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1 - You can Improve the site load time using tools like http://gtmetrix.com (page speed is also a ranking factor) 2 - I noticed you are using Magento you can install a magento extension to fix a few magento SEO Issues and give you a few extra features. I recommend http://mirasvit.com/magento-extensions/advanced-seo-suite.html 3 - Build links I mean "EARN LINKS"

Yes, I don't like Yext. I sure don't want somebody else in charge of my listings. I've used them on a couple of clients early on and really saw no benefit. I feel like they are absorbing all these local directories and eventually we may have no choice but to use them

it really depends on your content. this site has a so so DA of just under 50 with over 400,00 links from just 200 something domains. http://www.9slides.com/Talks/Growth-Hacking-is-not-sexy this page PA of 0. http://www.9slides.com/Talks/Fast-Mobile-Development-with-Apache-Cordova-PhoneGap-and-Backbone-js PA of 22 since april in comparison, slideshare has a domain authority of nearly 100 with 64 million back links from over 300,000 domains, but you would still find PA 0 slideshows on their platform as well. http://www.slideshare.net/FrostSimula/10-tips-your-development-partner-wants-you-to-know so you see, one is definitely more popular or much more established than the other, and in the end that plays some role, but YOUR CONTENT is what determines its PA and popularity, not the domain it is on really. too many of slideshows on both of these sites have horrible PA which means no1 cares about them or creators did not do a good job of promoting it. You have to face facts, the more niche, and the less mainstream type of content (the more professional and highly focused crap) the harder the challenges. in comparison you can check this one on another provider http://prezi.com/id1nlqcvqhrw/why-you-want-to-hire-me/ this content was cool and a bit aged, so you can see how it got that nice PA http://prezi.com/a_4dfvuzpeg1/the-decade-of-data/ this content is too new. both are on mentions of home page http://prezi.com/isuuq2i9awi3/prezi-3d-template-by-sydofr/ here is another one with a higher PA. SO TIME IS OF ESSENCE when you are trying to analyze these choices, time and quality of content are about your higher determining factors, although your platform of choice can play a big role into how popular your content becomes and how fast, how sharable it is. not to mention the mere factor of traffics for each of these sites. here is some hint as which platform gets more visitors overall Prezi Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,648 9slides Alexa Traffic Rank: 239,923 Alexa Traffic Rank: 44,706 NOTE: Alexa numbers are only a hint, not really too accurate, but you can possibly arrive at an educated guess here about the correlation between PA of your slideshow page (lets say you have the same identically popular and quality content posted on each one of these platforms, at the same time) and how popular the provider itself is. Given all of what I saw in this very loose and quick analysis, I'd pick prezi (you need a tad bit more skills on this platform) and i would spend a great amount of time and effort in ensuring what i do resonates well with target audience and would further make sure my target audience gets notice of this even if they do not naturally find this stuff on any of these platforms, meaning i would leverage as much controlled exposure to that link as i could via every available medium up to and including offline mediums such as TV or Radio or magazines, not to mention the plethora of apps and various other online mediums.

Hey Keri, Thanks for the response, the issue looked to be on Google's end, as after getting a hold of someone on the phone they expressed everything had been done correctly, however it was being bogged down on their end. I was told that they are working on fine tuning their process to make sure it goes quicker for the future.

Ok, for images that are the identical except for the angle, it would make sense to have the same alt text.  However, for the small wall image, it would make more sense to have an alt tag of "small wall with red bricks" or something to that extent. Like I said in my original post, the best results without having to write alt tags for each product would be to identify some key products that your client wants to focus on and write alt tags for those pages and automate the other pages. Regards, Chris Wilson

I just got off of another long call with the CBS rep and in a nutshell, I finally understand what they do. They take over your adwords campaign and buy a unique URL (an example of the type of URL is joesplumbingserviceoaklandca.com). Then they craft a two page website that provides a phone number as a means of contacting the business. No email, no form. The website gets indexed by Google and will beat out your real website if someone searches that exact URL phrase. In Joe the plumber's case, that long-tail domain URL is a valid search term someone would use. So if someone finds the CBS site organically and calls the number, the client gets charged. Also, the link on the CBS page pointing to the main website goes to a mirrored site at a different URL than the actual business URL and the phone number on that is a tracking number as well. They asked me to run a test with them to see if it works. I said, I am not going to take a $8000 test with you because if it doesn't work then it is me on the hook for recommending this product. They said if it doesn't work they will throw in $8000 worth of radio advertising and banner display ads. But they wouldn't tell me where. I asked if we could do a 1-month trial or even a 2-month trial and they said no. 6 months is needed for the campaign to ramp up. I asked for a reference of a client that is happy with the product. I got a 5 minute explanation of how advertisers would not want to discuss their plans with anyone else and that I should trust them that everyone is satisfied. So I pressed again and said, "If this product was so amazing and I had a huge ROI and you called me and asked me to speak to a potential advertiser to vouch for your product, I would do it in a heart beat." They replied by saying they would try and find someone. Oh and they said they are not selling this product to make millions, they are just trying to solidify their relationship with our agency. It was all about the sale and it became more and more obvious by the end. I think they could feel my disdain through the phone. Sorry, that wasn't a nutshell. Anyone know anything about ringrevenue.com?

I fully take your point, though i've actually never come across a scenario where I've thought Animoto etc would be a better solution than doing less content - but doing it properly. Personally, I don't think the baby clothing line video is fit for purpose - I can't even read what the writing says and I actually think just an image slideshow would work much much better here than the video form factor they've chosen. However, I am conscious that I'm a bit of a fundamentalist about this and I concede that there may be occasions when due to very limited budget and creativity - these kind of stock solutions are appropriate.........I've just never come across one yet.

Thanks Lynn, I see what my issue is. I need to rename some with more generic keywords...

There's no set time.  It's all a matter of how fast Google or the search engines crawl it. If you want a page to be crawled faster, I would suggest filling out the profile 100%, this of course means adding pictures and videos.  I would also suggest finding a creative way to share these citations on social media, as well as build links to these pages.

Hi Drew, I will add to Tom's thoughtful response by recommending that you study the recent Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 (http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors) and look at the different factors that have greatest influence in the mobile environment vs. the desktop environment if the goal is mobile local rankings. Hope this helps!

It depends how much good content you can create. If you can create great content, then having a single service per page might be the best approach. But the content needs to be unique enough across not only services, but your locations as well. As far as looking for more guidance, read How do I build the perfectly optimized page? by Rand Fishkin - with your keywords being your location and service. Then read The 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors to figure out how to get your page to rank in the local results. And for fun you can take a look at The 2013 Local Search Ecosystems to get a complete understanding of how the different local directories interact with each other. My best advice is to try it out... if it works, GREAT. If it doesn't, try something else. It is very rare that you will hit a homerun on the first try. So document your steps and processes and figure out what works for you. OR try different approaches on each of your locations and see what is working best and adopt the best practices to the other locations (if that makes sense). Hope this helps. Mike

So glad to be of help Silkstream, and that's good that you're working hard to remedy the duplicate content issue. Sounds like a really big project. Good luck with all the steps!

Sadly Google+ on mobile no longer has a review option; must be done via desktop.

Hi Netlover, The following local business indexes/directories require phone verification either part of the time, or always: Google Bing Yelp Foursquare Infogroup/Express Update YP.com iBegin Other forms of verification will include email and postal mail verification or a combination of these with phone verification. Hope this helps!

@Tim Berry: Thank you for your answer above, it's very interesting. My business address is listed all on one line, but using Ste instead of # (3975 University Dr, Ste 325) on our website, and that is how we've been submitting the address for citations. But, of course, I noticed that Google Places converts the address to one line using # instead of Ste: 3975 University Dr #325, and that's how the address appears in Google Maps. What you write about using just one line, and # instead of Ste, makes a lot of sense. But just to be clear, in my situation you would recommend using 3975 University Dr #325 on both our website, and in all our citations? In a sense, that would be starting with the way Google Places lists the address, and then "working backwards" and matching that exactly on our site and in our citations. Do I understand that right? Also, I notice that Google Places/Maps uses "Drive" in some places for our address, and then "Dr" in the display.Most of our citations use Dr. When I go into the About tab on our Google Places (we merged our Places and Google Plus listing for this address), it displays Dr-- but when I click to edit it opens an edit screen in Google Places, where "Drive" is shown. Do you have a recommendation as to Dr or Drive in that case? It seems that Google might be using Drive but converting it to Dr, so I'm wondering if I should be using Dr or Drive in citations. I believe I originally had gone with the shorter Dr partially based on a factor you discuss-- fitting the entire address onto one line in various places online where that's required. Thank you again for this!

You can try these tips if you haven't already: Optimize the image filename. Have another look at the alt text for each image and ensure it is optimized. Link to the image from the image. For example: [image: ImageURL] Make sure your images are big and beautiful. Differentiate your images from others if they are not exclusive to your site. For instance, you could resize them, change the hue a little, run auto-levels on it, mirror it, crop it, etc... Consider submitting an image sitemap. Hotlink to the image from a guest post on another site. Good luck!

Hello Alan, Thank you very much for sharing article. I am going to read it and make it happen with my two Google plus pages. If I will find out any issue over there so I will let you know about it.

Good luck with this Tim. Thanks for letting us know what you did.

If you're adding a logo for the sake of preventing image theft, it might not be such a great idea. Watermarking your images won't necessarily prevent people from stealing them. Adding a logo to your images serves more to increase the exposure of your brand, when people view your images or share them across the web. Companies creating infographics would be a good example of that. Here's an article that would be relevant to this topic: http://blog.photoshelter.com/2010/09/watermarks-protecting-your-images-or-damaging-your/ Hope that helps!

All of these are do-able but the authorship thing. It would likely be me manning all of the blogs. From my POV, I think the most feasible thing within our construct is aggregating info from the communications department and placing them on each page according to location. As far as one page for each branch, I don't know that it's within our bandwidth and I'd hate to set something up we can't maintain. But I'll definitely bring it up at our brainstorming session tomorrow. Thanks!