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Hey - another vote for getting this set up for your client. It is a pain sometimes to get them to verify etc but if you can do it this way the client retains central control and visibility and you can then bolt on access to all of these platforms. Hope that helps Marcus

Doh!  That was exactly it - thanks so much - you ROCK!!  

Wow - hadn't thought of that!  Very creative use of resources!!    Thanks so much ~ Scott

That makes sense - thanks for reporting back!

Exactly what I needed!  Thanks!  

Hey Scott, That's a tough problem, but removing the phone number would not be a good solution as it is one of the 4 core pieces of NAP+W data that Google and customers need to see about any local business. I wouldn't trust a business with no listed phone number and expect most customers would feel the same about this. I like Bryan's common sense suggestions on this. What I would like to add is that your thread has made me curious as to what it is about the client's business that is making it so confusing to customers that they need a 15 minute explanation before they understand the business model. Maybe the very best thing to do here would be for you to coach the client into whittling that down to a 4-5 sentence explanation that takes less than 1 minute to explain. Think along the lines of an elevator pitch. No business should require a 15 minute explanation, if we're just covering the basics. Likely, what the client is experiencing is that it's necessary to then move forward from the basic explanation to the conversation that leads to discovering the fitness of a prospect and then closing a deal. While there is no way to avoid putting in this time, again, it comes down how the conversation is managed. I am thinking back to my own early days when I found it frustrating that I would spend a great deal of time listening to customer's issues and explaining my service, only to discover many minutes into the conversation that their budget did not match my fees. What I eventually learned from this was to mention my rates within the first couple minutes of the conversation. At that point, I would either hear, "Oh, I can't afford that." or "That sounds reasonable." This helped me determine whether a further investment of my time in the discussion was appropriate. It may be that your client is struggling with something like this and needs to refine her communications so that she can tell the difference between a good match and a poor one within a couple of minutes of answering her phone. One other suggestion ... have the client answer the phone and then put the customer on hold for 30 seconds. In that 30 seconds, run an automated on-hold message with music and voice disclosing the key components of the pitch. By the time the owner then takes the customer off hold, they will have heard the basics.

Seems like Google is leaning toward favoring YouTube content with the removal of Rich Snippets. If you can get the same SEO benefit using a video site map and embedding YouTube videos instead, why not have your website visitors increase your YouTube video view counts and possibly add subscribers while you're at it.

Hi Scott, It is my understanding that search volume within the Keyword Planner Tool is given by exact match only.  However, in the planner tool, the performance projections are given for each different match type. Hope this helps, Chris Wilson

_It is perfectly normal to use - &trade and I do not think that it will make any impact on the visibility whatsoever. _

You need to fix it quickly. Yes, canonical is a suggestion, but in my experience it's a very strong suggestion. I ran an experiment a while back where setting rel=canonical sitewide wreaked havoc on one of my sites: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/catastrophic-canonicalization Now, Google may recognize it's a mistake and ignore it, but they also may just take days or weeks to process it, and the damage is just going to increase. I'd fix it ASAP and try to get appropriate (self-referencing) canonical tags in place.