Google Local Places Compliance - Internet Marketing Podcast - Number 95

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. Booyah. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of SEO. We got some great stuff here for you today on SEO and internet marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I'm Upgrade, spelled with two Ds for a double dose of this pimping. I'm Paul Hanson, sales manager. Sorry, I just saw a movie, and there was a pimp named Upgrade, and it was spelled with two Ds for a double dose of this pimping. A double dose of this pimping. I thought it was hilarious. Go watch Idiocracy. It was funny. So you may notice that there's some new lighting that we're trying out. And I don't have a face, actually. Yeah, Paul, where were you on the night of the fish? I'm just saying, man, like, wow. That's what's up. Yeah, we're just trying out lighting. We're trying to get it right. This is like a major theatrical can, I think they're called, without a film in front of it, and it's clear that we're going to need to get a film for that. We do have one film, but it's blue, and I don't think that would really actually help very much. So, as always, we want to talk a little bit about our last podcast, and we want to talk about some news. And we want to give you the tip from the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes, podcast number 94, and the tip was, focus on Google categories, not made-up categories, for your Google local places listings. And if that doesn't make sense to you, you guys need to go back and listen to podcast number 94, because that is actually a really good tip to stay focused on. All right, a little bit of news. Dude, Sunday, Super Bowl, commercials, we do marketing. Did any commercials stand out for you? A couple did, but I can't remember them right now. Apparently, one of the real popular ones is the little mini Darth Vader. Oh, yeah! Yeah, I

remember that one. Trying to use the force. And then the guy starts the car, and the kid's like, wow! That's pretty awesome. There are a couple other good ones, and then a whole lot of lousy ones. One that I remember was the Joan Rivers for Go Daddy. That's crazy. Ah, that was just uncalled for. I was like, I mean, yes, Joan Rivers is holding for her age, but I don't want to see Joan Rivers in some booty shorts. Yeah, I don't think that was her. Oh, okay. That was only her head. Oh, okay. You actually turned away. Yeah, I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm not trying to look at that. That's awesome. Here's a little bit of news. I thought this was pretty interesting. Smartphones are now shipping more. Smartphone shipping has surpassed PC shipping. That sounds about right, because everybody, I know people that don't own computers, they have a smartphone. They've got two burnout phones. I'm just amazed you know people who don't have computers. Certainly at work, they do. Yeah, so some of the talk was, oh, are smartphones going to replace PCs? I just don't think that's going to happen. You're not going to roll up to work and sit in the car, because you don't need to get out of the car and do work for eight hours and then leave. I'll say that tablets could replace PCs. I think they will replace PCs in homes. In certain industries, absolutely. It'll replace your home PC. That is just another Paul Hansen prediction. Certainly for people who don't work at home, right? Yeah. But I've got to have, like, I have almost the same setup at the house that I do here, so when I've got to get some work done, I can actually get it done. Great news. Okay. We've got 126 Twitter followers. That's what's up. Like, last time was, like, 97. And, yeah, really, it's all due to the man we will bring out a little bit later, Chuck. He has, we turned him loose

on our Twitter. He is the author of the social media marketing rap, so it's not surprising that he's doing a kick-ass job for us. And, you know, Gareth Copeland, I wrote a long email to him. He kind of lectured us on, hey, you shouldn't be telling people to use Facebook instead of Twitter. You know, maybe he, maybe there's a little right there, because now we've got 126 Twitter followers. And what I'd like all you Twitter followers to do is go like us on Facebook. We've got 85 people who have liked us on Facebook. And I'm going to talk about a few of them. Did you have any notes? Yes, I actually went through the Facebook page. Go ahead, and I'll scratch mine out. Okay. This is great. We posted that our live video broadcast, this broadcast, which is actually being brought to you at noon Central Standard Time from Houston, Texas, on a Thursday. Normally, it's 9.15 Central Standard Time on Fridays. We had to adjust because of some scheduling conflicts. And I posted it, and I put Darren Bowie. He made a logo for us, a podcast logo for us. And Darren Bowie actually commented, wow, that truly is a great logo. And we agree, otherwise I wouldn't have used it. Yeah, I thought it was an awesome. Thanks again, Darren. That's something Darren put together for us months ago. That and the South Park image. And you've got to go check out the South Park image. Darren is just a super creative guy. Yeah, he's awesome. And he hasn't been doing much producing because usually he produces the show by telling us what content to talk about. Dean has been doing a lot of production later because we've got some great stuff from Dean. Another shout-out to Global Specs Web and Graphics. This is Christine. And she actually taught me something because she put something on our web as her business. And I was like, well, how did she do that? Because if I go type on a business wall, it's going to

show up as me because I'm signed in as me. So I learned if you want to post something on another business's wall as your own business, go to your business wall, put the at symbol. Your personal account must have liked the business you're trying to post on. And then as you start to type that business, it will actually open up and it will actually post that on their wall. Okay. So that's pretty cool. So thanks, Christina, for the shout-out. And hey, how's it going, Leo? How's it going? And thanks for putting me on blast so I can figure out how to do that and make it happen. Now, we were talking about jokes and how just right before the podcast how it can be hard to write an SEO joke. We got this from Cara Marabella, and she wrote that she just started stalking us. That's cool. That is really cool for a whole number of reasons. One, because she's a chick. Yeah, for real. Your podcast rocks. Conversation with, so she's describing a conversation she had with her husband while listening to her iPod. Him, what's so funny? Her, I'm listening to an SEO podcast. Him, SEO is funny? Yeah. Her, it is with these guys. I didn't even see that line. Yeah, it is with these guys. That's what's up. And then I kind of wrote some, thanks for the compliment, great compliment. I said, I also said, it sounds like he needs a punch in the face. And she wrote back and said, I often think that about him. Yeah. That's awesome. It is awesome. Thanks, Cara. Send us some company details because I don't know where you're at. We'll give you a shout out. And we've got a couple reviews. Did you include the reviews in this? Brian Morgan, I don't think we've read this one last, maybe we did. No. He wrote on our wall when we read it. It was microtissues.com and we figured out what he does. It was kind of cool. He said

he downloaded another SEO podcast. I'm not going to say which one. Just to check it out, you can go to our Facebook page and get on our reviews link and he'll tell you which one it was. It was absolutely terrible. It literally did not even make sense. eWebStyle is the only SEO podcast needed on iTunes. That's what's up. You know, we've been trying to tell iTunes that for a while. And they still don't, you know, when you go into your iTunes and you search for SEO, for some reason, we're not one of the first two that show up in the list. I don't know what Adam's problem is. I don't know what, yeah. We've got to get a hold of the dude who just stepped down because he's really sick. For real. Well, maybe we shouldn't get a hold of him because he just stepped down. I can call some money from him. And finally, Kevin Humphreys. Hi, guys. I've been listening to your podcast for two months and enjoyed the information given and found the one today about Google Places. How handy, as now his Google Places was only 80% complete. With our tips, he's going to be able to get it to 100%, which, by the way, is one of our tips. Get your Google Local Places listings. And Kevin, listen today. We've got a lot of stuff for you today you want to listen to. And he, let's see. He's a Twitter, you can follow him or find him, facebook.com slash service routes. That's twitter.com slash service routes or tradeyouraccounts.com. And I glanced at that. And by glanced at it, I mean I think I read half a paragraph. I don't know what he does. So go check it out. It looked kind of interesting. It looked like there were, like, say, I've got a route of services that I'm providing and I can trade that with somebody else because maybe it's not close to me. Okay. And I can trade it. I don't know. That makes sense.

That's my theory. Okay. I'm going to run through a couple more people on Facebook real quick so we can get to it. David Defoe shouted out to us on our Facebook wall. Darren Bowie always chimes in. He had something. Go to our Facebook wall and look for Page Leaver. It's a creative way to get people to like you but not just with the regular old Facebook-like stuff. He left one on our wall that he uses for his, one of his Twitter accounts, I believe, for his Google Save the World. Take a look at that. Nathan Bonilla-Wardford, he asked a question about UBL.org. I'm not going to get to it, but I am going to answer that, Darren. Excuse me, Nathan. Stephen Duclo, I think that's our buddy in Ireland at flyfishingarena.ie. I just wanted to say what's up because he's in Ireland. He has that IE extension. And my main, Dean Eugene. I'm not even going to try to do your last name. Eugene P. He had something that was cool. It was like SEO, the definition of SEO, trying to stay one step ahead of Google while wearing a blindfold. I thought that was pretty, Apropos. Yeah. I don't know what that means. I think it's appropriate. So, yeah. And then lastly, Dean, I want to say shout-out to Dean. We're going to go, we're going to wrap up this topic today, and we're going to go into heavy, I want to really get into mobile. Dean and I have exchanged a lot of info, but really, Dean has been giving it to me. And I want to get into mobile. So, Dean, don't worry. I got some stuff coming for you. And, man, I hope your little man feels better. He just sent us an email. Like, his little man is in the hospital, and there was this kid that is in the hospital. I think he's okay. And the kid goes, he wasn't cooperating with the doctor or whatever. And the kid goes, I'm going to

punch you in the face. And he thought of us. And Dean goes, yeah. I was like, that's what's up, dude. All right. So, that's it. That's all I want to shout-out to everybody. That is right. We are the most violent podcast on iTunes. That is awesome. That's classic. Everyone needs a good punch in the face. Actually, we had a client in here this week, and we kind of showed him a couple of things. Well, potential client. And he wrote back, and he's like, I'm waiting for a good punch in the face. So, I think he's saying he's going to be our client. That's what's up. You know where we're at. Yes, we left off at 15, traditional on-page criteria. Okay, we've been going through the last, like, two or three podcasts. We went through factors that are important for your Google Places listing. So, Kevin, I think it was Kevin Humphries. This is for you, dog. So, it's towards the back, I think. I think you've, that's my list, isn't it? No, that's mine. Okay. I'll just cheat off of you. We could share. Okay. And before we get started, this article is by David Mim, M-I-H-M. We want to make sure he gets all the credit because he put together a good, good piece of work here. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, it is awesome. Today, we're going to cover three topics. We're going to cover traditional on-page criteria. By the way, I just raised my hand showing three for those people who are just listening. Yes. We've had, in the past, some complaints about our audio. I think we may actually get complaints about our lighting today. Go check it out. Normally, we can't see Paul because of light contrast from the camera. Now, we can't see him because he's totally washed out. Now, Darren's going to have to redo his South Park image. So, traditional on-page criteria and how it affects your places page. Off-page criteria, how they affect your places page. And customer reviews and how they affect your places

page listing. So, lots of stuff to cover today. Good stuff. All right. I like reviews. Reviews are good. We always talk about testimonials are important. We do talk about that testimonials. Often, people won't go to a separate page. Some people will, so you should have them. It's important to include testimonials throughout a particular website just because people will actually use, you know, be able to see those. And it's really what we call a USP, unique selling proposition. When you've got a testimonial that says, you know, some of the testimonials we read about our podcast. I've learned more in your podcast than several books. Those kinds of things, which, by the way, we should add to our podcast page. Yeah, of course. We do have one testimonial on our podcast page. You know, those kinds of testimonials really make people, you know, it's a unique selling proposition. Wow. Somebody learned more in this podcast than several books. This is something that I absolutely need to be listening to. And you should. And if you want to listen to it, of course, you can find us on iTunes. You can stalk us, twitter.com slash eWebStyle. Facebook us, if that's something. I think you like us at facebook.com slash eWebStyle. We do have YouTube videos out there, youtube.com slash eWebStyle. And like I said, we do broadcast this live usually at 915 Central Standard Time on Friday mornings live from H-Town. So come check us out. There's a chat feature. You can actually chat back and forth. And for some of it, we usually have Chucks over there chatting back and forth with people. So hit him up and say, how's it going? And now I see him moving into position, ready to chat. All right, let's cover one. We're going to start with traditional on-page criteria. Basically what this is, is a group of SEOs got together and someone gave them topics and they all rated, hey, which ones are important? And they said, how many of them agree that this one is important? So basically the

first one is general, the general importance of your on-page criteria. It has, it was a high importance and moderate agreement. And basically what this is referring to is things that are on-page, that are on your website, how do they affect your places page listing? You didn't have this one, but you had the next two. So basically what I found is, what guys are saying is basically you don't need a website to rank locally. So, you know, I've seen, I have personally seen people without websites rank higher than people with, or rank with people, rank when they're, I know there are people in that same industry that have local places listings who have a website, but they didn't rank in the top seven. So, you know, is it that important as an internet marketing company? We say absolutely. Yes. As talking strictly about Google local places, I agree. It's not important at all. I mean, if there are still a lot of, I don't know, plumbers, carpenters, you know, a good quality, people who provide great service. Plumbers, carpenters, whatever, car cleaners that don't have a website, but can have a Google local places listing and they could be somebody that you really should entertain using their business. Yeah. Just because they don't have a website, you know, doesn't really mean that they don't do good work. Yeah, true. But, you know, I work in this industry, so if you don't have a website, you're a douchebag. You don't do good work. Yeah. You're just a douchebag. We literally say that, you know, if you're not going to focus on internet marketing, you should have a website and that website should convey the quality and value of service that you give to your customers. So, not only do you need a website, we were looking at a website this morning that was just hideous, that we assume, we hope, does not convey the value and quality of service they give to their customers. So, they should have a website. One line that I really liked from

Mary Bowling, she says, the importance of compliance with the newest Google Places listing quality guidelines is becoming increasingly important as Google finds its way to weed out offenders, getting your listings into compliance should be a top priority. So, I love that. That should be the tip for today's pocket. Get your listings in compliance. Compliance. And compliance typically refers to the title of your Google Places listing needs to be the title of the business. So, unless your business is actually called SEO Houston, you know, we'd love to have our title be SEO Houston. That's not the name of our business. Although, we may be opening a subsidiary very soon. Yes. Okay. Next, there's a couple points that I was like, eh, I didn't feel like they were too important. I'm going to, maybe we can put these into a few. Basically, they say, including the city and state and your website title tags. I think it's important to do. I tell people all the time, do it. Don't spend a ton of time on it. Yeah. I think, you know, that comes to, does Amazon need their city and state? No. Right? Because they're national. Does, I don't know, let's say, I know there's some significant franchises that don't have locations across the country, like, I don't know, Chili's, maybe, let's just say for, Whataburger is a good example. It's a burger place that started in Texas. I think they're in Oklahoma. I don't think they're in Louisiana. So, a city and state might be relevant to them because somebody searching for them is probably in that city and state, and that helps Google identify exactly where they are. If you're really local, we even get to the point where your suburb should be in your title because, really, it becomes a target keyword. If you're a plumber, Katy is a suburb of Houston, although the mayor of Katy wouldn't maybe like us to say that. It is. And so, we would say, you know, plumber Katy. That's a keyword that we would go after for

a plumber who actually wants to work around Katy and not all across. Houston's incredibly spread out. There's lots of people who don't want to provide service to all Houstonians just because they're too far away from them. Yeah. So, basically, yeah, you should do it. Is it going to have an effect on your places, the position of your places listing? Nah, probably not too much, but you should do it. Yeah. And is this talking about in, oh, that's in your website title. This is in your website. Yeah. These are all off-page things for you and how they affect your Google Places. So, number 30, including a full address on places landing page. Well, one, I think your full address should be on every page of your website. Yeah. Maybe in a header or a footer, but, you know, will it have, I think what people are saying is it's a trust factor. Is it going to have a great effect on your position? Probably not. Yeah. But it's a good trust factor that helps Google, you know, trust your website. Well, and again, it's also we talk about CIVO, search engine visitor optimization, and how you need to have continuity of the path that the user's gone through. So, if they've typed Katie Plummer, they need to pretty quickly when they get on your Google Local Places listing if it's not obvious already, and it has the address in the Google Local Places listing. But, you know, when they get to your website, if they come from the Local Places listing to your website, you want to make sure that it's clear you do service Katie because if they click Katie, again, suburb of Houston, Katie Plummer, they end up on the local places and then they go to your website and all it says is Houston or some suburb that's kind of far away, that's going to be a bounce because, again, that continuity isn't there. I searched Houston Plummer. I want to see that term on every page I go until I pick

up the phone. Yeah. So, you definitely want to have it. Next, pretty much same thing. You want to including city and state places, excuse me, including city and state and the places landing page title tags. The reason I even bring this up, yeah, you need to do it. It's not going to affect your places listing that much, but you should do it. Now, I never, this is, the reason I wanted to bring this up, I never even thought about changing the title tags of your places page URL. That's not something I even considered doing. I didn't even want, I didn't even know if it was possible. Yeah, you could have them land somewhere else. To do that. Oh, wait, this is your landing page. I'm thinking of your places page. Yeah, it's the landing page. Okay, I'm thinking of your places page URL. Okay, yeah, you want to do it. Don't spend a ton of time on this. It's just good practice, but do it. Next, including local area phone number on your places landing page. I think that's, again, that's self-explanatory. And a good idea, yeah. It's not going to move you from the position 10 to position 1, but you should do it. Next, again, this says having a URL that contains a product or service keyword. Yes, it's good to do. It's not going to affect your places page that much. You're ranking for your places. Google local places. It's interesting because there's really, I mean, it starts talking about kind of fundamental internet marketing and what we talk about, which is, okay, step one, make a good website. Step two, get that website on the first page of Google and get traffic to that website potentially through, you know, whatever, Yelp, City Search, Google local places. And step three, make sure that when that traffic arrives, they either, they first find what they're looking for, what they've been looking for through the duration of their search, and then two, guide them so that they interact with you. You know, make it

clear and obvious how to pick up the phone and call you, how to fill out a form, maybe get a white paper, some article you've written, you know, and make sure you've got some unique components on that particular page that cause them to take action, unique selling proposition, calls to action, and make sure that you've got good credibility so that they'll actually take action. Yeah, I think that's definitely a good way to go. Okay, next, it says, having URL that contains a location keyword, basically a geo-targeted, you know, houstonplumber.com. Yes, good practice to have. I think, you know, with the way that domains are being sold these days, that's going to be difficult. Houstonplumber.com, I don't know, but I'm not even going to check. It's got to be taken. Or there's a, at the same point, though, you probably have the option of Houston-plumber- Are you giving away all our secrets? Oh, yeah. Because I know that's not taken. I looked it up. I looked it up. Or, you know, Houstonplumbers-something, you know, ink, dash ink, or whatever. Next, page rank- Did I just give another secret? Yeah. My bad. The page rank- We'll erase that. If we edited this, you wouldn't be hearing it. Yeah, really. The page rank of your homepage, of your highest ranked page. All right, all right. Yeah, this sounds like we've got to get a little more expertise out here to help us out with this one, because I don't even know what that means. Yeah. Let's see if we can peel Charles away from the chat on Ustream and get him over here to help us out. Yes, what this is referring to is, okay, the page rank of your homepage, or the highest ranked page in your website, how does that affect your local places listing? All right, Chuck. The hard questions. Yeah, exactly. So let me get your take on this, Chuck. Before we get the hard question, any Super Bowl commercial that kind of stood out for you? The Wendy's commercial? The Wendy's commercial. Oh,

yeah. What is yours taste like? What is yours taste like? Pop! They should have put the taste out of my mouth. You know, I think they listened to our podcast. Punch your customer in the face. Look at that. Well, I will say this, since we've been talking about it, and we'll get back to that. The majority of the Super Bowl ads seem violent. Yes! Yes! Rosanne Barr, my back hurts. Whack! Wow! My front hurts, too. Pepsi Max hitting people with cans. Yeah! I thought it was a little violent. You know, that's the influence of YouTube, right? Because every good YouTube video has a chick falling in a fountain or somebody... I thought it was just a sign of America. Yeah, because that's what we want to see. Yeah. Let's be honest. As you're walking out around the world and bumping into morons, you just want to slap a man. I think it's funny. And then laugh. And then hope somebody videotapes it and gets it on YouTube, and then it goes viral. That's the hope, anyway. So, what do you think? Is it important, Chuck, to have... You know, how important is it to have the highest... How much effect does your page rank have on your places listening? How much effect does the page rank of your site have on your places listing? Yeah. I would say some sort of effect. I'm not sure if it's overly important, because they're two separate listings. The places listing is more local-based, right? And so, if your site is a local site based on one of those maybe local domain names you were talking about a few moments ago, then it probably has a better rank. It probably has more impact. But if you're doing something on a national scale, and you're trying to, you know, use local for local offices or whatever, I'm not... I don't think it'll have that much... That is exactly the right answer. Yes, it's important, but yeah. Well, and it goes back to you can place well without a website. Yeah.

Exactly. Right? I believe that's a page rank of zero. Yeah. When you don't have a website. When you don't have a website. Well, we see a lot of sites with page rank of zero. Yeah. Even after you make them, they can still be zero. The next one I thought was cool, because it kind of opened up my eyes. It says, providing a KML file for your location. So, instantly I'm like, what is a KML file? What is KML? KML file. And the way I kind of understand it is it's kind of like a... Sitemap. Sitemap for your website. But really, it does what a sitemap does for your website, but more for your address. Kind of helps Google find where you are, but it's more beneficial for places like Chili's, Subway, that have multiple locations all over the country. Basically, one woman said, providing a KML file for your domain is definitely recommended for a business with numerous locations in order to provide search engines with trusted and accurate information, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you don't have multiple locations, it's not a key... I'll be honest, I've never heard of KML. Me neither. That's why I'm on the internet. Like, what is KML? If you have several different locations, you know, like usually it's restaurants. Yeah. You know, franchises or stuff like that that'll benefit from that. Interesting. Next. Something new every day. Yeah. The page rank of your places landing page URL. One, I didn't know that places land... Oh, excuse me. Yeah, that's the... I didn't say that. I'm thinking of something else. Either way, you didn't say it twice. Yeah. I'm thinking of your places listing URL. Basically, what is that versus the site? What was the last one? Page rank of homepage or highest rank page. And then, okay, so we can definitely say the page rank of the highest rank page probably has nothing to do with it. The page rank of the places landing page. Of your places. Landing page. Google places landing page.

So when you click to your site, you have a particular page potentially. And you can... It's the homepage. Yes. And apparently you can change it. Yeah. You can change it. Yeah. You can change it. So now they're saying, what's the importance of your highest page rank, of the highest page on your website with the highest page rank, and what's the importance of the actual landing page that you send traffic to from your Google local places listing? Yes. And I think the highest doesn't matter, and the landing doesn't matter much. Yeah. I think the rank of the page is irrelevant at this point. I think the page that they land on is more important. Exactly. Right? Not the rank of it, but does that page convert them? Yeah. I completely agree. So, meh, meh, meh. Kind of important, but whatever. Next, I feel the same way about the next two. The coding address on the website in H-card micro format. Again, I'm like, what is H-card micro format? I'm Googling with my fingers because you can't see me. I was like, whatever. Here's what someone... Tom Crandall says, I believe this is the best practice for local search optimization, but I am not convinced it is currently powerful optimization tactics for places pages. I like this one. I wish it mattered. I have yet to see it help. Yeah. So, this is somebody who's actually investigated, hey, maybe this will help, and it doesn't. And the next one says, the who is record associated with your domain. Mike Blumenthal, whatever, says, it's a trust factor, but does not affect your rank. Blumenthal. Blumenthal. Yeah, thank God. So, the last couple ones, I was like, well, you know, these are good things to look out for, but they're not going to affect your place's rank. So, that is on-page. That is all traditional on-page criteria. Is this our last podcast on on-page for local listing? Well, yeah, close. We're going to get through off-page listing criteria. How are we doing on time? Go fast. Okay. Off-page listing

criteria. Basically, the first thing that's off-page, that was on-page, the quantity of citations from major data providers and IYP portals. This was of very high importance. So, how much information you're getting from trusted websites, like directories, internet yellow pages, like yellowpages.com, CitySearch, Yelp, Foursquare, how many of these they have. Basically, everyone says this was of high importance, a 3.53, which is, I believe, one of the highest things you can have. And there's a great quote that I just pulled from Tom Crandall. It says, this most powerful off-page factor is web citations. Aside from well-known trusted directories and data providers, web citations from vertical directories and local directories, such as local.com, atlanta.com, are highly recommended. Yes. Basically, submit to directories. Yes. Find the best ones. If they're paid, pay for it. It's worth it in the long run. And, you know, it's a great way to build inbound links. Yes. So, the quantity has an effect. So, that helps your SEO anyway. So, you should be doing that for SEO and your local places. You should be doing it for your SEO. Now, here's the way that I took it. It says, the quantity of citations from major data providers and IYP portals. And it says, this is an off-page criteria. But remember, we're talking about your local listing. So, what I questioned is, do these listings, should they link to your website or should they link to your places page? I think they probably should link to your website. I think they should. And I think Google is kind of just agglomerating that information. So, it's a, you know, it's the contextual rele... Yes. I don't know what that means. So, the contextual relevancy is, hey, Google sees that this business is listed on this other directory with this address. Yes, the information we have is good. Check. Yeah. Okay. And they have value because all of these links are going there. Yep. Okay. They're agglomerated. The next one says, the general importance of off-page listing criteria. And basically, what this boils down to is

Google doesn't want information... Google doesn't trust information about your company that's on your website. Because I can... I'm the bomb. Yeah, they think you're lying. You know what I'm saying? You go to paulhenson.com, which is not on their website, which I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I talk about how great I am, Google's going to be like, all right, whatever. This is you, and you wrote this about you. Let's see what other people think. Listen, and that's the best way to describe it. So, Google says, let's see what other people think, and then they go to other credible websites like directories and city search to find that info. So, it is important. Off-page, your off-page listing criteria is important. Another person, Brian Cullum says, links aren't the... Links aren't the panacea, because I thought that said panacea. Links aren't as important as they used to be in SEO, but they help. Citations are critical. So, links are losing importance. These off-page criteria, these other things that we just discussed are increasing in performance. So, if you're not on Yelp or Foursquare or UBL.org or Whitespart, get on these things. Quality of citations. Next, quality of citations from other data providers. This goes back to the quantity of citations. Same thing. Same thing. It is of equal importance. What I found out was that the quality of this site is more important than the quantity that you have. Yeah. So, getting a link from... D-Moz. The D-Moz is much more valuable than getting a link from... PaulHansen's directory. PaulHansen.com. Because I don't give links, fool. Yeah, yeah. Trying to date me for my link juice. New song coming. I was dating me for my link juice. Oh, yeah. When I read that today, man, I was like, okay, my brain has been clicking. New song. Link juice is coming. I like that. Yes. Then, the next two talk about the quality and quantity of unstructured citations. Same thing. Just get them. You know, I didn't quite understand what unstructured citations were. I know

what a citation is, you know, a reference from another credible site. But quality and quantity, again, you want the quality is better. Google values the site that gives you the link more than they value. You know, you want the big page-ranked link rather than a million small page-ranked links. A million are still good, but you want quality over quantity. The next one, quality of inbound links from the website. I think I've kicked that dead horse. The horse is dead. Yeah. It's been, what's the word? Obligatory. I can't. What did you say? Obligatory? Obligatory. I don't even. Obliged? No. I don't know. The obituary. Sorry. Here's one. I said it earlier, then I said it to him. Oh. And then now I can't think of what it was. Obligated. No, I didn't. Obligated. Obligated. Oh, yeah. Was that it? Hell no. Okay, keep moving. All right. There is a language podcast, I'm sure. You can go find that if you're looking for actual. I can't remember what you said. The next one, Chuck's going to have to go into, because I didn't know what it was. Obligatory. Obligatory. Obligatory. I don't know what that means. Still don't know what that means. Sounds like it mean that. The next one, the quantity of my maps on which your business is included. I'm like, what is my maps? M, capital M, lowercase Y, capital M, lower APS. My maps is basically an application that Google did to allow you to embed maps from the Google maps page onto any other website or blog or wherever you want to embed it at. Can't you also save like my maps? Like I've got my maps when I'm signed in as me. And so it's saying how many people have your business in their my maps directory or their my maps list. So that makes sense. Yeah. I've never heard of that. If you can convince people to do that. By the way, I don't have any my maps right now. Yeah. And if you could convince people to do that,

obviously it would have that. Well, apparently it didn't do that well with the launch. Right. I mean, it's been out for quite a while. And, you know, you don't have any. Right. Yeah. I just heard of it today. He had to Google it. The one thing I took from this is Steve Hatcher, Hatch, whatever says. Everyone's name is whatever in this list. Like why do people even have last names? It says user generated content, be it my maps, KML files, geotagged images and videos appear to be giving a big boost lately. Oh. So to that, all I took from this, user generated content is becoming more important. So we need, so you need to add a, add to my maps link on your, whatever contact us page or whatever page you have about, about finding you. Yes. That list looks really long. We can kind of skip through this. So product service keywords and inbound links to your website. We've already kicked that horse. Why are they breaking this stuff down? Into the minutiae. Location keywords and inbound links to the website. Okay. Make your link ticks the keyword. There you go. Next. I tell you what. Google Mr. David Min, M-I-H-M, and do the rest of them. Yeah. And let's, we'll go through this last two. All right. It says, I like this one. Tagged photos and videos associated with your business. This is on your, no, not on your places page, but just associated to your business. Having tagged photos. Everybody knows you can't get, your listing isn't complete unless you have photos and videos. You should be tagging photos anyway. Yeah. But, you know, if you follow that practice of tagging all your photos and your videos with keywords that are related to your business, when you do add them to your Google Places page, they're already tagged. Yes. Here's some quotes that I read from this one that I love. Mike Ramsey, the most underutilized citation of, the most underutilized citation sources. Now, Andrew, one of my favorite cheap tactics. Steve,

I've been doing simple additions like adding photos, videos, and made, seen changes go from number one to number four, probably because the listing seems, seem active and trustworthy. So, yes, do it. Yes. And then the last one, quantity, and this is a huge one right now, the quantity of location service check-ins to your business. How does this affect your local Places page? Listen, we always talk about Yelp, Foursquare, and check-ins, and Rowala, I think, is one based out of Austin, Texas. I just discovered today. And how does that affect your Places listing? I'm going to say, I don't know. Positivity. I'll say positively. Because I believe that Google is probably rating that check-in probably equivalent to a review. Yeah. Okay. And so. Because you're not going to check-in at some place. You don't. Exactly. I won't say where you don't check-in, but you don't check-in there. Yes. Here's a great line I read. It says, this is probably the biggest change I've seen in 2010. It makes sense as these new geo-targeted check-in services show real people and verified data points and visits for search engines to incorporate in the local algorithm. So, another guy, the more check-ins, the more times your listing could be crawled, the more citations that you get. I think this is a very positive fact. Absolutely. Now, I have read that Google doesn't care whether it's positive or negative. The review or the check-in or whatever. Yeah. They're just. They're action. Action. It's just an action. So, get reviews and check-ins to your website. Now, if you're getting bad reviews, you know, follow up on those. Don't, don't try and take care of those. Yeah, I'll tell you what I did this week. I checked in at work. I cheated, so shut up. I'll just do it, too. Oh, I got blank stare news for y'all. Yes. Oh, blank stare news. All right. So, we're done? We're done? Yes, we're done. That's so blank. Okay, yeah. This stare, that stare goes to those people who were in front of the

Verizon store at 630 this morning. For the 5.4? 22 degrees outside. Come on, man. 22 in Houston. So, we're not talking, like, 22 in Colorado, Dean, is not a big deal. We understand that. We get it. It's not really that cold. It's like free, like, yeah. People are afraid their arms are going to fall off. Yes. At 22 degrees in Houston. Yes. Yeah, the line of people in front of the Verizon store for the iPhone. Dummies, man. Wow. Sorry. They wanted that heater app. A quick shout-out. Shout-out to SEO Jokes, man. At SEO Jokes, funny dude. Man, I'm following you. I'm loving what I'm seeing. Shout-out to Nicole, Nicole Berger. Appreciate you. Google is my boyfriend. I'm following you, too. Check your blog out. You use Blogger. Punch in the face. There you go. I hate girls, but put my face on WordPress around here. WordPress. Do you have a joke? We have a joke from Ad SEO Jokes. He has some pretty funny jokes. Oh, the one about the, I like the light bulb one. Yeah, but that's kind of hard to tell. Tell it anyway, though. The light bulb was, I forgot. How many SEOs does it take to change the light bulb? Is it light underscore bulb? Light hyphen bulb? Light space bulb? Yeah. Space bulb. It was funny. You had to read it. It makes sense when you read it. If you do SEO content, you understand. Let's put a link to that on our Facebook so you guys can find it when you actually listen to this. Thank you guys for tuning in to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. Again, twitter.com slash eWebStyle, facebook.com slash eWebStyle. Send us an email, podcast at e-webStyle.com. You can get a free website analysis. Go to any page on our website, and there's a short form. Just fill that out. We'll get back to you. I think we've got a little bit of a backlog, but get in before the backlog gets worse. Yes. Thank you guys for tuning in. My name

is Chris Burris. Upgrade. Upgrade. With two D's. With two D's for a double dose of this pimpin'. Charles Boone. Oh, man. Don't worry. Bye-bye for now. Bye, y'all.