Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Great Resource.

Hi Lyn, To help optimize the latter Google Places listing linked above, definitely fill out the focused location page more. Adding photos and video, as well as positive user reviews will help give listing weight when searching. Also, be sure the text used for your location listing also reflects the keyword focus you have on the website, so the listing will show up in searches relevant to the keywords already optimized.

Hi Richard, Unfortunately, the Google Places stats cannot be relied upon. They have never been accurate. There was a big shakeup in March in which tons of businesses saw a big drop, and right now, with the migration to the new Places for Business dashboard, it's likely that further inaccuracies are occurring. So, while you can take a look at the data for some idea of your impressions, you can't really trust what it reports. Here is a thread that on this topic from the Google and Your Business Forum that you might find reassuring, inasmuch as you can see that you are not alone: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/qn0rL72CDgA Obviously, any business owner needs to make sure that their listing is in compliance with the Google Places Quality Guidelines and that there are no issues going on with duplicate listings, but in general, G Place Analytics simply aren't accurate. Regarding photos - with the old Google Places Dashboard, image updates can take up to 6 weeks to appear. With the new dashboard, they are supposed to go live in a matter of hours or days. So, this should improve.

Hi Steven, It was called the Wonder Wheel and WE ALL LOVED IT!  It's been decommissioned (July 2011) and no longer available, in its graphical form.  However, you can extract similar results with Adwords Contextual Targeting Tool (CTT).  Also, my understanding is the CTT is utilizing the same engine that supported Wonder Wheel. Other Wonder Wheel alternatives include: Visual Thesaurus http://www.visualthesaurus.com Visuwords http://www.visuwords.com Hope this helps!

Being in the hospitality marketing industry I sent your question around and I hope to have some options for you go through soon.  Stay tuned fellow mozzer

My pleasure, Lindsay! Yes, if your home is in the same city as the neighborhoods you service, then by all means, go ahead and proceed as any SAB would...just be sure you hide that address when creating your local Google listing. Good luck!

Are there ANY Joomla! e-commerce sites are built well and SEO friendly?  From everything I am reading and seeing there are not.

The issue is that these are low level links created by duplicate content. There is nothing wrong with it happening, but the links don't count for much. Matt Cutts said just as much a few days ago, syndicated press releases don't mean much and their value is very small. I wouldn't waste time or money on it.

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion! I was hoping someone would say this, because 'on paper' it seems good (strong domain authority, gives followed backlinks etc etc), but my very first reaction when I first saw it was 'YUK'. Thank you for confirming my gut feeling

I actually have an issue with that as well (I'm also using Excel 2010), been meaning to contact Richard Baxter to ask him about it, but I keep forgetting to do that. I use the normal function, without "_toFit", and just select the cells beforehand and use CSE (ctrl+shift+enter).

Thank you Martin!!

Hi Aaron, I have done extensive research and testing to find the best Twitter tool and I prefer SocialBro (www.SocialBro.com). You can filter by all of the criteria you mentioned as well by influence, by how often a user is listed, by account age, by time zone, country, gender, etc. It also allows you to monitor tweets, find the best time to Tweet, create lists and analyze competitors. I do have an affiliate link for SocialBro; however, I am not recommending it for that reason. It does all that you need and it has a free trial so you can try before you buy. If you would like to use my affiliate link, it is http://get.socialbro.com/fB7v. Thanks, Christine DeGraff

I haven't used this click fraud software before, but Click Fraud is fairly common, especially with industries that have high CPC.  I managed Mesothelioma campaigns, which have the highest CPC $100+, and about 10-15% of mesothelioma clicks are fraudulent. Legal keywords generally range from $5-20/click, however some clicks are $20+, so click fraud is probable.  There are lots of click fraud software packages available...some offer a free trial.  My advice is try a few out, I imagine they will generate a refund that is significantly greater than their cost. Do you have a way of getting IP addresses from your server log and then looking up the business name/url for that IP?  I look this info up in HubSpot and have found that lots of our competitors click on our text ads, costing us $$.  I then block that IP.  Over time, this adds up to a better campaign.

Thank you Tom, Takeshi and Don. oh my. Your responses alerted me to the possibility that the code was already in place. We were Google verified long ago- we have the little check mark in G+ and I use AuthorSure. So lo and behold, we just checked and the code is there. So sorry to waste your time!!!

If you raised your budget, but have CPM bidding still on, then you will just be paying more for display advertising. Possibly better places, but not really. I don't think it works like that. You should be bidding CPC on display because then you are only charged when someone clicks on your banner ad (text or image) and comes to your site. The majority of people don't actually click on banner ads and instead visit the site via direct traffic.

I've actually had this discussion a few times   My prime example is always The Telegraph who was SEO'd by Distilled (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/).  If you look at their menu structure they utilize submenus for each section to limit the number of links on a given page.  Granted, they have a massive amount of authority, but they are still trying to best harness how it passes through the website. By clicking on 'World News' you get a sub-menu of different regions.  By clicking 'European News' you get another sub-menu for different countries/topics in Europe. This allows you to pump as much authority as you can into your main topics, and makes sure that you have the most relevant links while in the sub-topics. So, if ranking internal pages isn't important in your strategy, go ahead and forget about it.  However, if you want your deeper pages to rank well you should consider how reckless you are with your internal links.  You will be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Yes AdWords average CPC tool gives inaccurate estimates for keyword bids.  My guess is that it has to do with how Quality Score effects cpc.   Determining average CPC without knowing the average Quality Score is not an accurate measure.  If your quality score for the keyword is low, then you need to bid much more than the average CPC to be on the page.  Of If your Quality Score is high, then you wont need to bid as much.  I also have noticed that AdWords estimates seem to be a longer trend..for both volume and CPC.  I guess they are using a yearly average, not the last 30 days

Thanks Larry. I will certainly check it.

Hi Adam, To date, I believe Google is still only offering the hotel booking feature on their own impetus - I don't believe it's something you can initiate. That being said, you can do things to prompt Google's awareness and, hopefully, earn the booking feature. This is the most up-to-date post I have read on this subject: http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/a-hotels-guide-to-google-hotel-finder/ From your example, clearly it is possible for this to happen. Please, check out the above article and see if it helps!

Which do you think has more SEO or SMO impact?  Google plus votes, Facebook Likes, or Facebook shares?