Google Un-verifying GMB Listings

Google My Business

 

UPDATE: Since I posted this morning, Professor Maps got an update from Google with a copy of the warning email they send and SEL did a nice write up about the issue as well.

 

For those of you who work in Google My Business accounts often, this may be news. I was working in a GMB Bulk Feed account yesterday and noticed several of the thousands of listings in the account had a notice of “Disconnected“. The notice said, “This location can’t be connected to Google right now. If this problem continues for more than two days, try deleting the location and adding it again or contact support.”

Read more

Top 35 Local SEO Leaders to Follow

 

Updated: July 22, 2016

Digital marketing, specifically Local SEO, is extremely challenging and only getting more so with the addition of new Google algorithms, Mobile updates, Phantom Updates and the removal of Local Packs. How do you keep up with all of the changes and fluctuations in the local area?

When Google declared that content was king, the digital space exploded into a mess of content and most of it is crap. The challenge is navigating through the garbage and finding real information – gems of content you cant go without, nuggets you want to share which benefit your clients and then ultimately, your bottom line.

Below is a list of my 35 Go-To Peeps when it comes to Local SEO. These are, in my opinion, the top Local SEO people/companies which continually produce relevant, timely and high quality information. These are the people I turn to when I want no-nonsense, breaking information.

Read more

Why Google My Business is Critical for Local Success

Local SEO

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business launched to most businesses in June of 2014 and signified a major investment from Google in local business. Google, always looking toward future, appears to be solidifying local business as their foundation for the future. Many businesses were able to use Google My Business (GMB) immediately upon release, while other, larger, branded companies had to wait several months for the rollout.

Originally known as Google Places, Google My Business is designed to help local businesses seize control of their digital marketing presence. This powerful tool allows businesses to manage general business information, Google Reviews, Google Plus, Adwords and Analytics in one easy to use home. It also provides a way to manage the local digital landscape from Google Search, Google Maps and Google Plus on one dashboard.

Read more

I Got us Pandalized. Then We Got Out. Here’s How.

What Happened

The Google Panda algorithm was first deployed in February of 2011 and effected up to 12% of search results, most notably for us – our website. The algorithm targeted low quality websites with thin content, high ad to content ratios and other quality signals such as content farms. We got smoked by this algorithm and continued to get dinged each time a new version of Panda was released to the wild.

panda1

I’ve read others say that once you get hit by Panda once, you somewhat flatten out and it doesn’t keep hurting you. My perspective on that is different. Our website continually got hit and each time it took a good portion of our traffic – anywhere from 5-20% of whatever the current level of traffic happened to be. Now, this was our own fault mind you. Some of it was because we were lackadaisical in changing our content from standard, un-unique, nearly duplicate content on nearly all of our city/state/zip code pages and some was because I was still pumping out guest blogs which were of the same, poor quality as our website content. I take full responsibility.

Read more

Pigeon Local Results are Useless

via http://www.questioningcreatives.com/mark-chambers/
via http://www.questioningcreatives.com/mark-chambers/

What is Pigeon 

By now, we all know what Pigeon is about. A quick recap for those who are behind….On July 24th, Google launched a new local algorithm, later dubbed Pigeon by Search Engine Land. Results are still coming in though it appears the algorithm is a huge shake up in local search as both Google Maps and Web results were impacted. It is supposed to provide more useful, relevant and accurate local search results which are more closely tied to traditional web search ranking signals. (I will prove later why I think this is bullshit.) As of now, Pigeon has only rolled out to US results though it will most likely roll out to other countries and languages in the near future.

Read more