Best SEO Practices Google Local Places - Internet Marketing Podcast - Number 93

Hi, and welcome to the Internet Marketing Unknown Secrets of SEO. Part two. Part two. Yeah, we had a little technical difficulty, so this is actually our second run through this. This will be your first run. This is really, we're doing this for the audio and so that we have the video on our Ustream page. So we're excited about this podcast. The one that we just finished was awesome. Yes, this one was awesomer. This is awesome-er. You're getting the better one. As always, we'd like to talk a little bit about our last podcast. What did we do in our last podcast? We were talking about Google Local Places, and we're going to continue that today. We've got some really good information. We found this great article. And our tip from the last podcast was make sure that you get your Google Places listing to 100%. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. What does it take to get to 100% and make sure that you guys got all the information that you need. Yes, and before we get started, I kind of said this in the middle of last podcast that we erased. Dean Calhoun called us up this morning. I'm not sure if it was something that was mobile-related or local listing-related. Chris was here. He just missed somehow. We missed a phone call. Went into my voicemail. So if you have some good info, email us. Call us. Dean's always a great listener. Always has some great stuff for us to share with everybody. Absolutely. And now for the news segment of our podcast. Not blank stare. That's not happening. Lots of information. Schmidt with Google is stepping down. I don't really have anything beyond that. You're going to Yahoo. It's funny how that's funny. We all know how that's funny. And Starbucks is accepting mobile payments. They're not going with the near-field radio telemetry stuff that's available in credit cards or that they're trying to put in the new phones or in next-generation phones or whatever. But you have a

barcode. So I'm sure there's like a... Is the phone ringing again? Yeah. Yeah, go ahead and get that. So they have a barcode. So there's probably a Starbucks app. You open it up and it's got your barcode, which has your billing information. They scan it and it deducts from your card. So that works really good. It doesn't require any changes to the actual phone, any changes in technology. I was reading some interesting Facebook stats. Hang on. I hate that technology. I don't like it. I'm not for it. Oh, yeah. It helps me spend money too fast. Yeah. Yeah, but he's cool with the coupons. Not so cool. It's forced me to spend money that I shouldn't. Look how much I saved. It's awesome. My brother-in-law in New Jersey is an unbelievably diligent coupon user. And I asked him, like, how much do you think you save in a year? And he's like, probably 15 grand. Wow. Because he is always bargain hunting. That's the talk. Yeah, and I believe him. Now, that, okay. That, I'm like, wow. That has, there's value in that. It's impressive. I was, I, I, we were at a store and I showed him this, uh, this really cool, uh, Wii recharger. He has a recharger. He's like, why would you need that? I was like, well, you know, you're saving the environment and, you know, isn't recharging me. It's gotta be cheaper, right? Uh, I get batteries for 10 cents a piece. Wow. And I'm like, I'll go put this back. Wow. And then, and then he sent me like a lot, I asked him, and he sent me along, here's how you get 10 cent batteries. There's deals here. You gotta get the Sunday paper. There's 99 cent deals for batteries that cause, I know there's a dollar off on like Revco batteries or whatever. So there's some, uh, kind of generic brand. They work just as good. Anyway, so. That's awesome. So we'll be using 10 cent batteries both here and at home. Um, so the Facebook stat

is 150% of 20 to 24 year olds are on Facebook. That's awesome. 24 year olds that haven't even been born yet are on Facebook. Yep. Uh, and, and we were talking, you know, that makes sense cause my nephew is 13 and he's on Facebook. Um, and you know, I don't know if he should or shouldn't be, I don't even know. He has an iPhone. Went to Harvard. Uh, you know, he's been, uh, he's worked for such and such for a few years and, you know, looking for entrepreneurial opportunities, uh, looking for some investment dollars. Yes. Um, here's another interesting stat. Um, 1.78 million Facebook users will die in 2011. Man, that sucks for you guys. Yeah. Don't worry. Don't worry. It's not because you're using Facebook. It's just because statistically there's so many users. It's, it has a good, uh, uh, constitute, what do they call it? Um, not quorum, but consistent of the population, a good spread of the population. So, uh, given the number of users, 1.78 million will die this year. I've never actually thought about that, but it, it makes perfect sense. People die. Now what happened to those accounts? I mean, this is one of the channels, like, so grandpa dies and she's got a face. He, I don't know how grandpa became a she, but she, she has a Facebook account. Well, she and he, because 150% of people over 60 have a Facebook account. And, uh, and, and so what do you do with that? I don't know. What do you do with that? That's a good question. Maybe you could will it to somebody if it's of any value. If your grandfather was like, Michael Jackson or somebody. I did make Twitter accounts for my kids already. Oh, that's what's up. I think, I think that's hilarious. I have a couple of friends that did that with their kids and they're very witty, witty guys. It's, uh, the stuff that they're coming up with, I'm just dying. Well, I'm not, I'm not using it. I just kind

of reserved it so that they have their, you know, like Chuck, you know, Chuck has Chuck, Twitter.Chuck. Um, so, uh, yeah, I don't know what they're going to do. You know, Twitter may not even exist by then. Interesting. I, I found a whole, uh, there's a great article. I don't, I'll, I'll post it somewhere, um, about Twitter statistics and there's some really interesting stuff. Uh, 80% of users have never tweeted more than 10 times. Um, I have tweeted more than 10 times. Yeah. And, uh, and if you've tweeted, if you have 50 or more followers, you're like in the top 5% of people who have followers on, on Twitter. So, um, it doesn't take much. And, and, you know, it's a shame because their, their signups are just totally dwindling. They're only signing up like 6 million a month now. Oh, man. That's just so hard. By the time your kids are being old enough to use Twitter or like really get into Twitter, like tweets will come embedded in your brain. Yeah. And you just get status updates in your head. And I think it'll be less characters. Yeah. It'll just be. They'll have microchips in their arms. Oh, man. It'll be thought. Thought characters. Yeah. Um, Google offers. Uh, you predicted it. You said it was going to happen. Groupon. Groupon. Well, I was going to say, I hope they take you down just because you didn't listen to me, but I like Groupon. So I'll take that back. I hope they take you down and you continue somehow to give me offers. Yeah. To, to excel. Yeah. I said this a while back. I said, watch. Groupon. They tried. Google tried to buy you. You backed out of the deal. Is that, I don't know if Yahoo had anything to do with that deal. Uh, but I said, watch. Google is going to create a competitor of Groupon and they're going to take you down because that's exactly what I would have done. So watch out for Google offers. I might, uh,

jump on the Google offers bandwagon. Right away. Like the first one on there. Um, interesting, uh, statistic about Groupon. They have 2 billion in revenue per year. Um, and, and it said in the article that they increased their muscle by raising 950 million and their overhead can't be that much. They're making 2 billion a year. Like for me, you're not raising money is a big effort. Yes. Why are you going to go out and raise money equivalent to half of your current revenue? Current, yeah. Like that's, that's, that's dumb. It doesn't even make sense. You could just kind of like cut the fat and save some money. Yeah. For a couple years and have that amount of money. And they can't even have that much fat. Like for example, Living Social recently had a big promotion. $10 and you get a $20 Amazon card. By the way, Living Social is sponsored, owned, whatever, supported by Amazon. I didn't know that. One million sales. Maybe it's Living Social does a daily deal on eBay. Is eBay and Amazon, are they related? Maybe. Okay. I think they are, yeah. Um, one million. A full million. Uh, typically those, those, uh, those deals, I know how Groupon works because, uh, a theater that I work with, uh, did it. And typically they keep half of the sales. So if they kept half, they made $5 million in one day. So that was, that's $10 million of revenue that was generated in a 24 hour period. And they get five of it. Half of it. Wow. Yeah. And, and they even said, Living Social, their stats are, you know, we're making $950,000 a day. Right. Making a million dollars a day. Yep. Wow. No wonder Google's excited about it. Yeah. I would be too. A small note, Skype, uh, apparently crashes Firefox, the Skype toolbar component. So Firefox has just blocked it. It's like, we're getting too many calls or, or headaches or whatever. So you can't, you know, Skype can't connect. That's what's up, Chuck. Because Chuck is

like the lone Firefox advocate in the office. Well, we all use it, but Chuck is hardcore Firefox. Hardcore. Yeah. He's just, he's like, Chrome, huh? Chrome what? No. Doesn't happen. And I got to get this. This is our, we got a Facebook user. Jet, Jet and Prince, I guess is how you pronounce that. Uh, there's a picture of, uh, he's got, I think it's his son, uh, as a baby. Well, his, his, his baby son, uh, in a, in a puppy outfit. And it really stood out for me because I got a picture of, uh, of my son in a, in a puppy outfit, too. But he was his cooler. Yeah. You know what? He actually, the, the, his puppy has little spots on it. And it's, that's actually a pinnacle. We don't have the spots. We, we, we didn't splurge. We didn't get the coupon. By the way, if you are watching this video, you, this is just so awesome. This was created for us by Darren Bowie. And you see here, this is the A-team of SEO. By the way, if you're just listening to this, you can go to our Facebook page, uh, and you'll see this image. It's a South Park cartoon rendition of the A-team of SEO. Uh, you see me, you see Chuck, you see Paul, uh, you see Javier's hand in the, in the back, bloody hand, where all of this are bloody from punching our customers in the face. Because if you're lucky enough to become a customer, you're also lucky enough to get punched in the face. By us. Bloody knuckles and everything. I thought that was cool. And he's got the curve of the, I mean. Of our logo. And he's got Javier writing, we do websites. Oh, man. I thought that was awesome, Darren. Thanks a lot, dude. Go check out creative-dynamics.eu. Darren Bowie, you, you roll. That's our, that's our main man, Darren, one of the very first person to ever ask us the question on our podcast. I used that image in

a pod, in a presentation yesterday. Cause it's like, so, I mean, it really speaks to kind of, uh, the followership that we have and the support that we get to putting this podcast together. So, thank you guys. By the way, um, you can show some love, show some appreciation. Go on to iTunes, create an account, submit a review. Go to our Facebook page, facebook.com slash eWebStyle. There's a review tab up there. It works. We just checked it out with Terry Crosby. She was having a little challenge and it's all working. Uh, in our, on our wall right now, um, uh, there's a list of other podcasts that you can go listen to. She's apparently an, an SEO podcast junkie. Uh, we're happy to provide one small nugget of crack to, uh, support her habit. And, uh, uh, but you can find some other podcasts that she listens to. And, um, wow. So, we really appreciate you guys. You can also follow us on Twitter, twitter.com slash eWebStyle. And we do broadcast this live at 915 Central Standard Time. Uh, and we made it on time this morning. Uh, at, from, from Houston, uh, on Friday mornings. And, uh, just go to e-webStyle.com slash Ustream. That'll take us to our page where that is embedded. We really appreciate you guys listening. All right, a couple quick questions before we get into the content. One last piece of news. Oh, go ahead. I, I almost forgot. Um, this is really cool. Last piece of news. If you guys haven't heard of Blico, it's a search engine. Um, if you go to Blico and you type in, say, your website, uh, it'll come up. And there's a little link right on the search engine results page called SEO. You go there and it gives you some really good details. You can actually compare your website or one website to another website and look at how the inbound links are different. Look at how many pages have been crawled. What are the site pages? Um, and because there's a

compare button there and, uh, in, in ours under duplicate content, we had, uh, e www.e-webStyle.com is duplicated, duplicated content with e-webStyle.com. Uh, probably because the last time they traversed our site, we didn't have our, uh, our 301 redirect in place. So that's now in place. That won't be true. And go check out Blico. It's, it's pretty cool. And that's going to lead into a listener question from a new podcast listener, Kennedy Williams of KH Williams Design and Marketing. He says, Hey guys, just picked up your podcast a week or so ago and now I'm an avid listener. I'm an intermediate level SEO-er and have a question about some of your suggestions in previous podcasts. Question number one, redirects. You've suggested doing a 3-to-1 redirect, 3-0-1 redirect to consolidate data. But when I do a search on how to accomplish this, well, resources are lacking. Any suggestions? I, you know, I have, first I have to disagree. It's not that resources are lacking. It's that resources are overwhelming. I'm sure if you do a 3-0-1 redirect, one, you, you, you may end up on our website. I know that we do get some traffic from that. Uh, you may end up on our blog, maybe, uh, maybe on the page two of the search result there. Um, it's easy. I think you can have an easy time of it if you're using .asp, .php. I've put the lines of code. It's only about two lines of code, maybe three, that go into the very top of a page that you want to redirect somewhere. Um, so you really should be able to do 3-0-1 redirect .asp, 3-0-1 redirect .php, and then .asp net. That should also be as easy as .asp. Uh, I think there is a way to do it with HTML, uh, off the top of my head. We haven't, I haven't had to do that. Uh, as of late. So, um, so there should be an easy way to do that. But, Kennedy, go ahead and send, uh, send, you know, either put

it on Facebook or you can contact us at podcast at e-webstyle.com. Send us the link, the page, and then the page that you want it forwarded to, and I'll throw something together and, and, and we can help you out on that. All right, second question, sort of similar. What's the best way to use the canonical tag? Again, resources are lacking and confusing. Um, we don't really use the canonical. We just use a straight 3-0-1 redirect. I think the, the, what the canonical is for, uh, really, uh, and I may have this wrong, so if somebody correct me if I'm wrong, uh, is, is a way to have the page still there, but tell, uh, the search engines that really give all the juice to this other page. Um, I think that's what that's about. Uh, we just use straight 3-0-1 redirection, really try and get rid of the old page, uh, after some time, uh, after the search engines are aware that it really needs to be redirected. And the last question, Google wants you to specify a preferred domain, eight, for example, HTTP, www.example.com, or HTTP, example.com, is one better than the other? Not really, um, I, we tend to, to use the www as the default, um, mostly because people associate it with it, and, and, you know, I've got this story, it's really, uh, really kind of crazy, so I was, I was working with a technology guy, I can't remember if it was in web or just in IT, and, and I pulled up his website, or I tried to pull up his website leaving off the www, it didn't work, I was like, wait a minute, I was on the site the other day, I added the www, it worked. Really, that's a server setting, he's just got a wrong setting, uh, and when I got on the phone with him, I was like, you know, I tried to pull up your website, and I didn't use the www, and it didn't work, you might want to, you know, talk

to your hosting guy, or, you know, you fix it, or whatever, and he was like, well, you're supposed to use the www, and I was like, um, first, I didn't know that, and on most other websites, in fact, every website I've ever done, you don't have to, and is that really what you're going to tell your customers, who can't find, oh, wait, they're not going to be able to find you, so you're not going to have a conversation with them, so, hey, at least you're right to go, it's going to be like, did you use the word for Apple, because it's like, you're searching the internet wrong, like, well, I didn't know there wasn't rules, I'm sorry, you're holding the phone wrong, for real, tell me, yeah, so, it's, I think the, there's a phrase that I really like, which is, you can be right, or you can be happy, you can be right, or you can be rich, yeah, this guy was more interested in being right, than being rich, I'll be wrong all day, and be rich, I'll take that, yeah, exactly, and the last question was from our main man, Darren Bowie, across the pond in England, in London, I believe, Darren Bowie, uh, Bowie of South, by the way, it's too bad he didn't become, like, a famous athlete, because can you imagine when he gets, like, put on the court, or the field, or whatever, Aaron would be like, boo, and maybe they wouldn't even do the E, and then, if they were all upset at him, he wouldn't know, he'd be like, thank you, thank you, and we're like, no, we're booing you this time, thank you, yes, Darren had a great question, and Darren, uh, we talked about something at first recording, and I'm not really sure if I'm understanding it correctly, so here's two answers, the question, would Google see a listing more relevant if the Google places listing, that unbelievably takes two to three weeks to complete, is embedded straight into your website, I wonder. My

first comment, uh, two to three weeks to complete if you don't get banned, and they stop interacting with you, and somehow you became, become a Google, uh, places, kind of, uh, we're on the fence, right, because you have to love them, and we don't really like how we interact with them, um, so, embedded, I think our big question here is, what do you mean by embedded? My first thought was, you know, somehow embedding your listing onto your website. Like with an iframe or something, probably, um, that's one, I don't know that that would help very much, because, you know, the iframe might, um, I think what would probably have more value is if, if you actually linked to your Google places ad. I've never heard of anyone doing that, uh, and it kind of makes sense, because Google definitely knows how much traffic your Google places ad is getting, and if you're kind of maybe potentially pumping up that number, uh, because you are actually sending some traffic there, um, you know, that could have, that could have some value. And I'll say this, um, I, I've never read this, and I said this on the last first time I recorded it, but it's something different, but I've never read this, this is not, this is my own personal thought and feeling. If, now Google, everybody knows that the time someone spends on your site is a good thing. Google watches that, and that can have an effect on your, um, your rankings in the search engine results page. My thinking is that the same thing would be true for your places page. Now, don't hold me to that, but I think you would get precedence if you get more traffic. If I get 100 visitors and Chris gets one visitor and I have five minutes on my places page and he has 30 seconds, I believe that Google would give me, uh, a better placement just because people spend more time. They interact more with my, that's how the, uh, websites work. I would,

if someone told me that places pages work the same way or some way similar, I would believe that. So I have, don't, I don't remember why I was getting into that. I was a complete tangent. So, oh, so I was thinking if you have a link to it on your, your home, your, your website, as many avenues as you can have someone get to your places page, I think would be a good thing as long as they're spending time there. And I believe that Google watches that kind of stuff. I like the concept. This is great. This is one of the reasons you should be listening to our podcast regularly. And we love doing the podcast because we get, this is a, I've never even thought in this terms and this is the first time I've heard of, Hey, maybe sending actually you taking the effort to send traffic to your, uh, Google local places listing could increase the value of that Google local places listing. I'd say it cannot hurt. And I would stand behind that 100%. It's not going to hurt sending you more traffic to your places page. Absolutely. So let's get into places. So now the article, we tried to give a, we tried to give credit to the article, uh, David H I M M I H M. Um, and it doesn't, didn't really have a title. So your new name is Michigan. I'm not, I can't pronounce that. It's like, I kind of took this article as, uh, do's and don'ts of Google places. We talked about this so much because it's so important. Um, it's, it's the places listings are becoming the forefront, the most important part of the, the SERPs are a very important part of the SERPs. So we can't, we can't go over this enough. And I don't, I don't know what the title of this is. Well, you know here, what you can do is, um, uh, Google, Google local searches SEO. Uh, I think literally Google, uh, Google local search SEO. And that's

how I pulled up this article. Uh, if you just add like volume three and it was published in June 7th of 2010, you should be able to find it. If you can't find it, podcast at e-webstyle.com. We certainly want to give credit because this is a great piece of work. Uh, the guy's name is David M I H M. Um, so you guys can look that up and again, if you can't find it, let us know. We just want to make sure that he gets all the credit that he deserves. So thanks David. Appreciate that. We did it better though. And at one point we're going to insult all of your experts. So yeah. Uh, so for those of you who are following from last podcast, we're going to start at number 20. Now the numbers bounce around, so don't worry about the numbers. Just where I focus on the content number 20, excuse me, 21, uh, associating a places page with marginally related categories. Uh, it's of high importance and low agreement. So I don't know how to take that. Well, I mean, even with us, as we were talking about this point, um, we're, we're not exactly sure what they mean. Uh, you know, uh, a, a marginally related, does that mean it's still, so Google has their own categories and you can put in your own categories? Um, does marginally related mean like, uh, not really related, but one of Google's main categories or does it mean something that I've added in, uh, you know, physically typed in myself? Um, so we don't know the answer. I would say stick with the Google categories first. Absolutely. Then add your own categories. If it's going to be margin related, basically what I read that the experts are basically saying, okay, they're saying yes or no, it can help you. It typically only helps you in long tail search phrases. Um, and that's it, but it doesn't really seem like it can hurt you. However, the consensus seems to be stick with the categories

that Google gives you, try to find the categories that are related as, as closely as possible. And then if you have some, you don't have enough categories, go after some long tail keyword phrases with some marginally related categories. But something to note, um, Google boost is basically pay-per-click for Google local places. And, and it's a, it's a, Google boost is a situation where you don't have the option to control the exact keywords. And we talked about this. If you've been listening to our podcast for a while, we talked about this in the past where when we first started Google boost, um, they were giving us terms like marketing Houston and there's a lot of marketing that we don't do. Uh, we don't do radio, we don't do TV, you know, so it's not really a relevant content, you know, a relevant, uh, um, it's not hard, highly targeted traffic for us. Uh, so I wrote a letter to them. There's no way for me to do it. I sent them an email and they wrote back and they seem to have gotten that squared away. One thing that I have noticed though, is all of the keywords are based on the Google categories that are actually Google categories, not the categories that I've kind of made up and added in there. Um, so you know, it's one of those, one of those things Google is going to go off of their own categories first. So make sure you choose the right categories there, even if there's one. And I would say even if it, if it's marginally and yet still related to yours, I would choose the marginally over something that I hand to create that's more exact. Uh, I would as well. Uh, and here's a, um, a question to a couple of listeners. Specifically, these are listeners that I know of that are in, that are in, uh, feet there, that are in industries that may not have a lot of different, uh, categories. Uh, Google gives you, I think five, maybe six

categories you can enter into. Uh, Dean Calhoun, Affiduity Solutions, they're in environmental health and safety. I'd like to know how Dean categories did he choose? Yeah. Uh, how many environmental health and safety categories does Google offer? Uh, there was a guy, I cannot remember his name. He's a new listener. He did, uh, jumper training. Um, what, oh man, he owns a couple of different businesses, but I'd like to know what did he use? Uh, you know, with web design, we do a lot of things. So, you know, we can choose web design, internet marketing, Etsy, I mean, all kinds of stuff. So I'd like to know what other people use. For something so niche and so specific and really kind of limited from the broad retail landscape or the, you know, the broad landscape that, that Google's really trying to address. It'd be interesting to see what you guys, uh, hit. And I think, I'm not sure if it's Eugene who works for FunJet Watercraft or, um, I don't think it's Eugene. It's someone else that, that hit us up. He, uh, he's the chief geek for, uh, I believe it was like FunJet Watercraft or something. I'd like to know what did you use for your, your five categories? Did you write your own? Did you find something margin related that was already there? Uh, just interesting to know. And then how, how's it working? Yeah. And definitely how's it working and let me know if you got banned. We can do a, have a kumbaya. We got banned moment. Tell me about it. Okay. Uh, number 29, which is not really 29. The location keyword in the places page business title was of moderate importance and low agreement. Um, from what I, what I've read, basically this is what the experts are saying. It can have a benefit to you. It can also get you banned and I don't want to say banned, but I can get you banned. Um, or, or whatever your, your account needs some work and until the work

is done, you won't be viewed. So you're banned basically. Yeah. Um, cause Google says specifically the business title is for your business name. Yeah. Now let's say if you're the name of your business is Houston internet marketing, I think that'll be okay. Cause Google has enough resources to know if that's really your, they'll find your listing and millions of other directories in the yellow pages. I think they have enough information to know if that's really your business name or you just did that. Here's a, a quote from one of the experts named Mike Ramsey. It says, sad to say, but I still see a plethora of businesses that are ranking well with location keywords. This is against the guidelines, but still seems to have a positive effect for the time being. I don't see this method working throughout 2010, 2011. So I would agree. Don't do it. Yeah. You can get away with it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it. I can tell you, we tried to do it not with location base, but adjusting the title for legitimate reasons. So I noticed that there was another surgeon. One of our clients was a orthopedic surgery center. I noticed other surgery centers would have each of their doctors listed and it would say the surgery center and then the doctor's name, the surgery center, and then the doctor's name. So when I found our doctor's listings, I put our surgery center's name in front of it and then the doctor. So this is, you know, we're not spamming. We're not doing location. We're just saying, Hey, this doctor works here. This is, you know, this is relevant. In fact, the doctor isn't a business. The business is the business and the doctor is a reference. And so, you know, it's interesting how Google's trying to treat them. Um, I think that's one of the big reasons that that account got banned. We've since moved around that and they're up and running again. Uh, but even for legitimate reasons, I think we got banned. And so

that kind of sucks. And there's no support with Google local places. Yes. That's the, that's the scary part. If you get banned, you're stuck. You can't call anybody. You're just SOL. Yep. And I think that sucks. So, and I said this in our first recording, I, I, Google really needs to get their, their stuff together about the places. I think they're keeping the door wide open for other companies like Foursquare and Yelp to really come in and take over the local search, uh, or, or, or become a significant player in the local search market. I won't say take over because this, to me, it's so important because local search is everything and they don't offer a lot of avenues for help in this. So they suck for that. Um, but we love them. So, uh, 31 location keyword in the place page description. I feel like this is kind of similar to basically having the location in your description or having it in your title. Uh, the general consistence, it's of moderate importance and moderate agreement. Uh, I believe that the general consistence was similar to the last one. It's like, yes, this can help you, but it can also hurt you at the same time. It's basically says, uh, uh, here's what they said. It has a minor benefit to your listing, but it can also get you banned. And one of the experts says that too many location keywords in your description can lead to a penalty. So, uh, can this help you? Yes. Can it get you banned? Yes. I, again, I wouldn't do it. And I said this again in the first recording, if you, let's say you have multiple listings. We had, we found at least five listings for our business, listings, listings that were submitted to Google places via directories that we're a part of. And Google just pulls directly, directly from that directory. If you have a bunch of listings and you want to try some of this stuff out, these questions, these gray hat things, by all

means, go ahead. You have one listing. Don't roll the dice with your main listing. Cause once you get banned, it's a pain. So don't do it. I think where this could be useful to say, um, you know, say you're in a particular sub suburb, your office is in a particular suburb, but you service a couple suburbs around you. Um, I think it would be worth putting those suburbs actually in, in that, in that description. One, because it's actually useful information. If people are finding you and they want to know if you do work in their suburb, uh, you know, it's good to have that, that comfort. So they'll know to pick up the phone and give you a call and make contact with you. But stay, what I'd say is just stay away from spamming and use your own, use your conscience. If you have, if you're in question, whether this something is spamming or not, it probably is. Did you just tell our listeners to use their conscience? Yeah. Did you see the bloody knuckles on the South Park image? Yes. And the Zen, the Zen Buddhist, uh, episode is coming up. Become one with Google, local places. Sometimes I need that, man. Dealing with them is just a pain. Okay. That's another way that we get bloody knuckles. Tell me about it. Number 33, product and or service in your place, place page custom fields. Um, and I think I misread this the first time, the first recording. What's up, I've here. Hey, how are you? Uh, it's putting your product or service in the custom, basically creating custom fields and adding your product or your service to one of the custom fields. Again, Google gives you five or six different fields to, to list what category your business is in. And so let's say you sell blue one arm widgets. I love this example. Um, and obviously Google doesn't have a listing for that. So you want to create a category for blue one arm widgets or maybe widgets and then another

one for blue one arm widgets. So, uh, this was a moderate importance and moderate agreement. It says basically it kind of helps little to no effect. Um, here's what I would tell you. You want to use Google's categories first. And then if you can't find, and then if you can't find something that's marginally related to it, that's in Google's category, then create your own and put your product and or service. I don't think it can hurt you unless you're spamming. If you, if you really do sell blue one arm widgets, go ahead and create a category, blue one arm widgets. Cause all that stuff is going to be keyword searchable. Uh, I think this is interesting. One of the experts says currently helps, but it's not against guidelines and will D help soon. Wow. That, that, that doesn't even make any sense. That, uh, that doesn't make any sense. At all. Yeah, somebody did. Okay. Well, they can wait. Yeah. Uh, so again, you know, go with the ones Google gives you and then create your own. Um, they can help, but we'll D help you pretty soon. Uh, this next one, number 35, which is really not 35. I thought it was, uh, self-explanatory. Number 35 is associating videos with your places page. And actually, if you guys heard that, that's our, uh, that's the doorbell. Uh, someone just banging on the door. No one ever comes in here. Uh, while we're, oh, that's FedEx. UPS. Oh, okay. They couldn't wait. Come on, lady. Uh, so associating a video with your places page. I thought this was like, duh. Duh. I can't believe that it's only moderate importance because we all know that you have to have 100% complete local listings in order to do well in the rankings. Hello. It's a, it's a no-brainer. Is this the one where we insulted them? Yeah. Yeah. Y'all are stupid. They're all stupid. All of you are stupid. Anyone who said it's not of high importance is stupid. By the way, when you do have a

video, you do have the option, I believe, to upload a video or to associate it with a YouTube video. Uh, we recommend a YouTube video because YouTube is a Google product. It's a free Google product. So put that video on YouTube and then have that associated with your Google local places listing. Yes. And if you don't have an actual video, you can do like a still photo collage. Do something. Get creative. Do something. You don't have to actually create a video, but it's got, it has to be a video from YouTube. Absolutely. Uh, and like Chris says, use YouTube, use Google products, you know, they're not going to penalize you for it. Right. And for, for your images, Picasa is a, is a Google product for images. You can tag the images a little bit more in depth, uh, and then use those, tie those to your, um, to your Google. And I said this in the first recording. I, this is me. I've never heard, read this. I've never heard anyone say it. Matt Cuds didn't say it, but if you have the option to use Google products, use them, especially on things that can have an effect on your search engine placement, videos via YouTube, pictures via Picasa. Those are all things Google places. That's a listing that can come up in there and search in the results, use all the different products that Google, uh, gives you that are available to you. It's it. I guarantee you it won't hurt. Will it help? Maybe, maybe not. It won't hurt. And, uh, this is a last where we left off, right? Yep. Number 43, which really isn't, is the age of your places page. I have never heard this. This is the reading. This article was the very first time I'd ever heard of it, but it makes perfect sense. Uh, basically they're saying is how old your places pages, but what was it? It's only for like a couple of weeks that it, yeah, it's like, yeah, maybe for the six months,

I think it's okay. Yeah. Six months. Uh, after six months, it really doesn't make a difference. Is that kind of where the, I would, yeah, I would, yeah, I would agree. I mean, uh, one of the things is this is kind of moot for our audience. So it's kind of interesting to debate if it's useful or not. Uh, if you don't have a listing, you need to get one. So it doesn't, you, you, there's nothing you can do about time except to make one as quickly as possible. If you already have one, you already have it. And there's no way that you can make it, you know, age it somehow. So, um, you know, really make your listing. I think it probably does have some effect in early cases. Uh, these experts said a couple of things. They said they've seen some listings on the first page immediately, uh, and they've seen some delay on, on other stuff. And what a couple of guys say is trust is everything just like in regular SEO. And it kind of, here's what they're, here's what they're, they're getting at, uh, in the natural and organic SEO trust is a, your domain age is a big factor because they rate how much they can trust your site by the age of the site sites that have long, I have that are old are trusted more than brand new sites. So if you, we've talked about the sandbox, so to speak, if you build a new website and you upload it, you're going to be in the sandbox for a little bit because they don't trust you as of yet. Now, if someone told me that the same thinking goes into the places listing algorithm, I would completely believe it. Yeah. I'm not saying that it is, but it would certainly would make sense. It makes perfect sense to me. So what, here's what I have to say about that. If you don't have a places listing, you needed one six months ago. So get one. So get one

six months ago. Get one six months ago. Yeah. All right. Well, we've, uh, we've extended our time. There will be no charge for the extra time for this podcast. Uh, you are listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. That is because of you, because you guys listen, we really appreciate you like Darren Bowie, uh, with creative dash dynamics.eu. Wow. That's what an, what an honor. I used it in a presentation yesterday. Very cool. Um, uh, you can contact us at podcast at D dash E dash web style.com. We do do websites. We do do search engine optimization. Uh, we do do pay per click. Uh, so, uh, if you're looking for some of those services or maybe just some consulting, maybe you're concerned that whoever you're working with, uh, isn't doing a good enough job, you know, let us know. We have a free website and SEO analysis. Just go to our website, E dash web style.com. Uh, we're getting more analysis analysis in, uh, and we're getting those out as quickly as we can. And thank you, uh, for watching and thank you for submitting some information. Uh, follow us on our Facebook page. Most importantly, go to iTunes, create an account and submit a review both there and on Facebook. And we'll give you a shout out. Yes. And if you listen to this podcast, like us on Facebook, send us a note, say, Hey, I liked you. This is my name. This is what company I work with and your URL. And we will give you a shout out on the podcast. Excellent. So this is the end of podcast number 93. My name is Chris Burris. Paul Hanson. Bye bye for now. Tune in next week.