Google, This Is an Outrage! "Exact Match Business Name" is the Sh*t These Days!

I am just appalled at this Google Local Business Pack result for the key phrase: "seo expert philippines".

Check out the screen grab below:

What did you notice from the 3-pack listing showing generic business names with exact or related match results for the key phrase "seo expert philippines"?

Still not convinced? Check out this Case Study link from Moz.com:

Case Study: The Interconnectedness of Local SEO and Exact Match Domains

The case study above just basically confirms what I have suspected all along. I know there are several signals that Google use for top rankings in the local business pack but "Exact Match Domains" (EMDs) should not be a major signal IMHO.

Google's search engine results should be better than this. I'm sure there are better SEO and Digital Marketing agencies that are way way more deserving than these generically-named businesses.

Does Google need another Pigeon update to sort things out? Or should I just keep on ranting and cursing under my own breath. =)

What are your thoughts about this?

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What's up Google? Quality content you say?

Tweet

Here's something to think about by SEO professionals and website owners. Check out this item from Google's Webmaster Guidelines:

      "Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content."

Based on this guideline, a web page should have quality content in order to rank high in Google's search engine result pages.  So by searching  "seo expert philippines", I will expect a list of sites ranked by Google based on "quality content".

Using this knowledge, I searched "seo expert philippines" and then reviewed the search results. Scrolling down the first result page, I came across a Facebook Page with the title "SEO Expert Philippines | Facebook". 

Clicking on this link brought me to the "SEO Expert Philippines" Facebook Page.

It can be observed that the page has 10 likes but zero content besides the obvious "SEO Expert Philippines" text. So basically, Google ranked this page probably by the Title, URL keywords, and H2 ("SEO Expert Philippines") text.


Going back to the guideline "Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.", we can see that this page doesn't satisfy the "useful, information-rich site" requirement.

I don't see any usefulness of this page. There's no information, no content, nothing that makes it stand out and earn the first page ranking for the Google search key phrase "seo expert philippines".

Now, tell me what you think about this thru the comments section. Any idea how this thing happened? I am open to your suggestions.

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SEO Tips: Top 5 Tips for Google Places for Business Listing Optimization

Tips for Google Places for Business Optimization

1. Make sure your Google Places for Business listing is complete.

There are more than 20 different fields you in your Google Places listing and surprisingly most businesses don’t bother to fill them all in.  Don't forget to add pictures of your business and link to YouTube videos as part of your listing. Sometimes having a photo or video more than your competitor's listing is all it takes to rank higher.

2. Make sure you have client reviews in your Google+ Page(s).

Google+ User Review

Encourage your clients to write a review on your business'  Google+ Page. Sometimes, the business with the most reviews can rank higher than the business competitors.  Be sure that you'll be aware of your reviews whenever someone post reviews and comments on your page, positive or negative. Utilize Google Alerts to notify you of this event.

Respond immediately to negative reviews / comments by reaching out to your unsatisfied customer and seeing if you can reach out and explain your side and persuade the customer to withdraw the bad review.

3. Make sure that you'll use the best keywords in your listing's Categories section

Choose the most appropriate categories for your business / service. Pick a category from the predefined suggestions of Google to help it show your business for the right searches.  You can always enter your own category if you can't see it in the predefined list.  Make sure that you avoid using location-specific keywords (for example: london, manila, davao) as part of your category names.  This can alert Google that you are "gaming" the system. Just define the exact business type or service that you offer.

Don't be afraid to define specific categories instead of generic ones. The important thing is that the categories describe your business exactly. Google's algorithm makes sure that users searching for "cafes" will see businesses in more specific categories like "internet cafes", "gourmet cafes", and "sidewalk cafes" too.

4. Use only one Google Places Listing if you have several service areas

Google Places for Business Service AreasSection

 The Google Places Guidelines state that

"A business owner may add service areas to a new or existing listing if his business model requires him or an authorized representative of his business to travel to his customer's location. Some examples include: a restaurant that offers delivery to your door, a dog-walking business that picks up your pet from your home, or an in-home maid service."


Businesses that operate in a service area should not create a listing for every city they service. Businesses that operate in a service area should only create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas for each city that they service.

5.  Get listed in the other top local directories like:

•     Yelp
•     Bing
•     Yahoo Local
•     Best of the Web
•     Hotfrog
•     Foursquare

Yahoo Local

Get your business listed in the most popular local online directories. If you have a restaurant, nightlife, or hotel business, don't forget to use Zagat.com. Zagat's service is integrated to Google+ Local which is a part of Google Plus' core services.


I hope you can use these tips to improve your Google Places for Business listings.  If you have questions or inquiries, just add a comment to this article or email me at mailto: seo.expert4hire@gmail.com

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See Who is SEO Expert in Atlanta Click Here

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SEO Tip: All About Microformats and Rich Snippets

Microformats

What are Microformats?

 Microformats, according to Microformats.org, are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).


Rich Snippets

What are Rich Snippets?

Rich Snippets, according to Google, are detailed information intended to help users with specific queries. For example, the snippet for a restaurant might show the average review and price range; the snippet for a recipe page might show the total preparation time, a photo, and the recipe’s review rating; and the snippet for a music album could list songs along with a link to play each song. These rich snippets help users recognize when your site is relevant to their search, and may result in more clicks to your pages.


OK that's enough geekspeak. =)

How can Microformats help in SEO? If you are not familiar with Rich Snippets, Google designed Rich Snippets to summarize the content of a page in a way that makes it even easier for users to understand what the page is about. Rich Snippets are available in Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Rich Snippets - Reviews

The example above shows a rich snippet for a hotel review.  The snippet brings attention to the site whenever it's listed in the Google's search results.  If you compare it with other site listings, user's attention is brought to the site stands out because of the stars and high ratings.

Google Search Results

The Rich Snippets gives more detailed information about a site and provides higher click-thru rates according to studies.

So how are these Rich Snippets implemented?

Microformat will be the your next best friend. Microformats are simple codes that you can use to identify specific kinds of data,  like products, people or events, in your web pages.

Google currently only supports six (6) major Microformat types. These are:

1. hcard – Marking up business card / profile info
2. hReview – Individual user reviews
3. hReview-aggregate – A summary of hReviews
4. hProduct – Marking up products, prices, and all product-related things
5. hCalendar – Event dates and appointments
6. hRecipe –  Marking up recipes and their ingredients

hCard

hCard is a simple, open format for publishing people, companies, organizations on the web.

hCard - Profile

hCard - Organization

hReview 

hReview is a simple, open, distributed format, suitable for embedding reviews (of products, services, businesses, events, etc.).

hReview - Movie

hReview-aggregate

hReview-aggregate is a format for embedding review information (of products, services, businesses, etc). Whereas hReview is intended for an individual review, hReview-aggregate is meant for summary information about a collection of user or critic reviews about an item.

hreview-aggregate - Restaurant

hProduct

hProduct is a microformat suitable for publishing and embedding product data.

hProduct - Acme Anvil

hCalendar 


hCalendar is a simple, open format for publishing events on the web.

hCalendar - Conference

hRecipe

hRecipe is a simple, open, distributed format, suitable for embedding information about recipes for cooking.

hRecipe - Pommes Frites

 
Use the Google Webmaster Tool's Structured Data Testing Tool / Rich Snippet Tool to test your Microformat markups.  This tool tests for your site markup's validity.  It returns errors and offers suggestions on how to fix these errors.

Microformats may not improve your site's keyword rankings but by adding these markups you improve your site's click-thru rates which indirectly informs your site's importance to Google.  More click-thrus means more prospects which could ultimately lead to more sales.

More power to your businesses and have a blessed Merry Christmas!

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SEO Tip: November 2012 PageRank Update!

Finally, another Google PageRank update. Website PageRank (PR) values were updated on the 7th of November 2012. Again quality content and backlinks helped in earning higher PageRank values. My website's PageRank gained one point from a lowly zero PR.

My blogsite URL is relatively new because I created a new Blogger URL for it. I removed the extra hyphens that might signal Google that I have a spam site and also to avoid the Exact Match Domain (EMD) update of Google. A website sporting a shorter URL will also make its name easier to recall. Hopefully these changes will also improve my site's keyword rankings.

When preparing new articles / posts, make sure you have informative and original content. Create outbound links that point to high PR websites. Also you need to add the [rel="nofollow"] attributes to the outbound hyperlink tags to avoid leaking PR to another website's page. Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these type of links.

When creating backlinks, prioritize links from high quality, high PR, and authoritative sites. Avoid low PR directories and websites that have unrelated content. Don't forget to build backlinks from Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, PInterest, and Google+. Social Media sites help in driving traffic to your own website(s).

Just follow my tips and slowly but surely, your sites will gain higher PR values.

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