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Blog syndication is definitely an area where you should tread very carefully and the SEO benefit is likely to be minimal and possibly negative. If you use syndication purely as a means of increasing brand awareness for your client and a means to gain some referral traffic then it can be useful in that sense - but is it more useful than just writing a quality blog and retaining it your client's own site and then earning links, shares etc because the content is so good? Quality and unique content is what should rank and by syndicating the content it certainly becomes of less value in Google's and readers eyes, especially if they keep finding the content in many other areas. I would advise your client to keep the content for themselves unless the volume of referral traffic they receive is that great, in which case they should perhaps consider providing the content to other sites but not necessarily retaining it on their own blog. Alternatively, they could provide abridged versions of their own content to other sites and retain a lengthy authoritative version on their own blog. That said, if the content is that good then there's no reason it can't do more good for you client if they just retain it purely for themselves and market it effectively.

Hi Jane There has been a fair amount of discrepancy regarding Google Places rejections, and unfortunately as of now, there are still difficulties in re-instating rejected submission for Google Places. Located here is a good article regarding difficulties with Google Places listings; in the meantime, you can start by ensuring you are using Google Webmaster Tools. The Google Places dashboard does not mention checking the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard, where issues may be occurring, so you may be able to find helpful notices there. As well, if you have two businesses residing at the same address, it may be beneficial to add an “a” and “b” to the suite number (if possible) as Google Places may have trouble identifying two businesses in the same suite.

Thank you for your answer!

Thanks a lot. We are using Freshbooks and PayPal. We don't use Google Wallet, so I don't know if it would work.

It is likely not available to you at this time.  It is only being offered to a limited number of verified accounts still.

Morris, I did some Googling and found quite a number of people who were using an app or CMS called Presta (something) that had an image sitemap generator.  This makes me think that a little issue in the sitemap could cause this problem. Compare your image sitemap to mine and see if you can see anything different, missing tags, etc.: http://www.visualitineraries.com/imagesitemap.xml

Gianluca, Aleyda, thanks. Just talked to PRNewswire. +8000$ for one release in 22 languages is breaking my budget. businesswire was similar. I think they are a reseller of PRNewswire. maybe I will then just distribute worldwide an English press release.

I don't consider myself an expert on IDX & listing integration, but I'd personally choose a Wordpress-based site with a reputable real estate agent theme. I'd choose Wordpress because it will be a lot easier to add additional content than most custom CMS options (and I'm biased towards Wordpress in general). A couple I've heard of (can't vouch for any one in particular): https://placester.com/ http://themes.agentevolution.com/ http://www.wp-agent.com/ http://www.premiumwp.com/the-best-real-estate-wordpress-themes/ seems to have a good list as well and updated recently. Also, you could try Googling competitive markets (e.g. Chicago real estate agent, New York real estate agent, etc) and open up the top 10 results, and see which ones are based in Wordpress. If they're ranking in those SERPs, it's a good sign that the SEO aspects of the site are working just fine.

While no follow definitely does give you "link juice" (wow, that term is the worst), links on Twitter definitely have SEO value. Besides for conversation, the second reason people go to Twitter is for content discovery. You definitely have a huge potential for traffic, and from social media, this is the biggest immediately boost that Twitter gives you. Other things: 1. Build your community and your brand presence. 2. Get your name in front of people's eyes who might not have seen you. 3. Loyal community members really help you in the bad times. If you've build an awesome community who's loyal to your brand and say, the economy dives and you sell a luxury product, you'll see people still buying and advocating your brand. Or say when something goes wrong, people care a lot. For instance, at SEOmoz, when our tools were having tons of issues in Sept of last year, our community stuck by us and even made us a get well Roger card. 4. Serve as an extension of customer service. Using Twitter as customer service can cut down on customer service costs - a tweet vs a phone call. And also be an early warning for issues and save you money say if someone spots a problem with your product and you can fix it before hundreds/thousands notice. 5. Okay, a lot of those weren't SEO, but there is evidence that Google definitely indexes Twitter and while Twitter's links may be no-follow, Google isn't stupid and if they see a lot of people pointing out the same link / having the same conversation on Twitter, they know it's hot. Social signals do count. We just don't know for how much / how long they affect the Algo since we don't know the Algo's exact formula.

Hi Brian, I'm using it for my travel site, pulling country descriptions from Freebase for some overview pages for those countries. I'm happy to share some sample code if you like. My code is in ASP, but the Freebase-ish bits are pretty translateable.  The rest is a matter of using whatever you have (PHP etc.) to set up a GET request and parse the response. Email me privately at michael at visualitineraries dot com.

Thanks for reminding me of this tool. I forgot to consider it for this once my avatar started showing up.

I second 99designs.com - Terrific resource. The people behind Flippa and Sitepoint. Also, somebody I have worked with several times over the last couple years and a friend www.nutsitlab.com

Whenever you talk about PPC or awards it’s always about ROI and not about traffic only... so when you are going to optimize your list of keywords it should be based on ROI analysis. I would advise you to grab the record and see when keywords have lower cpc and have a better conversion rate as compare to those which contain higher cpc but are not offering any good conversion... On basis of that you can always alter the list of final keywords that eat your less money and gives you better ROI.

I'm currently looking for a good social sharing plugin for wordpress. I've tried Tweet & Like in the past and it was decent. I am trying out Tweet, Like, Plusone, and Share which had a good rating.

The reason that it's working so well for me is that it allows me to keep my bids in the positions that I want no matter what the competing bids are doing. I've used this formula-based approach for years, and while I sometimes have to adjust the variation off of the first-position estimates, I've found that it holds true across the board, and as such, I can nimbly adjust the keyword bids for tens of thousands of keyword in a few minutes. I can also run a far more complicated formula that tells me whether prices are going up or down across thousands of keywords. It's not all that complicated if you have a decent grasp on spreadsheet formulas.

Hi Miguel, you've received some great responses here! Has your question been answered?

Marin is the best performing platform, their bidding tool can be fine tuned in so many ways.  acquisio creates great reports, but lacks in Marin's bidding tools.  Also mongoose metrics is great at tracking inbound phone calls back to the keyword that generated the call.....which integrates with Marin, not acquisio.   Marin integrates with Adword, adcenter, Facebook & mongoose...so you can manage everything in one location.

I currently use Marin, previously used acquisio, and briefly tested keyshoo.   Marin is the best from a performance prespective.  acquisio is better for reporting.    If you generate inbound phone calls, make sure to use Mongoose Metrics, which integrates with Marin so you can track inbound phone calls back to the keyword that generated the call.  My clients experienced a 30% performance improvement once Marin & Mongoose were integrated.  Marin is rather expensive, but if your clients are spending a sizable amount on ppc, Marin more than pays for itself.  It also allows you to manage campaigns more efficiently...you can make all of your changes to Adwords & AdCenter simultaneously.  Plus Marins bidding algorithem let's you set many rules, that will greatly improve bidding performance.

Hi William, Creative thinking, but this is not a strategy I would recommend for a local business. Local businesses need to publish a single clear NAP signal, and adding mailing addresses for social media  or other purposes will cloud that signal. Because of this, I don't believe what you are recommending would be good fit for this scenario, though it might be a creative approach in a non-local scenario.

Sorted keri.