NASHVILLE, TN – Optimizing your site for search engines is one thing, but how do you know if all of your hard work is paying off? Google offers a free service – Google Analytics – to marketers and webmasters that tracks visits in multiple ways. Many large organizations, including Costco Travel, the American Cancer Society, and CKE Restaurants, use Google Analytics to track their web traffic.

While marketers may receive more benefits from keeping up with in-depth statistics provided by Google Analytics, individuals that manage their personal or business websites can also use these tools to better understand what drives people to their sites.

Courtesy of Google's http://Analytics.Blogspot.com

Learn the Dashboard: There are tons of reports you can view through Google Analytics, but those will take more time and more in-depth coverage to learn. For now, get acquainted with your Dashboard. This is the main page, the starting point, for your Google Analytics information. Here, you’ll see a 30-day graph for total visits; the time period shown is customizable. You’ll see a snapshot of Site Usage, including statistics for Visits, Pageviews, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and Percentage of New Visits. Further down the page, you’ll see a map, which highlights where your views are coming from. You’ll also see a pie chart containing information about how visitors are getting to your site. Are you visitors coming from search engine results? From referring sites? From direct traffic? This information can quickly clue you in to your strengths and weaknesses.

On the dashboard you’ll also be able to see your top content. Adding fresh content in the same vein as your top performing content will give your repeat viewers some new material and will likely draw more unique visitors to your site.

Know Your Visitors: It’s important to know who is visiting your site. Are your visitors first-time viewers? How long are they staying on your website? How many pages within your website are they visiting? How many unique visitors do you have? With Google Analytics, you can see a detailed version of this information.

If you learn that most people stay on your website a very short amount of time, try to find out why. Is your design pleasing and simple, or is it cluttered and hard to read? If you discover that the majority of your visitors have visited your site before, then you know you’re doing something right. Having repeat viewers is just as important as bringing new, unique traffic to your site. You can also customize the information you’re gathering by taking advantage of the Premium Analytics feature Extended Custom Variables.

To evaluate if the SEO steps you’ve taken are working (although that’s a hard thing to measure just with a few clicks!), try downloading a plug-in to enhance your Google Analytics. Here’s one from Juice Analytics that gives you data on your new referring sites and your keywords with 50% higher traffic over the past week.

This doesn’t even cover the tip of the iceberg that is Google Analytics. To really be well versed in the GA scene, you’ll need to spend some time clicking around, browsing forums, and viewing different reports. Different data will be helpful to different users, so learning what you can do on GA will open your eyes to a whole new way of tracking your web traffic.

SANTA MONICA, CA — In a perfect web world, quality links are a big stamp of approval received from another site (or many sites, sending many, many clicks back to you). But, especially in the early days of link buying, before it was made such a huge ‘don’t', there were some pretty funny gimmicks out there, as pointed out in a humorous comic strip by BigOakInc.com.

But, the idea of selling links is still out there, even though Google addressed it years ago by putting Google’s Webspam team head, Matt Cutts, on the case. According to an in-depth blog entry by Cutts, the basic problem with selling links is that it makes a link-based reputation seem shallow, and, even worse, it can even make a Google search less reliable if not discovered. Cutts gives an example of the early link buying days, and what went wrong.

“Selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results,” Cutts says. “When the Berkeley College newspaper had six online gambling links [back in 2005] (three casinos, two for poker, and one bingo), on its front page, it’s harder for search engines to know which links can be trusted.”

In fact, the mass buying of links can ultimately render a site unsearchable and get it cast out of Google’s search results, especially if the site is selling links, as Cutts explains. So what should you do to get links? Do you turn to the dark side of SEO practices (as discussed in our Black Hat Vs. White Hat SEO tactics post), and if not, what do you do?

According to Cutts, links will come when you have great content on your site, which will help it to rank well on Google. Although, as Ali Husayni somewhat agrees with Cutts that great content is king but he believes that leaving your great content out there without any hands-on link-building efforts will get you no where.

“Great content may attract inbound links but only if your site has good popularity (did the chicken come first or the egg?)” Husayni says. “But since your competition is not sitting back waiting for inbound links to appear, you cannot either.”

In this case, you need to consult a professional white-hat SEO specialist to help you understand what you need to do.

NASHVILLE, TN – Most businesses already understand the importance of a social media presence, as their potential customers are likely on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or all three. For this article, we’ll focus on Facebook, and how it affects SEO.

An article by Blue Glass Marketing’s Selena Narayanasamy states, “Word-of-mouth marketing  has been a tried and true strategy for many brands, and to this day, it’s still one of the driving factors of brand recommendation. The “Like” or “Recommend” feature is almost an online version of word-of-mouth marketing.”

Image Courtesy of www.MrInternetTips.com

This isn’t a surprise. People are more likely to follow a friend’s recommendation on a great new restaurant or their favorite local spa than to take unknown (and potentially spambot) recommendations from the web.

On Facebook’s Developers description of Open Graph, we see that when someone “likes” or comments on a business’s app, Facebook users have three places where they see that information just on Facebook. If the business has a “like” button on its website, then when someone views the business’s webpage, they can also see a count of how many people have “liked” the page from Facebook.

For instance, if I “like” Blumhouse Productions, my Facebook friends will see that action in three places once they visit Facebook. The information will show up in my friends’ News Feed, on my Facebook Timeline, and on the Ticker (the new-ish box on the right of the screen that scrolls recent activity). Once you’ve gotten a “like” from someone, your subsequent posts will all end up in that person’s News Feed. That person is tuned-in to your business on a personal level. It also affects their friends, as the more activity your fans bring (“liking” your posts, commenting or sharing your posts), the more potential you have to gain viewers or “fans”.

Facebook gives developers and businesses with web savvy comprehensive information on how to use Facebook to its fullest. In the Key Concepts for Open Graph, Facebook explains how different sites can tailor their keywords, i.e., their Objects and Actions, to their company. Explaining further, the page states: “First you must define your actions and objects in the Dev App. For example, a running app may define “Routes” and “Marathons” as objects, and “Run” as the action in the Dev App. A cooking app may define “Recipe” and “Menu” as objects, and “Cook” as the action.” This is basically adding specific keywords to your business’s app to further integrate with Facebook.

So what does all this mean for SEO?

Well, when you’re on Facebook and you search for “Nashville bakeries”, any bakeries you’ve “liked” will pop up. If you haven’t “liked” any, search results from the web will show inside of Facebook, powered by Bing. Therefore, optimizing your website for Bing results can be a big help for a user performing a search within Facebook.

Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge, mentioned SEO strategy for social media in a panel on Facebook, Twitter & SEO at the Search Marketing Expo East in 2011. His tips for optimizing your Facebook page are very informative, including: “Use brand name in wall posts and tweets” and “push for engagement through likes and shares.” He also urges posting useful content as well as asking yourself if you’re using your SEO knowledge to freshen up your Facebook page.

In a recent Master Google blog post titled “Top Five Free SEO Tips of the Week”, we highlighted how to optimize your business Facebook page. Facebook is a great place to promote your business. First, the market is giant! Facebook will introduce your business to a vast amount of people. Second, the fans that “like” your page can become a community, sharing information and automatically seeing your posts on their News Feeds. This provides an organic opportunity to share special promotions for your business and gain new customers.

NASHVILLE, TN – It’s hypothesized that the term “Search Engine Optimization” was first documented by John Audette and Bruce Clay in 1997. When search engine algorithms were simpler, webmasters could saturate a page with keywords, ensuring a higher rank in search engine results. Ultimately, as users really want the most relevant data, search engines worked to make their algorithms stronger to avoid “Keyword Stuffing”.

In an article by SEO expert Jill Whalen, she comments on the minor changes that helped SEO evolve from 2000 to 2008. In an outline she found from 2000, her introduction stated that Google had 1.3 billion pages indexed. When the article was written in 2008, Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings, estimated that Google had nearly 10 billion pages indexed. As all of these small changes and unexplained algorithms rock our SEO boats, Whalen comments on what stays the same: “The one element that will never change is the same one that I’ve been advocating forever—whatever SEO methods or strategies you use, the thing that will get you the furthest is creating an awesome website!”

More Competition
The easier it is to make a website, the more people sign up for personal blogs or websites that can potentially distract users from the relevant information they’re searching for. Services such as WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and Weebly make web development a breeze. As these sites have gained popularity in the past few years, more people have dumped their information onto the web.

Five years ago, if you had a serious niche, it’s possible that you could be one of several websites, or even (gasp!) the only website, discussing a subject. Now that it’s so easy to make a website, i.e., you don’t need to know how to code it, you don’t need to purchase a domain name, new sites spring up daily. In the wake of this over-saturated market, ensuring that your website has up-to-date, relevant information is crucial.

More Social
Twitter launched in July of 2006, and since then, its users have grown to giant proportions. An article from Time Techland dated September 2011 revealed that Twitter has 100 million active users. Facebook launched in February 2004, and as of January 2012, there are 800 billion users. Now Google announced that search results are getting more personal, as users will see Google+ results as well as normal search results in the “everything” category.

These sites are a destination, where people spend lots of time connecting with friends or acquaintances with common interests. While before, friends could share links fairly easily through email, now, these websites like Facebook and Twitter provide a common ground for link sharing. As Eric Hammer from Quantum SEO Labs writes, “[Social media] has really taken the concept of SEO and stood it on its ear because until now, you were trying to get Google to notice you. Now, for the first time, because of social media, you need to try to get human beings to notice you too and recommend you to their friends.”

Google Loves Change
To keep searches fresh and readily improving for users, Google is speculated to make changes almost daily to their search algorithms. Google introduced Panda (previously known as “Farmer”) to better their search results by weeding out duplicate content and lowering the prevalence of “content farms” in query results. Google launches Google Places to give businesses a place to be recognized.

Just as Google likes changing their own search algorithms, they also favor fresh content, as we recently reported in “The Google Freshness Update”.

While the SEO horizon changes daily like the phases of the moon, what stays the same is the importance of relevant, accurate, and fresh content.

NASHVILLE, TN – If you’ve been on the Internet at all in the past few weeks, chances are you’ve seen posts or news articles about two piracy bills that are swarming around Congress: SOPA and PIPA. SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA is the Protect IP Act. While these bills may have good intentions – stopping copyright infringement – they could be detrimental to information sharing and the Internet as we know it today.

In a 24-hour protest on Jan. 18, many websites blacked out their content, including probably the biggest and most influential participant Wikipedia. Fight for the Future, whose tagline reads “a non-profit working to defend online freedom”, reports that more than 115,000 sites participated in the Jan. 18 blackout. Their numbers show the progression of Senators publicly opposing PIPA, which grew from one lone Senator on Nov. 16, 2011 to six on the morning of the protest. On the evening of the Jan. 18 protest, 34 Senators publicly opposed the anti-piracy bill.

You may have also heard that, for now, these bills have been postponed in Congress; they were scheduled for a Jan. 24 vote. It’s hard to tell if Congress has heard the pleas of many Americans to stop these censorship bills, or if the postponement is a way to shut us up temporarily. Will the bill slide back into Congress with revised text? Will they try to slip it by us?

Clay Shirky, in a very telling TED Talk (which I highly recommend watching), speaks about the history of copyright infringement legislation and its chilling future. He begins by explaining the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which basically said copying content such as songs from the radio to share with friends is okay (i.e, making personal mix tapes). It also said that taping high-quality versions, making multiple copies, and selling these copied tapes is not okay. The media companies wanted Congress to stop all copying, but Congress didn’t go that far. Now media companies, especially those who produce music and films, are spearheading these anti-piracy bills once again with SOPA and PIPA.

Shirky states: “The real effects of SOPA and PIPA are going to be different than the proposed effects. The threat, in fact, is this inversion of the burden of proof, where we suddenly are all treated like thieves at every moment we’re given the freedom to create, to produce, or to share. And the people who provide those capabilities to us – the YouTubes and Facebooks, the Twitters and TEDs – are in the business of having to police us or being on the hook for contributory infringement.” Some businesses may not want the job of policing their content, which could result in the businesses walking out, leaving us no place to voice our opinions or share our findings.

In the same talk, Shirky also enlightens listeners to an even deeper-rooted problem that SOPA and PIPA propose. He explains how the bills threaten our freedom and an inherent human right: “And because the biggest producers of content on the Internet are not Google and Yahoo, they’re us; we’re the people getting policed. Because in the end, the real threat to the enactment of PIPA and SOPA is our ability to share things with one another. So what PIPA and SOPA risk doing is taking a centuries old legal concept – ‘innocent until proven guilty’ – and reversing it –’guilty until proven innocent.’”

The real problem, as Shirky so eloquently states, is that SOPA and PIPA will make everyone a criminal. Without a proper trial, without gathering significant evidence, the government would be able to shut down your blog or website. The government could shut down your favorite websites. Forgoing the foundation of our basic rights – our Sixth Amendment right to a speedy, public trial with an impartial jury and our First Amendment right to free speech – the government will be able to censor our content seemingly without reason and without a proper check of power. Shirky goes one step further, deducing that media companies don’t want us to produce, but only to sit on our couches and consume. The producing is what threatens their livelihoods.

The hacker organization called Anonymous has shown their disdain for SOPA and PIPA by attacking major websites. Anonymous supposedly hacked the Department of Justice in retaliation to the shutdown of Megaupload.com, a major file-sharing website, and the arrest of its operators. They also hit the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Universal Music, and the Recording Industry Association of America, according to a Forbes article. These organizations are supporters of SOPA and PIPA.

Facebook’s Washington, DC, office has a Facebook page where they discuss their views on these anti-piracy bills. While Facebook is sympathetic to the music and film industry on this copyright issue, they think SOPA and PIPA “are not the right solution to this problem, because of the collateral damage these overreaching bills would cause to the Internet.”

For now the bills are tabled, but Wikipedia writes, “SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows.” This isn’t the end of the fight.

Master Google Ali Husayni has this to say about these two piracy bills and what they mean for website content sharing as we know it today:

“I’m all against piracy and hacking. But being raised in Iran, I’ve seen what censorship can do to freedom of the flow of information. You ‘censor’ only when you feel unable to verbally ‘engage’ and ‘encounter’ your opposition. Censorship by its very virtue puts you on the defense and the weaker position. And we don’t want to be portrayed as weak.”

SANTA MONICA, CA – Although SEO is a serious time commitment, there are some lighthearted moments. From realizing that rankings can become a roller coaster ride if you check them moment-to-moment, to comedic commentary on just how perhaps overly personal searches have become (as outlined in our recent article, Search, Plus Your World), here are a few funnies to start your weekend off on a happy, lighter note.

The Rankings Game: What happens when we get addicted to checking our placement on Google’s search results? A wonderful comic strip by BigOakInc.com showcases the dangers of checking your rankings too often.

So how do you avoid this roller coaster? Our client CariniAir.com is a good example of what having the right attitude about the nature of changing rankings does for peace of mind. Doug Cooper, the VP of Marketing for CariniAir.com, has been working with Master Google for a relatively short period of time, and was supportive of our efforts, which landed him the top spot in Google Maps and Google Places. Cooper understands that rankings fluctuate slightly, but keeps it positive about the big gains in his website rankings.

“Finally achieving the top spot on Google Maps for our most important keywords is a dream come true. Everyone at Carini Heating and Air is very excited and grateful to Master Google for their continued hard work and persistence,” Cooper says.

When The Use of Highly Competitive Keywords Goes Wrong: Again, BigOakInc.com makes a great point about overusing keywords by inserting them into a conversation between coworkers at an SEO company.

While funny, this comic strip emphasizes that White Hat SEO techniques are so important for higher rankings, because Black Hat SEO simply defeats the purpose of keywords, because keyword stuffing without anything to back up those keywords is simply bad practice. According to Husayni, Black Hat SEO techniques include any techniques that use spam, cheap links and poor or irrelevant content just to get a higher ranking, and these techniques just hurt you in the long run. As you ruminate over the free SEO advice that you’ve learned about while reading these comic strips, also keep in mind that SEO efforts count for your blog content as well, Husayni advises.

“Blogs seem to be an important part of any site because they get updated on a regular basis,” Husayni says. “I suggest site owners should write for their sites on a regular basis. The more fresh, quality and relevant content they post to their sites, the better chances of exposure and inclusion on Google search results they will have.”

NASHVILLE, TN – On January 10, 2012, Google introduced “Search, Plus Your World,” SPYW for short, which allows users to see tailored search results when they’re signed in to their Google+ accounts.

Here’s what this means for you, as a user of Google. If you have a Google+ account and you stay logged in (as I do most always from my home computer), you should see your information across the navigation bar at the top of your page. Once you type a query into the search bar and hit ‘enter,’ if you have any personal results (such as acquaintances posting relevant topics on Google+), these will show up. For now, the search results aren’t commingled. If you look to the right of the screen, there’s an inconspicuous little toggle button where you can select “Show Personal Results” or “Hide Personal Results”. See the full explanation straight from Google’s blog.

Even if you aren’t logged in to Google, you’ll still see Google+ results on the right side of the page. In a small box, Google is promoting Google+ content under a People and Pages headline. Here, content is featured from Google+, including personal profiles and business pages, which is an incentive for people to use Google+.

Rand Fishkin, the CEO of SEOMoz.org, an SEO expert featured in a recent post about the importance of producing quality content, weighed in about Google’s SPYW on his blog.

“It’s my opinion that if [it] continues to roll out to all logged-in Google users and Google stays as aggressive as it’s been in the last 10 days with pushing Google+ for even logged-out users, the service will become a necessity for search and social marketers,” Fishkin says.

Fishkin also believes that marketers who don’t use Google+ are missing out on a huge platform, as Google is promoting its social application, Google+, through this new search feature.

Get Google+

If you don’t have a Google+ account, get one. As SEO Expert Ali Husayni tells us, Google+ pages for your business are absolutely essential.

“It’s a real step in the right direction. Initially, they said that they weren’t going to add that component, but they needed to have it from the get-go,” Husayni says.

Now that Google integrated SPYW into people’s searches, Google+ is even more crucial. For example, if I search for the term bicycles, and one of my friends on Google+ bought a bicycle from Bob’s Bike Shop and +1′d the store’s page, then Bob’s Bikes will show up in my personal results. As much as people like reviews, a review from someone you actually know usually goes further than a review written by a random person online. How do we know a random review isn’t one written by the business owner to promote his own business? It’s a given that we trust information more fully from people we’ve met and have a connection with.

Update Your Profile

If you have Google+, now is a great time to make sure your information is up-to-date. Since Google is pushing Google+ profiles to the top for users that are signed in, you want your content to be fresh, relevant, and accurate.

Get Your Customers Talking on Google+

Make it easy for your customers to find you by posting your content to Google+. Include a +1 button wherever you have other social networking buttons, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest links. Consider holding a promotion, such as “add us to your Google+ circle and you’ll receive an exclusive coupon code.” Having an incentive for your customer will bring your brand to the front of their brains, and having them add your Page to their circle or +1 you will be vital in their future Google searches.

For this new integration of Google+ into search results, Google is forcing us to get personal. Now’s the perfect time to be friendly in person and on the web. Having a strong SEO presence on your website and on your Google+ can help push you up to the top of the page.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Because search engine optimization is an industry rife with jargon and a technical process that many people do not understand, some assume that there must be some secret formula for success. According to SEO Expert Ali Husayni, that is not the case.

“Search engine optimization boosts the visibility of a website by making sure that the site’s language gives the best possible chance for it to be found when a web surfer performs a search,” Husayni says.

A small part of the SEO process is on-page optimization, which is constructing the code of a website to be easily crawled by search engine spiders, according to Web Developer and SEO Specialist, Saeed Khosravi. A basic search about SEO will pull up a staggering amount of information and ‘How-To’ tutorials. Unfortunately, knowing which list has ethical SEO techniques, and which has outdated or detrimental ones can be a chore. Plus, it is constantly changing.

“Google’s search engine algorithm is updated on a regular basis, which means in order to make sure you are not using obsolete techniques, you have to find a reputable source that keeps you informed about changes,” Khosravi says.

Google wants to mimic the human behavior of reading, analyzing and organizing content, and so the system evolves as people do. According to Husayni, some changes to the algorithm are to block black hat SEO techniques, which include any techniques that use spam, cheap links and poor or irrelevant content just to get a higher ranking.

Panda was an update like this that Google released in the U.S. in February last year. The major change was that Google began “rating” websites on their content and user-experience. According to a recent Search Engine Land article, the focus of the update was to reduce and penalize websites that had thin, low-quality and duplicate content. It also targeted sites that came up short based on other site-quality metrics, such as high advertisement-to-content ratios.

Where To Get Started

Husayni has been committed to the Google-approved SEO methods that work with the search engine algorithm instead of trying to abuse it, since he started Master Google in 2004.

He has written an e-book of best SEO practices that he updates as the industry changes, and here he shares seven aboveboard methods he uses for his clients, ranging from the medical field and real estate to heating and cooling:

1. Navigation. Navigation includes the top menu, footer links, breadcrumb navigation and HTML sitemap of a website. It should be very user-friendly and easy to understand. Do not make content hard to get to or structure the site in a way that only makes sense to experts in the industry or the person who designed the site.
2. Sitemap. Set the XML sitemap to automatically update so that navigation stays current and keeps the latest information easily accessible for users and search engines.
3. Header Tags. Header tags are used to define HTML headings and organize page content. <h1> stands for the most important heading and <h6> means that information is the least important of the page. Headers make the layout of textual information easy for the reader.
4. Links. The purpose of website content is to serve the reader, so linking to other content within the site is beneficial for everyone: the company, the reader and the search engine. A page that expounds on a topic, issue or technique mentioned on a different page builds an internal link structure that Google loves and, as a result, boosts the ranking on SERPs.
5. URLs. Use a consistent URL version and redirect all the other versions to the preferred one. For example, redirect non-www to www, https to http, and the one without trailing slash to the one with trailing slash.
6. Keywords. Using short, keyword-rich URLs is another way to share information about the page content, as opposed to a URL that uses an ID number or another ambiguous parameter. Just make sure keywords accurately explain the page’s content succinctly. This information shows up in the SERs, and Google is also factoring this into their algorithm.
7. Metadata. Do not use duplicate page titles and descriptions in the code for pages. The page title shows up at the top of the browser window, and the title and description show up in the SERs. This is another opportunity to make information available to readers and search engines.

Using a Master Google website page as an example, a popular search term, Google Free Optimization, displayed on the first page of Google results when I entered it. Notice the URL that lists optimization, as the page title is Search Engine Optimization Master Google Free SEO Services, and the description said this: “Master Google offers Free SEO (search engine optimization) in a way which Google spiders could easily find your site, read its code and content, and rank it for your specific keywords.”

Keeping descriptions concise helps SEO efforts tremendously, according to Husayni.

“The person who did a search like this would have a very clear understanding of what the contents of this page are going to be and whether it will be helpful,” Husayni says.

Husayni also emphasized that these SEO tips are designed to benefit the user, not just make a page rank higher on Google’s search engine. The reality is that on-page optimization is a much smaller percentage of the total SEO work than it used to be. Today, it is five to 10 percent of the work an SEO firm would do for a client.

Husayni explains more on his blog about the SEO components needed to build a site Google will love.

NASHVILLE, TN – Google Maps and Google Places may seem like the same product with two different names, but that isn’t the case. In a recent post, we outlined the success of Master Google’s client, CariniAir.com. With the help of our SEO services, Carini Air shot to the top spot of Google Places, and they’ve seen a 50% increase in qualified leads as a result. While CariniAir.com reigns supreme on Google Places, they aren’t #1 on Google Maps. Let’s delve into why and how these two differ.

Google Maps

If you’ve searched the Internet for directions in the past few years, chances are you’ve used Google Maps. This extensive free mapping service gives us directions and even offers a super helpful Street View, which plops us down virtually in front of basically any address. If someone searches “restaurants” in Google Maps, depending on how zoomed in the map is, they might find 30+ restaurants. Having a great ranking in Google Places will help your business make it to the first, larger map people view in Google Maps.

Google Places

Courtesy of ObserversRoom.DesignObserve

Google Places is a web listing (think Yellow Pages) that includes photos, reviews, a map, and other information about a business. Google introduced Google Places on April 20, 2010 as a revamping of their previous service called Place Pages.

Starting in 2011, Google started using Google Places listings instead of Google Maps on its main search page. These listings share the pin as well as the location on the map with Google Maps, however, the big difference is that they’re basically a combination of previous Google Maps and the organic results, thus having  the site’s title as well as the description under each listing.

Google Places allows business owners and patrons to upload photos, which is especially popular for restaurants. Patrons can also leave reviews, which can help prospective customers decide whether or not they’ll choose your business over another. Businesses can easily share hours of operation, add relevant categories (or search terms), and offer customers special coupons and promotions. If you have a specific service area, you can enter this information, too, so that your business’s information will be geographically-focused.

Get Listed

Even if you haven’t listed your business on Google Places, your information may still be visible. This is because through crawling, Google sets up unverified business listings on Places. If your business has a listing, you can search your business on Google Places. On the business listing, you’ll see information on the left about the business, and on the right side of the page you’ll see a small map. (Clicking the map will take you to a larger map and a smaller listing on the left side, i.e., Google Maps). Above the map, you’ll see a few links: one titled “Edit this Place” and the other titled “Business Owner”. To verify your business’s listing, you can click the “Business Owner” link and update your company’s information. Once you’ve done that, your listing will be labeled as “Owner-Verified”.

If you don’t know how to list your business on Google Places, watch this video by Master Google’s CEO Ali Husayni to see how easy it is. Once you’re listed, ask your returning customers to write a positive review for your business. The more your listing is rated, the higher your business will be in Google Places rankings.

Having reviews on other rival websites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor can certainly be helpful, but this Wall Street Journal article reiterates the importance of a Google Places listing in search engine results, as writer Amir Efrati explains.

“Links to the pages often appear near the top of the search results page when people search for information on local businesses, in part because they aren’t subject to the same Google algorithm that ranks other websites in search results. Google Places links often are ranked above links to Yelp, TripAdvisor and UrbanSpoon and Citysearch, which are owned by IAC,” Efrati says.

SEO is Still the Top Dog

Google Places expert Randy Kirk operates the blog Google Places Help, which provides free tips to business owners who want to optimize their Google Places listing. In a recent blog post about the importance of SEO content in Google Places rankings, Kirk writes that paying attention to every aspect of it is a must.

“No matter how closely you watch the changing world of how to rank on Google Places, it is a major mistake to take your eye off the main prize, and that is being highly ranked on the everything search for keywords you care about,” Kirk says.

Having a focused SEO plan, plus listing your business on Google Places, can increase the likelihood that your customers will find you. Contact Us to see if we can provide these services for your website.

Graphic Courtesy of TechTricksWorld.com.

SANTA MONICA, CA – The Master Google team is happy to announce the recent accomplishments of CariniAir.com. Doug Cooper, the VP of Marketing for CariniAir.com, has been working with Master Google for a relatively short period of time, and has already seen big results, both with the number of qualified leads and with his company’s Google rankings. Like most new clients to Master Google’s SEO services, Cooper was at first hesitant to hire a new Search Engine Optimization Company when he started in the middle of last year, but has seen a big spike in the number of qualified leads as a result.

“We get maybe 30 percent of our business from referrals, the other 70 percent is from Google Search Engine marketing. We’ve increased the number of qualified leads with Master Google about 50%,” Cooper says. “I wish we’d started a year ago, I am sure we’d be number one in everything.”

A simple Google search also reveals further success for Cooper, who readily shares his excitement about the recent accomplishments with Master Google.

“Master Google helped us reach the top spot in the Google Places listing for the air conditioning keywords, while still retaining our #2 spot for heating. We are very excited about becoming #1 in the Google Places listings, and expect this to result in another 100% – 200% increase in Google sales leads during the upcoming air conditioning season,” Cooper says.

But it’s important to note that these numbers didn’t appear right away. The SEO results took time, and were the product of hard work, as both Cooper and Master Google CEO Ali Husayni explain. Still, the results happened relatively quickly, as Cooper emphasizes.

“In a matter of about one to one-and-a-half months, Master Google helped us reach the top spot in the Google Places listing for the air conditioning keywords, while still retaining our #2 spot for heating,” Cooper says.

Husayni enjoys seeing these tangible results for his clients.

“When we see results like CariniAir.com, it proves to us the fact that what we do actually works. What’s needed is patience and perseverance,” Husayni says.

See Doug Cooper’s interview in our testimonials section. Contact Us to see if your site qualifies, and we look forward to continuing to work with Cooper and our other clients.

IMPORTANT RANKINGS UPDATE: As of Jan. 19, 2012, CariniAir.com took the #1 spot on Google Maps.

Cooper is thrilled about what this means for CariniAir.com.

“Finally achieving the top spot on Google Maps for our most important keywords is a dream come true. Everyone at Carini Heating and Air is very excited and grateful to Master Google for their continued hard work and persistence,” Cooper says.