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My Caveman Painting of a Local Search Engine
Fine, I guess our cavemen ancestors didn’t have search engines to help them find the closest woolly mammoth watering hole or the finest maker of custom wooden clubs this side of Bedrock. I’m afraid I...
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13 Best-Practices for Picking Google Places Business Categories
The “business categories” you choose for your Google Places page matter—big-time. Your choices can help get your business visible to all the local customers you’re trying to reach, or they can cause...
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The Lazy Man’s Way to Find Meetup.com Local Link Opportunities (in 5 Seconds...
Has your local SEO person nagged you to earn a few good links? I hope so, because that’s good advice. Especially since the Pigeon update, your ability to do RCS and earn links – like from local media...
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Have Google Places Descriptors Been Grandfathered in?
It’s been exactly one week since the latest revision of the Google Places My Business Quality Guidelines. Of all the changes, arguably the biggest change was that Google put the kibosh on...
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The 20 Principles of a Dynamite Local SEO Audit
If you aren’t sure what a local SEO audit is and have no idea how to do one, you’ve come to the wrong place. (In that case, start with Casey Meraz’s monster post.) But I’m guessing your problem is...
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12 Kinds of Duplicate Content in Local SEO: Which Ones Are Trouble?
There are two intertwined myths about duplicate content: 1: That Google is on the warpath against it, penalizing sites left and right. 2: That duplicate content is a thing – one specific problem....
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10 Benefits of a Disappointing Local SEO Effort
You’re the business owner. You’ve paid for help. You’re the local SEO. You’ve been paid to help. Maybe you did help – just not quite enough. Both of you were expecting boom. But all you got was...
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Who Should Ask for Reviews: Business Owner or Employee?
“Phil, how do I get more reviews?” I’m asked that all the time. What I’m almost never asked is who should ask customers, clients, or patients for reviews. That’s a shame, because a good strategy +...
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Keep Your Site, Lose at Local SEO: When Must You Rebuild?
Can your camel’s back take any more straw? Take care of your camel and it’ll take care of you. Give it plenty of food and water, be its buddy, and don’t overwork it. When your camel gets very old,...
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BBB Accreditation: Boring But Bumps Your Local SEO
I may be unpopular for saying this…. But here goes: You should consider getting accredited by the Better Business Bureau. It can help your local visibility (if you’re in the US or Canada). Mind you, I...
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The Best [BLEEP]in’ Local Link Questionnaire
You need at least a few good links to rank well in Google Places and beyond. Especially post-Pigeon update, and especially if you’re in a competitive local market. But that’s easier said than done....
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Google Helpouts Didn’t Have Time to Bleed
Google Helpouts and Jesse Ventura’s character in Predator have much in common: They both showed early promise, but got killed off way too soon. Well, on second thought, I guess that’s all they have in...
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How to Use Wildcard Searches for Local Keyword-Research: Lightning Round with...
Two little characters – the asterisk ( * ) and the underscore ( _ ) can help your keyword-research. Simply add them to various search terms you type into Google when researching keywords, and...
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20 Local SEO Techniques You Overlooked (Almost)
We local-SEO geeks talk about the same old basic principles a little too much: clean up your citations, don’t get penalized by Google, be mobile-friendly, earn “local” links, create “unique” content,...
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Which Local Review Sites Are on Your Side?
Not all review sites play games with customers and business owners. In that way, Yelp and Google+ are outliers. Reviews there are important, of course. But if you run into difficulty getting reviews...
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Who Can Write You an Online Review – Besides Customers?
Tricky question. Let’s start with the obvious gold standard: your customers write openly about their experiences with you in online reviews, and you did such a good job for them that those reviews...
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Lipstick on a Pig: Google Places “Report a Problem” Requests Now Rejected...
A couple days ago, Colan of Imprezzio Marketing reported that the next-to-useless “Report a problem” feature in Google Places had been revamped. I was excited. After all, Google made it easier to...
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Pasting or Embedding Google Reviews on Your Site: Will They Get Filtered?
For a few years now, people like me have told clients and others that it’s probably not a good idea to copy their Google reviews and paste them onto their site as testimonials. The concern is that...
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Hauling in More Local Customers…Even When Your Wheels Are Spinning
That’s the name of the talk I gave at MN Search yesterday. I covered 25 quick wins for attracting more local customers when you don’t know what to do next. Some of my suggestions are for local...
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25 Principles of Building Effective City Pages for Local SEO
So you want to create “city pages” to attract local customers in places where you don’t have an office. How can you make those pages attract customers rather than repulse them, rank well in the...
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