Great Apps to Customize Your Facebook Fan Page

Facebook recently hit a new milestone: 500 million users! With this high volume it is a perfect platform for marketing, and people are already taking advantage of this opportunity. Here is a list of great apps that allow you to customize your fan page to its fullest potential.

35 of the Best Facebook Fan Pages

To go along with the above link, here is a fantastic list of fan pages that have taken full advantage of Facebook’s customizable applications. Some examples include pages from the likes of Skittles, Red Bull, and Harley Davidson.

Forrester to Advertisers: Hold Off on Foursquare

Forrester Research recently came out with a study that revealed 84% of people polled are not familiar with location-based applications, a la foursquare. This is useful information, but they conclude that businesses should hold off on using these FREE services because of it. This article explains why their conclusion should not follow their results.

Foursquare Means Businesses: Have you checked-in yet?

We’ve never been shy in our support for foursquare, and this link is a perfect follow-up to the previous one. The article just lists some more of the many advantages to utilizing this and other location-based applications.

10 Sources For Better Conversion

Getting people to your site is only half the battle. Once they’re there, you need to get them do whatever it is you want them to do. In the SEO world, this is known as conversion. This is a list of 10 resources that explain how to get better conversions on your site.

Local Citation Finder: Must-Have SEO Tool

From the article: “The tool looks at the businesses ranking for your keyphrase, grabs their phone numbers, and then does a Google.com search (or .ca or .co.uk) for those numbers, collecting and collating all of the mentions/citations that it finds.” In other words, you can get a list of citation sources your competitors use, and mimic them. Nice and easy!

10 Great Local Search Tools That Don’t Exist Yet

It’s pretty clear what this article is about, so I won’t bore you with an explanation. I will say that these tools would be incredibly easy to make, and some of these developers need to get on the stick!

On-Site SEO: How to Optimize Your Blog Posts

A blog is a great tool for SEO, but simply posting one every week or so won’t be that great of a help. This is a great guide on how to optimize your blog to maximize your exposure on the web.

Using Bing’s New Webmaster Tools For SEO

Bing recently released a new version of their Webmaster Tools. Upon being asked by Bing to give feedback on how to improve it, Chris Smith decided to provide this advice via blog post for the world to see.

Google’s New Local UI Proving Conspiracy Theorists Right

In our last installment of Top 10 for the Weekend, we discussed some changes Google made to their SERPs and Places listings. It looks like the conspiracy theorists were right. This article explains why.

Google Testing New, More Integrated Local Search SERPs

Looks like Google is busy experimenting with some new layouts to their main SERPs. Blumenthal’s shares the findings of Linda Buquet of Catalyst eMarketing, including such changes as making the Places listings bigger and more like organic results (the only difference being the inclusion of a Map pin) and having the map scroll down the page as you do. Not sure if this will be a permanent change, but what I am sure of is that this will no doubt lower traffic results to individual websites while increasing them to review sites. Not cool, Google.

Google Takes More Real Estate For Business Name Search

Ah, Google. Why are they doing this to us? Not only did they potentially make some pretty lame changes to their SERPs, they also started linking to the business’s Places page for these searches as opposed to the actual website. The article lists a few possible reasons they may be making this change, none of which are very appealing.

Google brings a Facebook rival

We’ve posted about Google’s latest social networking platform endeavor in the past, but the news was sparse. Here we get another hint at the tactics Google may be using to bring down the Goliath that is Facebook. Recently, they’ve been meeting with big name game developers for Google Me. What this means is anybody’s guess, but I hope it means less lame Farmville updates and decent games for a change!

Is Google Watching You? New Plugin Will Let You Know!

Boy, this Top 10 is a little Google heavy this week, eh? Don’t worry, there’s more! Here’s an article about an awesome new browser plugin that lets you see when your personal information is being sent to Google’s servers. Not only that, but it alerts you using a vuvuzela-like alarm.  How great is that?

Why You Need to Monitor and Measure Your Brand on Social Media

If you read these lists of ours often, you’d know we’re no strangers to the social media game. Once you make the leap, it’s imperative to keep your presence known. This article gives a couple of great tips to monitoring and measuring your brand to make sure you can use these great utilities to their utmost advantage.

How to Get Top Search Engine Optimization and Placement Results with Google Caffeine

In our last edition of Top 10 for the Weekend, we posted an article outlining the differences between Google’s Mayday and Caffeine. Well, here is a handy article on how to make Caffeine work for you to achieve results at the top of the ranks.

Should I renew my yellow pages ad?

Here is our most recent blog about whether or not remaining to advertise with Yellow Pages is beneficial to your site from an SEO standpoint. Want to know the answer? Read to find out!

The Google Sewage Factory, In Action: The Chocomize Story

A great article on how sites pollute Google’s news section by taking advantage of some specific editorial criteria, and their lack to police these actions. A very interesting read about Google contributing to the pollutants that make the internet a “cesspool,” according to one of their CEOs.

Google Places Police

We’re no strangers to the confusing and oft arbitrary guidelines Google seems to enforce on their Places accounts, and we’re not the only ones! This is a fantastic article highlighting the hair-pulling experience that Google can induce for businesses and SEO companies alike.

8 New Link Types That Exist On The Web

A hilarious article outlining some of the insane practices that SEO companies and many others use for link building. Check them out and see if you are guilty of any of them. I know I am!

Yes, the yellow pages industry is dying, some would argue it’s dead.

Unused and unwanted.

But a part of me hesitates at completely dropping out of the book.

What I would love to say is “keep your ad or an ad because the yellow pages gives you a free backlink in their online product with any paid ad,” but this is not the case.  It is my personal experience in my local market and my observation in other markets that the yellow pages sales people are not offering a free backlink in the online product with the purchase of an ad in print book. One must pay to be in the print book and pay to be included in the online directory too.

And even if you pay for it, how valuable is that backlink from deep within the yellow pages online directory?  Apparently, not very.  I checked a few different tools for the online directory page where my client would appear if she paid to be included in the online directory, and the page has a 0 (zero) value.

Also, the backlinks are nofollowed. Wow.  Talk about about a waste of advertisers money and about a wasted opportunity by the teleco.

So my suggestion to the client was half-hearted … decrease your big expensive display ad for a smaller in-column ad so you’re not totally out of the book just for the few people who are still using the print product.  She looked at some internal data, and came back with feedback saying she has gotten no patients from a yellow pages referral so she was dropping her yellow ages ad.  I have no data to advise her otherwise, and really, it’s probably a sound move.

In LA too they throw the printed phonebook right away to the trash

Yellow pages sales people have always offered call tracking, but on a limited basis – only to those clients who were waffling on renewing that giant display ad.  What they could be doing is dropping a call tracking number in the every ad over some benchmark value (say $1,500.00 because that would include some of the more elaborate in-column ads) and adding a tracking website URL into the ad.  Together, these tracking mechanisms would give some real data for advertisers to make this renewal decision.  But I know that the real data is probably more hurtful to the renewal rate than having no data.

In comparison, at Search Influence (where a few of us grew up in yellow pages a few years ago),  we understand the need for tracking, for constant proof of our value.  We track form data.  We track phone calls from organic traffic and from paid traffic.  We track all kinds of stuff so we can give real ROIs.  We do this all of the time, and at least every month.  Proving our value every month, month after month, definitely keeps us on our toes, and we share the successes with our clients because of that accountability.

Thanks to Sabrina Tang and lejoe for the great pictures!

Orlando Plastic Surgery Yellow Pages Ads

I worked in the yellow pages industry for just short of 10 years at a CMR, Certified Marketing Representative, where all of my clients were national clients in multiple markets.  So I’ve spent a full decade of my life working in the yellow pages industry, which is not a glamorous media, but at one time it was incredibly profitable for clients based on their return on investment (ROI).  That ROI in yellow pages is now dropping dramatically with every year because of the overwhelming competition from internet for media dollars.

It is in the yellow pages industry where a lot of tracking techniques were started.  I can’t tell you how many tracking phone numbers I have set up and used in a yellow pages ad.  And given a client’s number, had to track a very real ROI each month based on the calls made.

I have organized split run comparisons where we run 1 ad in half of the distribution area of a phone book and another ad in the other half of the distribution area, and then sit back and watch the tracking phone numbers data.

And now in search engine marketing for 2+ years, I find I am doing many of the same things.

When Will first asked me to work with his company, Search Influence, I hesitated – I mean what did I know about search engine optimization?!?

It turns out, it’s a lot of the same stuff. Getting our clients in the right directories, listed under the right categories, tracking incoming calls, proving value …

It is this last, “proving value,” that is the most telling.  Knowing what a large display ad costs in the yellow pages which a lot of our clients would have been doing 10 years ago, and comparing it to what Search Influence charges for SEM and SEO, I realize that the value is definitely in the internet.

In yellow pages, a plastic surgeon might buy a full page or a half page ad for a large percentage of their annual advertising budget.  In some larger metro markets, this can easily reach up to $100,000.00, over $8,000.00 each month, with a yellow pages industry average of 5% increase each year.

This gets the surgeon an ad that is in print for a year, and that’s what you get.  Hope that people pick up the fat book shoved in the back of the cabinet, find the heading, (not under “Doctors,” not under “Physicians & Surgeons-Cosmetic Surgery,” but buried under “Physicians & Surgeons-Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery”) and choose your ad to call.

Most people today are already in front of the computer for work.  They just type it in exactly what they want, no digging, “Plastic surgery Houston“.  It’s too easy to use the internet.

The internet is a living, breathing medium.  For the same amount of money or, amazingly, much less in some big metro markets, SEO actively finds the people searching for your product.

Ringing Phone = Profits

Changes can be made daily or hourly for specials and promotions.  Yellow pages ads are in print for 12 months.

Tracking is not limited to phone number tracking – we can find which pages are working and which pages users are most likely to leave the site on, edit some graphics and compare the traffic patterns week to week instead of year to year.

The average yellow pages display ad attracts over 440 calls per year (Source: YPPA Media Impact Study, 2004).  Search Influence has many client sites with thousands of visits each month, with hundreds of contacts each month.

Businesses are moving their marketing dollars to the internet from yellow pages more and more every day because it’s smart money spent.   I mean I don’t want to glorify SEO for more than it is, but dollar for dollar, internet marketing gives so much more impact for money spent by bringing in real customers.

I did a very informal survey which I think sums up America’s use of their phone books.  Here are some responses to “Where is your print phone book?”:

1. “I may have thrown it away, if I have it, it is in the pantry.”
2. “I threw out the new ones.”
3. “I saw it this weekend when I was trying to make room (in the kitchen cabinet)”
4. “I don’t have one.”
5. Another, “I don’t have one.”

Of course, my survey of 5 people may not be fair because I did only ask people who sit in front of a computer all day, and so I ask, do you know where your phone book is?

She sent me an email with a list of questions which were based in large measure on a list at SEOConsultants.com. It was a great list, I’m a guy who likes being challenged and with Natalie’s permission I’m reposting the bulk of that email here:

It’s funny this is the first time I’ve been asked to answer so specific a set of questions but I’m happy to have the opportunity.

Perhaps we should make it the basis of an FAQ page

Please see my answers in line below.

Very best regards,

Will

Natalie wrote:

> Will,

>

> Great speaking with you on Tuesday. Below you will find a lot of questions. Due to our inexperience and knowledge on this subject we tried to compile a list of questions that could help us understand things a bit more. Thanks for your time and patience.

I’m going to say again, you’re pretty darn savvy and this list proves it.

> 1. Have you optimized other cleaning services? If so can you give us an example of feedback/response they have received?

We have not worked with a cleaning service. We work with many different businesses both consumer and business to business. These have included printers, sign brokers, medical professionals, soil testing companies and many more.

The tools we use are appropriate for any business and most particularly effective with locally oriented service businesses like yours.

There is a great quote on our web site in the testimonials section from our soil testing company.

This past Tuesday, Midwest Laboratories had the largest receiving day on record. We received 17,800 soil samples. The previous record was 13,200. That is the equivalent of 790 UPS Boxes – 3 UPS Trucks.

We are now averaging about 85-120 hits per day on the eStore. Thanks again for your help in this process.

Also, we recently published a press release on our success in internet marketing for plastic surgeons with a New Jersey plastic surgeon: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/10/prweb1410684.htm

> 2. Based upon your professional opinion when should we expect results?

It is a constant process, and we see continued improvement in sites we’ve worked with for years. In the worst case you should see something definitive within 6 months. If we are aggressive it should be markedly less, perhaps as little as 60 – 90 days.

> 3. Will you/company be undertaking the seo work yourselves or will you be outsourcing to another country?

We have both US and offshore staff. We do not outsource our core work and aside from 1 or 2 discreet tasks all work is done by our employees, some of whom are offshore.

> 4. What is the payment schedule?

We bill by credit card on the 1st of the month.

> 5. Who owns the rights to the work?

You do

> 6. Please define maintenance after site is up and running. What does maintenance include and why is the start-up and maintenance price the same? Do you have a maintenance program?

The bulk of our ongoing maintenance is link-building and content development. See fuller answer in #7.

> 7. Will you be providing any additional value added services with the setup? Example: blog, ezine, newsletters, PR, etc.

We often use all of the above. Currently for link-building we are very fond of Articles (distributed to ezine sites and press releases. When desired, some of the effort that would go toward off-site content creation can be used for on-site blogs. As an added service we can help with newsletters and email marketing.

For more about link-building in the local space please feel free to have a look at my presentation from SMX Local/Mobile.

http://www.searchinfluence.com/blog/2008/07/local-search-ranking-presentation/

> 8. Is there a limited number of keywords that will be used?

We usually select a basket of 20 search terms to focus on. These are terms which we agree together will drive valuable traffic. In our typical relationships we have a 1 year contract which has a 6-month checkpoint. If at the end of 6 months you’re not on page 1 of Google for 10 of those 20 selected terms we keep working for free until you are for up to another 6 months.

Typically we track many more than 20. The selection of 20 search terms is merely intended to be used as a yardstick by which our clients may hold us accountable.

> 9. What is Google PageRank™ and how does it affect our website(s)? How would you address improving our PageRank™ with Google, and other search engines that calculate the number of quality inbound links to our website?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

PageRank, in a nutshell is Google’s indication of the relative authority of your site among its peers. All of the search engines do some level of weighted link analysis which helps to sort the sites competing for a given set of searches.

In other words, if you have two sites which say exactly the same things and one of them has 10 inbound links and the other has 100 links, the one with more links should clearly win.

That said, per the algorithm MORE links doesn’t always mean better. The authority of the links matters too. if the site with 10 links has links from Harvard, Emory, NASA, The Pentagon, your local newspaper and the like and the site with 100 links has nothing but free directory links, the 10 trump the 100.

To improve PageRank, it’s important to focus on trusted inbound links (of the type discussed in 6 & 7)

> 10. What is link popularity? What linking strategies would you use to increase link popularity for our website? Is this service part of the proposed price? What types of websites will you target for link exchange?

Link popularity is no longer as widely used given the advent of PageRank and similar systems from the other major engines. Many times Link Popularity was referenced when talking about reciprocal links (you’ll notice this question references “link exchange”) — I’m sure you get the emails offering these exchanges.

Per the PageRank algorithm, the number of links is no longer weighted nearly as strongly as the trust of the sites linking in.

In fact, in the last 2 years Google has specifically come out against link exchanges and there was even and issue a year or so ago where hundreds of realtors disappeared from the listings due to aggressive use of this technique.

> 11. What changes can we expect you to make to our website to improve our positioning in the search engines? Will these changes be visible? Will there be changes in the coding of our website?

We typically change a number of on-page elements including the title and description which are not readily apparent. We also will often make changes to the visible copy to enhance the use of search terms in copy and the use of page elements such as heading tags which are cues to the search engines of the importance of certain text.

We typically don’t change the code which structures your site unless it is inherently blocking search engine spiders.

> 12. What type of reporting will you provide to us? How often will you provide those reports? Will you provide consultation on how to interpret the reports so that we have a basic understanding of the statistics?

We typically offer both position reporting (e.g. you rank # 10 for phrase X) and traffic reporting using Google Analytics. We send monthly reports interpreting these data and are happy to walk you through the reports to explain items which may be unclear. We will also have separate call tracking #s for better visibility on the actual leads.

> 13. What is a PR0 penalty?

Sometimes, when site owners behave very badly their PageRank and ability to rank will be greatly diminished sometimes to zero. Recently Google has been clamping down on paid links. Some have suggested that a PageRank of zero is a warning to clean up one’s act. There are a lot of differing opinions on this point. In short, if a site has been online a year or more has a fair number of inbound links and a PR0 it’s not a good sign.

To really be able to tell what’s going on with your site we’d need to do some analysis and then submit a re-inclusion request to Google and see what happened.

> 14. How many pages will you be optimizing in our website?

All of them.

> 15. What techniques does Google consider spam?

The Google Webmaster Guidelines say it better than I can: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3

> 16. Can you assure us that the optimization strategies and methods that you are utilizing fall under the criteria of Best Practices for the SEO/SEM Industry? Can we assume that this means no penalties for our website? Penalties could include, but are not limited to; removal from the search engines or directories index, or a possible Google PageRank™ penalty.

We haven’t lost one yet. We don’t do anything risky. We don’t hide text and we don’t auto-generate 15,000 links overnight. We trade content in the form of articles, PR, blog posts and submission text for links.

As I’m sure you can see from the above, this is a GREAT way to start a relationship. If only all our clients were this rigorous in interviewing an SEO company we’d all be better off.