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If this were me (or my client), I would focus on claiming and taking over the Google Local page.  While that can be a complicated process, and communicating with Google can be slow, if you keep at it they will eventually help you get control of the page.   Can you share the Google page that is causing the issues?

So basically, It wouldn't benefit me to use more than what I am already using?

I believe if you go to your Facebook page -> Edit Page -> Settings -> Notifications, you should be able to manage your notifications from the page to your email through a checkbox. If you still do not receive any emails from Facebook, you may want to check the notification settings on your own Facebook account.

Hi Qlkasdjfw, If you are encountering this problem with your customers, I'm assuming you are either friends with the owner of the Tustin dealership and he is letting you know about it, or customers are reporting directly to you that they visited the wrong dealership first. If the latter, I would grill them about how, exactly, they searched for this. My guess would be that they simply got confused about the 2 Auto Center Roads being so close together...not that they were doing searches for '30 Auto Center Road', because I just can't get my head around someone performing a search like that. Maybe they would even show you on their cell phone (if they used a cell phone) exactly how this happened, so that you would have more information about whether customers, in general, are puzzled by 2 identical road names in a 7 mile area (which probably confuses so many people) or if they would actually search for a business by looking up an address, instead of the business type or brand.

I just wanted to add my views. I don't think there is such a thing as 'Google Images'.  Google is returning a search result of images that exist on peoples websites, with links through to those websites.  The purpose of those images is to drive people to those sites they are attached to, not to take directly from Google. If your posts are along the lines of 'what to do in this city', you'd be better off approaching the people and asking if you can feature them on your site?  e.g. if one of the things you are suggesting is 'visit this theatre, or visit this restaurant, I'm sure the theatre and restaurant would be delighted to get a mention and willingly let you use their images.  You should link to their sites and they may well give you the benefit of linking back to you as you are featuring them as a 'good things to do when you are visiting x'. The bottom line is always ask permission.  Chances are, if you are giving credit to the photographer, or the owner of the images (i.e. the restaurant, theatre etc), they will be happy to let you use them as you are promoting them. You can get into some hot water by just taking them and it's not fair on the owner not to receive some credit for their work.

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Hi, Everybody has issues with the AdWords API - as Google revoked access to a lot of companies and now it looks like they are after all of us I agree with you that they did had some issue with communication especially with the Adcenter - but overall I am sure they have some solid reason - what I don't understand is why they didn't open up and be transparent. I don't think there is a good replacement for Raven overall - on the features they provide and that are not present in other tool kits.

I wouldent spend $300 on that. You can find information for free just by searching Google and here at SEO moz.

There are no pros of using article directories.   Short term gains might look like a pro, but they aren't. Value in these sources of links has gone down over the years, and they'll continue to slide.  A better use of your time might be with publishing a few selective guest posts on related sites.  With regards to your question, use links wherever it feels natural.  If the link is forced or looks out of place, you probably shouldn't be doing it. ...and remember the links you use, don't all have to be pointing to your site alone. I did a guest post recently which was later re-published on Forbes.  In addition to my own, I linked to two other sites which I was not affiliated with.  One of them emailed me to say thanks and I took the opportunity to ask for a link from his PR6 site which I got.  I emailed the other one, and after several exchanges it was clear that the only thing that moves him to link out is money.  So there ya go.

I use www.keyworkstrategy.org to categorize keywords into as many cats as you wish down to the page and or topic.  It's export feature is easy to export new keywords. It has a keyword finder that is quite nice and if you use wordpress it has a companion plugin that provides keyword gathering and internal links of those keywords across all posts and pages selectively. I search for thousands of keywords, prioritize by kei, cost and rank. It's an eco system for keyword management finding new keywords from google analytics searches that reach your site, new posts and a host of other features. It is designed to manage tens of thousands of keywords and in the end help you prioritize your content creation to take advantage of the known keywords that perform for your topics and industry. I use it to help pinpoint the most effective keywords for my industry so that I write about what people are looking for, using their terminology. I know, they say don't write for keywords, write for the user... As an expert in my field, sadly Google is not using my expert knowledge and terminology and helping people find it - I have to meet them half way by knowing what they are looking for and the words they are using to try to find my expertise. Keyword management is super time consuming, but this tool has helped me sort through thousands of keywords, manage them through projects, groups, pages and sites.  Now I can find and categorize rapidly now that it is all up and running.  Since some of my keywords are good for other sites, I export them to excel and then reimport them into other projects, filtering by selections, tags, kei, cost, occurrence and other helpful indicators. So now I have a keyword specific management system and the ability to use spreadsheets fast and easily too! www.apalytics.com www.cio-tech.com www.synsynack.com Bill Alderson

yes -its called guest posting now (we no longer see the value of article directories)

Google is pretty clear on hidden text: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353 In practice, it's pretty common to "organize" text using CSS or Javascript in a way that sometimes hides it from the user. In your case, since your intention is not to deceive search engines, but to enhance user experience, one option would be to include the "read more" via javascript, and then include the same text in a <no script="">tag.</no> Keep in mind, Google will read this as html text on the page, and often in the same position as you place it on the page. So if you place several paragraphs of text in a no script tag towards the top of the page... ask yourself is this is how you want Google to view your homepage. As long as you follow Google's guidelines, and are careful to make your text accessible, you should be fine.

When you look in OSE, it shows 35 LRD but right above the large metrics is the small print "Link metrics for the page http://thisisouryear.com/". The key word is "page". If you look at the SEOmoz tool bar it offers three sets of link metrics: the page, the sub-domain and the root domain. If you look at the page metrics for the URL you will see it shows as 35 LRD. If you look at the root domain metrics, it shows 1015 LRD. As an additional note, this particular directory does not warrant any analysis. It is a pay-for-link directory which charges $25 for links and then you choose if you want a follow or nofollow link. If you choose nofollow, then the link is not worth paying money. If you choose follow, then you are violating Google's policies as this site is not compliant with them. You would therefore subject yourself or your client to penalties. Google is coming down hard on manipulative links and their removal is the most painful penalty to deal with in SEO. The overwhelming majority of directories are manipulative links. If you obtain a link from a directory, please be sure they comply with Google's guidelines.

I just got off of another long call with the CBS rep and in a nutshell, I finally understand what they do. They take over your adwords campaign and buy a unique URL (an example of the type of URL is joesplumbingserviceoaklandca.com). Then they craft a two page website that provides a phone number as a means of contacting the business. No email, no form. The website gets indexed by Google and will beat out your real website if someone searches that exact URL phrase. In Joe the plumber's case, that long-tail domain URL is a valid search term someone would use. So if someone finds the CBS site organically and calls the number, the client gets charged. Also, the link on the CBS page pointing to the main website goes to a mirrored site at a different URL than the actual business URL and the phone number on that is a tracking number as well. They asked me to run a test with them to see if it works. I said, I am not going to take a $8000 test with you because if it doesn't work then it is me on the hook for recommending this product. They said if it doesn't work they will throw in $8000 worth of radio advertising and banner display ads. But they wouldn't tell me where. I asked if we could do a 1-month trial or even a 2-month trial and they said no. 6 months is needed for the campaign to ramp up. I asked for a reference of a client that is happy with the product. I got a 5 minute explanation of how advertisers would not want to discuss their plans with anyone else and that I should trust them that everyone is satisfied. So I pressed again and said, "If this product was so amazing and I had a huge ROI and you called me and asked me to speak to a potential advertiser to vouch for your product, I would do it in a heart beat." They replied by saying they would try and find someone. Oh and they said they are not selling this product to make millions, they are just trying to solidify their relationship with our agency. It was all about the sale and it became more and more obvious by the end. I think they could feel my disdain through the phone. Sorry, that wasn't a nutshell. Anyone know anything about ringrevenue.com?

Well said Oracle.

Finding blogs can certainly be difficult when you've guest posted on 300+ blogs in your niche.  I wrote a YouMoz post last year about ways to find guest post opportunities - perhaps that could be of some inspiration? I also created a free tool to help generate queries to find guest post opportunities based on a variety of keywords - it sounds similar to the method you've used to find current guest post opportunities, but perhaps there are a couple query variations that you haven't tried yet - check it out here: Guest Post Opportunity Finder. Aside from that, what comes to mind is figuring out ways to post on blogs that may not be directly related to your niche - in other words, horizontal guest blogging.  For example, if you are doing SEO for a construction company, don't solely focus on construction blogs, but figure out ways to create content that can be shopped to real estate, home improvement, and green or sustainable building blogs.  Sugarrae wrote an awesome post that talks about horizontal guest blogging.

Greetings! I wanted to provide some resources for you to review before making a decision on this. Here is an SEOmoz discussion on this same topic: http://www.seomoz.org/q/call-tracking-and-local-seo Here is an article from 2009 by David Mihm which continues to be pointed to in most discussions of call tracking: http://searchengineland.com/be-wary-of-call-tracking-numbers-in-local-search-26895 Here is a detailed and excellent article from Chris Silver Smith regarding cloaking and call tracking: http://searchengineland.com/for-local-seo-lack-of-call-tracking-solution-spawns-cloaking-70198 I believe that a read of these three resources will give you all of the information you need to make an informed choice regarding the risk/benefits of call tracking in a local campaign. Good luck! Miriam