For those who hadn’t heard, Marchex and Matt McGee recently decided to part ways. Regardless of any “structural” changes that Marchex was making, I was surprised that they would let such a charismatic and knowledgeable ambassador for their company out of their grasp! But their loss will be someone else’s gain. (It might even be Matt’s own gain if he decides to go the solo consulting route :D .)

I’ve looked to Matt for Small Business SEO advice and for general career guidance since I was a wee babe in the SEO industry (read: a lowly lurker on his blog). He was kind enough to take some time away from his ridiculously packed travel schedule to answer a few questions that I had been looking forward to asking him for some time.

As part of that travel schedule, Matt will be heading here to Portland on May 20 for an SEMpdx HotSeat event, speaking about his SEO Success Pyramid, so if you have any more questions, you should sign up and ask him yourself! While there, yours truly would love to meet any local Mihmorandum readers, so make yourselves known. You can’t miss me, I’ll be the one in the bright blue trucker hat.

Without further ado, on to the interview:

DM: You’ve mentioned a couple of times over the last 18 months that while you were with Marchex, you didn’t really DO Small Business SEM much anymore … what have you / do you miss about it?

M2: That’s true. Most of our SEO clients were larger companies and/or well-funded companies, so it was quite a change from my previous job. It was a bit intimidating at first, but I learned that I like doing SEO for clients of any size. There are good and bad things about working with any client, no matter the size.

To answer the question, the thing I always enjoyed about working with smaller companies is that there’s a better chance of forming a creative partnership. I think smaller companies are generally more appreciative of success and willing to remain loyal when you can show results. But I can’t really speak poorly about larger companies, because my favorite client over the past 18 months was a large retailer with whom we developed a really tight relationship. They have a great team; I’ll miss working with them.

DM: Did you enjoy working for one client as opposed to many or do you prefer the variety?

M2: I was still able to work with a variety of clients, and that’s the best part about doing SEO and online marketing. When you get to work with a variety of clients, you’re forced to be as well-rounded as possible in the strategies and tactics you use. The more you work with a variety of clients, the smarter and sharper you become as a marketer.

DM: You are an amazingly talented photographer. What kind of equipment do you use? (NB to readers, if you think I am kidding, check out Matt’s Flickr photo stream)

M2: Thank you, but I’m really a hack when it comes to photography — just smart enough to be dangerous. I don’t even have any equipment, at least nothing compared to what real photographers use. I have a little Canon S3 IS, a not-real-great zoom lense, and a tripod. But I am happy and proud of some of the pictures I’ve taken. My secret? Shoot a gazillion photos of the same thing and cross my fingers that one or two turn out well. It works!

DM: How did you get into it in the first place?

M2: I read a lot of magazines with great pictures when I was a kid: Sports Illustrated, Life, and National Geographic to name a few. I think that got me interested in photos. Then I got my first camera at about 14 years old. It was one of those dorky Kodak Disc cameras. I snuck it into a U2 concert in 1985, shot some photos, and was hooked for life.

DM: Do you submit any of your work to iStockphoto?

M2: No, I looked into that a year or so ago, but the size and resolution requirements just made it seem like too much work. I shoot photos for fun and put them on Flickr, and that’s good enough for me.

DM: You love U2 as much as I love college basketball. I’ve only got about eight guys that I work with on Bracketography, whom I can barely keep up with them during hoops season, yet you’ve got over 25 contributors on atU2 and you’re able to put out a quality website for the entire year. Do you have any tips for guys and gals out there with their own niche sites in the “infant” or “toddler” stages? Is there a basic management process that you can share, or ideas on how to delegate some of the more time-consuming responsibilities to your users (but still maintain a quality publication)?

M2: I never intended to have a staff for the U2 site. But some of my most frequent readers started sharing news tips and writing things for me to post, and that made me think it would be smart to have contributors. And then it became much more formal, with certain people handling specific roles. We have an Assignment Editor who oversees editorial planning; we have a Copy Editor who fixes all our grammar and punctuation; we have a couple people who specifically produce our podcast. So I think that’s one piece of advice: Look to your audience for staff. Ardent fans and supporters already have a stake in what you do, and often make great staff members.

The other thing I’ve done is make sure the staff knows that it’s not my site, it’s our site. It’s a democracy, and if the staff overrules me on decisions, so be it. Everyone on staff should (and does, I hope) know that they have ownership in the site, and I think it helps make the quality of contributions much higher.

DM: How do you find time to sleep? Photography and @U2 notwithstanding, it seems like you are always blogging, sphinning, posting comments…AND I know you have a family AND I know you were commuting back and forth to Seattle for a couple days a week.

M2: There’s no such thing as enough sleep. I love sleep. But I’m a night owl, and tend to be awake several hours after the rest of the family has called it a night. That frees me up to write blog posts, play on the Internet, and get things done in peace and quiet. And the commuting thing — that came to an end about six months ago, when I started working from home full-time. Thank goodness for that.

DM: Along the same lines, what does your average day look like?

M2: It may change now that I’m in career limbo, but I tend to wake up around 8 am, work a full 9-5 day, have dinner and family time until maybe 8 pm, and then I’m back on the computer working again. The only TV I watch during the week is LOST, so that leaves me plenty of time to work after the kids are in bed.

DM: Even before your spring travel schedule, you were a veteran of the conference speaking circuit, and IMHO on track to be a hall-of-famer. What advice would you give to folks looking to break into that circuit & speak for the first time?

M2: Thank you, David — I appreciate that. Advice? Hmmmm. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in starting at a smaller show, like Rebecca Kelley did at SearchFest 2007 in Portland. Obviously, you have to pitch to speak on a subject you know a lot about — because beyond your 15 minutes, you better be ready to take another 30 minutes of questions. The Q&A is often where you separate the good SEOs from the good speakers. I think it’s probably a good idea to pitch with a friend; having someone up there with you that you know and like can make the first time easier. And lastly, follow the instructions very carefully when submitting your pitch to the conference planners.

DM: Are you getting as much value from conferences as you used to?

M2: I learn something new at every show I attend. And as you attend more shows, and get to know more people, you tend to get more value and education from the after hours networking. As you know, everything they say is true about the real conference happening in the hotel lounge/bar.

DM: How many do you think is a good number of conferences per year?

M2: That probably depends on the person, don’t you think? The great thing is that, no matter your level or interests, you have plenty of options now. If I were just starting out, and money/travel were no object, I’d probably try at least one big and one small show just to see how they differ.

DM: If there’s ONE emerging area of Small Business and Local SEO that you’d advise small business owners to bone up on, what would it be? Reviews? Video? Social Media? The NEXT big thing? Where are they going to get the most bang for their buck over the next 2-3 years?

M2: I’d go with hyperlocal blogging. I think blogging is going to continue to trickle down to the so-called Average Joes, and those people are going to blog about what’s happening around them — their street, their neighbors, their neighborhoods, their towns and cities. It will become incredibly pervasive because it’s so easy to do. There’s almost no barrier to entry for starting a blog.

We all know that a good blog is a powerful SEO tool; the quality of content and links brings trust fairly quickly. So it makes sense that a good local blog would become a trusted source for local information.

So, for the small business owner this provides an opportunity to connect with local customers much more easily by having their own local blog, and by joining discussions on other local blogs. These hyperlocal blogs will become easier to find, too, because of sites likes Outside.In and Placeblogger.com. And I think local newspaper and TV web sites will reach out and make connections with local bloggers for content and exposure.

DM: You’ve recently become an unrestricted free agent. What kind of position are you looking for from your next team? GM-Coach, Player-Coach, Coach Only? GM Only?

M2: I’m open to just about anything. I’ve never cared much what my title or position is, as long as I’m working with good, smart, and creative people.

DM: Matt, thanks SO MUCH for such an extensive interview. I am sure most if not all of your readers are just as appreciative of all of the strategies and insights you have shared on your blog over the years as I am. We know you’ll do great no matter where you land!

Proselytize Your Customers with Exceptional Service

While even casual acquaintances know I’m a big sports fan, and a huge college basketball fan in particular, only the most avid David Mihm fans (read: stalkers :D ) might be aware of my distaste for coffee and coca products, as well as my passion for a certain energy drink known as Zenergize.

I’d like to relay two recent examples of customer service I received from companies I had previously been passionate about: ESPN and Bevology, the maker of Zenergize. Hopefully they’ll provide some ideas for small businesses to use to their competitive advantage!

Company I: ESPN

ESPN runs a subscription service called “Insider.” It costs about $6.00 a month, and I’d been happy to pay that to satisfy my addiction to the latest gossip and analysis from ESPN’s trio of college hoops experts (whom I can watch on TV anyway)–Jay Bilas, Doug Gottlieb, and a source close to “sources close to the situation.” It also comes with a “free” subscription to ESPN the Magazine, whose only purpose, it seems to me, is to hasten the deforestation of the Amazon.

I recently moved from Oakland up to Portland, and as part of that move, I changed bank accounts from Bank of America to Wells Fargo, since there’s a Wells right across the street from my new place and the closest BofA is over a mile away. So I made sure to change all of the billing info with people I order stuff from online, like ESPN.

Only, ESPN doesn’t offer the ability to change credit card info online (!). Imagine that, a multi-BILLION dollar company (its parent company is Disney) without basic account functionality. Nonetheless, I sent a brief but courteous email to customer service:

I need to update my billing info for my Insider subscription. I didn’t see anywhere to do it online. Please call me at 503 560 2755 ASAP as my credit card info has changed.

Thank you.

Now, ESPN has a lot of great columnists, particularly Pat Forde and Andy Glockner, and I’ll continue to read their stuff. But I’ve definitely noticed myself defaulting to CNNSI recently for my general, AP-style sports content since my experience with Insider. That’s roughly 15 minutes and 10 pageviews a day that ESPN has lost to its chief competitor. At a conservative $20 CPM they’re charging advertisers, over the course of a year, that’s $73 in lost revenue, in addition to the cancellation of my Insider account which cost them about the same amount.

Company II: Bevology (Zenergize)

The contrast between ESPN and Bevology could not be more striking. I sent an email to Bevology’s blanket customer service email address, info {at} zenergizehealth.com, letting them know that I had just tried a new flavor and had been disappointed with the taste, just in case they were thinking about reformulating that flavor. I had just assumed it would go into a big bank of inquiries somewhere, but like ESPN, I cared about the brand and wanted it to succeed.

Within 45 minutes of arriving in the office that next day, Bevology’s Director of Marketing, Michelle Arnau, sent me a direct, personal response:

Thank your for your message and feedback on the empower product. I am sorry to hear of your experience with the product. We are actually discontinuing that one as your feedback is pretty spot on with what we have heard from others. The good news is that we are replacing it with new flavors on the Burn, Energy, Hydrate and Immunity along with a new item: super-v which is an acai + pomegranate super fruit blend. All of them will be hitting shelves in May.

She then offered to send me a replacement tube of my choice, which I found amazing in-and-of itself. Even more shocking was the arrival of a FedEx package less than 48 hours later, which Michelle had obviously put together herself, and had included her business card. The package contained not one but THREE replacement tubes, along with about 25 individual samples of their new flavors.

Needless to say, I am an even bigger evangelist for Zenergize than I used to be. Their new flavors are amazing, particularly the citrus varieties, and I’ll continue to drink their products as long as I need an adrenaline boost in the morning. I would encourage all readers to try them if you are looking for a natural energy supplement; you can probably find them at Whole Foods and other similar stores.

What You Can Learn from This Experience:

1. Automated responses to your customers without a follow-up phone call = a lost customer. All either “Scott” or “Patrick” needed to do was call me for my new credit card information. I gave them my phone number in my initial email! Instead, they sent a lazy, stock response.

2. Truly exceptional customer service experiences, particularly if you’re in any kind of tech-savvy community, can generate great online buzz, and even incoming links. I doubt this post will get picked up by Digg, Reddit, or even Sphinn, but who knows how many additional tech folks I’ll talk to about the Zenergize brand in the next 12-18 months, and what linking opportunities that might open up. And imagine if Zenergize were a locally-focused company, the positive impact a review of their website might have had both within the Local algorithm and in terms of click-through on their listing.

There are a number of examples of companies whose customer service is legendary: Aston-Martin, Southwest, and Cabela’s. As online reviews become even more important, these companies will doubtless continue to build their brands even higher, while companies with notoriously lousy service like AT&T and American Airlines will continue to lose market share.

Salk Institute, by TheNose

A Quick and Effective Keyword Research Strategy for Small Businesses

Why you should do keyword research

Without doing keyword research, you might think that “office supply store” is the single most important keyword that you want to show up for in search engines, and that’s where you might throw all of your marketing efforts. But the problem with a small business going after a generic keyword like “office supply store” is that you’re probably going up against Fortune 500 companies who are spending gobs of money on their online presence, and you’ll be lucky to show up in the Top 5 pages of results, let alone the Top 5 results.

Keyword research might also tell you that “office supply store” gets half the number of searches, on average, that “office supplies” does (true story). And while you might not have a chance to get found for “office supplies” going up against the Office Maxes, Office Depots, and Staples of the world, you might stand a very good chance of ranking for “office supplies Salem, OR.” Ascertaining your most lucrative set of keywords is the foundation upon which your website can be built–that’s why it’s the First Commandment!

Follow-up: Literally as I was writing this post, Jennifer Laycock at SearchEngineGuide authored her own excellent post on the importance of doing keyword research in which she points out that when your customers perform searches, they may use much different words than your marketing agency—yet another great reason to make sure you get your ducks in a row before developing or re-developing your website.

How to do your keyword research

If you have the budget (and the time), running a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign (called “Adwords” at Google) for a couple of months is a great testing ground. You get actual data on how many people are searching for exactly what keywords you think they’ll search for. And even better for locally-oriented businesses, if you target the scope of your ads to your metro area, you’ll get a fairly good idea of what people in your particular region are looking for. Your ongoing return on your PPC investment is probably not going to be as high as it is for SEO and Local SEO (see below), but it still might provide solid marginal revenue, so you might continue it even after the “trial” period.

***Personal preference: be sure to limit your PPC account to the Search Network ONLY. You’re going to get lower-quality clicks and screwy volume numbers if you include the Content Network. Unfortunately, the default (at least in Google; not sure about Yahoo or MSN) is to include the Content Network. So you’ll need to go in after you’ve set up your account to turn off Content Network. Click the “Edit Settings” button from your campaign Dashboard, and then UN-check the Content boxes on the right-hand side under “Networks.”

But even if you don’t run a Pay-Per-Click campaign, you can still use Google’s Keyword Research Tool and see what people are searching for. Plug in a few keywords that you think people will use to find your business. Google will show you data for those keywords, and suggest several others that seem similar in concept.

Look at the size of the bar in the righthand column (average search volume) and compare it to the size of the bar in the lefthand column (advertiser competition). Usually if there are a bunch of advertisers, it means it’s a pretty hard keyword to rank for. If there aren’t many advertisers, but it looks like there are a fair number of monthly searches…well, that’s your sweetspot!

For a little more detailed analysis, you can export the data from Google directly into an Excel Spreadsheet. I’ll typically open that Excel CSV file and create a formula in the far right column that looks something like =SUM(D2-B2).

***Personal preference: Unless you’re a site that relies on a lot of Holiday or otherwise time-sensitive traffic, you can typically use the “Average Search Volume” column as your main indicator of customer interest and ignore the Search Volume from the previous month.)

That formula gives me what I call a “Lucrativity Index,” making it easy to sort those keywords that I want to target: fewer advertisers and more searches. Scores will range between -1 and 1. A high positive number (like 0.4, for example) is a great keyword to target.

Below is a screenshot of what that spreadsheet looks like for the keywords I target on my own website. Sorry I had to blur them; can’t give away ALL my secrets to my competitors :)

Keywords with a negative index may still be worth targeting if they’re high-volume keywords, or keywords that you know are going to convert into business. They’ll just be harder to rank for.

That’s the skeleton of my keyword research strategy for clients with small budgets. There are obviously a number of nuances that depend on the industry and the client, but this will generally yield a pretty effective keyword list of ~500 - 1000 phrases (if your site is sizable enough to target that many) in a couple of hours. I’d love to hear from other folks in the comments if they’ve seen or used other techniques that are equally or more effective!

Things that I hope will be made clear by this post:

• It’s a darn good idea to submit your site to Webmaster Tools because it can help you identify spam that might have gotten onto your site.
• Older versions of Wordpress might have a security glitch, so make sure you upgrade.
• My SEOmoz PRO membership AGAIN proved its worth as part of this ordeal.
• Why is Google penalizing only my blog folder? I am obviously thrilled they are smart enough to limit the penalty, but am surprised and amazed!
• UPDATE: READ THIS WHITEPAPER ON MAKING WORDPRESS SECURE.  Thanks to stuntdubl for the tip.

Introduction: Houston, We Might Have a Problem…

Regular readers know that I am as lily-white an SEO as there is in our industry. The only links that I encourage clients to buy are from respected, human-edited directories, like Yahoo, Best of the Web, and JoeAnt. I have never purchased a link for my own website, though Greg Hartnett at BotW was nice enough to include me in their directory after I met him in San Francisco two years ago.

Part of the reason I am so white-hat is by choice; part is simply because I don’t know enough PHP to spam or automate link-building processes. (Not that I am passing any moral judgment on those who perform SEO that way; it’s just that I am building my business, and I don’t see those tactics as a viable long-term strategy, either for myself or for my clients.)

So obviously, it came as a great shock last week when my Google toolbar PR showed up grey (i.e., zero) for the address http://www.davidmihm.com/blog. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to Toolbar PageRank; as long as my site, and my clients’ sites are somewhere around 2-6, I know things are ok. But when it was showing zero, I thought there might be a problem. So I did a couple of searches that I remember Rand recommending awhile back to see if your website is under penalty.

Step-by-Step: Diagnosing the Problem

I searched for the exact title tag of my blog homepage (”Mihmorandum: The Small Business Web Design + Local SEO Blog”), and for an extended excerpt of text I’d used in a post a couple of months ago.

The results were discouraging:

I immediately logged into Webmaster Tools (where I hadn’t visited in at least six months) and was horrified to see the following:

I then tried searching my site for some of those alleged keywords. Oddly, the only keyword that returned any results was for Valium:

I am normally pretty vigilant about approving / disapproving comments that my Akismet spam filter plugin catches, but I just assumed that a couple had slipped through the cracks. However, when I went to check those pages, I didn’t see any spam, either on the page OR in Google’s cached version.

I then checked to see whether I’d been banned, or had just been placed under severe penalty by doing a search for “site:davidmihm.com/blog”:

Pages in site: search meant that Google was still indexing my blog, just placing it under severe penalty.

Interestingly enough, it looks like the rest of my site, the part that lives outside the ‘blog’ folder, is/was doing just fine. Check out the following search for my Sitemap page (which is no-followed an thus should have no link juice pointing to it whatsoever). Google indexes and ranks that just fine:

Still, I was concerned about my blog.

That’s when I asked for outside help — one of the many great features of SEOmoz PRO membership is that you get to ask up to three questions per month of the expert staff. Jeff Pollard, SEOmoz’s CTO, emailed me back within 12 hours of my question to tell me that he had found the culprit in the source of the cached version–a hidden markup injection in the footer of my pages!

All I have to say is, FILMTHREAT, YOU SUCK. Unless you were hi-jacked also, in which case whoever hi-jacked you is the one that sucks.

Remedying the Problem

Armed with the code that Jeff had found, the first thing I did was upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress, in this case, 2.5.1.

Then, I logged into Google Webmaster tools and submitted a re-consideration request to Google. I checked out Matt Cutts’ authoritative post on the subject, explaining exactly what had happened and what I had done to fix it. Here’s the crux of Matt’s synopsis:

Fundamentally, Google wants to know two things: 1) that any spam on the site is gone or fixed, and 2) that it’s not going to happen again.

I asked Jeff to take another look at the code of my blog & he says that it looks like upgrading did indeed clear it up. And as for Matt’s #2, I sincerely hope Wordpress 2.5.1 permanently fixes this vulnerability :).

I am still not sure why or how Google only banned one folder of my domain, but I am thankful that they did :).

I am also thankful to Yahoo and MSN for continuing to rank my site just where it used to be throughout this whole process. (I am not sure if that’s because they could tell that my site had been hacked and were able to devalue those links, or if they just didn’t catch the spam!)

Google says it could take several weeks before my request is considered, but I will keep people updated if and when they do. In the meantime, thanks to my readers for continuing to read!

Step-by-step instructions for the small business just trying to get a handle on this whole internet marketing thing.

In honor of the recent passing of the former president of the National Rifle Association, I submit to American small business owners the following ten essential action items for a successful online presence.

Disclaimer: This is NOT a comprehensive list of online marketing techniques for small businesses. These are simply the ten most essential strategies that I have found to be effective for maximizing my clients’ online presence since 2004. In most cases, I perform these services for my clients or at the very least, advise them on the best courses of action. If you’re interested in learning more, contact me at davidmihm@gmail.com.

I. Research your keywords before building or re-building your website.

Ascertaining your most lucrative set of keywords is the foundation upon which your website can be built–that’s why it’s the First Commandment!

• If you have the budget (and the time), running a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign (called “Adwords” at Google) for a couple of months is a great testing ground. You get actual data on how many people are searching for exactly what keywords you think they’ll search for.
• But even if you don’t run a Pay-Per-Click campaign, you can still use Google’s Keyword Research Tool and see what people are searching for. Plug in a few keywords that you think people will use to find your business. Google will show you data for those keywords, and suggest several others that seem similar in concept.
• Look at the size of the bar in the righthand column (average search volume) and compare it to the size of the bar in the lefthand column (advertiser competition). Usually if there are a bunch of advertisers, it means it’s a pretty hard keyword to rank for. If there aren’t many advertisers, but it looks like there are a fair number of monthly searches…well, that’s your sweetspot.

II. Create compelling content that targets your keywords.

Your content should

• Look good visually
• Be written in a tone that you’re comfortable portraying your business with
• Be formatted in a way that’s easy for visitors to scan

Each website page should ideally be 0.5 to 1.5 pages long in Microsoft Word. Shorter than that, and the search engines won’t get a good enough “scent” of the page to know what it’s about. Longer than that, and your visitors might be intimidated or lose interest.

Target a different keyword set on each page of your website. You’ll capture a much wider range of search traffic this way. Be sure to use geographic modifiers with your keywords if geography is important to your business.

Don’t stop writing content once your website launches. New, compelling content is critical to developing links to your website, which help your search engine rankings dramatically.

III. Build your website in simple HTML. Or at least most of it.

HTML is the favorite language of search engines. A quality website designer should know how to make even basic HTML look pretty using CSS and even a little Flash or AJAX where appropriate.

• No fancy PHP, ASP or Javascripts (some uses of PHP / ASP are perfectly fine). Search engines have a tough time with pages that have too much dynamic content.
• Dropdown forms only where absolutely necessary. For the most part, search engines still can’t navigate through these forms.
• Flash embedded only WITHIN a page, with other HTML content surrounding it. For the most part, search engines still can’t index Flash very well.

I almost feel like I should start a separate “Ten Commandments of Coding for Search Engines” !

IV. Link freely and openly within your own website.

Links are the major way that search engines find new pages to index. But their spiders don’t have unlimited time to hunt around your website, so you want to make sure that you:

• Link to your most important pages directly from your homepage.
• Link to your most important pages from as many pages of your website as is practical or reasonable.
• Link pages together in a way that makes sense to both visitors and search engines–if you’ve got pages with similar content, cross-link them. For example, your “antique chairs” page should be linked to your “vintage tables” page, etc.
• Make sure that you include a sitemap to every page of your website, and link to your sitemap FROM every page of your website (usually in the footer).

The text that you link with is an INCREDIBLY important signal for search engines. It helps tell them what that destination page is about. So instead of linking to your Products page with just “products,” link instead with “vintage tables” or “antique chairs.”

V. List your contact information in HTML on every page of your website.

Your contact information should be placed consistently across your website. This is good for visitors, as it gives them a way to contact you and reassures them that you are indeed a business in their area. It also gives search engines a strong local “scent” as to where your site is located, and can help boost your rankings in the Local algorithm.

• Include your full address and phone number with local area code
• Use both geographic AND product/service keywords in your business title. For example, if your real business name is “Foster’s Supply,” adjust it on your website to read “Foster’s Office Supplies - Salem, OR.”
• Images won’t work as well because they can’t be read by search engines (yet).
• When coding your address, use the hCard Microformat if possible.

VI. Submit your website to respected directories in your industry and geography.

Very few people actually use directories anymore (back in the early days of the internet, when there were no search engines, directories were really the only way to find anything), but their main value today lies in the link back to your website. Search engines count links as “votes” for a website, and the more votes your site has, the higher it’s going to rank.

• Dmoz — It’s free, although increasingly difficult to get a listing in Dmoz because there aren’t enough editors to review your listing.
• Best of the Web — In my opinion the most cost-effective, potent directory link you can buy. BoTW is exceptionally well-reviewed and you can get a permanent link to your website for around $200.
• Yahoo — The Yahoo Directory is expensive ($299 a year) but if you have the money, it’s worth it because one link actually counts as several due to Yahoo’s international syndication of its directory results.
• Business.com — Expensive (~$200/yr.) but well-indexed by the search engines.
• JoeAnt — Less expensive (~$40/yr.) but not as well-indexed by the search engines.

Other directories depend on your industry and geography. Do a search for “my-business-keyword directory” or “my-location directory.” See what websites show up near the top. Chances are, those are good places to get a listing.

You can also search for neighborhood organizations or promotion entities like Chambers of Commerce or Convention & Visitors’ Bureaux. It never hurts to ask for a link from anyone.

VII. Submit your website to Local Search Engines.

As I mention on my SEO Consulting page, the Local search engines’ algorithms are, for the most part, independent of the main ranking algorithm. Thus, it’s essential to get your business listed and ranked in both, if you are even partially-dependent on local search traffic. At a bare minimum, you should submit your business to the following:

• Google Maps / Local
• Yahoo Local
• MSN Live Local
• Superpages.com

You might also consider:

• TrueLocal
• Local.com

You should submit your website using the same contact information list on your website. Remember to use both product/service AND geographic keywords in your business title.

Note that many or all of these companies will try to sell you something as you input your business information. My advice: decline anything you have to pay for, but make sure that you get a confirmation that your FREE listing has been entered into their database.

VIII. Add or verify your business information with data providers for the Local Search Engines.

• InfoUSA
• Localeze
• InsiderPages
• Merchant Circle
• Yelp (note this link is for Portland, OR businesses…business owners in other locations will need to adjust once they’ve set up an account)
• Universal Business Listing ($30 fee)

Again, be consistent and submit your website using the same contact information list on your website. Remember to use both product/service AND geographic keywords in your business title.

IX. Don’t neglect your offline marketing.

As print subscribership and traditional newspaper revenues drop, offline and online PR efforts are merging at a rapid rate. Print content is increasingly being syndicated across multiple web properties online, and often includes links to companies that are quoted or featured in articles. Additionally, print outlets are now starting to hire bloggers, who routinely link out to content that interests them. Remember that links coming into your website have a direct impact on your search engine rankings.

Additionally, sponsoring non-profit events or making donations to charitable organizations in your area may lead not only to positive associations by your customers, but to links from these organizations’ websites to your own.

X. Engage your community.

Stemming off of Commandment IX, it’s critical for long-term online success that you are an active member of your community, both locally and in your industry worldwide.

• Read industry or geo-focused blogs. Make insightful comments on blogs you enjoy reading. If you make enough of them (or even one or two good ones), the author is bound to take note and you can begin to develop a relationship with him / her.
• Write blog articles about emerging or un-publicized topics in your industry or region. Either syndicate them on other popular blogs and content sites (with a byline that includes a link to your website, of course) or publish them on your own blog.
• Don’t forget about capturing customer email addresses and marketing to your subscriber list.
• Don’t hesitate to ask for customers to review your business on the Local search engines and other sites like CitySearch and InsiderPages.

Danny Sullivan’s opening keynote gave prominent mention for the importance of Local (along with other Vertical search elements) in the coming year, as part of what he refers to alternately as ‘Blended Search’ and ‘Search 3.0′.

Danny featured a slide showing Google’s result for ‘hotels santa clara ca’. For those heavily involved in the Local search space, the “10-pack” is nothing new.  Danny and others have been telling us that it, or something like it anyway, has been coming for some time now.  But the fact that search marketers from the entire spectrum of SEM were just awakened to the importance of Local by the godfather of the industry speaks to the notion that 2008 will finally be the tipping point for this vertical.

As an interesting sidenote, Danny was quite explicit with advice for the Vagabond Inn, highlighting the relative effectiveness of “Search 1.0″ techniques in the Local space — include keywords early and often in your business title.  His specific advice for the Vagabond Inn: claim your Local Business Center listing and add “Santa Clara” to your business name.

Mike Blumenthal’s been all over the recent experimentation with the Google Local OneBox Ten Pack, first made public by Paul Jahn, in the last several days. Mike accurately notes that while displaying a larger number of businesses seems to level the playing field. In my opinion, this is mostly a good thing, as it helps defray some of the impact that the poor quality of Google’s Local algorithm currently has on small businesses.

Pictured above: Side-by-side screenshot below to illustrate the change (original available on Mike’s blog).

Greg Sterling commented today “the ratings disappear in this expanded view and the ratings display is valuable.” An important point, Greg, though I’d argue that until the quality of the algo improves, it’s more important to display a larger number of relevant businesses than it is to show review information for a smaller, less relevant number.

Which brings me to the point of this post:

• Some Local users, like me, are looking for a wide range of local businesses. Because I know the area well, I’m not so concerned with things like maps and addresses, I just want to know all of the businesses located a reasonable distance away that could potentially satisfy my search query.
• Some Local users, like Greg, are looking for what other people say about businesses in order to know which search result is relevant to them.
• Some Local users like my friend Natasha aren’t as good with directions & locations, and prefer a larger map interface to know where those businesses are.

The solution?

Give users the option of how they’d like to display results.

Search results have gradually begun to get more personalized for the last 12-15 months. The technology is in place now with iGoogle and myYahoo such that users can log in and set preferences in terms of what items display on their homepage, how many search results show on a particular page, search histories that give preference to sites a user has already visited, etc. Why not extend that into the Local arena?

It’s great that Google is still trying to figure out the best interface for the default user, but (and this is no small point) it would seem to me they’d get GREAT data about what users actually prefer by allowing them the option to experiment on their own, while at the same time locking that user in as a “return searcher” by allowing them to personalize their interface.

Take a page from Kayak’s book.

There’s a travel website out there that ALREADY does this incredibly well, allowing registered users to sort and filter hotels, for instance, by price, user rating, distance from the city center, and even distance from a custom landmark. It’s obvious this technology took a lot of time, manpower, and resources to develop, but surely all four major search engines have plenty of know-how and wherewithal to develop something similar. Or at least the cash to license it from Kayak! And surely your UI experts can implement this in a way that is easy to understand and doesn’t clutter the page unnecessarily.

Pictured above: Kayak’s user interface showing multiple options to sort.

One bonus recommendation:

@Google: you’re under-using the plus-box stickies that you’re so fond of in your REGULAR results within your LOCAL interface.

Seems to me if Google is interested in increasing the number of businesses in the Local section of OneBox results, the map might be a HUGE, unnecessary space-eater. Why not simply list a plus box next to each business (instead of A-B-C-D…) that enables users to display that location on a map?

Above: Result for Pizza Orgasmica in Universal before clicking plus-box.

Above: Result for Pizza Orgasmica after clicking plus-box.

With this solution, you can STILL

a) include the review / star information next to the business
b) Show all of the additional information in an INLINE search result, without making users load a new page
c) Increase the number of Local listings in a Universal SERP.

Above: Proposed Google Local OneBox result. 

Not that anyone asked, but that’s my .02! 

I’m quite sure we haven’t seen the last of Google’s innovations within its local interface, but the fact is, Local Search is SUCH a hot market right now, anyone who can get out ahead of the curve will have a tremendous advantage in terms of capturing marketshare and publicity, both within the online AND offline community.

Getting the kids, friends, and family of small business owners an interface that they ALL love (not to mention SBO’s themselves) might be one of the most fundamental strategies to attract additional businesses to submit information or keep it up-to-date.

Tim lays out a VERY convincing argument for why certain businesses (and certain businesses’ reviews) show up at the top of the Google Local algorithm, and why others don’t. It’s the most salient, actionable piece of advice I’ve ever read for small businesses looking to get a leg up on the competition in the new Map + 3 interface that’s become ubiquitous in Universal Search.

In a nutshell, Tim suggests that Google’s algorithm takes into account not only the star-rating for the business given by the reviewer, but also the number of ratings that the reviewer has given to other businesses. In other words, the opinion of a person who’s only ever reviewed ONE business is weighted far LESS than the opinion of someone who’s reviewed tens or even hundreds of businesses.

It’s a brilliant hypothesis backed up by some empirical evidence, whereby a business with only 4-5 reviews from quality reviewers is ranked highly, and with a star rating, while another business with 30-40 reviews isn’t listed or starred.

In other words, if you own a small business, and you want to rank highly in the Google Local algorithm, seek out reviewers on Yelp, InsiderPages, etc., that have reviewed a ton of businesses, and “ask them nicely” if they wouldn’t mind reviewing yours! I’m by no means recommending that you pay them off directly, but if there’s some way to entice them with a special offer to come into your business, or something you can do for them in return, I’d seriously investigate it.

His post also looks at the implications this algorithmic strategy might have on review spam. I commented that

Unlike with paid links, though, the difference is that the individual reviewers probably couldn’t care less if they lost the ability to pass “ReviewRank,” meaning it is a MUCH more difficult situation for the Google Local algorithm to deal with.

At any rate, I HIGHLY recommend that anyone in the Local SEO space heads over to read his post.

Monday

I arrived in Vegas Monday afternoon, and after wandering around the north end of The Strip for an hour or so, headed to the Hilton for a quick drink with “Dr Pete” Meyers, a Chicago-based usability expert. By the time we were finished with our drink and subsequent walk over to The Wynn, it was dinner time. We caught up with the SEOmozzers and headed to the Monte Carlo brewpub for some ridiculously oversized and odd-shaped pitchers of Hefeweizen. It was great fun to hang out with old friends Scott Willoughby, Jeff Pollard, Rebecca Kelley, Jason Arango, Jane Copland, and Matt Inman, and to meet newbies Mel Gray and Sarah Bird.

After an exhausting weekend finishing client work so that I could attend PubCon, I was in no mood to party Monday night, so I went back to my room and crashed, leaving Natasha Robinson to fend for herself at “The Planet.”

Tuesday

The conference got off to an inauspicious start, as I wandered around the unimaginably huge Las Vegas Convention Center looking for the PubCon registration area. As fate would have it we were in a subset of the main building called the South Halls, which took about half an hour to find. Along the way I bumped into Wes Cox and Eric Bramlett, and we talked design & local SEO while we were waiting to register.

As the morning sessions wound down, I ran into my current friend Bob Charlton and met a new friend: Todd Mintz of SEMpdx. We sat down with Jon Kelly of the insurance ad network SureHits, SEOcial Butterfly Jane, and assorted other talented SEOs to enjoy our box lunch in the concert hall.

That evening, following what would be the first of many visits to The Wynn’s ParasolUp Bar, I headed to Mandalay Bay’s RumJungle with Google gadget and Facebook application consultant Pat Sexton and the male contingent of the SEOmoz crew. Pat had what some would consider a better-than-average day at the gaming tables & generously bought us all dinner.

We returned to ParasolUp later that night for drinks with Ciaran Norris, Stephen Pavlovich, and Gareth Davies. After mingling with Social Media maven Tamar Weinberg, linkbuilding expert Roger Montti, and one of the founders of the best online directory for SEOs, Greg Hartnett, I also met legendary Orange County SEO consultant CK Chung and Social Media Marketing experts Chris and Danielle Winfield.

Wednesday

Wednesday necessitated a brief nap mid-afternoon, not entirely due to the morning sessions, but more because of the late hour of the previous night and the events of the night to come.

I started with drinks and dinner at the Wynn with the usual suspects before eschewing the their Werewolf contest in favor of a trip to see Penn & Teller organized by Social Media guru Todd Malicoat. I bumped into Chuck Price of WeBuildPages, search engine patent expert Bill Slawski, Dallas-based PPC and SEM expert Christine Churchill at the supposed meeting place: The Rio’s Chippendales bar. (I still say you were playing an evil joke on us, Todd! :D) After finally finding our way to the Penn & Teller theatre, I met Olga of Avenue A, as well as the founders of BuddyTV and ICanHasCheezburger, better known for their LOLCats. Prior to the show, Cameron and I discussed his new Social Media consulting company, Factive Media. Brent Csutoras and his “better half” Annie showed up as well. P&T put on a terrific show, and I was particularly blown away by their Magic Bullet finale.

The night was made even more exciting by Syracuse’s win over Virginia, Wazzu’s defeat of Gonzaga, North Texas’ admirable showing against the Longhorns, and Pacific’s drubbing of USF, most of which occurred during the P&T show. (I’ll leave it to your imagination as to why these particular events pleased me so much.)

We all made our way back to the Wynn afterwards for the Yahoo party, during which we were all treated to a bizarre light show on the Wynn’s north pond.

At the Y! party, I met Brian Gil, product manager for Yahoo Local, and hung out with Rand, Laura Lippay, and Mr. Laura Lippay (Chris _?_) . I also met Dick Masterson, a hilarious chauvinist who’s got a new book coming out and a series of appearances on Dr. Phil. After the Yahoo party wound down, it was back to ParasolUp yet again.

The rest of the night is hazy but may have involved playing some roulette with the hottest gambler on the Strip (in SO many ways), Pat Sexton.

Thursday

The conference sessions lacked punch on Thursday, which was fairly predictable for the last day of the conference. But a trip to In-Out Burger with the ‘moz/0at/SEOish crew re-energized us for the awesome MSN party at The Palms’ Ghost Bar.

College hoops was a popular topic among the party-goers, including Lawrence Coburn and Brant Bukowsky, among others, including Jon Kelly and Natasha’s friend Patrick __?__.

Then came the poker tournament, where Neil and I did a little trash-talking beforehand. Shockingly I was NOT the first person ousted. In fact, there were two other people at my table who lost before I did! I managed a terrific hand against Portland web hosting expert Scott Hendison, knocking him out after a wonderful Ace-7 draw. Soon thereafter, card sharks including Jake Baillie showed up and took all my money, so Scott and I just chatted about some of his upcoming projects & life in Portland.

What happened next was without a doubt the highlight of my entire trip: we were all frozen by a chilling rendition of “I Will Survive” by Tony Clifton himself. Sadly in an occurrence that is all too familiar, The Venetian’s pit boss took Tony’s microphone away just a minute into the song. But as always he exited the poker room to thunderous applause, with a beautiful lady on each arm.

There was still plenty of fun to be had after Tony’s performance, though, hanging out with Jared and Greg of Best of the Web, Chris, linkbuilding guru Greg Boser, and the loveliest wife in the SEO industry.

To cheer up after our losses at the Poker Table, and after being robbed of the aural pleasure of Tony’s “melodic” ballad, several of us including Ciaran, Jane, UK SEO Consultant Lisa Ditlefsen, and Chris Cotton headed over to a bar at Treasure Island, where Stephen hastened the end of my PubCon 2007 with a shot of Jagermeister.

Whew! What an exhausting week!

But it sure was fun… thanks to everyone who indulged me a few moments of their time, and even more thanks to the ones who bought me free food and alcohol! Be sure to give me a ping if you’re heading to SMXW in Santa Clara next year if you want to hang out again.

• Greg brought to everyone’s attention TubeMogul.com, a site that allows for one upload and automatic submission to 12 video search engines.  He still recommends that smaller sites with fewer videos submit on a manual basis to vary their titles and descriptions in order to rank for a broader range of keywords, but for sites with a huge volume of content to push, TubeMogul makes a lot of sense.
• The frames between 1:10 and 1:20 into the video are typically used as thumbnails on YouTube.  Keep this in mind when editing.
• More video SEO tips here.
• WMV allows for easy editing of properties.
• Vary the number of tags used for your videos –a smaller number means more density, a larger number means greater long tail ranking ability.

John Coronella:

• Submit the exact page of the video search engine TO other engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., to ensure that it gets spidered.  Throw some links its way to encourage its ranking.  Even BUY links that point to these pages; “let’s face it, Google’s not going to ban a YouTube page.”

Brett Tabke:

• Maximize your filenames – you have 100 characters; use as many keywords as you can.
• Include keyword-saturated HTML text AROUND the embedded video, speak the keywords that you want to rank for IN the video (transcript services are starting to become more popular, like Everyzing). 

Bob Charlton (who wasn’t even speaking!):

• Put self-contained teasers on YouTube that encourage clickthroughs for full stories on your own site.