Blind Ape Seo

The path of the ape

Think global, rank local - Local SEO

How to optimize your business’ web sites for local search

According to SCORE, the are 29.6 million small businesses in the United States alone.  Nielsen researchers state that over 80% of customers and small business owners use the Internet to find information about local businesses.

Easy to see why a SEO effort for local search pays off, but how to do it?

Lucky for you, young grasshopper that the old sensei knows some easy ways to optimize sites and content to attract local customers.

1. When seeing a professional, contact a local SEO agency

Remember that local SEO is part of a bigger, sitewide strategy of search engine optimization, so if you are overwhelmed by all this, see if there is someone in your area to help you.

In local SEO, it is better to go with a local provider, as he will know the local culture and interests of the internet users in the area and can help you target the local crowd more efficiently.

There are many SEO specialists offering help for businesses in their vicinity, such as San Diego SEO, and others, depending on your location.

Knowing your keywords is half the battle, also in local SEO.

2. Claim your business on local search
It’s as simple as logging into Google PlacesBing Local and Yahoo Local and walking through the verification steps which include a phone call or post card to verify your address.

3. Google+ pages

As the researchers at BrightEdge and others have pointed out, Google has started to integrate Google+ pages into the search results. So go and claim your account at Google+, then fill in all the information about your business.

4. Upload Pictures of your business

On the local listings, users are also provided with pictures of your business. To make sure that they see some good pictures, upload your own. These will represent your business so make sure they are at least decent. Think about contacting a professional photographer to make pictures, if necessary.

5. Control information on other sites
Aggregators for local listings search the internet to find pictures, reviews and any information they can on your company. Submit your info to services like Localeze & infoUSA yourself to make sure it is correct.

6. Ask for reviews

On your contact form thank you page, on invoices, on email communications, make a point to say “Hey we’d love it if you gave our business a review on Google/Bing/Yahoo” . Authentic user reviews serve to make your business more creditable and also add to your business’ internet profile.

7. Add your local phone number

On your website, be sure to publish your local phone number, not 800, in plain text (not in an image).

8. Have a full mailing address on all pages of your website.
Your address should be on all pages of your website, to make this information visible to the search engines and add more weight to your geographic location.

9. Give each location its own landing page

Local search is all about that - location, location, location. If you have more than one location, re-enforce this point to the search engines by giving each its own page.

» Guest post by Rankmywebsite.net, a trusted authority on Local SEO

No comments

Resource of the Week: Must Watch Marketing Experiments Webinar

The old ape is probably late to the party, having just discovered marketingexperiments.com (no affiliation).

A member of the wickedfire forum pointed out this free webinar on marketing optimization and it is indeed one you should watch.

Being a stickler for things like usability, the your senile simian enjoyed the ability to click through to interesting slides in the player, which cuts down on viewing time as well.

::emp::

No comments

Usability for evil

Once in a blue moon, things just come together. Usability and evil marketing? Hell yeah, why didn’t I think of that?

Sure, exploting the “sinful” side of people for profit is nothing new. The blog Usability for Evil outlines the direct implications of this in a web design and marketing setting.

Pure genius and hey, who doesn’t love a site with the main categories gluttony, lust, greed, envy, pride, wrath, and sloth?

Read it and enjoy all the machiavellan schemes that appear in your head.

Then go out and apply, little grasshopper.

No comments

More food for your databases

The world bank just opened up it’s data vaults.

Get all of it from their data catalog page.

No comments

uBot now with libraries

After he wrote the review of the uBot Suite, the old ape dove into creating new bots left and right, putting bug reports in the uBot forum, developing a better relationship with the team and spreading chaos and mayhem in the forum.

Next to constant updates and fixes, the uBot developers also worked on new features, which finally pushed the version number to 3.1

Here, a congratulatory cheer is in order.

Why?

Well, besides lowering the memory footprint, squashing bugs, and introducing tons of small, but nifty features, this version brings one HUGE development:

Bot libraries

In essence, this means that any bot that you develop is now open for future reuse.

With a few simple clicks, you can include one of your old bots and use all of it’s nifty subroutines in a new one.

Surely and easily, your arsenal will grow more powerful with each bot and each function you create.

Did anyone say bot army?

~~ / Get uBot for only US$ 199 with promo code BlindApe199 /~~

3 comments

Massive. Branding. Fail.

America Online, formerly known as AOL has decided to rebrand.

Right now, this is a case study in how to utterly destroy a brand. (Not that the company was ina  good shape before that).

Enjoy the fail named Aol.

::emp::

PS: For additional cringes, watch the video.

1 comment

The Demand Media Model of Content Creation

The old ape thought this was interesting as hell:

Wired Magazine article on Demand Media

enjoy,

::emp::

1 comment

So the old ape forgot about the WebWriMo

Darn!

I completely forgot to organize this years WebWriMo, simply because I am too busy.

But, if you want, you can join me for an insane month of web creation.

The old ape himself just started on two big web projects, svereal uBot creations and more. November will therefore be spent in a productive trance, typing and thinking until his hands fall off, the brain overheats and turns into a mush, and he collapses at the desk.

You can share your own stories in the comments.

::emp::

No comments

UBot - Web Automation made easy

Or:

How to get from this

Before uBot automation

Before uBot automation

To this:

After uBot Automation

After uBot Automation

With a few clicks of your mouse.

Update:

Get your own bot army for only 199$ with promo code: blindape199

As every one knows, I love automation. Automation makes webmaster life worth living again, simply because it takes care of the drag involved in a lot of SEO activities.

Now Seth dropped uBot on the community, and it is a bomb - a bomb dispensing gold coins, chocolate bars and playboy magazines.

What uBot is

uBot is a visual scripting environment for web browser automatisation.

I guess you are not alone if you just muttered a “huh?”. So let me put this another way.
Anything you can do with a browser (and a few extras) can be automated with uBot AND you don’t have to write code to do so!

uBot is a tool that lets you build any bot with a few clicks of the mouse!

Clear now?

What uBot is not

uBot is no automated tool that builds you a SEO empire out of nothing.

Instead, it is a tool that lets you build all kinds of little scripts to do your bidding.

Have some ideas:

  • web2.0 account creator - yep
  • stats checker - yes
  • Wordpress commenting - can do
  • sending mail via web interface - you guessed it
  • Page scraping - no problem
  • Search engine scraper - check

What you have to know

Yes, uBot does have a small learning curve in store for you, but it is nothing in comparison to learning a proper scripting or programming language.

Everything you need to know can be learned easily from the tutorial videos on the site or / and the uBot commando guide (reference guide didn’t sound as cool).

Actually, everything I needed to write this reddit user creator learned in the very first video. It took me about half an hour of clicking around and done!

Reddit bot - half an hour of clicking

Reddit bot - half an hour of clicking

That is half an hour with no prior contact to the uBot software!

You can download the .uBot file here, so you can expand on this.

Or you can get the full reddit acount creator .exe file instead, as uBot allows you to compile a bot, so you can run it as any other programs, or give it to your oversea workers or sell it to whoever wants it.

What you do need to have is knowledge of HTML and web forms, but that can also be learned easily.

Who uBot is for

Anyone. Anyone who wants to automate web stuff without heavy programming.

Hell, I can code, and I use uBot now, simply because it is faster and easier to do a lot of things this way. For other things, an uBot can serve as a quick prototype and proof of concept.

My recommendation: Buy it NOW!

7 comments

Visio Wireframe Stencils

I am just leaving this here, because I was looking all over for something like this.

Web Wireframe Stencils for Visio

Especially the pencil sketched look warms my heart and should be useful in conveying the idea of a purely planning stage.

Enjoy,

::emp::

No comments

Next Page »