This is NOT a new push from me. Other SEO experts have been talking and getting their clients listed locally for years.

Going forward, I really think it’s important that you get your business listed locally as soon as possible if you want more business locally.

If you have a business, you need to get your website listed in Google Local, Yahoo Local, and Live Local. In fact, it’s important to get your business listed regardless if you have a website or not. Just remember to list your correct business address and telephone number.

I’m almost certain that potential customers will call your business if your business is local to them.

Fast forward to November 23, 2009, and Google has started experimenting with their SERP again. In this case, I searched for “plumbers fort worth”, and I was presented with a different SERP than what I’m used to seeing.

Normally, when I’d searched for “plumbers fort worth”, Google would displayed local businesses in a A through J format above the organic search results. Today, I saw something completely different.

Check out the screenshot:

SERP Google Local

In addition to the local businesses, Google has added a clickable map above the listings of businesses. Now instead of the former A through J business listings, Google is only showing A through E.

Naturally, you could always click the map to see the original A through J or just click on the “More results near Fort Worth, TX” text link below the E listing.

Personally, I think the addition of the clickable map is a great feature because now I can see instantly where I could go or call to get a plumber that is closest to me. This same feature also applies to mechanics, lawyers, and dentists in your local area. Simply use the following format: services + name of city

From an SEO perspective, this new SERP sucks! If you’re an SEO expert that ONLY focus on organic results, and you have not listed your client’s website in Google Local, your client is missing out on a lot of potential customers.

Do a search now for something local to you, and you’ll see that organic listings are pushed all the way down. On my 1440 x 900 screen resolution, I can barely see the first organic listing.

What does this new change mean for you as an SEO or Internet marketer?

Most importantly, you have to get your business listed locally — now. Additionally, you might have to invest some money on Google AdWords to compensate for the possible drop in organic website traffic that you would normally received from Google.

Personally, I’m surprised that Google hasn’t implemented this new SERP sooner. As a service media company, Google could have increased their AdWords revenue by undermining SEO efforts by simply making it harder for local search traffic to find organic results. Consequently, some websites that were ranking high organically for local search keywords will have no choice but to start using AdWords if they wanted to continue receiving traffic to their website.

In short, it appears that Google wants everyone that is listed organically to start advertising on AdWords. Arguably, being listed for free organically in Google is not enough anymore. In a way, Google may be delicately persuading you to pay for your free organic listing, and to start using AdWords if you want to continue receiving more website traffic from the world’s most popular search engine.

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Last but not least, I especially liked the ability to specify a date range. From an SEO perspective, you can look back in time and see what your competition was doing 6 to 12 months ago. This insight into the past allows an SEO to turn back the clock, if you will, and see what has changed in terms of search algorithm.

With so much information at our fingertips from Google, I see a new era in SEO that will allow seasoned SEOs’ to better optimize their client’s websites and drive more traffic to other webpages beside the typical homepage. Stay tune for more coverage on this new and emerging trend in the world of live search.

Google Live Search

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Note: at the time of this writing, all but one of these websites does not charge a fee to access these services.

• www.googlerankings.com
• www.gorank.com
• www.advancedwebranking.com – $199/year

Most of these websites requires a Google API. You can get a free Google API here.

If you know of any other free tools, please comment on this posting.

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Search engines like Google loves quality content, and you can provide this needed content by writing in your field of expertise. In exchange for your hard work, Google could reward your article writing efforts with backlinks to your website.

In order to acquire these backlinks to your website, you need to submit your articles to article directories that will allowed the placement of an author’s bio at the footer of your article. Most article directories may allowed you to use as much as three unique text links or URLs in your author’s bio.

Once these text links are cached by the search engines, you could be credited with backlinks to your targeted webpage. It’s critical that you do the keyword analysis beforehand to find the right keywords. If done correctly, your targeted webpage could be elevated into the much coveted top 10 listings in the search engines.

You can leverage this awesome technique by simply writing good articles, and submitting them to article directories. I’ve listed some of my favorite websites that allows the use of an author’s bio. Additionally, I’ve also checked to make sure that none of these article directories are using the nofollow tag. Nowadays, you don’t want to waste your time, and submit your articles to websites using the nofollow tag because Google might not follow or pass any Pagerank credits to your targeted webpage.

Note: as of this writing, these websites are not using the nofollow tag

• ezinearticles.com
• ezinearticles.biz
• articlecity.com
• goarticles.com
• articlegeek.com
• articlecircle.com
• buzzle.com
• articlebeach.com

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Recently, Google may have answered our prayers, to say the least.

This past Sunday, I’d noticed that Google was experimenting with 3 different versions of displaying it’s SERP or search engine results page. Located at the top left hand corner were three squares labeled “S”, “M”, and “L”. My educated guess is that these letters represents “S” for Small, “M” for Medium, and “L” for Large.

I’d only played with it briefly, but it allowed me to change how I wanted to display my search results for a particular keyword. When I clicked on “S”, it produced a summary version of the top 10 results without any description. Basically, you’re getting a list of the clickable green color URLs.

And then I’d clicked on “M”, and it produced the regular search engine results that we’re all accustomed to seeing.

The most interesting version for me was the “L” version. It allowed me to see which keywords were being recognized or highlighted by Google on my competitor’s website. I took some screen shots for you. You can see the large or “L” version here too.

As an SEO, I can see how the Googlebot is reading my website or my competitors. With this tidbit of information, I could potentially makes minor changes to my title, or description and truly optimize it for the top 10.

It’s Tuesday morning, and I have not seen these letters again. I am hoping that Google makes this new feature a common interface for their users soon.

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More than likely, I will be settling down in or near San Francisco and offering my search engine optimization services to all local businesses. One of the advantages of the search engine optimization business is that you can be anywhere in the world and still provide reliable SEO services. Naturally, I’ll need a reliable ISP if I plan to offer reliable SEO services to my clients.

Now that I know that I’m moving to California, I need to focus a lot of my attention on providing SEO in California. SEO California should be a good market for me and I hope to do well there too.

In short, I will be offering my affordable SEO services in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Deigo, San Jose, and many more metropolitan within California.

If you’re a California business and you need SEO services in California, please call me or email me. I would love to do the SEO on your website. Call now. 1-888-249-4215

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As you may have already read, SEO or search engine optimization is one way to garner interest in your website. There are other online marketing strategies, but our focus today will be on affordable seo. Additionally, if you operate an online business, you will more than likely enlist the help of an SEO consultant. The seo services offered by an SEO firm can deliver continuous online sales if your website is optimized properly using white-hat tactics.

Nowadays, almost everyone that has a commercial website has heard about search engine optimization. In my opinion, search engine optimization is the highest form of online influenced marketing. I say this because, as SEO experts, we are influencing the buying behaviors of online consumers in all of the major search engines. With the exception of auction websites like Ebay, nearly everyone uses Google and other search engines to find a product or service when they want to buy something.

Generally speaking, SEO experts are optimizing a particular website because the client and the SEO company believes that you should be buying from their website and no one else. Although optimizing a website for the search engines is one way to push traffic to your website, thousands of online businesses are also using pay per click advertising (PPC) to advertising their websites. In theory, you can literally send thousands of targeted website traffic to your website, but it can be very expensive because of fierce competition on Google. Regardless of you advertising budget, you should use PPC advertising in the first phase of your online advertising campaign to help determine the right keywords to optimize for in Google and other search engines.

Advertising in Google Adwords could help you to determine what keywords to target for your website. And if you work with a good SEO company, they should be able to help run your first PPC campaign easily. Many SEO companies will offer PPC advertising or management to their clients. An experienced SEO expert can guide you on how to advertise your website using PPC advertising. Before you select your SEO company, you have to make sure that they know and are currently using PPC advertising to help their current clients. For me, this is a good indication that the SEO company is well versed in all areas of online marketing.

Since you’re a new online business, you might want to consider how much you can afford in terms of a monthly fee when you decide to outsource your SEO campaign. Many smaller firms have very affordable SEO rates that you could try when you’re starting out. Keep in mind that the monthly fee you pay may or may not return any sales to your website. Additionally, paying more per month does not guarantee that you’ll get any sales either. Most importantly, you have to see your monthly seo fees as an investment in your website. And if you selected the right SEO company, you will be rewarded with new online sales and targeted traffic from the search engines.

You have to keep in mind that you’re a new website and the potential online customer may not trust you yet. To alleviate this issue, you can start offering discounts or free trial for your product or service. By doing this one simple step, you can eliminate the initial buying barrier, acquire a lead, and sell to this same person over and over again next time. Before hiring an SEO company, always ask them what they plan to do with your website BEFORE you hire them. If they don’t tell you, then you have good reasons not to use them. A good SEO company will disclosed the basics of their SEO campaign for you for free and without obligation.

If you’re in the market for an experienced SEO consultant for Google, please consider hiring us for your SEO campaign. Thanks!

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Starting Monday May 26, 2008, Clay Media Group, LLC will be offering our professional SEO services in the following cities — Austin, Dallas, and Houston Texas.

We’re making this vertical move because we’ve had requests from small and mid-size businesses in Texas asking for our white-hat and ethical SEO services. Our mission has always been to provide quantifiable SEO services to all of our clients regardless of where they are located. In fact, we will even serve overseas SEO clients.

So if you have an online business and need SEO services in Austin, Dallas, or Houston, please contact us and we’ll would love an opportunity to work with you.

If you’re located in the cities listed above, please contact our local SEO account manager for assistance. One of our account manager would be happy to help answers any questions that you may have before you sign-up with us. Call 1-888-249-4215 for immediate assistance. Thank you!

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If you’ve been reading my blog, you will noticed that this blog was originally a Pagerank 2. Click on that link and will noticed that I had posted that update on February 29, 2008.

To say the least, I am happy with this new Pagerank, but it means nothing to me. Pagerank is just a whimsical green bar to me. It preconceived value is only important when someone asked to advertise on my blog. Aside from this green bar, I am only focus on creating good posts and revealing SEO related information that you can use right now.

I hope you had a good Google update because we received numerous gifts from the Google god.

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On a regular day, if posted on a Monday, I would usually see the Google cache on the following day. Yet recently, it would take more than 2 days before I can see the Google cache appeared for a new posting.

I’m not sure why this is happening, but I suspect two elements that could be causing this abnormality.

1. Google is making more changes to it’s algorithm
2. the layout of the new WordPress theme caused Googlebot to spider the posting differently

Although I leaning more towards the one reason, I will wait and see before making my conclusion.

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