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Thank you Miriam - very helpful. Zack

you want to makeYour content delivery network go through a cname WHY ARE MY CDN URL’S DIFFERENT THAN MY DOMAIN NAME? Normally your URL paths would be http://domain.com/wp-content/uploads/image.jpg With a CDN enabled, it becomes http://account.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/image.jpg This can always be changed to a custom CDN URL such as cdn.domain.com if you wish. You just need to setup a CNAME for cdn.domain.com to point to account.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com then contact support and let us know so that we can make the required updates on our end. this is a link from my hosting company that describes exactly how to set up your DNS http://support.wpengine.com/how-does-a-cdn-work/ I hope this is of help to you, Sincerely, Thomas von Zickell

Hi Megan, You are not alone in being puzzled by this. Here is what has happened. You have not lost your organic rankings - they have been subsumed in your blended/local ranking. If you look closely at your listing, you will most likely see how it is a blended listing. Some elements connect directly to your website - whereas others are going to 3rd party data, such as a Google+ Local page. So, your previous organic strengths have helped you in attaining this highly desirable blended/local result. Way to go! In times past, it was common for dominant businesses to be able to achieve both a local pack listing and an organic one (or even a couple of organic ones) on the same page of the SERPs. This is no longer typical, and most businesses will have either a blended/local listing or an organic one - but not both. Even if you were the only bathroom remodeler in Ann Arbor, chances are that you would get a blended/local listing for your business and that other spots on the page might be made up of a few of your citation sources (such as your Yelp profile) and that Google might pull in other stuff from further away (sometimes in really wonky ways such as showing an auto dealership for a search for a plant nursery!). It would be uncommon these days for you also to have internal local pages linked to from your site, beyond that blended/local listing. Not saying it never happens - it's just really uncommon. You should feel really good about your achievements, and to make you feel a little better, check out Dr. Pete's super post on heatmap studies for local listings: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps In that post, you will see how eyes are often drawn to the local listings, rather than the organic ones. So, things are going well for you! Congratulations!

Hi Robert, Thanks for coming here with your good question. There are 2 important issues here. As First points out, sharing an address with other businesses is problematic. If your client's address duplicates that of even one other business, you can expect troubles ahead. Google will likely merge the info of the two businesses, meaning that your client could end up with the other business' phone number, reviews, or analytical data on her listing. So, sharing an address is out, unfortunately.  The only exception to this included in the Google Places Guidelines (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528) is this: Some businesses may be located within a mall or a container store, which is a store that contains another business. If your business is within a container store or mall, and you'd like to include this information in your listing, specify the container store in parentheses in the business name field. For example, Starbucks (inside Safeway). But, it doesn't sound like your client is within a container store or a mall, so I would not consider this truly applicable to the situation. I cannot recommend using a floor number. Even if the client has a distinct business name and phone number, I feel merging is going to be a likely outcome. Here is an excerpted user comment one a Mike Blumenthal post (http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/19/the-long-and-winding-tale-of-trying-to-fix-a-merged-listing/) regarding a merged business: "We have had this problem for about a year and Google won’t fix it. They say it will be fixed but is not. Me and the other law firm have joined up and are both e mailing Ashley with the same case no. to try and convince Google to use our user data instead of assuming we are the same company. Since the address uses a Floor number (Not a suite number) and a mail room sorts the mail, Google says it is the same business even though the other details like the phone number, are different. We both meet clients and have offices in several locations in the Inland Empire, as we both lease from the same leasing company. That is where the relationship ends. I think the work around maye be to add an identifier after the floor number, such as -A, or -B. So it would appear like #400-A." (emphasis mine) You are always supposed to use the precise street address at which the client receives mail when creating any Google Local property. You are not supposed to add or subtract anything from the mix. So what option does this leave your client with if he/she wants to participate in Local? Getting legitimate suite numbers assigned by the post office to the different businesses on the floor would be the only open road, as far as I can see. You will need to contact the postal service in the client's area, as well as all of the other businesses located on that floor to try to arrange this, if you can. Not a great solution. But as things currently stand, without your client having a distinct address, they are lacking one of the 3 key metrics for local inclusion which are: A unique local area code phone number A unique physical street address In-person transactions with customers. Hope my reply is, at least, helpful, even if it doesn't automatically solve the issue. Sincerely wishing you good luck!

Hi Strathcom, I am looking into this for you. Trusted businesses are sometimes given the phone-only option, just as less trusted businesses are often given the postcard-only option. Let me see what I can find out for you. I will return. Update: Looks like you have already started a thread at the Google and Your Business Forum and received a good reply from Treebles: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/business/OXYk9JlWCCY/s8n4jpjN514J[1-25] Also, in case you didn't see this similar thread, here is one with a response from Jim Jaggers regarding making 4 verification attempts to cause the postcard option to appear: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/phone$20tree/business/mPIRxdm5vQw/iqcf5gh9--4J[1-25] Hope this helps!

Host your videos on a third party host (Wistia, Vimeo Pro) and embed on your site with a crawlable player - most prefer html5 player to get your videos on the SERPs and refer back to your site. Do not publish videos on Youtube or Vimeo if you want the video to go back to your site - it will be self-cannibalization. Also once the videos are on your site, create a video XML sitemap and submit through GWT. As far as having a link in the embed code of your videos, I believe Wistia's Embed Builder will help you create an iframe that can do just that. Here are some helpful posts: http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/getting-video-results-in-google/ http://www.seomoz.org/blog/winning-the-video-thumbnail-in-google-universal-search

Hi Stephen, Yes, this is very much a known problem. If your clients are involved, first step for them is to report their issues to this thread in the Google and Your Business Forum: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/business/0f1Cu9yLIzY/J21OJDPL1NUJ[1-25] This thread was started by Google Forum Top Contributor, Mike Blumenthal, to consolidate all of the complaints into one place for review. So, go there and list each client separately (or have them do it themselves) with documentation of what each is experiencing. Additionally, here is a blog post on this topic from Joy Hawkins that I think will be helpful to you: http://imprezziomarketing.com/seo-blog/google-maps/a-way-to-avoid-the-google-local-review-spam-filter/ Also, if any of your clients happen to be in the auto dealership industry, be advised that Google appears to be cracking down on reviews in that sector with especial vigor. See: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/08/08/what-should-you-tell-a-client-when-google-loses-their-reviews-a-4-part-plan/ Hope these resources will help you feel up-to-date on this issue, and maybe even help you resolve your client's troubles.

Hi MIriam, Thank you for your excellent reference and great info! According to your link at http://searchengineland.com/be-wary-of-call-tracking-numbers-in-local-search-26895, we suspect that our call tracking may not be done correctly because it uses a new anchor number instead of our business number on our website. I have also created a new Google+ Local page following Mark's suggestion, and will see how it goes. Really appreciate the helpful feedbacks from SEOmoz, we just joined the community a few days ago and it seems very useful! Enam

Hi Lucas, Yes, there have been reports of category display issues. See: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/categories$20not$20being$20displayed/business/FehIOOYxWLk/RBgKkezj8_kJ Now, first of all, let's make sure your categories aren't actually being displayed. Go to your Google+ Local Page and actually click on the place where the category is. Do you get a dropdown showing the other categories? For an example of this, go to this page for a jeweler in Buffalo: https://plus.google.com/103156080483607740278/about?hl=en As you can see, this business is showing only 2 categories on the top level interface, but if you click on the categories, a dropdown displays additional categories. I'm wondering if you've overlooked this function. My second question would be whether your categories are violation free. No city names? Nothing spammy? Be sure of this. If neither of these points applies to you, I would recommend that you report the issue via the Google and Your Business forum for direct technical assistance: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business Hope this helps!

Well I think you should for sure get some pages on your website with the videos on them and a video sitemap setup. A way to get them in the press release have a picture of what the video looks like with a url to your website. Its cheap but if its a good video people won't bounce cause of it. Just an idea

thanks Mark - good info. The announced changes are likely why the response has been the way it is.

Looks like u are using jwplayer and hosting the videos yourself which is the first step. a) generate video thumbnail images for Google to use b) generate and submit a video sitemap.xml file to Google

A quick look at the SEOMoz keyword difficulty tool tells us that is a 68% - Highly Competitive search term and you are just not going to rank a new site for that term overnight. This is not a perfect science but just take a look at some of the commercial sites that do rank 500 linking domains, 100 linking domains to the page itself This is the kind of ballpark you are working in and you are just not going to do that overnight. You need to look at a long term strategy, start with long, long tail and work backwards over time - this kind of thing: what phone to replace htc desire what phone for an old age pensioner Then when you have this kind of level dialled in come back a notch in terms of competitive keywords and slowly but surely (over a year or so) work towards your bigger terms. Also, remember, phrases like 'what phone', it probably shows big numbers but just how good a term is that? What is someone looking for? An informative breakdown of which phones are around maybe? Maybe you could do that and provide a truly authoritative look at the phones around and update it each qtr on your site. Look to become known for your content, seed it out in other ways, be the best possible result for 'what phone' and keep your eye on the prize and you will get there but.... it's going to take time and effort and some content smarts. Oh, and don't buy cheap links, that's just going to smash this ship into the rocks before you even leave the port! Hope this helps Marcus

Irving, thanks for the response. It appears YouTube has not disabled searches with an @symbol though. For instance the query @dormtainmenttv returns results.

Thx for sharing your perspective. I need to look into this more. We are just launching our new local campaign.