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Thanks Everett, we're going to try to hack wp

Hi John, While I don't own a hotel or restaurant or other entertainment-oriented business, I have been working in Local SEO since the mid-2000s. While I'm not sure that it's necessary to do anything 'different', I do think the carousel may prompt Local business owners and Local SEOs to do some things better. Namely: You have got to be on top of your citation sources. Because clicking on a business in the carousel now brings up a big list of citations in the SERPs, reputation management has just been pointed up as more important than ever. Crummy reviews on your Yelp profile or bad NAP data on your Yahoo! Local profile are going to have a greater impact on any user who actually scrolls around through that page of branded SERPs. Keeping your citations up to date, responding positively to negative reviews and working hard to earn good reviews simply matter more than ever now for carousel-included businesses. Images matter more than ever now. There was a completely awesome forum post about how to control which image appears for your business. Go to: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-search/8819-case-study-images-businesses-carousel-local-results.html The author's test was relatively small, but his order of operations for getting a preferred image to appear in the carousel make sense to me. I'll quote here: "The whole point of this is to inform you that; you have control over the images that show on the new results. Here is a quick breakdown of what Google is looking for. 1. Listing verified and managed in Google Places (This is the easiest method of control) 2. Gathers User Photos for unverified listing 3. Uses Citation Sources as a last resort for photos. 4. Adds a map image when nothing else can be found." At the same time, actually choosing which image will make you stand out in the lineup matters a lot now, too. Mike Blumenthal touches on this in this piece (http://localu.org/blog/google-introduces-new-carousel-display-for-local-results/) but I have yet to see a real study of tactics that make an image stand out. For example, is it better to have a closeup of food or an image of your building as your main photo? What about the use of color? Does using red make your image pop? Etc. This is deserved of experimentation, for sure. 3. Where you're at in the carousel lineup matters, based on early heatmap studies. Mike Ramsey wrote a good piece on this and a study of the heatmap is helpful in understanding this: http://localu.org/blog/a-heat-map-click-study-for-googles-local-carousel-results/ Expect change. Google is experimenting with this right now. Just this week, I was discussing with a member here at Moz the fact that some people are seeing a toggle button in the carousel that is totally absent for other people. This kind of behavior is indicative of testing. And, the whole thing with the Zagat-based ratings is in flux right now, too. So, the carousel we are seeing in mid-July may be quite different from the one we're seeing in December later this year. Overall, I don't really see the carousel as a game changer. I see it as incentive to continue to do better at the core work of Local SEO. Having a violation-free Google+ Local page, building strong, clean citations, earning diverse reviews, managing your reputation, etc. I hope others will contribute to this important topic John has brought up!

thank you for the great advices Kurt. have a lot of think about how to best move forward and get people involved, and more importantly, how to capture all that seo juice so i wont loose any. seo seems alot more fun now then before when it was just about linking

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Yes I totally agree with your point. Thanks a lot guys for your help in finding me the right information.

The right meta description can get people to click - so while not ranking factor, it's very critical to success in driving traffic.

There's no telling. I'd say wait at least a month after submitting a thorough disavow to see any changes.

No problem my friend. You are most welcome and here at Moz, you will not only be able to get almost all your SEO related queries addressed and solved, you will also learn a great deal about digital marketing. I highly recommend to every aspiring digital marketer to be active on a community like Moz and I bet they will be able to save a great deal of time and money as well. Wish you all the very best. Regards, Devanur Rafi.

If you want someone to confirm Matts answer I would do the same thing. Hope that help, Thomas

Hi Stephanie, So - I'd basically avoid the Google help pages on these kinds of topics, because they're completely useless. Essentially to get into Google video search (http://www.google.com/videohp) you need to get a page indexed as a video, and then optimise the page as you would for organic search. So, your process looks like this.... Get the video indexed. This can be done either by submitting a video sitemap, or by using the VideoObject schema.org mark-up. Personally, I prefer using a video sitemap, as it tends to be more consistent. For details on how to do this, check out this post: http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/creating-video-sitemaps-for-each-video-hosting-platform/ Optimise the page for the relevant keywords. You can do this exactly in the same way you would optimise for organic search - so ensure you have keywords in the Title tag and on-page, then build some links and ensure the page has really great user - experience. That is basically it. There are some technicalities about the types of embedded video Google will index, but you only need to worry about that if you have trouble getting things indexed with the sitemap or schema mark-up. Hope that's useful! Phil.

Hey Justin, it is a pretty long and specific process. However there is close to 50 different blogs and articles published on MOZ alone for it. I'd start here: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amoz.com%2Fblog%2F+%2B+unnatural+link+removal Hope this helps! Kyle

Thanks FDFPres. Interestingly, all sites that have improved over the weekend have previously been hit by Panda, which makes me think perhaps there may have been one of these mysteriously silent rolling Panda tweaks. Some of the sites which were worst affected, and subsequently were reduced <1000 visits a week are now running around 90% up week on week organically.

Just wanted to send some love to all those that go beyond page 1  As the owner of a small ecommerce business who has been pushed off the first page by all the big box store (Sears, Walmart, Costco, etc) results, I'm always overjoyed to hear about those who have made it a habit to go beyond page 1. Maybe there should be some sort of Go Beyond viral campaign like "Google Beyond page 1 for the good stuff!"  (pretty awkward, needs some work, where are all the bright copywriters?...)

Days, weeks, months, or sometimes never It is a very inexact science, and we're unaware of the vast majority of the 500+ updates Google makes every year.

Yep, if Bing Webmaster Tools doesn't show problems with the sitemap, I'd focus on the points I highlighted back in mid-June on this thread (make content robust, unique, and make sure text is in HTML). Good luck, Kristina

Hi Kathy, I had a client that we recently did this for and I can say that this isn't true. What could have an effect on your rankings would be if you update to the new version and change all of the URL settings and page title settings, etc. Just make sure that you make a backup and keep your existing settings intact.

Thanks for the detailed response, It is very much appreciated.

I gave Tom a "good answer" As for other suggestions, none except the obvious. 1. Keep building content that earns links/mentions/buzz 2. Make sure you have a diverse link profile 3. Diversify your inbound traffic sources. I'm starting to sound like Dr. Pete, so I'll just link to this post and save us both time: http://moz.com/blog/top-1-seo-tips-for-2013 Cheers!

Thank you Carla - I too noticed moz.com appears in most seo-related topic searches, so thought it was odd that tools showed they have a PR2. And thanks for the link - great info to know for the future if there is a project we have that involves domain changes

So in a nutshell this is how I list out products at present but I don't group size just colours, we then have related items linking through to there sizes. Egyptian Bath Towels (15 colours) Alt tags all contain colour as well. Egyptian Bath Sheets (15 colours) A lot of food for thought there. For me, the key is to find the one person who can write the content hit that sweet spot. The search continues! Egol, thanks for all your advice.