Twitter is over capacity.  Please wait a minute and try again.  Must be a nice problem, I guess…  If I had a site selling something, or making money on advertising, which this site does in some ways, with affiliate links, and through the sales of my services, helping quite a few of my clients rank in the top of the search results for a number of their keyword terms, if I had such demand for the content and services on my site that it was over capacity, I’d have more business than I could handle.  I’d also loose a few customers, probably make a few mad, and loose advertising revenue.  I’m wondering how a social media site like Twitter, who KNOWS they are big and growing exponentially, makes a TON from advertising revenue, etc. can’t manage to scale their hosting and capacity.  Both a good and bad problem… Tweet…

Professional SEO’s Guide to Local Search – This is an incredible opportunity for you.  For a VERY LIMITED time, when you sign up for my mailing list on the right side of this page, you will receive a FREE copy of the Professional SEO’s Guide to Local Search.  This book is being sold online right now beginning at $49 which you can see the order page for the Professional SEO’s Guide to Local Search right here.  This book covers Google Local Business Listings, local seo, google maps, local search engine optimization, and how to get your business ranked for local search, and take advantage of this new wave in local search marketing, and will help you explode your business via the internet.

So, for simply signing up for my mailing list, you will receive a copy of this comprehensive guide for free, through a very special deal and arraingement with them.  This is an extremely limited time offer, and I will either comment or ammend this post when I’m forced to remove this very special offer, but for now, and as long as I can convince them to allow me to keep giving it away, it’s simply yours for the taking by signing up and confirming your e-mail on my Search Marketing education, news, and information e-mail list.

Hurry and put your name and e-mail in the box to the right on this page today to take advantage of this incredible offer, and get your  $49 Professional SEO’s Guide to Local Search for free….

I also provide comprehensive services related to local search, and am available for consulting, coaching, as well as provide complete, done for you services.  Contact us today to find out how we can help you explode your client base by tapping into one of the biggest marketing shifts in the past 100 years….  Local search and experience Search Marketing by Mike Richey.  Hurry and get your Professional SEO’s Guide for Local Search today while the offer is still available..

Search Engine Marketing – SEO vs. PPC.  Which is better?  Which gets better results?  I’ve heard that PPC is very expensive and there’s a lot of click fraud, and that it’s very difficult…

These are just a few of the things I’ve heard from friends and clients regarding search engine optimization, pay per click and marketing online.  With internet marketing, search engine optimization, and pay per click, there really is no “one size fits all” solution…  Each case has to be looked at individually, and then monitored for results, and tuned and it’s ongoing efforts re-evaluated, etc.

These are also just a few of the topics I’m going to be covering this evening at the US-75 Business Professionals Learning and Networking Group.  If you can make it, we’d love to have you, and I’ll be covering these and a wide variety of other topics, and would be happy to answer your specific questions and address any issues you might be having and help you get a grasp on what your options are, how they will benefit you, and what you can expect with diffferent kinds of marketing campaigns, etc.

I normally don’t post things like this, but Denai is a really good friend of mine, and I’d like to do what I can to help her live her dream.  If you could, please just take a few seconds to click on the link below, vote for her, and then either forward this link to everyone in your address book, your Facebook, Twitter, etc?  You don’t have to actually read anything….  Just click on the link below, click to vote for Denai, and it takes all of 30 seconds…

I’d very much appreciate your help with this, and I’m sure Denai would also…

Mike

The below is copied and pasted from an e-mail from her:

!!!PLEASE FORWARD!!!
====================
You read correctly, I am pursing a dream of being on TV… as a Talk Show host!
With Oprah’s contest for Your OWN Show, this will become a reality in 2010!!!
WOO HOO!!!
 
I need YOUR VOTES to climb the charts.
 
I am COMMITTED to working my way from page 70 to page ONE by July 3rd!
The Top FIVE with the most online votes will be on a REALITY TV SHOW.
Those persons will compete and my intention is to WIN my OWN show!!!
 
I NEED YOUR HELP TO GET THERE!!!
There are already people with over 1 million votes, but I BELIEVE in my friend, my colleagues, their networks, my family, and in my dream!!!
That is why my audition will RESONATE with the producers, Oprah, and all involved and you will see me on TV!!!
 
You can VOTE as often as you want whenever you want from now until midnight on July 3rd!
 
You can SHARE on Facebook, Twitter, and in your email asking your contacts to VOTE.
 
Please FORWARD this message to EVERYONE you know.
 
Here is the link: http://TheDenaiShow.com
 
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!!!
Denai
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VOTE TODAY & EVERYDAY FOR THE DENAI SHOW on OWN!!!
 

http://TheDenaiShow.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday, Google announced it’s new search index, Caffeine. What is Google  Caffeine?  How will Google Caffeine affect my SEO?   The premise behind Google Caffeine is that they can offer you MUCH fresher results, and that pages can be indexed at a MUCH faster rate that they’d previously been able to.  Google surmizes that people want to receive much more relevant content faster, and with the advent and exponentially increasing popularity of video, articles, blogs, and other various rich media content and information publication platforms, Google says that Caffeine can and will deliver.  How will it affect our SEO?  Remains to be seen.  From what it says, it will be possible for pages to get indexed and actually show up in the search results MUCH faster than before, but it could also create a demand for pages that refresh much more frequently, or content that is updated much more quickly, thus more labor intensive and increased effort and or costs associated with SEO.  Of course, as always, automation kicks in and enables these things to be taken into consideration and rolled out without manual intervention after being setup, but we’ll see.  According to Google “Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.”  That surely WOULD require a healthy dose of caffeine to manage that, and for many, to even begin to understand it.  As for search results and how it will affect SEO if at all, it’s only a day or so old, and the jury is out for sure still on Google Caffeine.  Read more about it here on Google’s official blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html

How would you like to get 30 to 100 new DEPENDABLE referral sources?  Yeah, that’s what I thought….  Main difference here being DEPENDABLE, and constant…

This video is pretty awesome, and has some information.  Check out You Want 30 to 100 New Referral Sources right now here http://www.livescribe.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LDApp.woa/wa/MLSOverviewPage?sid=mx2cRHqSRj5M

 This meeting was the monthly meeting of the DFWSEM, of which I’m a Corporate Member – Coolbubba Multimedia.  Meetings are $30 each, and free for members.  Annual Membership is $150 for individuals and $300 for corporate. Individual memberships include one attendance per month, corproate memberships include 3 people per meeting with additional seats available for I believe $50 annually.

 The meeting last night was on Local Search, and the panel of nationally known experts on the subject included David Nihm (nationally recognized expert), Chris Silver Smith – Keyrelevance – Dallas, and Brian Combs, CEO ionadas local LLC out of Austin.

The meeting bascially covered the differences between Local Search and “normal” SEO and the different approaches to take when undertaiking campaigns of each.  It answered on a basic level the questions of  “How Do I Rank in Google Maps” and “How Do I Rank in Local Search?”

 The comparability somewhat of citations in local search as compared to “links” in “normal” seo.  About keeping your information consistant with all sources of citation and your own site, advertisements, etc.  If you have your business name and address formatted in a certain way on your site, i.e  123 Main Street, don’t list it somewhere else as 123 Main St.  – be consistant with the formatting of all of your local search information. 

The topic of tracking numbers was also covered – if you are going to use tracking numbers – either include them as images or have them called externally via javascript, no inline javascript, etc.  Reason being, the most consistant your company information, including address, phone number, name formatting, etc. the higher the “trust” element with Google, and thus, in theory, the higher the ranking.

For local search links are important, but so are “citations.”  Citations are mentions of your site, URL, phone number, etc. on other websites.  Your URL may or may not be a hyperlink, as well any geo information that can be incorporated in your site as well as sites on which citations exist.  Maps, hcards, etc.

Reviews are also extremely important for local search.  Reviews by a wide variet of people on a wide variety of sites, such as Yelp, City Search, IYP, etc.

Data providers are also important. Localeze, infoUSA and Acxiom.  Get your information into these resources, which supply information and feed data to many other sites, and, again, make sure it’s formatted identically, as identical information formatting helps out with the trust factor, which is again a large part of local search. 

They went over a ton of other things, but the above being some of the basic, recurring themes.  If you are into local search, I’ll have a book coming out soon, so check back on the site for a comprehensive book on decimating your competition in local search and Google Maps.

Smart phones now half of AdMob’s worldwide mobile traffic.  AdMob, which is one of the world’s largests mobile advertising networks, divides its traffic into three categories – smart phones, feature phones, and mobile internet devices.  In February 2010, smartphones contributed 48 percent of the networks traffic, up from 35 percent a year earlier - all data coming from AdMob’s latest Mobile Metrics Report.  For more information, check out:  Smart Phones Half of AdMob’s Traffic

Google Maps have, for quite some time, presented challenges for many small businesses, especially home based, or service based businesses.  Requiring a business address, this is often not ideal and can in fact be very problematic for home based business owners and/or service based business owners.  People such as real estate agents, and even in businesses such as my own, Search Engine Optimization, and Local Search Engine Optimization and consulting, it presents quite a few challenges.  Also, it’s been very frustrating for many of my clients in that they have a hard time getting visibility on maps, especially in situations such as home inspectors, plumbers, pest control, and real estate agents, where they would just get visibility on maps for their exact location…  Not ideal when you have a home inspector who has an office in North Richland Hills, but services Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, and 50 other odd small towns around the metroplex and surrounding areas.  When you log into the Google Business Center, you should now see a new tab entitled “Service Areas and Location Settings” which will give you the ability to identify whether customers come to your location, or whether you service customers as their location.  And when you identify that you service customers at their location, you can identify your service area in one of two ways – either list a distance from a central location, or you can input a list of service areas for your business. 

This provides some much needed improvements, but also presents some new, additional challenges as well.  I do think it is a positive step in addressing one of the fundamental problems with the Google Business Center for many home based and service based businesses though, and provides some welcomed relief.

Log into your Google Business Center listing today and see if this new functionality can lend some relief or new exposure for your business, and also contact me for help in dominating the search results, local or otherwise…

Yelp for Local Search.  There are many places where you can either claim your business listing or create a listing for your business which will help with your local search placement.  Make sure you have your business name and address information format down, and then go about getting your business listed on each of the sites with your information listed identically, and then get your customers to give you as many reviews as you can.  As far as your business name and info, if you have Acme SEO, Inc.  don’t list it one place as Acme SEO, another as Acme Seo, Inc (with lowercase Seo), and another place as Acme SEO Incorporated, and yet another as Acme SEO, Inc.  If you can control it, list your name and address on all sites the same.  As well, if your business is on a Blvd.  list it consistantly as Blvd. and not Blvd. in one place, Bolevaurd in another and then blvd in yet another.  Places to get listed are InfoUSA, Localeze, and Yelp.  There is a really good site called Yelp Secrets that you should check out.   It shows you how to put a “Find Us on Yelp” button on your page, and you can put comments near it about adding reviews there as well.  Check out Yelp Secrets for more information as well.