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I have heard a lot of people say not to trust the results of google adword's keyword tool.  Is there a better tool out there that i am not aware of that can judge local monthly and global monthly search volume?

I have recently been gaining a lot of backlinks which have anchortext that is not exactly related to the keywords we are targeting.  I have no control over the anchotext used in these backlinks in this situation.

Given that we already rank in a certain position for keyword2 based on the existing backlinks we have with keyword2 in them.

Will adding another say 50 high authority backlinks with anchortext keyword1 hurt our rankings for keyword2?

What i am trying to ask here, is can you dilute existing backlink keyword anchortext by gaining backlinks with different anchortext?

just got an e-mail from google actually:

Hello from Google!

We're delighted to share some great news. We recently introduced free phone support for all of our U.S.- and Canada-based AdWords advertisers. Now, when you have a question about your account or advertising campaigns, you can find helpful answers online, via email, or over the phone.

1-866-246-6453 or

1-866-2-GOOGLE

or email us using our online form

Please have your Customer ID XXXXXXX ready when you call or email

Our specialists are ready to take your call between Monday-Friday, 9am-8pm Eastern Time.

I think it depends on the customer really. It might be wise to discuss your strategy openly with them, it is quite possible they have someone on their staff that could help you write copy, and save your time for more valuable things.

Thanks! that was very helpful!

Have you had any luck getting reviews to stick with google and yelp though?  I noticed that the only reviews that translate to actual stars on google are google user's reviews.  Are you noticing stars apearing from homestars.com and canpages.ca?

Also, i have seen some n49.ca reviews stick btw.

I wish i could help you, i myself am just looking into and learning adwords.  That sounds like a question that you could ask of the google adwords support department.  Remember in this case you're the client, they're getting money from you, so they will be more than happy to give you help/advice on how they can better take your money

I would go with the abreviation, as it is the most common form other people will put it up as.  You might even get someone listing your business on their website unsolisited.  Often i find these people will use abreviated form, and what really matters is that it matches what is in your google places.

either way, pick one now, and stick with it forever. don't change it, and make sure it matches everywhere.

also google definitely prefers local numbers to 1800 numbers as primary phone numbers in places page.

and make sure you use their format: (123) 456-7890

which site? google or yelp? and where? got an example?

Honestly i wouldn't bother much with submitting links to directories.  You can spend your time much more productively trying to aquire links directly from related blogs and local businesses or friends websites.  It takes a bit more work, but from my experiance those link directories are pretty much ignored by google, and won't gain you much other than an easy way to waste your time.

Try guest writing some material on a related blog, then you have full control over the link and the anchor text as well as the content it is surrounded by.

That seems to be an american only site. doesn't really solve my problem, as i am in canada.

Also, it seems that the only reviews that show stars next to the number of reviews are google reviews.

I'm open to hearing other peoples opinions on the matter.

Do you have any tricks to getting reviews to stick on yelp?

Whenever we ask out customers to review us on there their reviews end up getting "detected" as fakes.

I have tried it out myself, and the only way i've gotten them to stick is making several reviews of various different local businesses with average ratings and then dropping one in for the client with a better rating.

Perhaps this is a little on the blackhat/greyhat side of things.  But if our customers are legitimatly trying to review us and it doesn't stick, i don't feel all that bad taking this route, the only real problem is time consumed.

What about google? has anyone had any luck gaining more reviews for their client on google?

that is not exactly what i got from reading this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

Sorry for the lame title, i couldn't think of a better one.

I want to know if google treats this:

http://www.domain.com/products/some-product-name

the same as it would treat:

http://www.domain.com/?products=some-product-name

if not, could you tell me the differences?

a straight google search for: mailto:user@domain.com

will get you loads of results. is there a scraper that filters them down nicely.. not that i know of, but it shouldn't be too hard to write one, or shouldn't cost much to hire a php guru to make one for you.

what is your application? perhaps there is another approach?

I have noticed when i change the page title of some pages the rankings will temporarily drop almost completely off the first page, or to the top of the second page. after a few days the page crawls back up to being #3 or #2 on the first page.

"since Google dings pages when their titles change, modifying your Facebook Page’s name will cost you SEO points."

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/07/13/seo-facebook-pages-10-key-strategies/

Although, perhaps the author was wrong, just noticed a comment further down the page that said google doesn't penalize this behavior

I just recently learned that changing your page title earns you a google penalty.  Unfortunately i learned this after playing around with my page titles a bit to get the most optimal page titles.  Does anybody know how long this google penalty lasts? is it forever? or just temporary?

Thank you, i found this quite helpful.

Doesn't this completely contradict Google's motivations?

It seems that if this was the case, then google could easily be gamed by purchasing position on all these local directories.  Wouldn't this be the opposite of what google wants?

In the case of links, google does their very best to ignore paid links.

Why would they turn around and give benefit to paid citations?

We have been working on local SEO quite a lot for our small business, trying to understand why we are consistantly outranked by our competators.  I understand there are many factors at play here.

I realize that DA & PA, Places page optimization, and on page optimization also play a role, but for the purpose of this question i would like to focus on just one factor: citations.

From your experiance with local SEO do you find that a citation that is located closer to the top of the page holds more weight than a citation buried further down a page?

Here is an example:
http://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/Storage-Self+Service/Toronto+ON/

in this case the people paying for the priority positions on that page are right at the top of the page, rather than buried 5 pages into the results.  in fact they are right at the top of each page of the results, so over and over again they are above the free listings.

I have heard that google considers the value of a link based on its position on the page.  So would it be safe to assume that google also considers the value of a citation based on its position on the page?

Thank you for your time,
Storwell