I was excited to be invited to write a guest piece over at Bruce Clay Inc’s blog this week, and my article on “10 Image Optimization Tips for Local SEO” provides a few ideas to help further enhance a small business’s local search signals.
Bruce Clay is of course a well-known and well-established technical search marketing expert who helped pioneer the field, and I recall reading his work and sitting in on his presentations at industry conferences from the very early days of SEO, back when I was working in obscurity within a big mega-corporation. So, it was a particular honor for me to be invited to foist my thoughts on — I mean contribute a professional article on — his blog!
In all seriousness, I’ve used Bruce Clay’s tools over time, and I believe his LocalPack business listing distribution service is well worthwhile for any business beginning to establish its listing information in major online directories and local search engines everywhere. (And, FYI, this was not a paid endorsement a quid pro quo endorsement by me — Bruce Clay’s people have not asked me to write about their products nor link to them, and I have no financial connection with them.)
I’ve also particularly enjoyed reading work by the various other authors and editors who work at Bruce Clay Inc — Susan Esparza, Jessica Lee, and Virginia Nussey.
Thank you guys for inviting me in to participate on your blog, and making me feel welcome!
Locksmith Spam Listing Issue
Monday, May 23rd, 2011I recently wrote a piece about how to bite back at local scam businesses over at Natural Search Blog, but one of the more difficult variety of scams are the faux local business listings that Google Places fights. And, ever since people first began scamming listing rankings in print yellow pages, the worst sector affected is that of Locksmiths.
Quite a number of locksmith listings are for business locations which do not exist or do not have locksmiths’ offices there. Some listings are blatent — they are locations where there are no businesses at all — while others are more subtle, being shopping centers or office buildings which have no locksmith shops in them.
Why do the scammers do this? Well, they figured out that in order to have placement in local search results, (more…)
Tags: business listings, local search optimization, locksmiths, online scams, scams
Posted in General Commentary, Law and Legal Matters, local search, Local SEO | 8 Comments »