Today, my faithful blog readers (I’m sure there’s a handful of you out there and that I’m not just talking to myself) we’re going to talk about getting found locally for local companies. In this short post I’m going to use NorthSouthMedia as an example and the key search phrase will be “Ayrshire SEO Company“.

I’ve started using the region that I service the most, that being “Ayrshire” and also the service which my company offers “SEO“. Now, from digging around a little I’ve found out that there are 64 towns in Ayrshire with an overall population of around 375,000 and I want to be found everytime when someone types “SEO Company” for that particular Ayrshire town. Understandably, being in my line of work, it’ll be more likely that businesses, groups or entrepreneurial individuals would require an Ayrshire SEO Company rather than everyone in the region.

The proven, and still the best, approach for my company to target towns within Ayrshire is to build town based landing pages. Granted, this is time consuming, but if I want to be found for “Ayrshire SEO Company” and then all the towns that come under this regional umbrella – then this is the desired step of action to take.

What about duplicating content on town based landing pages?

Duplicating content is never a great step-forward but you can still getaway with it regarding localised landing pages as long as the competition isn’t great. However, that said, I prefer using unique content where I can, and plus you can always shake things up a little by using a coupon code for that town/area that will allow businesses/individuals to communicate with your site and benefit from the local offer you have on offer.

Is there anything else I need to know regarding localised results ?

You can create KML files and submit them to Google and these can be viewed in Google Earth and Google Sitemaps (read more from my interview with Dev Basu about KML Sitemaps).

Make sure you’re on-page SEO is targetted towards the locality your aiming to be found within. Title tags, Meta Data, Headers, web copy and internal linking structure are, as usual, a must. Finally, go after local directories and get links from these to your local pages. Use Google places for business listings and add as much information about your business listing as possible.

Finally, if I really wanted to push for “Ayrshire SEO Company” or any of the local town keywords I’d ask for reviews/testimonials from clients in that area and post them to their relevant page – reinforcing the authority of that localised page.

Hope this helps, your local Ayrshire SEO Company!

If you’re a business who devotes a segement of your resources to improving your online profile then it’s most likely you’ll have several social media profiles such as Facebook or Twitter in you’re online toolbox. Both of these social giants are a great way to bring you closer to your client base.

However, both of these social sites perform differently and should be treated as such.

I’ve come across quite a few online businesses recently that ‘buy into‘ the ‘one update fits all‘ category. By twinning their Twitter & Facebook profiles under an auto-update tool they feel their cutting down on the time spent communicating while still reaching their audience and getting their message across. Their not! Their conning their audience and before too long their split-personality, communicado will neither be one thing nor another.

Let’s break this down a bit…

Twitter is a great tool to deliver a short, sharp, verbal burst of an update – it’s called microblogging for a reason. Having a Facebook update show up in Twitter can be annoying for your Twitter followers when they realise that you’re update is cut-short and when clicked upon only carries a few more words – keep this up and you’re Twitter follower count will soon dissipate. Even worse is when the message itself is cut-short and holds an embedded link to a blog/product/service page – it’s unnecessary and you can hardly blame someone for NOT clicking when you have cut-short the message as to why they should clickthough in the first place!

Facebook offers a more homely social encounter – a bit like Mum’s cooking without the verbals – it can make use of images, help you create events, offer realtime questions in visual bar graphs, and, more importantly, it creates conversations in a simple to read format. In short, Facebook offers much more than straight to the point update functionality. Facebook has layers!

Do they sound similar ?

Now answer yourself this question. Why would you treat them both with disdain by offering the exact same post/update to both platforms?

I’m talking from experience because in a previous life we updated our Twitter feed from our Facebook profile automatically. The interaction that we once enjoyed on Twitter soon faded when we used the site as it was intended to be used.

If you want the most from both Twitter or Facebook then treat them seperately and you’ll soon experience the real potential that both of these mammoth social sites have to offer.

It might not be apparent to the average Google user but Google did away with its Real Time Search functionality – you might remember the automated scrolling box that appeared in Google’s results for relevant news items. You could also search under the ‘Updates‘ link on the left hand navigation bar.

Google’s Real Time Search pulled updates from Twitter, Facebook and mySpace plus a few other social platforms which it crawls vigoursly.

However, the deal Google had with Twitter expired on the 2nd of July and over the weekend Real Time Search Updates were missing from Google’s new look search interface.

What does it mean for Google and Real Time Search ?

Firstly, it’s no way a signal that Google has any intention of giving up on using realtime content within its search results as Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land writes (opens in new tab/window) …

“Google also stressed that when Google Realtime Search relaunches — something it says will happen but with no set time frame — it will include content from a variety of sources and not just be solely devoted to Google+ material.“

Basically, Realtime Search is being rewired by Google, once they’re more than satisfied that the Google+ project is ready to be released to the public in general after the high expectations of Buzz and Wave fell flatly short.

It will be cliche to say that the internet is vastly infinite. Across the planet, there are about 1.8 billion active web surfers who come online. Plus, there are probably billions upon trillions of websites that can be visited on a daily basis. If you are running your own website, shouldn’t you be doing something to make it to stand out from the crowd?

When you create your website, what are the factors that you consider most important?

Is it the color scheme, the graphics, number of pages, or the content? If you answered all of the above, then you are on the right track to creating a profitable site that people will want to visit. But what else can you do to get more traffic to come into your site? The answer lies in SEO and keywords.

Search engine optimisation uses tons of new methods and strategies to make websites more visible on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Lycos, and many more. Day in and day out, these search engines release bots or spiders to crawl across the web and find relevant websites that they can index to include on search engine results pages (SERPs). If a website is indexed, and a certain web surfer makes a query that is related to that site (using a set of keywords or keyphrases), then you can expect its links to be displayed on Yahoo or Google’s SERPs.

But how can you make Google or Yahoo bots index your website more effectively?

This is where keywords are most important. Say for instance your website is about selling shoes for babies, then the most likely keywords that are relevant to your site include “baby shoes”, “shoes for babies”, “babies shoes for sale”, and so on. In this regard, you should optimize your content to use these keywords and other similar or related keyword combination. To get other possible combinations of words use Google Wheel (a pretty new tool) or the Google AdWords tool – choose “Ideas containing my search terms”.

Your site should contain adequate content, and it is best to integrate these keywords in your articles, keeping in mind relevance and good quality. Already too much? Oh, well… then take note that keywords should not be overstuffed into one page, as search engine bots can view your content as malicious or spammy, and this in turn prevents your site from getting indexed.

Let’s see what we already have:

• Write at least 500 words content on every page – make it interesting
• Include relevant keywords but not too many – 2-3 keywords per page
• Write your content for users not Googlebot

Now it becomes really hard! But who said it was going to be easy?

Where else can you use keywords? Besides integrating them into your sentences and paragraphs, keywords may also be used to tag images and other elements in your website. You should also use keywords to name the pages of your website, as this makes it easier for bots to go through every page to index its content.

Choosing the best keywords for your site does not only involve mixing and matching phrases and combos of words. You should do keyword research to determine how strongly used some keywords are compared to those used by competitor websites. A great tip would be to try (again) the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which indicates how similar websites are using keywords compared to the ones you have optimized your site with.

Some other great tools for you to use to get good keywords will be:

• Keyword Analysis Tool
• Keyword Spy
• Keyword Tracker
• Keyword Group Detection
• Term Extractor SEO Tool

Keyword research should be done regularly, because trends in keyword popularity and strength tend to change in a short span of time. In this way, you can be updated with the best keywords for your site, so you can in turn update your content to drive more traffic.

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This was a guest post written by Vic Dinovici a Toronto SEO Consultant – if you would like to do your own guest post on North South Media then, please do get in touch.

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After the recent WordPress 2.9.2 update I noticed that the comments within this blog stopped working – I have since noticed the same problem across a few other self-hosted wordpress sites.

The problem comes about after a user has posted a comment to an article and then they are greeted by a blank screen from the wp-comments-post.php – seems at first the page just won’t redirect back to the original post.

So, I checked the database to see if the actual comment was being inserted – it wasn’t – which meant the script was bombing out before it reached the database part of the script.

Next I checked out the official wordpress support site to see if anybody else had similar problems. Seems there has been a few people out there with the same sort of trouble (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/288615)

Now, going through the threads I tried all the various advice & help

• I modified my wp_comments table and also ran a repair – it didn’t work
• I readjusted my redirect_to form value – it didn’t work
• switched back to Default theme instead of the custom NSM one I have – it didn’t work
• I disabled Askimet – it worked

Now I’m in a conundrum. With no spam protection the bots would have a field day – so, I’ve decided to give Defensio a chance to see how it does.

But what is still bugging me is why has my Askimet plugin decided to act in this way? Is it WordPress? Has Askimet just decided to go total 100% on spam and just disabled my comments?

Perhaps, I’ll never know.

I tried earlier this evening to twin up my facebook and twitter accounts, so I could share my twitter tweets with my newly formed NorthSouthMedia page on facebook (perhaps if your interested and want to hook up – you can become a fan here).

Now, I can integrate my facebook updates simply with twitter, however, when I go though the same process on my twitter account…

Which when clicked leads to this page, a 404 error page on facebook.

Just wondering if twitter were aware that facebook removed their app and why?

I’ve searched the web for any info on this and came up with a big blank nothing. Has anyone else seen this recently? Love to hear from you.

Blatant Push For Fans on NSM facebook page coming up ***********

You know if you want to connect with NSM on facebook then just click the following link : www.facebook.com/NorthSouthMedia : it will be an experience that you’ll, probably, remember for the rest of your remaining days

Today, I slapped myself on the wrist – hard – not because it was something that I had to do, or even wanted to do, but as a necessary step in stopping myself from letting something get so bad in the future. OK, I’ve been busy, so busy that I have rarely posted on this blog, but that excuse apart I should have really been keeping a close eye on my outbound links.

Like a victorian mother hooked on gin I fleetingly gave a second glance to my nearest and dearest – this blog – all the while the non-attention was having an adverse effect against my own rankings. My shame, apart from not posting as often, was to neglect an seo rule 101 : Keep an Eye On your Outbound Links!

Linking to bad neighbouthoods is bad, very bad! Linking to pages that are no longer available is just as bad. Linking to sites that look ok, then when your no longer checking your outbounds, and they pull the ol’ “301-switch-to-a-tasty-adult-porn-site” is, well, downright, ingenious of them and slap-on-the-wrist material for you for becoming lazy!!!

I’ve watched a few posts on this site go from a PR3 to grey, they still rank, except they nor longer rank on the 1st intended page but wallow on page 2 or heaven forbid on page 3 because my labour of love became just too laborious. Not anymore!

There are plenty of tools you can use to help you combat negative outbound links, Xenu is just one.

Remember, checking your outbounds is part and parcel of your sites homekeeping, don’t become a gin infested parent to a blog like I became, yous’e your nounce, check, check, check and keep the gin and the bad neighbourhoods at bay.

An interesting article appeared in The Telegraph newspaper, a few days ago, about why having too much choice can leave us bewildered and depressed. The article relates to research carried out at Stanford University and can be used broadly across every instance we meet in our day-to-day lives and that includes using search engines.

To quote a piece from the aforementioned article..

People can become paralysed by too much variety and wracked with uncertainty and regret about whether they have made the right decision.

I tend to think, just how do people navigate a Google search result page, nowadays. I see a muddy mess, sometimes, when a certain search query is run. For instance I could get all the following types of results shown on a Google results page against my search query:

• Google Sponsored Links (top and right of the page)
• Google News Listings
• Google Local Business Listings
• Google Live Search Feed
• Google Shopping Listings
• Google Image Results
• Google Organic Listings (normally a maximum of 10)
• Google Blog Listings
• Google Video Listings
• Google Related Search Listings

Have I missed anything? Err, what about the kitchen sink from Google’s cafeteria, why not throw that in as well.

Now, if you think I’m being pedantic, let’s run a search query and see what a typical user might be up against.

Google Sponsored Listings

Google News Listings

Google Organic Listings

Google Live Search & Google Shopping Results

More Organic Listings

Even More Organic and Google Search Related Results

It’s a bit of a pic n’ mix. Don’t get me wrong, I like Google having these Eureka moments – I just wish there was a better structure to the layout in which they displayed on the page.

So, what’s your thoughts. Have Google got it right! Does their Universal buffet of search variety agree with you or are you frustrated by too much choice and yearn for the days when search result pages were easier to navigate and you got what you wanted quicker. I’d love to hear your comments.

After taken a week and a bit break from blogging, social networking etc.. I thought it was time to jump back on the bandwagon and get things moving again. Before I started getting into the grind, I had a wee peak at Google Webmaster Tools where I noticed a number of links coming from a site called Shownar.

After a little bit of investigating it turns out that Shownar is the BBC’s experimental prototype to track buzz online about its shows.

At the moment, Shownar, is centered around the BBC’s iPlayer, but it is expected that, if it becomes popular enough, it will be the main site for taking the online pulse of shows from other TV networks including American.

Why was NSM featured, well it was this post : Top Sources For Online Related News where I mentioned the BBC’s technology program Click!

How does Shownar Work?
Basically by tracking inbound links to various programme-related pages on the bbc.co.uk. Shownar monitors Yahoo! Search BOSS, Nielson Online’s BlogPulse (which indexes over 100 million blogs), and Twingly (which searches microblogging services like Twitter, Jaiku and Identi.ca for links, even when they are shortened using URL shortening services such as TinyURL and bit.ly).

When you consider those that work and are actively social online, just how much information about ourselves do we really reveal?

Think back to the recent Project Gaydar scandal, where two MIT students constructed a program that could tell, with striking accuracy, if a person was gay by analysing their friends list on Facebook.

Now, we have the Canadian Police using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to bait and trap potential criminals and predators. Nought much wrong in that but you’ll hear plenty say that it is further proof of the erosion of privacy online.

The counter reaction to that is anything posted online isn’t safe from prying eyes – from emails to private facebook profiles.

We have created Cyber Bullying, Online Identity Theft, Internet Criminal League Tables, FOAF Profiling etc.. all within a raging digital cloud in a matter of a few years. And still we continue to add fuel to the fire. It is expected that those who have an active online social profile will spend a minumum of 50% of their browsing time on social sites as early as the middle of next year!

Not everyone I know has a Facebook page or uses Twitter, in fact a large percentage of my friends and family just ‘ain’t, that interested’. Perhaps, their the lucky ones!