Obtaining a listing that shows up in the prominent Google one-box or local 10-pack is becoming increasingly important for any business looking to compete in a local marketplace. Where the print Yellow Pages used to dominate the local advertising dollars, the big 3 search engines, local and national vertical directories and IYP’s are on the rise, full steam ahead.

When Google one-boxes first started popping up years ago, it was few and far between for most local based searches without a great set of tools to further improve the visibility and rankings short of adding keywords to your business name. Read More

Google recently announced that they will be making some changes to their referral string format which will be rolling out this week.

The old url referral string looked something like this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search

The new one will look something like this:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw
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Today Google announced that they are rolling out longer meta description snippets for some keyword searches. The new feature will appear in search results for queries that are 3 words or longer and have a very specific intent. So for example, if you are searching for something like “Google Rolls Out Extended Snippets” you’ll see some results that have longer meta description snippets (3 or 4 lines instead of only 2) like this: Read More

In Google AdWords there are many options and settings which you can tweak for different effects and for different purposes. One such feature is found in Edit Campaign Settings under Scheduling and Serving: Ad Serving. This allows the user to choose from 1 of 2 options – Optimize (which Google recommends), and Rotate. Read More

Over the last couple of years I’ve noticed a couple things in the search space: 1. keyword tools are unreliable 2. PPC traffic can show some valuable search trends. Well here’s the point: PPC and SEO help to inform each other consistently.

There are reasons why SEO and PPC should always be in cahoots: On the SEO side, a simple look at the analytics queries that come through and spend time on site are usually from keywords that are relevant and have a value. If there is evidence that some terms that show up organically on page 2 or deeper in the SERPs are getting hit are are converting, then these are that have value for PPC. We can immediately pay PPC to be seen next to the top ranking organic sites showing for these competitive terms. Of course, because this is PAID traffic, and because CPCs can be so wildly different for each industry or vertical, ROI calculations should be applied constantly.

Now it gets interesting. Read More