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30 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
30 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
Search engine spiders/bots aren’t all that intelligent. If a spider can’t find content (because of a broken link, for example), it’s not programmed to stop what it’s doing and go looking around for that great article you wrote. It’s going to move on to the next link and keep crawling, ...
29 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
29 Jun This post is from from my other blog here Sigh…. This blog has been a do-follow blog for many, many months. If you’re willing to take the time to leave a quality comment, I don’t mind sending you back a link that counts. I started do-following comments back in the days when you had to register and be logged-in to leave a comment here. You had to work to get that link. You may have noticed that comments are now open; no registration required. I’m glad I made the switch — the amount of comments, page views, and interaction on this blog has gone up dramatically in the past six weeks. ...
28 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
27 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
27 Jun This post is from from my other blog here Every now and then, I like to walk around the house trying to speak in French. I was pretty good back in high school — even won my school’s foreign language academic award. C’est vrai! But that was then, and this is now, and I’d never try to write more than a couple words in another language. Fortunately, other folks are doing that for me. I just saw a trackback today letting me know that the SEO Success Pyramid has been translated and published in German. To my knowledge, this is the fourth overall translation of my SBS content: SEO Success Pyramid How ...Click here to read the entire blog post
25 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
25 Jun This post is from from my other blog here I remember someone saying that local search is like the wild west, and Palore has some data that shows at least one aspect of local fits the description. Check out this chart showing the amount of restaurants that have been reviewed online across the U.S. 
Palore says the data comes from crawling 70 local and vertical sites. The map above shows how many restaurants have at least one review posted on one local/vertical site. The top three states are Massachusetts, Washington, and California, with more than 23% of restaurants in each state having at least one review online. I think it’s ...
24 Jun
24 Jun This post is from from my other blog here Multiple author blogs … Multi-topic blogs … Blog/Web site convergence … these are a few of the emerging blog trends that Darren Rowse recently identified on ProBlogger.net. I agree with him on all counts. I’d also like to suggest a sixth trend be added to the discussion: Hyperlocal blogging, which I wrote about briefly last month: Local Blogging: Don’t Forget the Local Stuff. 
Hyperlocal blogs are also known as city or neighborhood blogs. Typically, these are blogs written by one or more authors who restrict their writing and discussion to a single area, most often the place they call home. Although stats ...
22 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
It’s with great pleasure that I share the image at right, showing my Twitter home page with its 500 followers. w00t! This means that Jeff and I will each donate $250 to the charity of my choice, which is the African Well Fund, a charity started years ago by some friends ...
20 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
19 Jun
19 Jun This post is from from my other blog here Whenever I take part in a Site Review session at some conference, one of my fellow panelists will inevitably tell a webmaster something like, “You don’t have an XML sitemap. Create one and submit it to the search engines as soon as you can.” I’ve yet to have the opportunity to play devil’s advocate on that during a session, but I’m going to do it here on SBS. Because I believe that XML sitemaps are the most overrated SEO tactic ever. 
XML Sitemaps: This Week’s Hot Topic
Coincidentally, XML sitemaps are the hot topic this week on the SEOweb:
18 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
18 Jun This post is from from my other blog here Anytime a search engine rep. hands out SEO/SEM advice, I think it’s generally worth listening to. I did my best to get some local SEO advice from Yahoo’s Brian Gil when I interviewed him a couple months ago. Be sure to read that if you missed it the first time around. Now, another Yahoo rep, Nick Patsiopoulos of Yahoo! Canada, shared some local search advice this week at SES Toronto. Here’s Nick’s six tips for local search success:
17 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
17 Jun This post is from from my other blog here When you leave your first comment here on SBS, I send out a “thank you” email that goes like this: Hi (your name here), Just wanted to drop a quick note to say THANKS for leaving your first comment on Small Business SEM. I always like to see new voices speaking up on the blog. The easiest way to keep in touch with me and Small Business SEM is by subscribing to my feed. Any feedreader will do, just use this feed URL and you should be all set: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SmallBusinessSem Thanks again for your first comment! I look forward to many more from you in ...
17 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
Local Search Ranking Factors: Ranking High in Google Maps and Yahoo Local If you’re a small business owner or webmaster, or have even a remote interest in local search, it’s a must ...
16 Jun 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: May 2007 SBS Flashback: April 2007 SBS Flashback: March 2007 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 Advertise Here: Learn more at www.smallbusinesssem.com/advertise. This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.
16 Jun
16 Jun This post is from from my other blog here After mentioning last week that I’m actively seeking mailbag questions to answer here on the blog, I promptly received an interesting one about linkbaiting and local business. The question comes from “Bob” (not his real name), who owns a national company that provides local services all across the U.S via franchising. Just like hotel companies, Bob’s web site offers a unique page for each city where they offer services. Here’s Bob’s question: We’re now looking at doing some link baiting. Any thoughts on where we should start? The key for us is that we have 340 franchise partners and we want them ...
14 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
13 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
13 Jun This post is from from my other blog here If you’re a small business owner, Google wants you. Lots of other Big Companies want you, too. But Google is as aggressive as anyone in courting small businesses … maybe more aggressive. 
Consider the evidence:
12 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
The next one coming up is SMX Local & Mobile, which happens July 24-25 in San Francisco. Third Door Media just announced the speaker lineup today, and it’s practically a Who’s Who of local and mobile ...
12 Jun This post is from from my other blog here Do you have a question about SEO, social media, local search, or general online marketing? I’ve mentioned before that I want to do some more Q&A posts here on Small Business SEM, with you providing the questions and me trying to provide the answers. Here’s why:
Win, win, win for all involved! So, if you have a question, ask me about it now! If you’re kinda new ...
11 Jun This post is from from my other blog here
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In my opinion, the nuts-and-bolts of SEO can generally be boiled down to three primary parts: Crawlability, Content, and Links. These three things make up the middle row of the 
A couple alert friends emailed me over the weekend to point out that I now have 500+ followers on Twitter. This normally wouldn’t be worth a blog post, except for that 
I usually save my favorite articles and content for the end-of-the-month recap, but this is too good to hold for two more weeks. David Mihm posted an article today in which 20 search marketers discuss and debate the impact of 47 potential criteria that might impact your local search success. It’s a fascinating discussion and debate on what matters and what doesn’t where local search is concerned. Here’s the link:
Google offers a wide variety of products aimed at small business owners, and many of them are free — or very ...
Have you ever felt snakebitten? That’s how I feel when it comes to local/mobile search conferences: For a variety of reasons, I’ve never been able to attend one of these conferences. Doesn’t matter which ones — the Kelsey shows, the Incisive shows, or the SMX shows. Every time one is scheduled, I end up missing it. By all accounts, I’m missing some excellent shows, too.