The New Rush to Local Search Help

Have you noticed? Have you received the tell-tale email that says "we can get you to the top of Google!"? It's the latest rush and if you're not a part, then you need to be. And it's not hard to get involved. In fact, you probably already know tons more than your local dentist about getting pages indexed in Google, and then working on getting them ranked higher in search.

Why this is rubbish to local businesses

When we approach businesses we don't tell them we'll get them to the first page of Google for their search term. That is like speaking in a foreign language they don't understand. It doesn't make sense and seems like a waste of time to them. What do you suppose they are really searching for from the Internet?

Customers are the Bottom Line

Yes, new customers - those who come in simply because of what you've done helping the local business get their pages and site ranking higher in Google. They don't give a flip about first page, number 10, whatever - what they want to hear from your lips is that you're concerned about making them more money.

How can the search engines make me more money

It's a fact that the lion share of the clicks go to the company in the top positions in Google. You never go searching deeper than page three - probably never more than the top 5 results. So this is what everyone else thinks as well. But what the merchant wants to hear is that these will convert into sales - not that you can get him or her to some magical position on this website. They really could care less. Money is where it's at.

Speak their language

So when presenting this whole local search optimization to them, it's important to speak their language. Don't sound like you are a lawyer. I remember when asking a friend (Brazilian) who dabbled in Japanese art work as a side hobby, some advice about getting a divorce in Brazil, they turned into a totally different person and started speaking this lawyerese that was simply a put-off. I never did do any business with them because I couldn't understand a word they were saying, even though I understand Portuguese. It was because they were using terms I didn't use nor could relate to in my day to day work. What a disappointment.

Provide value

Finally, provide extreme value. Give way more than expected and blow them away with what you can do for them online. This will make them a lifetime customer of yours and one that will sing your graces to their friends forever. It just makes sense to give.

This helps - work your plan and you'll be rewarded greatly. Ask me for advice in this.

Watch How It's Done - Google AdSense Earnings

You don't have a list, like a lot of those jokers who advertise to buy their package. They got a following because one person who had a list, advertised to that list and thus created a new list... and so on. If there's a way to make a list quickly with a site and a little bit of traffic - I'd like to see it. It just doesn't happen... and therefore the list guys get richer from your $47 or $97 or $997, and you can't figure out how to make it work. Will they let you advertise to their list? Keep dreaming.

So, here's a little experiment that you can surely do, using a website, Google AdSense, some nice content, and some elbow grease... work. If this doesn't work, you're not putting in the work.

I don't expect to see life out of this for at least six months - but maybe we'll get lucky. In any event, this is how it's done and what has been making many a good living for a long time.

I suggest you subscribe and grab a coffee or tea and read up. My next posts will keep you linked on how you can really make money with AdSense.

Let's get started.

What Are Your Best Hosting Companies?

At first I had all of my sites at Yahoo Small Business. Then, when I noticed at Alexa that '95% of sites are faster than yours', well - I did some research. Netcraft.com was where I spent some time - and at the time, 1and1.com was pretty fast. I already had some accounts there, so I moved the Yahoo accounts over.

And that's worked out well until today - I'm getting 404 errors on many of my sites there. I called, using Skype, (because with 1and1 you'll sit on the phone for an hour before you get a live person), and the support girl told me that everyone is calling in. I thought it was funny, she used the words - "okay, to be honest with you..." Ha.

So right now I am doing a major upload to Yahoo. I still have the accounts there - never canceled them for ... well, for this reason. And it's coming up on 3 PM - which is the time I've chosen to change the DNS for my major accounts.

Hey, another fun URL at Netcraft is the hosting provider switching list. You can tell who's running away from their host. Rackforce and Rackshack hold the award. Check it out.

Gotta run... I am working on a report regarding the recent duplicate content penalty with Google. This was eye-opening, even for me - when I dug in. You'll be amazed.

So let me know who you use. I'm always interested in what is working for you.

Prince Keeps Us on Our Toes

In 1991, thousands of people gathered in Maracana Stadium for what was to become "Rock in Rio II". George Michael, Guns and Roses, Debby Gibson, Santana, and many, many more famous rock groups took to the stage January 18 - 27.

But one character kept in character as being the strangest act on the festival. If you've ever done any work with entertainers, you know they can have very crazy personalities. And Prince fit that description to a "T" (or is it ?)

My good friend Carlinhos of Sao Paulo, Brazil, was contracted by MTV to provide the sound mix for Rock in Rio II. Naturally, each band must do a sound check before they go live. These were while the event was closed. Carlinhos made everyone sound great.

When Princes' band ran through their sound check, everything was super. The first few bands went on and MTV had a sweet mix. However, when Prince finally came on stage (he delayed his "entry" by over an hour), his sound people had switched all the inputs to the feed to MTV.

Most sound engineers would take half of the set to figure out the inputs - drums, which were on input 5 through 11 are now scattered in the 18 - 23 range. Vocals were where the keyboards are. And so on.

Carlinhos had the mix nailed in a little under a minute and a half. He figured out which input was switched and quickly labeled it. It was a huge challenge, but Carlinhos was up to it.

Since I started on the Internet in the early 90's (I had my own FidoNet node through the 80's, and ran several BBS's), it is a chore to keep up with change. What used to be a great business model six months ago - today won't float. Many companies, mainly the search engines, are switching the mix - changing the rules. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes because they simply want to improve their game.

There are few models you can implement and just watch them make money. Most of contextual ad businesses take work keeping fresh content and making sure keywords are worthwhile. You can do that by reading blogs like this.

One discussion I had with a marketer recently revealed that his testing with Google showed the search engine literally changing every few hours. Indeed, it doesn't take too much to get penalized anymore. Copied content is probably the biggest sin. From the way I understand it, Google scans everyone's copy of this "new" content. Then it figures out who is the authority site and knights them the king and everyone else a fraud.

When this happens, Google will not return to your site for many moons. It pays to take the time to do it right the first time. If you are not using your own copy, make sure you have someone else write it for you originally.

What is a good way to do this?

Elance.com is one place to find good writers for less than you think. It doesn't pay to write your own sites as a business. You need to have others do that for you. Spend your time researching and developing new websites. Not spam sites - real meat and potato sites that people will enjoy reading.

Make sure in your game plan you have set aside time to learn continuously about your trade. It's important. How many hours do you spend learning the market, and do you think Google is really changing faster than before? Thoughts?

Google Granted Patent for Estimating Similarity

This one has been in the works for a few years, originally filed on December 31, 2001. Google's Moses Samson Charikar is listed as the inventor of a new method for estimating similarity between web pages and documents - designed to filter duplicate content.

Abstract

A similarity engine generates compact representations of objects called sketches. Sketches of different objects can be compared to determine the similarity between the two objects. The sketch for an object may be generated by creating a vector corresponding to the object, where each coordinate of the vector is associated with a corresponding weight. The weight associated with each coordinate in the vector is multiplied by a predetermined hashing vector to generate a product vector, and the product vectors are summed. The similarity engine may then generate a compact representation of the object based on the summed product vector.

This is designed to reduce the amount of redundant, or nearly redundant documents crawled and returned in response to a user's search query. The method will also dump sites determined to be substantial duplicators of content.

Google's New Software to Find Spam Pages

In Google's fight to weed out spam pages and honeypot pages aimed solely to have visitors click on ads, they've requested a patent on software that will detect spam documents in a phrase based information retrieval system.

What does that mean?

That means phrase stuffing pages will be nixed out of Google's database as soon as they are "detected". If you are guilty, your days may be numbered.

The patent application came out yesterday.