Archive for September, 2010

What Are Google Tags and How Should You Use Them To Enhance Your Local Business Listing

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Darryl Delong

Google Tags Example

 

Google Tags is a new feature from Google for local businesses that already have a free business listing with Google Places.  Along with every business listing you can add a link to your website, choose categories of services provided, include hours of operation, upload photos, and add a video about your business (see our post Improve Google Places Ranking With These 5 Optimization Tips). Now you can even add a special coupon for new customers.  By adding a Google Tag, you can choose which item you most want to promote in Google’s local search results.  So, if you choose to promote your website using a Google Tag, a clickable link to your website will appear underneath your local listing.

Below is a screenshot example of what a Google Tag looks like.

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Unethical SEO, Reporting Cheaters

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Hans Riemer

Today’s topic is about people who don’t follow the “rules” of SEO. Perhaps you yourself have violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and are wondering if and when you’ll pay a price. Maybe you’ve done something that the search engines consider unethical but aren’t even aware of it. It can be infuriating to carefully follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines only to discover that your main competitor, whose site outranks yours for several key terms on Google, is up to all sorts of shenanigans. What should you do? Follow suit? Do something even more outrageous and risk a penalty to your site? Keep following the rules and report them to Google?

There are lots of ways people use to try to artificially improve their search engine rankings. Google specifically mentions the following (this is not a complete list):

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