Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Miriam,

I think budget issues are always a consideration. I'm with you: if the owner doesn't get that this is a long term effort to increase their business, then I tell them I can't help them.

I tell them that my job is to increase their business and that I need a commitment of time and money to do so. I generally try to get them to commit for a one year period and a budget large enough to actually accomplish something.

These kinds of customers are harder to find, but, once I do, because I have the time and money to get a result, they tend to become more or less permanent customers.

My biggest challenge is explaining what I'm going to do and how this will result in more business.

Hi Miriam,

Great answer.  I especially like your differentiation on "is" and "does" and agree 100% about the importance of mapping content to research and trying to cover as many bases as you can.

I've long been involved with national campaigns, but this is my first local job. I knew the categories would be crucial, but wasn't sure about the best approach.  With your roadmap, I know exactly what to do.

You should consider a  post on this issue. This is a crucial issue for local, and I bet a lot of people aren't getting this.

How do you deal with customer resistance to expanded/ongoing content?

Hi Miriam,

That's exactly what I'm asking: should I build out my website service pages as per the custom categories available in Places or per preset categories available in + Local?

Say you are listed with both Google places and Google Local. Places still allows custom categories, while Local limits you to preset categories. Which is the better strategy: to build service pages following custom services available in Places, or build out service pages following the (allowed) preset categories in Local.

Great. thanks Linda. My big takeaway here is that Yellow Pages and Industry Canada are primary data aggregators in Canada.

Just what I was looking for. Thanks Lynn.

Hi Mozzers,

I've seen David Mihm's list of data aggregators for local search for the US (infogroup, localeze, acxiom) but I'm in Canada. Does anyone know if someone has sourced this?

Hi Mozzers,

I have a both an 800 number and a local number for a local business client, with both featured on the site. Which number should I feature on the Google places, Google+ and local citations — the local number, the 800 number, or both?

Any help appreciated.

A client of mine has been approached by a company that sets up one-off private link networks like this:

Main site: http://www.klausparking.com/

Network sites:

http://www.carparkingtechnology.com/
http://www.carparkingsystem.com/
http://www.victoriaparking.net/
http://www.reginaparking.com/
http://www.torontoparking.net/
http://www.multicarparkingsystem.com/
http://www.carparkingsolutions.com/

The company doing this actually promotes this as a patent-pending feature they call "silos". How do I explain the real danger to my client?

Thanks!

Hi Mozzers,

Is it possible to do YouTube-specific keyword research? I have a client who sells wine making franchises and wants to produce a video for prospective franchisees.

I doubt people are looking for this on YouTube and want some data to support my case so I can push the project in a more meaningful direction.

Hi Mozzers,

I've been mainly B2B focused, and am used to estimating the amount of work necessary to best competition for organic results, but now I have a local client.

I need a method to estimate the amount of work necessary to get listed in the one-box for my chosen queries.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Any help appreciated.

Hi Mozzers,

I've had some successful national and international campaigns but this will be my first attempt at local. The client is a landscape designer, services several cities within a 50 mile radius and has a rural address which is not located in any of the cities serviced.

What's my best strategy for ranking in the desired cities considering the client's address is not located in any of them?

...ask Gravity — why didn't I think of that? Good advice, thank you both.

Hi Mozzers,

Gravity Forms for Wordpress provides an unsurpassed user experience. The form submits and the form response replaces it  without having to reload or redirect to another page.

The problem is that without a redirect there's no way to track this event in Google Analytics.

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who tried to track and ajax event in Google Analytics.

Sounds great Rand, but until then, to show clients  progress, I'm going to have to use one of those barebones list-of-links indices.

Even though GWT's Links to your site is about a month behind I am finding that it reports new links faster than either OSE or Majestic.

Has anybody found anything more current than GWT?

Any chance of sharing some of your other sources?

I get that OSE is trying to be discriminating and discount spammy non-relevant directory links but most of my links are good quality and highly relevant.

Vikas, I have high quality links from the government of Canada which have never appeared in the OSE index.