Remember MapQuest? Sure you do! The first popular mapping application, MapQuest is still alive and well. Like the Yahoo Local directory and many other local business resources, MapQuest's listings are now managed by the pay-to-play directory service, Yext. But you can still get a listing … [Read more...]
How To Add Your Business to Yahoo for Free
Contrary to popular belief, you CAN still claim or add a free business listing to Yahoo's local directory. Here's how. In October 2015, Yahoo's Small Business program, including their local business directory, was spun off as part of the new entity, AAbaco Small Business. Management of the … [Read more...]
Claim Business Listings or Get Hijacked
Let's talk business directory listings, aka citations. You know, those directories like YellowPages, SuperPages, MerchantCircle and others. Their information comes from a combination of public data sources and user submissions. While verification of user-provided data has improved over the years, … [Read more...]
Google: Header tags – Do They Still Matter?
Most modern-day web designers strive for semantically-correct use of header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) in their code. However, the fact remains that many sites still are not using them in a strict heierarchy, if at all. Legacy sites often used header tags solely for presentation, and many CMS themes … [Read more...]
The Case of the Faux Panda Penalty
So a site you monitor experiences a MASSIVE traffic drop on the date of a noteworthy Google update. Your first thought is "they got slammed by this update", right? You may be wrong. The other day I was looking in on a few sites which I no longer actively support but that I check in on from … [Read more...]
#1 SEO Problem With Mobile Sites and How to Fix It
Last week Eric Enge and Mark Traphagen of Stone Temple Consulting hosted a Virtual keynote with Google's Gary Illyes For those who don't know the name, Gary is a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google Switzerland GmbH and a frequent speaker at search conferences and webinars. There's a lot of good … [Read more...]
How to Get Corporate Sponsors for your NonProfit or Event
In a shaky economy with cutbacks rampant, many nonprofit organzations, from school sports teams and local events to name-brand 501(c)3's are sorely in need of outside funding and looking for ways to raise those much-needed funds. The good news is that there's an easy fundraising channel you may … [Read more...]
5 Adwords Mistakes Which Will Trash Your Budget
I sometimes get calls from prospective clients who tried to run an Adwords campaign on their own and failed miserably. It sounded so easy - they're intelligent folks, they followed the instructions, but they ended up with little or nothing to show for it. What went wrong? One of my idols is … [Read more...]
It’s official – Google doesn’t use the keyword meta tag
If you've been even half awake and following the news in SEO circles for the last decade or so, you probably know this already but Google just saw fit to make it official - Google does NOT use the keywords meta tag for search rankings. (Note that they don't explicitly say they don't use it as a … [Read more...]
Google Spills the Beans on Keyword Searches!
I fired up my trusty Adwords Keyword Tool this morning to do some research and was surprised to see ... Actual search numbers! Yes, you heard right - actual search data from the Google search network - believe it or not, it looks like the green bars are GONE! It's interesting to note that … [Read more...]