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Category: Vertical SEO: Video, Image, Local

Dive into vertical-specific SEO tactics.


  • Hi Ocelot, Don't miss this Search Engine Land post which covers the top 50 citation sources for the UK and USA: http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938 There may well be some good ones on there you have missed, but as far as industry-specific directories go, finding them is frequently a manual task. Actually do some searching for terms and see what you come up with. See what offers free and paid inclusion. In addition to this, you might want to pay for usage of WhiteSpark's citation finder tool: http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/2-using-the-local-citation-finder It's an industry favorite for finding citation sources. Hope these resources help you! Miriam

    | MiriamEllis
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  • I agree with Egol's comment. That's the way to go. Optimized Filename, Anchor Text and any surrounding text...think of trying to describe the image in 3-4 words. It works wonders. And if people share your image or the page the image sits on, it helps. Also, I have not seen a clear evidence of Images XML Sitemap helping or not helping, but it can't hurt to do an XML Sitemap of Images/URLs along with their captions/titles if you can. <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" <="" span="">xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1">        <loc>http://example.com/sample.html</loc>     image:image</image:image>         image:lochttp://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc></urlset> http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/adding-images-to-your-sitemaps.html

    | NakulGoyal
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  • Thank you Rafael. That's kind of you and good luck! If you do end up having to start a Google Places Help Forum thread, I'd title it: "Customers Getting Lost Going To Old Address" I think that just might get personal attention from the forum's top contributors. Buena suerte! Miriam

    | MiriamEllis
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  • Sounds good Rich! Sorry, i couldn't find the video sitemap! Definitely add that to the robots.txt file as well (assuming it's a separate sitemap). Yeah - Google don't like the olde multiple videos per page - can only include the one. Let me know how you get on - i'm an ale man all the way :). Cheers, Phil

    | PhilNottingham
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  • WOW Thank you so much Phil - Very Kind of you

    | AMG100
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  • As we say down Jamaica way....It be jammin' mon. It be jammin'.

    | RobertFisher
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  • Check out BlueGlass. They often write about infographics on their blog (this post http://www.blueglass.com/blog/avoid-ordinary-infographics-with-these-7-steps/ is from yesterday), and they also offer infographic services (I can't personally vouch for them, but did see information about it on their home page).

    | KeriMorgret
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  • I just ask because the tool can show exactly where your site should be showing up in the SERPs and may provide a little insight. If nothing else it saves some time.

    | Andrea.G
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  • Hi Ariel, Thanks so much for bringing your question here to Q&A! The icons you are referring to are called 'Place Labels'. Read these: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=174115 http://www.iexposure.com/2011/06/16/how-to-get-a-google-places-label http://www.iexposure.com/2011/07/26/how-to-get-a-google-places-label-part-2-update These 3 links should bring you totally up to speed on this subject. Best of luck! Miriam

    | MiriamEllis
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  • OK, lets take a step back a second. Syed & BK search - sorry, but YouTube is absolutely the wrong approach here. If you're use Youtube for the content then the SERP results will link back to youtube and not to the target domain. Tim - Brightcove is totally fine and you're doing everything right from what you describe. It could be a minor sitemap error or perhaps a general technical issue that's preventing the videos from being indexed. Can you send me a link to the site in question and one of the video pages? If you don't want to reveal it publicly, then feel free to PM me or drop me an email. Cheers, Phil

    | PhilNottingham
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  • Hello Llsa, Thank you for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum, and will do my best to give you helpful answers. 1. Email addresses Yes, it is ideal to claim/create a client's Google Place Page with a domain-based email address, but if this just isn't possible, you'll have to settle for doing it with a gmail address or other address. As WrightIMC has stated, you should not experience any actual penalty for this, but I believe that it's best to do it with the domain-base address whenever possible because of its ability to send a stronger trust signal to Google that you are the owner (or that the client is the owner). 2. Radius It's vital to understand that Google will always view the actual physical address of the business as its key signal of relevance. Yes, for go-to-client business models (like carpet cleaners, landscapers, etc.) this isn't ideal because they may serve in a wide area. But, if the carpet cleaner is in San Francisco, Google views him as most relevant to San Francisco. His competitor in Oakland will be viewed as most relevant to Oakland. When I work with clients like this, I develop a strategy with them for getting high organic rankings for their service area, while the main local results must surround their actual city of location. That's just the way Local works. Exceptions to this: if you have a client in either a rural area where there are few businesses, or you have a client with an unusual business model creating a situation of low competition, the client may well show up in results outside of his city of location because he is one of the only providers of what he does. This does happen...but not in metropolitan locations, busy suburbs or industries with heavy competition. 3. Tips Study exactly what the competition is doing. Duplicate their strategy. And then go one better! Hope this helps! Miriam

    | MiriamEllis
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  • You are welcome Jastos, This is one of those points on which I wish the guideline language were slightly clearer. If, as you say, your client appears in the offline world just as 'Joe Plumber' then going the route you are going should be within the guidelines. Does the client have a DBA record of their name without the Inc? To me, I read those guidelines to mean that the name should be the legal business name (Inc included) but that's an interpretation. I agree, you could equally interpret that to mean what you have decided. But back to your original question - if you've decided to go with the name without the Inc., then I feel it would be wise to make the effort to make that consistent across the web. Miriam

    | MiriamEllis
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  • Hmmm, that's troubling, Andre. I honestly don't have an answer to this. May I recommend that you try submitting a thread to the Google Visualization API forum: http://groups.google.com/group/google-visualization-api I would love to be able to help you, but am afraid I don't know how to resolve the error messaging you are receiving. Maybe someone over there will have encountered it before and will be able to tell you what's up? Good luck! Miriam

    | MiriamEllis
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  • This is perfect thank you. Exactly what I was looking for!

    | Digirank
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  • You are very welcome, Todd. I hope this works out for you and your client. Miriam

    | MiriamEllis
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  • Hi David, Thanks for clarifying this about the suite number. Interestingly, I've been seeing reports of 'suite' being changed to '#' in Places this morning. Sounds like your listing is being affected by what may be a widespread change in Google's handling of spelling/punctuation of suites. Thought you'd like to know that. The guidelines you are quoting: Businesses with multiple specializations, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties. You may create one listing per practitioner, and one listing for the hospital or clinic at large." To my understanding, your client does not fit this scenario. He is not a practitioner within a business. He is running a separate business than the other businesses at the same address. Now, if he were one of four partners at a legal firm, then, yes, each lawyer could have his own Place Page + the main Place Page for the firm itself. But, at least as far as I've understood, this is not your client's situation, right? I can see how you would arrive at the understanding that separate businesses at the same address would deserve the same treatment as partners within a single business, but in my experience, this is not how Google sees it. I have to stick by my original feeling on this - your client needs to have a unique suite number in order to avoid trouble down the road. I think your fears of future merging are appropriate. In your shoes, I would tell the client that they are going to have to set the record straight now, deal with the hassle of this, and hope to get things straightened out in the coming months with a great deal of elbow grease on your part. And, don't forget: the Google Places Help Forum is now staffed. You can always open a thread there in hopes of getting individual attention paid to your listing. Don't cross your fingers...but it is happening more and more these days. Hope my opinion is helpful to you on this. Miriam

    | MiriamEllis
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