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Where In The World Is (Insert Your Company Name Here)? Are you in Google, Yahoo, or Ask’s Maps or Local Databases?
November 9, 2007 By Webposition SEO Team
By Scott Goodyear
Does your business fit a local market? How is your local search marketing campaign coming along? Can you be found on a map in Google, Yahoo, or Ask?
Whether you are promoting a realtor’s site, a restaurant, a comic book store, or anything else that can potentially be “local” in nature, you shouldn’t ignore the various map and local options that the search engines offer. We all want to be the “number 1″ ranked site, but it is often an uphill battle. The more active competative a keyword has, the longer that it will take to get on the first page. By registering with an engine’s map or local search option, you can some times land on the first page even if you are not the top ranked page in the normal, “organic” results.
Top Ranking Skips Organic -and- Pay Per Click Ads
Lets look at the Google search for: car rental portland oregon.
The first 30 organic, non-paid results are for for sites like Expedia, Thrify Car Rental, Priceline, a local company called Landmarkford, and others. Above the normal search results you will see a special map area that also lists several Portland rental care companies. Hertz shows up with several links in this maps area despite the fact that they’re not in the top 30 organic search results, and they are not playing the Pay Per Click game.
Go to a local or map search and plug in your business name and a local area.
http://maps.google.com
http://local.yahoo.com
http://city.ask.com/city
If you find that you are not listed, add yourself. These services are usually free.
Google: http://www.google.com/local/add/lookup
Yahoo: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
Ask: You’ll need to email your business info to Ask. Ross Dunn’s Optimize for Ask article tell us:
Submit your business information to askcitybusiness@help.ask.com with the subject line Ask City Feedback ” Business. Ensure the following information is added to the email:* Business name and complete address
* Phone number
* The category your business best fits
* The website URL
* A contact persons email address
Reputation Management
Just as you might monitor your search engine rankings, make sure that you watch your map/local listings. You may notice that some companies have additional items in their listings like photos, reviews, stars/ratings and other bits and pieces.
Below: Does a five star location stick out a bit more than a no star location?
In Hertz’s case some reputation management is called for. Google has a review area where they display a negative review that they’ve indexed from Citysearch. A Hertz manager should probably head to Citysearch and post something there about how management has changed, how you only need to notify their staff of the issue, etc. Post something to encourage web visitors of what you are doing today to ensure great service, let them know that you aren’t letting a negative review in 2006 hang up today’s visitors.
For the rest of us, now is the time to encourage your users to post their positive experiences at Citysearch, Epinions, and other sites. If you have some one that is emailing in and singing your praises, give them a few outlets.
Most popular search engines re-use data provided by Google or Yahoo. This is why you receive Google search results when you go to Earthlink, AOL, and others. Even so, engines like Google and Yahoo source reviews, maps, and other data from a wide variety of third party sources including:
Yelp
Epinions
Insiderpages
Discoverourtown
Directory Assistance Plus
If you find that your Google or Yahoo listing does not include a photo of your building, a review, or other data, you’ll want to contact companies like those above.
Summary
Being found online is more than just a ranking. Getting into some of these alternative searches now may also help down the road. Search engines are already on many cell phones. Search engines, and their mapping data, are being used by airlines with seatback monitors. Soon you may find Google and other engines providing driving directions and local data to terminals in gas stations. Ask the engines, where in the world your company is found in their local and mapping services. If you are not found or the listing can be improved, now is the time to do something about it.
Reciprocallinksarenotdead, 11/1/07 update and 3 SEO Points.
November 1, 2007 By Webposition SEO Team
By Scott Goodyear
As of 10/26/07, 2 days after my post about Reciprocallinksarenotdead, my post ranks for “reciprocallinksarenotdead”. Google and Yahoo have indexed this page and other pages off of MarketPosition.com. (Although today, 11/01/07 it appears to be missing from some Google datacenters.) They do not report any one else linking to this article yet. So, from just links on our own site, probably a few RSS feeds that are counted but not listed, and really minor SEO of the page, I’ve gotten both the home page and the post to rank for this term. This means that this is not a tough keyword to rank on.
I’ve similarly pointed out to WebPosition customers on the phone, that I rank for “International SEO” based on this old article. The ranking of that page goes up and down, but I’m not intentionally trying to rank on it. I would guess that the first few sites that DO rank for “international seo” are trying to rank on the phrase and probably put in a small bit of effort to maintaining their rankings for International SEO in a Google search.
Stoney G deGeyter from Pole Position Marketing has emailed to ask if I would link to their E-Marketing Performance.com blog in my article. I’ve added a link to his original E-Marketing Performance blog post rather than use only the link where I originally saw it republished.
I know some of you are probably cringing at this, but I don’t have a problem adding deGeyter’s link. While it’s fun to rank on reciprocallinksarenotdead (see my screen shot at the bottom of the post), I’m not real protective of this ranking. But it does remind me of 3 rather good SEO points…
1) Request a link, you never know, they might add one.
If you see some one that is ranking higher than you, for a term that you want, email them and ask for a link. You may get it. You may not. Not every company knows or cares about SEO/rankings/etc. Some may rank for a term that you want and not even know it. So, if you can get a link from the page that already ranks, bonus! You are now more likey to rank for the term.
With a little bit of work, I think just about any one could take out my ranking for the odd-ball term reciprocallinksarenotdead. But if you are going to ask for a link, don’t do it like this.
2) Grouped links do not equal normal links. You can break them or make them!
In this screen shot you’ll see that I currently hold the number one and two spots for the term reciprocallinksarenotdead. The first ranking is for the article page and the second is for the MarketPosition home page. This is a set of “grouped pages”. In our case, the home page really is not at rank 2. Weird, but true, stay with me…
Perform a search in Google then amend the Google URL with &num=9 and work your way down with &num=8, &num=7, etc. At some point the home page listing will be removed. Today I found that the MarketPosition home page really belongs in rank 7. There is a great article by Stephan Spencer that explains grouped results in more depth. In essence, Google groups multiple URLs together if they are from the same base URL and in the same page of search results even if they are actually several rankings apart.
You can control not only your own rankings but those of your competitors by understanding this Google feature.
3) Do consider editing Wikipedia, but resist the urge to immediately edit Wikipedia. Learn the rules.
I don’t have an exact transcript from the SES 2007 San Jose session on Wikipedia (great interview with some of the speakers here though), but I did take a few notes. One presenter said that it might be helpful to add your URL to a Wikipedia page that already ranks on a term that you are targeting. It was also suggested that if see a Wikipedia page ranking for your term, you have a competitor that ranks above you for the same term, and your competitor’s URL is listed in the ranked Wikipedia page, you might “edit” them out of the entry in order to “improve” the Wikipedia entry.
Before jumping on this advice, I encourage you to learn as much as you can about Wikipeia editing before you start any editing…
An audience member from Onecall.com explained that they were an authorized Sony dealer for several products. When they tried to add links to Sony related Wiki pages, they were labeled as “spammers” by Wikipedia monitors. Despite this, some of their competitors were already listed on Sony’s Wiki pages.
Obviously, a frustrating situation.
While there is a whole nest of rules to follow when editing Wikipedia articles, especially if you want your edits stick, you should try to understand some of the basics around how to Wiki. Like SEO, there are some complex rules and even a “culture” that is evolving around Wikipedia, most things are in a constant state of change, so reading a few articles is nice, but they won’t tell you everything. Also be aware that Wikipedia and similar services have to weather comedic editing sprees, aggressive SEO contests, and other non-welcome editing. Editing now means your IP address can be logged and blocked, or cause you to be accused of vandalism.
Summary
When it comes to terms that want to rank on, do ask for links from sites that rank above you. Do understand how you can make or break grouped links in Google. If a Wikipedia article ranks above you, consider editing it, but only after you’ve done your home work in how Wikipedia and it’s editorial process works. Contribute, don’t spam. Good luck!
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Extras:
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Onecall WikiPedia Exchange
You can read a 2006 dialog between Wikipedia and Onecall on this Wikipedia talk page:
“Links to OneCall.com
Hi Imroy,
Yes, I did setup several links to OneCall.com. I didn’t think of the idea but actually noticed that several of our
competitors are doing this currently on Wikipedia and thought I should do the same in order to keep up with their SEO advantage for doing so. If you do not want me on Wikipedia then please also clean up the external links from my competitors. You can find examples of competitors on all the pages that I put a link on. The biggest violator is Vanns.com.
Until those other external links are removed I will continue to attempt to put external links on manufacturer pages in order to keep a competitive equality.
P.S. Yes I am new to Wiki . . . so if there is a better way to accomplish my goals please let me know. I don’t me harm I simply need equality.
Thanks,
B. David Payne Business Development OneCall.com http://www.onecall.com
Did it ever occur to you to remove your competitor’s links yourself? Instead, you’re only making the problem worse! Thank you for making contact, but if you re-add your link to articles, it will be considered vandalism and you will be blocked. The actions you propose are simple unacceptable for anyone on Wikipedia. –Imroy 19:24, 23 October 2006 (UTC)”
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Screen Shot for Posterity: Reciprocallinksarenotdead.
Below, I took a few screen shots and created an image for posterity, my article ranking for Reciprocallinksarenotdead:
