Google Local Business Listings -How to Rank Higher

Google offers a free business listing to small businesses at the top of most local search results pages. Local Google Advertising is what we're after when we talk about Google's local business listing center. Anatomy of a Google search result page:

o Listings on the right side bar are paid advertisements, often called "sponsored links"
o The main body of a search result page are called the "organic" or "natural" search listings
o At the very top in a colored text box are also paid advertisements, sponsored links
o Above the organic listings are "Google Local Business Listings"

This wiki deals with only with the Local Business Listings

You will notice a map associated with each listing, this is because Google used the existing infrastructure of Google Maps to implement the free business listings. It's generally thought that Google offered this free service, and gave its location on a search result page prominence above the organic listings because of the popularity of Google's AdWords program.

AdWords is a PPC (pay per click) advertising system where keywords and keyword phrases are bid on in an auction like system. The immense popularity of AdWords priced smaller Mom n Pop stores out of the market due to the ever escalating costs of certain keywords. Google became fearful that it's search platform would be return search results of the "rich and famous" thus reflecting only what the rich and powerful wanted seen on Google search results.

How does Google determine which website should rank higher than another?

Google uses a computer program algorithm based on hundreds of factors as the vast size of the internet precludes any human capability of keeping the listings accurate or current. That algorithm is a closely guarded trade secret within Google. Search Engine Optimization Consultants learn what Google apparently likes and doesn't like from the observable behavior of search results.

Google Places Is Googlemaps

Google Maps algorithm is different from the algorithm that anoints one site over another. It's also slower to update. If your customers leave glowing reviews of your product or service on the link provided your site will climb in rank. You are permitted up to 10 photos of your product or service, use as many of those slots as possible. Fill out as much information about your business as space allotted provides, being verbose is better than being succinct when it comes to Google Local Business Listings

Many small businesses get leads and interested inquiries from a local business listing even if they don't have a website URL. Still other small businesses find it unnecessary to have their company listed anywhere other than the top local business listings. If your listing falls in ranking or is bumped out of it's spot by a newcomer and you find your company losing sales because of it, you may want to outsource your rankings management to a local search engine optimization firm.

The fees involved for a local business listing may be less than the fees for improving your company website's organic listing.

What Determines Rank?

Ever wonder why your companies listing in Google does OK in the main body of Google's search results page but is not in the top 10 of those pesky Google Local Business Listings?

Ultimately what you want is to be found in BOTH sets of listings, the net effect of which would be to drive home in your prospective customers Mind's Eye that Google apparently thinks pretty highly of your company if Google is displaying YOUR company listing in the Local Business Listings and in the Organic Search Rankings.

Well, people's perception and Google's reality are far, far apart.

Google didn't *pick* you to be #1 and your competitor to be #11
A computer program picked you over the hapless fella you compete with. A person did not visit your site, take notes, compare notes, make a decision, hear the belly aching and whining of the poor fool who got bumped off of his front page listed by a website that ranked better than his...

nope, an algorithm picked you over them.

Think about it... there are what? a Gazillion webpages already indexed in Google? And how many tens of thousands of new webpages being created as we speak? Some of those tens of thousands are being "generated" by a "bot".

There is no way on God's Green Earth a staff of humans could possibly keep up with that kind of volume. An algorithm did it. The robot that scours the Internet (in the SEO industry we call that "spidering") is titled GoogleBot. GoogleBot Can't Really *Read*

GoogleBot can NOT read... but it CAN count

Googlebot counts the words on your webpage, it counts the keywords and keyword phrases you use in your copy. Is y0ur company website a little light on copy? Too bad for you.

It matters little to Googlebot if the fancy flash graphic and dramatic digital photos depicting your most important product are... well the damn thing can't decipher a photo! but it CAN read text.

What ever makes your photos good, better or best and likewise your competitors photos crappy is subjective. Art is subjective, math is not.

Either the keywords are on your webpage (Prominently placed at the top of the page I hope) or the keywords are not.

He who has the most keywords (elegantly, tactfully and deftly constructed with proper enough grammar for the spell-checking-programmed Googlebot to index) Wins that coveted top spot!

But... the Google Local Business Listings are a different story. The algorithm that runs it is different.

What Google is looking for and rewards when it sees it for the organic search results page (the body of the page) is one thing. What Googlebot is looking to see in the Free Local Google Advertising Listings is quite another.

I'm not about to reveal the entire loophole in a "Google Secrets Revealed" post, not even for a hefty $1000 fee for an ebook (I'd do it for that price if it were ticket sales to a seminar and I got a couple dozen of you to buy $1000 tickets to eagerly learn how I do what it is I do) (that's in the works by the way)

No, I'm not telling, not the whole thing but I will give you a hint, and I'm giving said hint in the form of my own Maryland search engine optimization results. This is not theory.This is not alleged. What follows is battle tested!

I'm competing against the best of the best, the top guys and gals in Maryland: other SEO professionals. Link building technicians like me:)

If your customers leave glowing reviews... and they leave them USING a Gmail account, and that Gmail account is associated with a Google Profile, and the person leaving the review has a picture or avatar uploaded to that Google Profile... Your Google local business listing will climb in ranking.

There are things you can do to improve your ranking
Source Article :http://localorganicsearchranking.com

HTML Syntax Vs Search Engine Positoning

There is a lot of competition to get good spots in the search engines. Proper html syntax and a clean code will help toward better positioning.

With website design mostly done with wysiwig editors now, there seems to be a lot of reliance on these tools without realizing that they are far less than perfect.
Software like frontpage tend to produce a fairly complicated html code and we as users just assume that because it is software generated there won’t be any problems with it.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Wysiwig software is very often unable to properly integrate additional code e.g. affiliates links, adsense code, shopping cart codes etc. The more complicated the page, the higher the chance of there being a problem with html.

It is quite surprising how many sites there are out there with html problems. Just run a few competitors pages through the a validator and you will see. Today’s browsers are extremely tolerant and will still display a page properly that has all sorts of problems. But it is a different story with robots. They like it simple and easy and will generally take the path of least resistance -- almost human, aren’t they ?

So let’s say we have two competing sites, both are suitable for the top spot and the search engine has a tough time deciding who to put first. There is a very high chance that the validated site with proper syntax will be the winner. Validation of the html on your site alone will certainly not secure you a high rating, but as with so many other things it will help and might even be the contributing factor to get you across the line.

Also a very important point for webpages using SSI, PHP etc. It is sometimes difficult to validate code offline as there are many small bits that are put together by the server. So you really don’t know what you will get in the end. Be sure you validate all of these pages and do it with an online tool. My favorite html validator is validator.org

And a case to the point: I recently installed a data-feed code for an affiliate site. There was one error in the product display, two tr and td tags where the wrong way around. And as each page listed over 20 products the errors of course accumulated...

It will only cost you a bit of your time to validate and maybe a lot of time to fix all the problems, but believe me it's worth it! Go and validate! source

SEO Checklist- Google Ranking Factors

Search engine optimization is on every webmaster's mind these days. Achieving a favorable ranking for the right keywords can mean a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site, and all for free - that's hard to beat. The key to high search engine rankings is structuring your website correctly, including plenty of content that is relevant to your keywords, and making sure your website is spider-friendly. You can use this checklist to make sure all of your Web pages can be found, indexed and ranked correctly:

Your website is themed. Your site deals with an identifiable theme which is obvious from the text on the home page and reinforced by all the other pages on your site. In other words, all the individual Web pages relate to each other and deal with various aspects of some central theme. The text on your home page should state clearly what that theme is and what your website is about, and the other pages should reinforce that.

Your Web pages have enough high quality, relevant content. Spiders come to your website looking for content. If a page doesn't have much content, or the content doesn't appear closely related to the page's title and your website's theme, the page probably won't be indexed or if it is indexed it won't rank well. Search engines love quality content and lots of it - content is what Web searchers are looking for and search engines try to provide.

Your website's navigational structure is relatively flat. You don't want important pages to be too "deep" within your website, meaning it takes several clicks to get there from the home page. Search engines typically index the home page first, then gradually index other pages on a site over time. Many spiders are programmed to only go three layers deep - if some of your important content is buried deeper than that, it may never be found and indexed at all.

You've created a unique "Title" tag for each page. The title is one of the most important aspects of any Web page from an SEO standpoint, especially for Google (which is the most important search engine to optimize for). Don't use a generic title for all your pages, use the keywords your targeting for that page and keep it brief but descriptive.

You use the "Description" meta tag. Contains a highly descriptive sentence about the content and purpose of your page, and contains your most important keyword phrase early in the sentence. Not all of the search engines will display this "canned" description when they list the page in search results, but many of them will, so it's worth getting it right.

You use the "Keywords" meta tag. As with the meta tag description, not every search engine will use the keywords meta tag. But some will use it and none will penalize you for having it. Also, having a short list of the keywords you're targeting will help you write appropriate content for each page. The keyword tage should contain your targeted keyword phrase and common variations, common misspellings and related terms. Make sure your keywords relate closely to the page content and tie into the overall theme of your site.

Your keywords are included in the visible page content, preferably high up on the page. You have to achieve a balance here - you want to include keyword phrases (and variations) a number of times within your text, but not so many times that you appear to be guilty of "keyword stuffing". The trick is to work the keywords into the text so that it reads as naturally as possible for your site visitors. Remember, you can incorporate keywords into any Web page element that is potentially viewable by site visitors - header text, link text and titles, table captions, the "Alt" attribute of the image tag, the "title" attribute of the link tag, etc.

Every page of your website can be reached by search engine spiders. This is critical - if your pages can't be found, they can't be indexed and included in search results, let alone rank well. Search engines use spiders to explore your website and index the pages, so every page must be accessible by following text links. If pages require a password to view, are generated by a script in response to a query, or have a long and complicated URL, spiders may not be able to read them. You need to have simple text links to the pages you want indexed.

You've included a site map. Unless your site is very small, it's a good idea to create a site map with text links that you link to the site map from your home page. In addition to a link, include descriptive text for containing the relevant keywords for each page.

You link to your most important pages from other pages on your site. Internal links help determine page rank since they show which pages of your site are most important. The more links you have to have to a page, relative to other pages on your site, the more importance search engines will assign to it.

You use keywords in your link text. When you create a text link to another page on your site, use that page's targeted keywords as the text for the link (inside the anchor tags that create the link). Make it as descriptive as possible. For example, a link that says "Premium Customized Widgets" is much better than one that says simply "Product Page", and indicates to search engine spiders what that linked page is about.

Your site doesn't use frames. If possible, don't use frames on any page you want to get indexed by search engines. If you feel you simply must use frames for a page, then also make use of the "noframes" HTML tags to provide alternative text that spiders can read (and make that text descriptive rather than just a notice that "This site uses frames etc. etc.").

You don't use automatic page redirects. Don't make any pages automatically redirect the visitor to another page (the exception is a page you've deleted for good - in which case you should use a "301 redirect", a permanent redirect which is acceptable to search engines).

Your important content is in plain text and not contained in images. Search engine spiders can't "read" content in JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. If you really feel that using an image rather than text is crucial to your design, at least put the same text in the image's "Alt" tag (or in the "title" tag if you're using the image as a hyperlink).

Your important content is not contained in Flash files. Flash is a wonderful technology, but unfortunately spiders don't have the required "plugin" to view Flash files. As a result, Flash content is mostly inaccessible to search engine spiders. Some can find and follow hyperlinks within the Flash file, but unless those links lead to pages with readable HTML content this won't help you much. Don't create all-Flash pages for any content you want to get indexed - instead, put that content in the HTML portion of the page.

Links and keywords are not hidden inside JavaScript code. If your links use JavaScript to direct the user to the appropriate page (for instance, a drop-down list) or important content is contained within JavaScript code (when it's displayed dynamically using DHTML, for instance) search engine spiders won't be able to "see" it. You can, however, use the "noscript" HTML tags to provide an alternative that can be read by spiders.

You've optimized every important page of your website individually. Don't stop at your home page. Take the trouble to optimize any page which has a reasonable chance of being indexed by the major search engines, targeting appropriate keywords for each. If you face a lot of competition it may be nearly impossible to get a top ranking for your home page, but you can still get a lot of search engine traffic to your site from other pages which are focused on very specific keyword phrases.

You didn't duplicate content. Each page of your site should have unique content that distinguishes it from every other page on your site. Duplicating content or having pages that are only slightly different might be seen as "search engine spamming" (trying to manipulate search engine results).

You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site. Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will use it, but most often they will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it is truly descriptive of your site and doesn't contain "marketing hype".

You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site. Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will use it, but many will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it doesn't contain "marketing hype".

Important hyperlinks are plain text links and not image links or image maps. Text links are better from an SEO standpoint than image links, as spiders can't read text from an image file. If you feel you really must use a graphic as a link, at least include a text description which (including the relevant keywords) by using the "title" attribute of the link tag.

Your website is free of coding errors and broken links. HTML coding errors and non-working links can keep search engine spiders from correctly reading and indexing your pages. For that reason, it's a good idea to use a Web page validation utility to check your HTML code to make sure it's error-free. <a href="http://ezinearticles.com/?A-SEO-Checklist&id=2213">source</a>