Google Places

For a long time now, it has been common practice to share your physical address with Google and other search engines. The SEs used this information for search engine result displays as well as in their search algos.

No more. Well, kinda.

The good folks at SEOMoz wrote a nice piece on the recent Google Places change.

Here’s a summary of their recommendations; I believe them to be good recommendations.

Thanks to Google Places Help Forum Top Contributor, Mike Blumenthal, I feel that I have arrived at a fairly clear understanding of how Google is now classifying different business models. I’d like to pass this information on in hopes that it will help you determine whether your business needs to hide its address on its Place Page.

Type A
Your business is brick-and-mortar and serves all customers at its location. Show your address.

Type B
Your business is home-based and serves some customers at your home and some on the road. Show your address and use the Service Radius tool.

Type C
Your business is home-based and does not serve any customers at your home. Hide your address.

I believe these are the parameters in a nutshell.

If you fall in the Type C category, you definitely want to “hide your address” at Google Places (aka Google Maps).

Patrick Schwerdtfeger and Bill Davis

Become a Keynote Speaker

You all know that I haven’t produced a Tiny Letter in quite some time. I went on what was supposed to be a short hiatus and it turned into weeks/months. I completely understand if you want a refund. I would. I’d ask for one myself.

But I’m going to do my darnedest to get you back on my side

This first Tiny Letter of the New Year (2012 edition) is an introduction into what I have in store for this little newsletter for the upcoming months. I’ve fully taken on the idea that I should be planning–not for the entire 12 months–but for the next 90 days.

It’s easier to manage, easier to come up with real SMART goals, and it’s easier to correct when things go awry. And they always do, right?

So I’m going to throw out some topics that I think will be important–if not to do something about but to learn what to expect and not get caught with our collective pants down.

Social media will become even more important and take an even bigger chunk of your daily life and business budget. Now that the search engines, led by Google, have embraced social media and your connections to make personalized search pretty darned relevant, it’s high time to start paying attention.

And please don’t do what many do–set up a Facebook page or twitter profile and never make any posts. That’s such a waste. Let’s endeavor in this first quarter of the year to get really good at ONE social media site (choose Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube). Specialize in it. Read a lot. Do a lot.

Get it DIALED IN!

Then, in the 2nd quarter, go whole hog on another. By the end of the year, you should be very competent in the 4 biggest social networks there are (right now).

Speaking of right now, don’t be surprised if another social media network starts taking “eyeball share” from Facebook and Twitter. It could be Google Plus (another one to keep an eye on, for sure) or somebody else completely different. Don’t forget that before Facebook, My Space was the king of social networks and now, just a couple years later, it is totally insignificant.

I do think that perhaps there may be 2 big things in social media this year: 1) Consolidation and 2) Upcoming social networks will be really “niched down”. Meaning, there may come into prominence relatively little social networks that concentrate on rock music or basketball or collecting cars. I think things may get very granular.

And at the same time, the bigger networks may see some shrinking, not necessarily in terms of users, but in terms of number of big players in the market. Think what could happen if Google bought Twitter. Ponder a transaction like that for a moment.

Don’t despair, though–if this sort of consolidation occurs, all your work probably won’t be for naught–even if it is one of your networks that gets gobbled up. I have confidence that the folks doing the consolidating will do their level-best to keep current customers; keeping customers will require that they integrate any merging of disparate systems in a very seamless manner. Otherwise, people will really jump ship–in droves.

No social network can afford to lose members. None of them.

Obviously, I think social media should take a little more of your effort this year. It’s only going to get bigger.

Next up is mobile. I’ll talk more about it in the next Tiny Letter. Suffice it to say that I think mobile may even be bigger than social media, especially for “brick and mortar” businesses.

Because of the above two emerging trends (social media and mobile), I think that search engine optimization (SEO) will take on even greater importance in marketing your business’ goods and/or services. Many would lead you to believe that SEO will take a backseat.

And it could.

But I don’t think it will. There are a lot of smart people involved with SEO (and it’s not all–or even a little, really–scams)…they’re too smart to NOT figure out how to optimize webpages for on- and off-page SEO.

SEO will be HUGE in 2012 as the SEs give more attention to social media and mobile.

Of course, video will grow, too. Right now, video seems to be like the Old West, where things are wild, unpredictable, and exciting. Once in a while, you run into people who have it “all figured out.” Hopefully, I can turn you on to some of those people

Next up, we’ll talk about the second emerging trend in 2012: Mobile and its implications. Until next time…

Thanks for sticking with me!!!

Bill

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If you have the stomach for these things, read about them here:

Stop Online Piracy Act

PROTECT IP Act

Suffice it to say, I think both of these bills are fundamentally flawed and will lead to criminalizing people who really aren’t trying to promote or condone piracy.

It would be great if each of you would call your elected representatives in both the Senate and House and tell them to vote “No” on these two horrible bills.

Online Protest Over SOPA Helps

First off, you will have to do some work. I know, the “internet lifestyle” would suggest that you do nothing, the search engine rankings rise, and you make money hand over fist.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way.

Seven Days to Better Website Rankings

It’s easiest to break this down into 7 daily tasks.

1. Write a kick ass post. Make it good. Concentrate on a single keyword phrase. Make sure your onpage SEO is spot-on. Read about onpage SEO best practices here.
2. Produce a video about the topic you wrote about in Step 1. Link back to that post in your YouTube “description.” Tag with your keywords.
3. Post the video on Facebook. Write some descriptive content using the same keywords.
4. Submit the post and the video to Twitter (i.e., tweet about it).
5. Write a blog post at blogger.com or wordpress.com using the same keywords as in Step 1. You can use the same content, but I suggest you re-write it or start fresh. Place a link somewhere in that content to the URL in Step 1.
6. Tweet about and submit the URL from Step 5 to Facebook.
7. Submit the URLs in both Step 1 and Step 5 to Social Monkee. With the free version, you will get 25 backlinks per day from social media sites.

If you follow these steps with every blog post you make, you will ratchet your way up the search engine results pages with a pretty small effort.

(I’m on a roll!)

I promise to make this year’s Internet Marketing Muscle Tiny Letter far better (and much more frequent) than before. So let’s get right to it!

Last week, I mentioned 3 emerging and converging trends: Social media, mobile marketing, and search engine optimization and then discussed social media. This week, we’ll do the same with my thoughts on mobile marketing.

If you’re a local business (especially if you’re a “brick and mortar” business–which make NO SENSE here in Earthquake Country, California), you really need to jump on the mobile bandwagon.

Why, you might ask?

Because 1 in 7 searches right now is done on a mobile device (i.e., not a laptop or desktop computer–but a smart phone or tablet).

Read more at the (paid) newsletter.

A package like this normally goes for at least $1,297–often times (depending on the niche) for $4,000 or more.

Get it while it’s hot. Price rises every few sales.

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