Friday, April 10, 2009

Maryland Internet Marketing

Maryland Internet Marketing Consultant David Bruce

Local Google Advertising-
Google that phrase, then Call 301 363-8206 If you want YOUR company website to perform that well in Google.

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How Many Google Penalties Are There?



During the course of optimizing websites for the search engines and striving to attain the numero uno spot for competitive keywords, many webmasters run into various kinds of penalties from the search engines that affect the organic rank of their websites.
How Many Kinds of Search Engine Penalties Exist?

A member of the WebProWorld forums reported that there are 3 major kinds of penalties:

1. -30 penalty
2. -950 penalty
3. Index Exclusion

However, there has been a lot of debate on whether the drop of a website’s rank by 30 or 950 spots in Google is really a penalty for adopting shady SEO methods or is it just because some of the major ranking elements that were holding the ranks of a website high just got devalued in the Google algorithm update tossing the ranks badly.

It is reported that a -30 penalty affects the whole domain whereas the -950 penalty only affects some specific URLs for some specific keywords only.

Tedster, a member of the WebmasterWorld forums stated in his post about the -30 penalty as:However, there has been a lot of debate on whether the drop of a website’s rank by 30 or 950 spots in Google is really a penalty for adopting shady SEO methods or is it just because some of the major ranking elements that were holding the ranks of a website high just got devalued in the Google algorithm update tossing the ranks badly.

It is reported that a -30 penalty affects the whole domain whereas the -950 penalty only affects some specific URLs for some specific keywords only.

Tedster, a member of the WebmasterWorld forums stated in his post about the -30 penalty as:

“When this penalty situation was first noticed, it worked in a very odd way. Every search that would normally bring up a url from that domain now showed that url on the top of page 4, position #31 precisely — and this was even true for a search on the domain name itself.”

Positioned at #31 for even a search with the domain name? Now, that sounds like a penalty. However, Tedster goes on to say:

“The penalty has mutated a bit since then — the domain name search, for example, is apparently not always penalized today. Also, the depressed position is not consistently at #31, but every search is still pushed down by about 3 or more pages.”

Now this makes it harder to determine whether the drop in a website’s rank is due to a penalty or for any other reason.

Regarding the -950 penalty, Tedster says that:

“Think of this as an “end-of-results” phenomenon, rather than any specific number of the penalty. What we see is a URL that was previously top ranked for a certain search now showing up on one of the last pages of the SERPs. Most of the time this only affects specific searches — on other searches that same URL can still be first page. The low ranking sometimes comes and goes with various new data pushes from Google. It’s a very odd thing to be #1 and then #896 and then #1 again!”

For both these kind of penalties, SEOs and webmasters associate shady optimization practices to be the key reasons for it. Some say, this is because of keyword stuffing, some say this penalty occurs due to “too many occurrences of semantically related phrases”, while some others say that these penalties are because of faulty and apparently shady link building practices, commonly known as BLOOP (BackLink Over Optimization Penalty)Regarding the -950 penalty, Tedster says that:

“Think of this as an “end-of-results” phenomenon, rather than any specific number of the penalty. What we see is a URL that was previously top ranked for a certain search now showing up on one of the last pages of the SERPs. Most of the time this only affects specific searches — on other searches that same URL can still be first page. The low ranking sometimes comes and goes with various new data pushes from Google. It’s a very odd thing to be #1 and then #896 and then #1 again!”

For both these kind of penalties, SEOs and webmasters associate shady optimization practices to be the key reasons for it. Some say, this is because of keyword stuffing, some say this penalty occurs due to “too many occurrences of semantically related phrases”, while some others say that these penalties are because of faulty and apparently shady link building practices, commonly known as BLOOP (BackLink Over Optimization Penalty)

So what is this BLOOP?

there is a school of thought that getting too many links within a short span of time and with similar anchors can raise red flags with Google since it may look to Google that those links have been acquired unnaturally by means of automated scripts or link building software.

A member of the Webmaster World forums reported in this thread that:

“A new site that gets like 20 links per day, then all of a sudden gets 2000 in one day, well then there’s tom foolery going on there and the penalty gets slapped. Once that penalty is slapped, over time it will go away.

Try to avoid any anomalies. Slowly ramp up your linking strategy.”

This sounds like a plausible explanation for such penalties since Google has always stood against websites that are engaged in practices for manipulating search results.

Another kind of penalty that is known to exist is the Index Exclusion penalty or a complete ban, this is a kind of penalty, which when imposed on a site simply throws the site out of the Google index. Index exclusion penalty usually occur with websites that severely violate the quality guidelines of Google and adopt black hat methods such as cloaking and doorway pages.

How do you avoid being penalized?

read the rest of this article...

and Hire a Seasoned Vetran of Local Search Engine Marketing Battles

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Friday, March 27, 2009

If you have a business you need a facebook page

Facebook isn't for your kids (not anymore)


If you have a small business, you need a facebook page... and you need it right now.

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Don’t look now, but the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.

Here are the latest stats on Facebook’s US audience gender and age demographics, according to the company:

Facebook US Audience Growth, Last 180 Days

Looking at Facebook US audience growth over the last 180 days, it’s clear that Facebook is seeing massive increases in adoption amongst users 35-65.

The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is still women over 55 - there are now nearly 1.5 million of them active on Facebook each month.



The biggest growth in terms of absolute new users over the last six month came amongst users 35-44. Over 4 million more US women 35-44 and nearly 3 million more US men 35-44 used Facebook in March 2009 compared to September 2008.


Facebook just went through another change and from a business point of view this is a very important change. Now Facebook offers RSS feeds, over the past year the number of 'applications' being able to 'write to' facebook has grown, but now YOUR facebook page can transmit and not just receive.

Pages are now a part of News Feed
From now on, posts from Pages you are a fan of will show up in your News Feed. You can hide their posts by clicking the ‘x’ in the top right corner of the post. If you would like to see posts from Pages you connected to in the past, click here. (copied right of my facebook's new *face*)


MySpace and Facebook have been battling for supremacy and from a small business owner point of view Facebook just crushed MySpace. From where I sit MySpace is for the kids with body piercings and tatoos, any website urls posted to a MySpace page get obfuscated at best or simply erased at worse. MySpace does not want you to use your Myspace page for your business (unless you are in the music industry). I have a MySpace page (http://myspace.com/localgoogleguru) and I keep it just so I can capture an potential audience I might otherwise not have access to, but Facebook is getting me more clients than I can keep up with!

MySpace offers 'vanity urls', in other words my original MySpace website address was http://myspace.com/123456 and the vanity url is http://myspace.com/nameIchoose now.

Facebook does not offer vanity urls, but MY facebook page skyrocketed my search engine rankings in ways I never imagined it could.

Addenda: Facebook did retract their postition on vanity urls and I grabbed mine, after giving it some thought I choose my full name rather than /localgoogleguru so my facebook url is now http://facebook.com/davidbrucejr and it did skyrocket to the top of Google: Google my name, David Bruce Jr

Before and After



Before Facebook, if you typed my name into Google you saw my more famous kin on the first few pages... One of my distant relatives owns a patent for the typeset every newspaper press uses, even today. Another of my kin was ambassador to England- kinda hard to out rank those people... Google shows 28,200, 000 websites that are about my name and my name sake(s)

Results 1 - 10 of about 28,200,000 for David Bruce Jr.
Google David Bruce Jr

The first two entries in Google are about my famous inventor relative, the third is someone with Bruce as a middle name
Guess who is number 4?

Facebook did that for me!!
And I've only had a Facebook page for 2 months

Here is the Google Entry for David Bruce Jr:
David Bruce Jr. - Washington, DC | Facebook
David Bruce Jr. (Washington, DC) is on Facebook. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected.
www.facebook.com/people/David-Bruce-Jr/1329852113

That number string is my Facebook account number (1329872113), if Facebook allowed vanity urls mine would be www.facebook.com/people/LocalGoogleGuru

I have a North Carolina client I do search engine marketing for, Stuart M Edwards owner of Camo4x4s, a North Carolina Hunting Videographer. His Facebook page also managed to make Stuart easier to find in Google

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=Stuart+M+Edwards&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f

http://www.facebook.com/people/Stuart-M-Edwards/502463246


I'll be posting on developments with Facebook from the perspective of a local small business owner in coming articles





Maryland Search Engine Expert David Bruce

Local Google Advertising-
Google that phrase, then Call 301 363-8206 If you want YOUR company website to perform that well in Google.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

73 percent of small business would rather do taxes than SEO

The study revealed that 59 percent of small businesses with Web sites don’t currently use paid search marketing, and of those, 90 percent have never even attempted it. Surprisingly, seven in 10 small-business owners who participated revealed that they would rather try to do their own taxes than start a paid search marketing campaign

read more | digg story

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Sunday, January 11, 2009

Fundraise for 501c3 Non Profits

Raise $1000 month for the Free Mobile Health Clinic

If you just stumbled upon this blog and like it please subscribe to my RSS feed and subscribe to Advertising Secret Weapon via Email to make sure you don't miss the latest posts!

"A Mission of Mercy" is a traveling health care/ dental care clinic serving Northern Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania.
With 4 stops per month is Frederick and a few in Baltimore "A Mission of Mercy" provides health care to those that slip through the safety net.

The Un insured
The Under Insured 


=============+


My current secret weapon besides using blogspot blogs?



Raise money for a local charity in your area.

You want something from me? Donate to my favorite charity through Facebook and I'll teach you how to do what I do.

I charge $97 for a complete step by step "

How To Become a Local Google Guru" report on one of my other advertising/ web promotions blogs.



Here's how the offer breaks down:

You can see how well any blogspot blog I make for a client instantly ranks in Local Google Search Results. 






Frederick Internet Advertising



If you want me to show you exactly how to get a Blogger.com blog set up for Business Purposes and get that blog to skyrocket to the top of Local Google Search Results

1_12_09 auto upholstery frederick

Donate to A Mission of Mercy using FaceBook here




Call David Bruce Jr. NOW 301 363-8206

davidbruce@frederick.com

http://frederickwebpromotions.com

Follow me on Twitter

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Local Google Guru - Changing Gears for 2009

How to be a Local Google Guru


When I first started doing free lance Business to Business Local Internet Advertising where I live in Frederick Maryland my thoughts were to keep my efforts local.

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What I did was to offer Frederick Maryland small businesses that did not have an existing website a blogspot blog like this one to use as a company website. It wasn't until I approached Frederick's City Cab Company that I learned the best use of a blog for business promotion.

City Cab already had a company website, they had several actually; Limousine Service, Sedan Service, Advertising from a Truck (rolling billboard ad truck).

Blaine Young, one of the owners of City Cab Frederick let me do SEO on his existing sites, since I seemed to know what I was doing he let me make him a couple business blogs. I was in bad shape financially and didn't charge him much, so he paid me to do it.

At that time no one in the entire state of Maryland was using blogspot blogs in lieu of conventional websites. There were a few journalism type Wordpress blogs, but blogspot was considered to be more of a toy than a serious business Content Management System (A Wordpress blog IS a serious CMS).
They don't know Google the way I know Google...

While experimenting (full disclosure- I did this on City Cab's dime) with Blogger blogs I learned how to get a blog to OUTRANK a conventional website.

Everyone was surprised, I was, our competitors were... The consensus in the Search Engine Optimization field was that a blog would temporarily gain rank in Search Engine Results Pages, then degrade (loose rank) just as quickly as it skyrocketed past a conventional site.

Well... I found a way to get around that. The problem for me was that no one wanted to take a chance on it, I mean who was I?
Joe 'flash in the pan'?

Everyone thought it was just a fluke, no one wanted to believe that little old me, a guy down on his luck (didn't even own a car, went to sales calls on a bicycle) could out perform the large (expensive) glitzy web design bureaus (I don't even know how to spell bureau with out spell check)... yet here we are?
The business model I use is to create a set of blogs, a themed series of connected blogs, the net effect is to have Google identify my main site as a Frederick Maryland Portal or Frederick Maryland Authority Site.

It's obviously effective or you wouldn't be reading this.

While on my Quixotic Quest someone on Facebook asked me if I could get multiple rankings (4, 5 or 6 out of the top 10 search results) for his site, I responded,

Sure I can get multiple Google Rankings for your company website


Then I found out he was targeting the entire nation

...I'd not tried that... I didn't know if this technique would work in that venue.

For example I found it child's play to get a local mom and pop store to the #1 spot in Google/ Yahoo/ MSN / AOL. But some business have more competition than others.
the Moving industry was one of those toughies, so is Real Estate, Doctors, Lawyers, any industry where big enough money is involved for the heavy hitters to pay us super geeks what ever we ask.

I'd not attempted to get a site to rank nationwide or worldwide.

Well I'll be damned!

Google this:

Local Google Advertising

I'm #5 out of Results 1 - 10 of about 30,500,000 for Local Google Advertising.

Local Google Advertising Search Results Proof

Maryland Internet Advertising

(for complete results go to another of my blogs here: http://localfrederickwebpromotions.blogspot.com )
As of this writing I'm at #3, #5, 7, 8,9 & 10 out of Results 1 - 10 of about 9,220,000 for Maryland Internet Advertising.




SOoooo, since I now command the mighty Google as if I was a Lion Tamer, the focus of this blog is to teach people exactly how to use Blogspot blogs to dominate your local internet advertising market the way Frederick Web Promotions can.

The next few posts are going to be in the "How To" category.

I'm NOT going to tell you everything... not for free any way.

What I am going to do is teach you enough to make a dollar or two in YOUR local market, whet your appetite for more and offer for sale a Full Report for $97 on Step by Step instructions where I take you by the hand and show you, with videos, email support, hell you can even call me if you get stuck!

But... here's where it gets even better... I got a Christmas deal for you:

You *Could* buy the Step by Step Report (that comes with how to videos, email support and PHONE support) for $97 (and I'm told that is way under priced considering I'm setting you up in your own local advertising consulting business) OR... You could donate just $25 to my favorite charity via Facebook and I'll give you the report for FREE!


I purposely left this for last... How'd I do with the moving company ranking?

Google this:

move to frederick maryland
Results 1 - 10 of about 499,000 for move to frederick maryland

As of this writing I'm currently at: #4, #7,8 and 8

What good is that?
If I get YOU to take up FOUR of the top ten, what's that leave the competition?

If almost every where they click they all lead to YOU.. what's that say about your companies credibility?

If Google thinks that highly of you... shouldn't your prospective customers think highly of you too?



Call David Bruce Jr. NOW 301 363-8206

davidbruce@frederick.com

http://frederickwebpromotions.com

Follow me on Twitter

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Simple steps to Maryland Internet Advertising

Link

As a local small business, you're not going to be able to
knock that directory out of his number one spot, but that
also means your competitor isn't going to be able to do so
either.

Google's SearchWiki Distorts Results?

One of the latest in new products/ services search engine juggernaut Google™ recently rolled out is a personalized search modification they call SearchWiki.

What is SearchWIKI? Basically SearchWIKI is a customizable search engine. It’s estimated that nearly 80% of internet users interact with a search engine before any other website every time they log on to the Internet.

End users of Google know what they’re looking for and we need a way to help THEM find it.

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Have you ever done a search for a moving company, say in Frederick Maryland? What the public is irritated with is the top ten results for a local business or service almost never display a local business or local service provider. Typically what Google returns as a search result is ten listings of moving company directories, NOT Frederick Maryland moving companies.

Why is that?

Simple, the online moving company directories are better SEO (search engine optimization) webmasters than the local web design guy who created the moving company website.

I don't know about you, but if I wanted to find a company to clean my widget, and all Google showed me was widget directories I'd be PO'ed too.
What happens is the better SEO webmaster is outranking the local guys and is offering the local yokels to pay up if they want to be on the first page.

I'd much rather search and go straight to a local company than click on a half dozen company directories, who wants to go through that many hoops? Isn't the point of the Internet to save time?

So how does searchWIKI change all that?

You don't like a search result? You can make it never show up on YOUR google search again. Really. SearchWIKI is customizable, you can personalize what comes up when you search. This amounts to your being able to "Vote" for the sites you want in Google!

How does this distort search results for those of us in the Search Engine Optimization business?

The other day I had the pleasant discovery that my main website ranked #1 in Google for the keyword phrase I coveted the most:

Local Google Advertising