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30 Mar This post is from from my other blog here Confession: Putting together a 90-freakin’-minute presentation on local search is a pain in the you-know-what. However: I’m really looking forward to the presentation and think it’ll be valuable information for attendees. My plan is to give what will amount to 3-4 separate presentations, breaking for Q&A in between each topic, all the while trying to keep it relaxed, yet interesting. (My biggest fear: having to stand behind a podium for 90 minutes. I really hope I can walk around a bit, maybe even sit down a bit, or some combination of the above.) 
I’m referring to the upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference ...
27 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
27 Mar This post is from from my other blog here In the days after the SMX West conference last month, I recapped the “Local Search & Blended Results” session here on SBS, pointing out a comment from the Yahoo! speaker about the non-impact of reviews and ratings on the three local business listings that show up in Yahoo!’s Local Shortcut.
That Yahoo! speaker — Brian Gil, Director of Product Management for Yahoo! Local — then clarified that the ratings are a factor, but not the review text. And in the process of getting all that clarified, I was invited to speak at ...
26 Mar
26 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
My friend Michael Jensen and his company, Solo SEO, hopes to change this with the introduction of Leave Feedback: LeaveFeedback.org helps local businesses to get authentic, online reviews from their customers by giving a coupon for leaving feedback at a review site, and pointing the customer directly to one of the review sites. I’d suggest you start on the Solo SEO blog post to learn more about how Leave ...
26 Mar This post is from from my other blog here Quick story: My wife e-mailed me last night with a simple question: “Do you know what an Alexa rating is?” I told her I did, then found out why she was asking. Turns out that a real estate writer recently suggested in an otherwise excellent article on the Bloodhound Realty Blog (which is about the best real estate marketing blog you’ll find, despite what I’m pointing out here) that one question a real estate agent should ask when grading his/her own marketing plan is: What is your Alexa traffic ranking? For realz! In other words, the suggestion is that you, as a ...
25 Mar This post is from from my other blog here In response to news this week that affiliate marketers appear to be placing affiliate URLs into prominent hotel listings on Yahoo! Local, a Yahoo! official confirmed today that they’re “looking into it,” and suggested the situation may not be as bad as the reports make it appear to be.
25 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
25 Mar This post is from from my other blog here Since I’m not on Twitter, I’ll pass along a couple notes the old-fashioned way….. More on SES New YorkIn addition to my previous post here on SBS about the SES New York conference last week, I’ve written up something with a little more detail on the video/small business session my wife and I attended. You can read the post on Local Point: Local Search and Video: A Match Made in NYC. SEMMY AwardsFor those of you who are still e-mailing to ask about helping with the 2009 SEMMYS, thank you very much for volunteering, but at the moment I’m all set with ...
25 Mar This post is from from my other blog here Dear Google, It would be more un-evil if you would make it easier to opt out of that new data sharing “feature” (your word) that you recently added to Google Analytics. I tend to be much more forgiving of you than some of my friends, so please let me share a few suggestions. Let’s start with this screen, the one I see when I login to an existing Google Analytics account: 
You give me a nice, big “ACCEPT” button … so how about adding an equally big “NO, THANKS” button? As it stands now, it’s like I don’t have a choice but to ...
24 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
23 Mar
23 Mar This post is from from my other blog here It’s always fun to get good questions from readers via my contact Matt McGee page, and even more fun when the question comes from someone whose blog I read regularly and enjoy. Rich Brooks, who writes the small business-oriented flyte blog, emailed earlier this week with this question about marketing on Flickr in light of the Flickr TOS: I had a question on Flickr and your post Flickr No-Follows (Some) Outbound Links. You had reported that flickr account for abusing the TOS, right? So I looked at Flickr’s TOS and it appears you can’t use Flickr for ANY commercial purpose. But don’t photographers ...
23 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
22 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
22 Mar This post is from from my other blog here For those of you who are new SBS readers & subscribers, here’s a list of noteworthy posts you probably missed from one year ago. I try to put together a post like this each month.
SBS Flashback: February 2007 SBS Flashback: January 2007 SBS Flashback: December 2006 SBS Flashback: November 2006 SBS Flashback: October 2006 SBS Flashback: September 2006 SBS Flashback: August 2006 SBS Flashback: July 2006 SBS Flashback: June 2006 SBS Flashback: May 2006 This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.
21 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
19 Mar
17 Mar This post is from from my other blog here I’m at SES New York this week and enjoyed a really solid session in the Kelsey track called “Video Made the SMB Star” — it really opened my eyes to what’s going on with local search and video content. Best of all, my wife was sitting next to me during the session and is equally excited about some new ideas for creating real estate-related video content. If my blogging slows down in coming weeks/months, it’s because A) I’m traveling a ton, and B) I’m making videos about Tri-Cities (Washington) real estate.
16 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
14 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
13 Mar
13 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
As I say at the end of the interview, I’m looking for more small businesses to profile like this in the future. If you’re using the Internet to grow your business, reach out to customers, etc., please contact me and share your story. Maybe you’ll end up with some extra exposure on Search Engine Land and/or Small Business SEM. By the way, one last note: ...
11 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
Teams and brackets will be announced on Sunday, when I will likely be in an airplane headed for New York. So, I’ve set up a Tournament Pick-Em group a few days early — you can sign-up now and then choose your winners next week. We had about 40 ...
11 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
11 Mar This post is from from my other blog here The 2nd annual SearchFest conference (hosted by SEMpdx) is in the books, and the folks in Portland have a good thing going here.
07 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
07 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
As I said all along, next year’s SEMMYs have to use a better method of finding nominated posts. Even though this year’s nominees included 127 different authors, there was still a lot of great content that wasn’t included. With that in mind, I’ve formed an advisory committee to discuss ideas for fixing this and making sure we cast a wider net in the future. The ...
06 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
04 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
03 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
Ratings (stars) are taken into account, but review text is not. That’s word-for-word from Yahoo! today, who contacted both myself and Greg Sterling (who reported on my original post; don’t you love blogging?). It’s in reference to factors that influence which listings get shown in a Yahoo Shortcut on Yahoo’s main SERPs. (Both ratings and reviews are factors when you’re ...
03 Mar This post is from from my other blog here Over at SEOmoz yesterday, Rand shared a collection of six weird and wacky Google search results and invited readers to share more in the comments. I don’t think mine counts as “weird” or “wacky”, but it is annoying. When you do a search for [U2], this is what you get: 
The band’s official site just got sitelinks for the first time, and what used to be the indented second link now stays in the No. 2 position as a non-indented, regular listing. Is that really necessary? How about once you get sitelinks, you lose the ability to have a second listing on ...
02 Mar This post is from from my other blog here Football season is over. Baseball season is yet to begin. We’re still a couple weeks away from March Madness. And the NBA and NHL playoffs are yet to arrive. If you’re looking for something to do on a Sunday afternoon/evening (or whenever you read this), I would be honored if you’d 1.) Create an account at Blogged.com, and then 2.) Review Small Business SEM there. You can also feel free to add me as a friend if you’re so inclined. While we’re at it here are some other ways to connect with me and/or this blog: 2) Add SBS to your Technorati favorites. ...
02 Mar This post is from from my other blog here 
Bitter Beer Face!
Originally uploaded by SmallBusinessSEM.com.
This is one of my favorite photo from SMX West: Poor Danny S. isn’t too fond of the taste of beer (me, neither), but during the Search Bowl they weren’t able to bring him anything he really wanted to drink. So, this was a common sight: Bitter Beer Face! I also caught Lisa Barone having a case of BBF, too. Ha! While you’re at it, you may as well check out the full set of 41 photos: Next ...Click here to read the entire blog post
01 Mar This post is from from my other blog here
There was an exception to this during SMX West: The “Local Search & Blended Results” session on day one. Google didn’t have a rep there, but Brian Gill of Yahoo! and ...
01 Mar This post is from from my other blog here Here’s my roundup of the best search/marketing posts during February. If you’re new to SBS, this is a monthly feature. You can find earlier “Best Of”s for each month in the archives. Only rule is that my own posts are not eligible. What about the SEMMYS?, you ask. Well, as I’ve been saying all along, the goal is to not be using these roundups for next year’s awards. More on that coming soon, I hope. Local Search
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by 
Problem is, I got the comment wrong. 
It’s no secret that customer reviews can have a 
Brian Gil, Director of Product Management for Yahoo! Local, told me today that the company is aware of recent reports on the 
Meanwhile, video isn’t the only thing happening in local search. ...
Quick lunchtime post here: My latest Search Engine Land column is online today — it’s a 
The best three weeks of the year are about to begin. I’m talking about the NCAA basketball tournament, better known as March Madness. Just like last year, it’s time to show off your basketball smarts in a friendly competition against your fellow search marketers. (And just like last year, I’ll win*.) 
Planning is underway for next year’s 