Google Local Places - How to fix the problems? - Internet Marketing Podcast - Number 87

The episode recommends first making sure the basics are solid: relevant content, good keywords, and strong backlinks. Then submit to Google Local Places to appear in the local A through G listings above organic results, get active on social media, do article submissions, and build more backlinks.

According to this episode, the bot does not care about canonical URLs and will index all versions regardless. The real benefit is link juice consolidation. If 400 inbound links are split across four URL versions of the same page, proper canonicalization concentrates all 400 links onto one page. Duplicate content is a secondary concern.

Header spamming is when you place multiple header tags inside a body of content but use CSS to style them so they look like regular body text. The idea is to trick search engines into reading the text as more relevant. The hosts consider it a gray-hat tactic they would not use for client sites.

The hosts recommend UBL, which costs about $30 a year, primarily for link juice rather than to complete your directory listings. They advise setting up your own main listings separately and using services like UBL as a supplementary source of inbound links back to your website.