aggregators” like BellSouth, Verizon and SuperPages. Back then, the world was different. You could outrank a competitor by paying more than they did, and Overture (yeah, I know) would actually tell you how much to bid to jump ahead of your rivals. Bruce Springsteen called them glory days, RuPaul called them glory hole days, I called them the days when you could walk into work hungover and still please your clients.
So, although I don’t do a lot of Local Search today, it’s still fascinating to me.
SearchFest 09 - Local...with a guy in the way
First up, Greg Hartnett of Best of the Web.
Surprisingly, his advice is to start your online campaign with the web directories. While I can’t disagree, it does kindof feel like Google saying the best place to start is AdWords. However, to qualify this he encourages us to work only with the good ones.
- Yahoo Directory
- Best of the Web
- Business.com
He also stresses the importance of finding and utilizing local niche directories. This is really one of the best pieces of advice during his entire presentation. One of the things that can really hold back a local campaign is the failure to be seen in the right places.
What’s another great piece of advice? Properly using phone numbers and addresses. This is something that we used back in ‘04 to differentiate the 500 Atlanta Plumbers for which we used to have to write titles and descriptions. One thing that Greg pointed out is to use 1 phone number and address per page, as search engines will be confused as to which phone number/address to associate with the listing. Priceless. This has a two-fold effect. First, you’ve made the engine’s job easier, which is crucial because we all know that the search engines are too stupid to process 4 phone numbers, secondly, you’ve a reason for 3 more pages of content, phone numbers, et cetera to work for you on the engines.
Last thought – Greg seems like he could be a tough guy.
Now, Mary Bowling from seOverflow.com
I have 2 pages of notes on Mary’s presentation, that being said, you’re not getting all of them here. Sorry, but you don’t want to be reading my site for 10 minutes either.
Of the things that I do wish to share, the first head smacker was when Mary introduced an age-old local marketing idea to the crowd – create a geo-targeted tagline. How insanely simple. It’s so simple that you probably know about 30 places around your town (maybe 4 places for my potato farming readers and those stuck out in the middle of Canada 
) that have geo-targeted taglines. Neighborhoods, cities, region, state, anything can be used; just take whatever you want, combined with your service (e.g. Boise’s Famous Pizzeria), and boom goes the dynamite.
The other, slightly less obvious, suggestion Mary had was to pusue citations in whatever form (not just links). Apparently, seeing a business name referenced throughout the web builds trust with Google and other engines. Obviously, it’s easier to pursue a reference or review or note than a link, and although it may not have the strongest end impact, trust is trust, and is best to be built than squandered.
Last thought – Mary needs a PowerPoint consultant
Next, my man, Matt McGee – Small Business SEM
First, Matt recaps what’s happening in the Blogging and SEO session “Blogging is good for search.” Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get on with the conference. Matt’s still got it.
The local blog, Matt and his wife run 4 of them. His wife being a real estate agent, obviously has great reasons for having a local blog. It conveys an inherent knowledge of their city, the schools, restaurants, stores, doings, et cetera. A level of expertise is communicated to the readers, while, most importantly, not plugging any real estate content along the way. This is a common mistake for the small, local blogger – the thought that their blog must actually serve a purpose to their business aside from content, traffic, readership, subscriptions, comments, links, advertising space, references…do I need to continue?
So many small business/local blogs fail on this very first step. I’m a plumber so I need to have a blog all about plumbing, or I’m a dentist so I could write about silly things that happen when I put patients under. Well, yes, I’d read about how you lost your licesnse to Dr., however, you could also just write about the new restaurants going in across the street and capitalize on the traffic that’s interested in those restaurants. The same people that are looking for those new restaurants probably have teeth, and they might live in your neighborhood. Put it together Hoss.
Again, I’ll hold back on Matt’s presentation as I want to save some info for myself; however, this was really the crux of his presentation.
Last thought – Only Matt could make Tri-Cities sound nice
Also, I have to get one plug in here for David Mihm & Patrick Sexton’s GetListed.org. It’s a great little tool for any company with a local office to leverage their local presence.
That’s all for now, Technical SEO will be up soon.
Posted on: January 15, 2009 by Syzlak
Bam! Welcome to 2009 reader! Your man Syzlak attended the SEMpdx PPC Hot Seat on Tuesday the 13th and blew it up.
On my first panel for SEMpdx, I was tasked with critiquing the PPC campaigns/offering PPC guidance. It was an interesting experience, unlike many of the other Hot Seat nights (that should totally be a viral infomercial for SEMpdx “Hot Seat Nites,” make it all 11pm 80s style, a little sex, a lot of dumb humor, like Viva Variety. Now, THAT was a good show. Remember Johnny Blue Jeans and all the stupid products? Baby is the Bagpipes? Baby Tastes Like Soup? Fishy Bar – the candy bar that tastes like fish??? Loved that show. Especially the episode where they played the game Plant or Animal. Contestants were given a 2 second sound bite and had to guess if the sound came from Robert Plant or a wild animal. It was unbelievably difficult, and made for a great game show.
Man, there really was nothing like the early days of Comedy Central. Shows like Exit 57, Stand-up Stand-up, Short Attention Span Theater, MST3K , Dr. Katz – all great. Then South Park came and ruined it. Now all we have (aside from Daily Show & Colbert) are MADtv reruns and Dane Cook specials. Seriously, when are people going to realize that not only is Dane Cook a theif, but he’s also about as funny as Andy Dick), this time the audience didn’t seem to be as familiar with the topic at hand. I think it’s fair to say that SEMpdx audience members are a bit more in tune with the ideas of usability and SEO, than they are with PPC; and for that, I am thankful that SEMpdx put on a PPC specific event.
Hopefully, the audience members got as much out of the sessions as the businesses on display did. I know that after the session the businesses were quite appreciative of all the help from Mr. Tom Hale, Mr. Todd Mintz and Ms. Leisa Hall and myself. I just hope that those in the audience didn’t feel like all the information was going over their heads.
All in all, a fantastic time and a great idea. I really hope SEMpdx makes a PPC Hot Seat a part of the regular rotation. If not, put a PPC specialist on the panel once in awhile to add some diversity, it’s about time we knocked some of those SEO big whigs down a notch
Oh, I almost forgot – I won a T-shirt!!! See what you can do if you set your mind to it?
Posted on: January 6, 2009 by Syzlak
Here we go, first post of ‘09 and first with the new WP.
Dear Reader,
So, we all made it to 2009. Congrats, we staved off death another year. I have nothing to say today, but I felt I needed to get back in the swing of things over here. It’s like shopping for a holiday, you have to buy the first gift regardless of whether you think you could get a better deal somewhere, or think that the item is utter garbage, that’s not the point – it’s crossing into the proper mindset.
Which brings us to our current predicament: my lack of posting. Never fear reader, I’m working on it. To get in the mindset I’ve put on Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash and I’m writing a fluff piece to get used to the onslaught of writing that will surely follow.
Yeah, that’s probably a bunch of bullshit; but hey, I’m trying.
Love you till Friday,
Syzlak
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