Google for many is their best friend and for others their worst nightmare, and in late February of this year Google made another “adjustment” in the way it provides search results. Google called it Panda it was a major change to their algorithm which impacted 1000′s of sites. The update was designed to reduce the rankings for low quality sites – Low Quality sites was explained this way (Google Blog) “Sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful”. Once again the magician shows you the trick but not how its done.

For many in the SEO world saw sites that were on the front page disappear overnight many of the so called content farms lost a tremendous amount of traffic. Google is all about content and user experience and so the SEO world was left not knowing how to fix this or really address it. Until this week the magician finally is providing hints to how the trick is done.

Google Blog May 6th

The main talking points of the blog post above are this:
“focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals”
“Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find “high-quality” sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content”

Finally and Most IMPORTANTLY they have given us 23 questions to ask yourself about your site, Google scholars will be pouring over the meaning of each one of these for some time we may even see a movie ” The Sergey Code”.

Well there you have it 23 question to live or Die by.

Content is king, it needs to be original, it should be well written, it needs to contain substance. The days of worthless blogs that were jammed with target keywords are over, 150 word articles aren’t going to cut it and just cause a content site lets you publish it probably isn’t going to help you.

Media Advisory

National Groups Celebrate Local Veterans in NW Houston

Who: Spirit of Liberty/ Crossing America     Wheelers for the Wounded

What: Tribute ceremony, breakfast, and live music to honor local veterans wounded in combat

Where: Northwest Dodge 19616 Northwest Freeway, Jersey Village, TX 77065

When: Friday, May 6^th 2011

8:00-9:00 Ceremony and Remarks

9:00-9:30 Breakfast

9:30 Jeep Convoy

A tribute to America’s fighting men and women, past and present, will kick off right here at Houston’s Northwest Dodge dealership on May 6, 2011 from 8:00 am to 9:30am, just in time for Memorial Day.

The dealership will host breakfast, live music and present a Customized Jeep Wrangler.  The Jeep Wrangler is covered in a custom vinyl wrap depicting the American Flag.  The Jeep has been done to honor an organization called Crossing of America.  This year, Jeep is the national sponsor of the Crossing of America, donating two Jeeps that will be driven 12,700 miles each, by America’s most patriotic celebrities in the Spirit of Liberty/Crossing of America event this summer.

At 9:30 am, The “Liberty Jeep” and a convoy of other Jeeps will leave the dealership in a procession consisting of veterans, Jeep owners, and off road enthusiasts.  They will join other off road enthusiast at one of Texas’ premier off road parks, Hidden Falls Adventure Park, located in Marble Falls, Texas for The 3^rd Annual Wheelers for the Wounded Event.  The event offers a weekend of off roading and activities for wounded soldiers and their families, a much needed relief from rehabilitation.

Local military and Color Guard will be honored by former congressman Nick Lampson, and other local celebrities, as well as the Vice President of The Spirit of Liberty/Crossing of America event, Monya Magilton, along with Gale Muskiet, president and executive director of Mothers of Military Serving (MoMs USA) and Paula Alessi and Cheryl Whitfield of National Memorial Ladies. The proceeds from the sale of “Liberty Jeep” after the Crossing of America, will go to these veteran support groups.

Blogging is everywhere, we hear about success with blogs and we work with clients everyday to assist them with their blogs. Those that run their own blogs here are some basic tips that we see everyday that will help improve your blog.
1. Your blog should be part of your site www.yourdomain.com. It should not be hosted at wordpress or some other 3rd party site.
- One of the biggest benefits of a blog is in your Search Engine Optimization; we have proven this time and time again with clients especially when we get stuck in our SEO. We have a site that has moved consistently month after month up in the rankings and then stalls. A blog can take you over that hump and put you in the top 3 rankings.

2. Don’t focus on you ie. solely your products or services. This is not to say you should not focus on your industry or topics that you are an expert in you should.
- But using your blog to hock your products and services is a mistake. You blog can be picked up by 100′s or 1000′s of resources on the web and can be a way for you to reach hundreds of potential customers by your expertise. You can establish your blog as a resource on a particular topic or better yet your industry. When this happens your site will take off because of the quality sites that are now pointing to your blog for news and information.

3. Consistency counts and make sure you publish enough.
- To receive benefit from your blog you must publish frequently and consistently. Every study we have for the last 3 years shows that companies that publish at least 20 articles a month average at least 2 new customers from their blog.
- In addition companies that publish at least 20 stories a month move up in the rankings for high traffic keywords 60% faster than those that do not blog.

4. Stay Focused what do you plan to achieve with your blog.
- Whether you want the SEO benefits of a blog or you want subscribers and followers you need a focused plan for your blog, fight the urge to use your blog to talk about the snow on the ground (unless you have a weather blog).

5. Mix it up offer variety.
- Endless pages of text with no pictures, graphs, video, polls etc is boring… take the time to make your blog visually appealing it pays off in the end.

Blogging is here to stay and its critical to the success of any website make sure you are doing the things necessary to make it successful.

If you don’t have the time to keep up with your blog hire a professional.

The talk since last year for Google has been one of being the leader in “Local Search”. Google has always had one commitment to provide the most relevant search results and that directive has moved to what they are calling “Place Search”. The look of the new Google search engine results page (SERP) has changed dramatically. The days of the 3 sponsored listings on top and the 7 pack with the map and 10 organic results next is gone. Google said that the algorithm has been improved and refined for Place Search. We also shouldn’t see any more of the “mapspam” that has plagued the 7-Pack in the past. Previously the local and general search algorithms were distinct. I asked whether they had now been consolidated or merged in this new release and was told “yes.”
Below is the old SERP:

Old Search Results

The look has now changed very dramatically. The new look still provides 3 sponsored listings at the top but from that point on its all new. To the right in the sponsored listings is a floating map that moves down the page as you scroll, and yes it even scrolls over the paid advertisers. The most significant change is in the results the top listings are now derived from the map and shows extended information regarding reviews and citations.

New Search Results

So what does this mean?
This is by far the one of the largest and most significant changes in search. This will have some fairly major SEO implications. Initially success will be realized by the cluster, the group of sites like Yelp, City Search, Urban Spoon where information is directly pulled from. In addition Google appears to be assigning heavier weights to other sites listed at the bottom of the places page called “More about this place” these citations have a local focus and provide validation for the Google places page in the way of address and phone number.
Google began its discussion with us yesterday with a repeat of its previously released statistic: “More than 20 percent of searches on Google are related to location.” The key words in that sentence are “more than.”
By making local results (and Place Pages) more prominent than even they were before, users will likely respond with more local queries and rely on Google more heavily for local information. The overall volume and percentage of queries on Google seeking local information may in turn increase.

9 Areas to focus on to increase Google Map Ranking

Your Physical Address
To rank for keywords related to a particular city, you will need to have a location in that city.

Your Business Categories
The next two areas are very close But EMG’s research shows it’s more important to have your business be categorized correctly than to have the right keyword in your business name.

Keyword in Business Name
EMG ranks this high based on what we have seen lately while watching client keyword categories. The accounts where we have modified the listing to say a particular keyword as part of their business name began to appear for those additional Keyword based searchs.

Citation Quantity
David Mihm wrote, local citations are the “new” links. Google relies heavily on citations — mentions of your business elsewhere on the web — to validate your business name, address, and phone information. The more validation via citations, the more trust Google has to show you in its local/maps results.

Completing your business profile/Place page
Just claiming your listing is not enough; there are plenty of unclaimed listings that rank very highly in Google Maps. But what does matter, a lot is completing your profile. I’m talking extra information like hours, payment options, a well-written and complete business description, and especially adding photos and videos to your listing.

Business data consistency.
Your business name, address, and phone number need to be consistent across the many sources of local business information.

Reviews and ratings.
Google Maps is really a recommendation engine. It recommends restaurants, dry cleaners , and hotels based on the cities you search in.

Proximity to location. This is not just “proximity to city center,” but  “proximity to location” is more accurate to think about because a lot of searches are about a specific location: hotels near the NASA, restaurant near art museum, and so forth. True the majority of searches are conducted by city identifier like Lawyer Houston and typically the results are those nearest to city center. We have seen in the last 4 days since the change an increase in area specific identifier, seems once people see on the map where the results are they are looking for things closer to where they actually what to be.

My Maps and other User Content/Data
Google shows the user-generated content associated with a business. This is typically in the form of people using Google “My Maps” tool to create their own maps and add important locations/businesses to those maps. I believe this is becoming a more important signal recently, in part thanks to what seems to be more people using My Maps. But there are other forms of user content, too, such as geotagged photos of a business, the use of Google Buzz and Latitude. We have seen how all these activities directly relate to a clients position on Google Maps.

Google has changed the way we see search results; SEO going forward will and must include Place Search and optimizing for those elements that will get you on the map and move you up the map. The practices of the past are not ancient history, Google relying solely on results from Place Search would be foolish and they stated that they are incorporating their previous organic based results algorithms with their new local “Place Search” algorithms is there plan.

First what is a Landing Page – Wikipedia defines a landing page as: “Is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement. The page will usually display sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link.”
The right landing page is essential because Internet searchers are an impatient breed; they want, what they want, when they want it and they don’t want to have to look for it. Before any Google Adwords campaign should be attempted careful thought must be made to where you are going to send the prospective customer when they click on your ad. First get rid of the notion that you will send them to your main page so they can see all your products and/or services, if I am looking for tankless water heater installation I don’t want to see that you do 25 different kinds of plumbing installation, sewer repair and leaky faucets.
The Essentials of an Effective Landing Page
• Make your Landing Pages Relevant: – Your Landing Page should be targeted to your ad copy. For example if you are selling “Tankless Water Heaters” then the content and headline of your Landing Page should contain the keyword “ Tankless Water Heaters” in them so that your landing page becomes relevant to what someone is looking for. You have 10 seconds for that visitor to make a decision don’t waste it.
• Creating Unique and Relevant Content: – Google hates duplicate content your landing page should be uniquely written with regards to content, taking an existing page and changing up some of the wording is the worst mistake you can make. Always add relevant and unique content on your landing pages. If you have literature from the manufacturer then rewrite it. Because if you have it so does every other site that has that product.
• Load Time: – High speed Internet is a subjective term if your page is bloated with pictures and takes to long to load 2 things are going to happen. The visitor will leave and your quality score will go down. Test the the load times of your pages, optimize images on the site and don’t call feeds from 10 different sources. Your Landing page should be lean and mean.
• Call To Action: – What do I get if I call now, do you even tell them to call now or buy now. Tell visitors what they can do to get your product or service now. I don’t need to look all over your site for a phone number or shopping cart.
Effective landing pages will achieve the following:
1. Higher Conversion Rate – More visitors will buy your goods and services. Your bounce rates will go down and it will take less money to make more money. We have seen conversions with some of our clients go from 5% to 22% just by creating better landing pages.
2. Lower Cost Per Click – Because your page contains relevant content to your keyword Google is going to reward you with a higher quality score and charge you less to be in better positions. We have tested this over and over again and we have seen costs drop for advertisers by as much as 18%.
So do the math: An increase from every 5 out of a 100 visitors calling you; to 22 out of 100 visitors calling you, plus saving 18 dollars for every 100 dollars spent. Landing pages make a difference.