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We all know that its important to rank in Top 7 for local listings for getting targetted local traffic.

But how to ensure your listing is in the TOP 7 Listings ?

I’ll show you the Top US citation sources for ranking high in local searches.

In order to get top rankings in local searches, Citations from certain sources play a crucial role. In this post we’ll go over the Top Citation Sources for Local Search Rankings. Do make sure your business is listed in these sources.

LIST OF TOP 8 US CITATION SOURCES FOR LOCAL SEARCH

1) SuperPages : SuperPages is a top online resource for local info on Businesses. They have an extensive database that is used by several search engines for verifying info. You can get your business listed for free using this link here .

2) Best Of The Web Local : BOTW Local listings is a new feature from BOTW. It’s giving all other local listings a run for their money. Its very easy to use and very interactive for business. Businesses can avail the free listing or go for a premium listing. You can get your business listed for free using this link here .

3) InsiderPages : Insider Pages tagline ”reviews for the things that matter most” says it all. Being a subsidiary of Citysearch.com a citation from here carries enough juice in rankings. You can get your business listed for free using this link here .

4) Yelp : A powerful local portal that had over 38 Million visits to their site in August alone ! Its effective in connecting people with local businesses. They seem to have a good system in place to cross check the reviews posted for authenticity. You can get your business listed for free using this link here .

5) Localeze : These guys are major players in the local search market.  Its worth getting listed here. They verify all listings. You can get your business listed for free using this link here .

6) Judy’s Book : One of the most used local search sites. They have a great database that is extensive and growing at a fast pace. You can get your business listed for free using this link here .

7) CitySearch : A great local listing site for Businesses like Restaurants, Bars, Hotels and Shopping. Its part of City Grid Media. You can get your business listed for free using this link here .

8 InfoUSA : These guys are one of the main providers of data to yahoo local listings. They maintain and update their records on a regular basis to ensure all data is accurate. Great place to get listed in multiple places as their data is purchased and used by quite a few directories. One can get their listings from a subsidiary of InfoUSA called Expressdateusa. You can get your business listed for free using this link here .

Of Course you’ll need to have citations from Yahoo Local, Google Places and Bing Local.

Submitting to all the local listing sites can be time consuming and painful. If you’d like to use our Premium Citation Submission Service for submitting your listings to the Top Listing Directories, Listing Aggregators, Major Search Sites and more, feel free to use this contact form  to contact us and we’d be glad to assist you. The service is affordable and a lifesaver for small and big businesses looking for increasing their online visibility for targetted traffic.

I hope you found this write up on Top US Citation Sources for Local SEO helpful. Do share your thoughts and feedback  in the comments below.  We do reward regular commentators with do follow links.  Don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter and follow me on twitter ( i will follow back )

You’re searching for a local Plumber using Google Local Listing (also known as Google Places).

However, how do you know whether the plumber is reliable and reputable ? The Reviews !  But how do you know if they are authentic reviews ?

We’ll go over a few Google Local Search Reviews to see for yourself if they are real reviews. Also we’ll go over Google Review Syndication.

Local Search Analysis:

I did a random search for “plumbers san diego ca” in google ( http://ow.ly/2qB9D ) and saw one listing (Bill Howe Plumbing)  that stood apart as it had 106 reviews !

If you click on the reviews for this fellow you’ll see that the top 5 reviews are all 5 stars, perfectly happy customers ! Thats a good thing right ?

So i decided to look into the details for the top 5 reviewers and noticed an odd pattern. I’ll use the latest reviewer : “Chappy” as an eg to show the odd pattern i found

This fellow is someone who takes posting reviews very seriously. All his reviews are 5 stars. On August 6th chappy has posted 17 reviews. Most of us dont have the time to post more then a couple in a day but thats ok, “chappy” takes reviews seriously.

However should one look further in detail you’ll see a lots of odd things :

1) On the review for Bill Plumbing “chappy” claims to be Megan M of San Diego Ca, however on the same day posts reviews under the names of Craig B of Denver CO, D G of Chicago IL, Danielle of Minneapolis, MN, Christi of Costa Mesa, CA

2) Chappy claims to be living at Legend Park Apts in Schaumburg, IL yet takes his/her ( not sure )  garage door to be fixed in Lake Forest, CA ! Further goes to a dentist in Boston, MA and uses a Spine Doctor in Chatham, NJ.

3) Posting of 17 reviews on Aug 6th alone and buying of several cars from various dealers all across the country

4) Always posting 5 star ratings ! I guess he/she is always extremly satisfied.

Now, would you agree with me, that there is an odd pattern here ? Also its the same pattern with the other top 5 reviewers for Bill Howe Plumbing. Which brings the question: Are these Reviews Authentic ?

There could be some explanations for the reviews done. Perhaps chappy is a young billionaire who has houses all over the country, travels on a daily basis for leisure or business. Perhaps used their services at one time and just got to posting the reviews on a day when they had nothing else to do.  I dont think thats its likely, but i really dont know. Perhaps you can come up with an explanation and share with all of us here ?

Now i must say that this is not an odd incident. I found similar questionable reviews for several other service providers like Chiropractors and even Criminal Attorneys. I found one case for a Criminal Attorney in Texas that specialized in military cases, where they had a review posted every 7 days on the dot. All of the reviews gave 5 star rating, each reviewer had only 1 review under their profile and the writing pattern was the same for all reviews.

I’d have to say that they were probably done by a Review Providing Service … Google Review Syndication. There are firms that provide reviews for business by either posting fake reviews using various techniques or claim to find your customers and get them to write their reviews on a post card, mail it to the review firm which then posts the customers reviews online under various accounts. Is this service acceptable to google ? While there is no official statement from Google regarding this service, i’m sure google review syndication would not classify as a review but as a comment.

Google’s guidelines are very straight forward. NO FAKE Reviews are acceptable and they do remove fake reviews, ban local listings for business if found to indulge in unfair and unethical methods. Are you willing to take that risk ? I’d recommend thinking twice before you hire a firm offering a review providing service.

I hope you’ll use this post to determine if the reviews you see in local listings for business are authentic or not and do share your thoughts on the eg’s i provided and let me know if you think they are authentic.

On a key note, i have to clarify that I have no affiliation with any Plumbing service. Also am not liable to any loss of business that any firms used in the eg’s may face due to this post. Also i would not be liable if google decided to ban the local listings for any firm mentioned here for unethical methods or non authentic reviews posted. I am not saying that they indulged in any unfair methods, thats for the readers to decide for themselves based on the facts i provided from the reviews.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts on whether you think the reviews are authentic or not. Also if you have other methods to determine if a provider is reputable to not. I can be followed on Twitter and you can fan me on FaceBook. Also feel free to sign up for my Free Newsletter for more exciting articles.

In my next post i’ll go over Top Citation Sources For Local SEO

UPDATE ( Aug 18, 2010 ): Stephanie, Communications Director from Bill Howe Plumbing contacted me to inform that all the reviews posted were genuine and that they had provided them to a Review Syndication firm they hired. The Syndication firm then posted the reviews for Bill Howe Plumbing.

This brings  me to ask

Should Review Firms Provide Proof that the Reviews posted are Genuine ? (Some do by posting a link to a scanned copy of the correspondence from the customer) Let me know your thoughts.

UPDATE ( Sep 13th 2010 ) : Looks like Google has responded to Review Syndication. At the time of writing this post Bill Howe had 106 Reviews showing on Google Places. Now there are only 75 Reviews showing. Did Google respond by removing the reviews they found questionable ? It would seem that way. Will this mark the end of Review Syndication ? feel free to post your thoughts on this below.

UPDATE ( Oct 2nd  2010 ) :  Google removed more reviews for Bill Howe. They have only 49 reviews showing on Google Places.

You’ve got a FaceBook page that looks great and are getting lots of fans, but are you happy with the limited demographic details that facebook offers about your visitors ?

In this post I’ll show you how to track if your FaceBook page is working for your business.

How to track Keywords used to arrive at your FB Page, traffic sources and much more using Static FBML.

Step 1: Create a Google Analytics account ( in case you don’t already have one ) and create a new website profile for your facebook page. Enter the domain as facebook.com and even though you will be told that you have to activate or verify the site don’t worry about that. Once the profile is created you will get a code that looks like UA-4124123-1

Step 2: Create your custom image tag for each page. Enter the Tracking code into this Free FBGAT Tool here or download the script from here and host it on your own server (courtesy of webdigi.co.uk). In the analytics code you’ll enter the code given to you by google analytics, in the domain you’ll enter the site url used to create the tracking code ( facebook.com ) and in the page link enter the page link to identify which page the tracking is for. Once done you’ll get your custom code to be added to your FBML page.

Step 3: Add the Custom code to your Facebook page using Static FBML . I recommend adding the code to the bottom of the page so that it does not interfere with your page.

That’s all there is to it. Let the analytics pull the data and use it for your tracking purposes. Of course you could take it another step and distinguish fans and non fans visits and activity by setting up funnels, goals and segments.Webdigi has graciously shared their code for distinguishing fans and non fans activity on their FB page here .

Implement the above steps properly and you’ll see the results. In case you dont have the time to do it yourself or are just lazy feel free to contract it out to my team and we’ll take care of it for you. You can contact me through the Contact Page here. These steps have worked for me and my team successfully.

I hope you found this write up on How to add Google Analytics for your FaceBook Fan Pages helpful. Do share your thoughts and feedback  in the comments below.  We do reward regular commentators with do follow links.  Don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter and follow me on twitter ( i will follow back )

This is a continuation of my previous post on 3 Steps To Get Your Business Listed in Google Local Listings where i showed you how get your Business listed in Google Local Listings.

Since everyone has not started listing their business in local listings there is a need to rank higher in local listings.

I’ll share the Five Proven Steps To Rank Higher in Google Local Listings.

How to Rank Higher in Google Local Listings

1) Add Keywords to your Company Name and Description : If your Business Name happens to have your Keywords in them then definitely use that name in the listing. Don’t make up a new name with the keywords just for the listing. Google gives you the ability to add a description describing what services the company offers. Make sure your content has your keywords along with Location added along with the prime features. This description is used by google in calculating rankings.

2) Add Logo, Photos and Video : Make sure you take advantage of Google’s option to add your Logo to your listing. Also add as many photos and Video’s that show the viewer who you are and what your Business is about. This lets them know more about your business and how you can help them. The more photos you add the better it is. Do make sure the quality of the photo’s and Video’s are decent.

3) Get Tons of Reviews : The more the reviews that you have the better your listings stands out from the rest. Don’t make the mistake of faking reviews, you will get caught and its not worth it. Get as many reviews from previous clients who have used your service in the past. Have your reviews have your Location in them. Reviews play a strong role as to whether the visitor would click on your site URL.  Think about it, which Dentist would you rather go to.. one with 5 Good reviews or one with 50 Great reviews ?

4) Add a Company Coupon : A lot of people don’t know you can add a Company Coupon to your local listing. Nothing gets more traffic then a great coupon offer. Create an Urgency to use the Coupon. Make the customers see value in you through your coupons.

5) Create One Way Links for Your Listing : Now that you’ve optimized your local listing, you need to create one way links for it. Just like any other page on your website you need to push it higher in rankings and one way links does the trick. You can get links from indexed articles on top article sites, links from your own website, your social profiles. These links will push your listing higher in rankings.

Implement the above steps properly and you’ll see the results. In case you don’t have the time to do it yourself or are just lazy feel free to contract it out to my team and we’ll take care of it for you. You can contact me through the Contact Page here. These steps have worked for me and my team successfully.

I hope you found this write up on Rankings in Google Local Listings helpful. Do share your thoughts and feedback  in the comments below.  We do reward regular commentators with do follow links.  Don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter and follow me on twitter ( i will follow back )

Contact us for getting your Business Listed in Top Rankings in Google Places, Yahoo Local Listings and Bing Local.  You can reach us at

Sales (at) RamitNarang.com

I get asked by clients all the time if i have a Guide or a cheat sheet that they can follow to ensure that they following proper SEO guidelines and to make sure they are not missing out on something.

So i thought why not create an OnPage SEO Guide for my readers to follow to ensure their website is properly optimized for search engines.

If you follow this OnPage SEO Guide you will obtain Higher Rankings in Search Engines.

We have tested the techniques mentioned below and have attained Top Rankings in Search Engines.

I may over the next few weeks discuss the Top 10 Steps in detail only for my readers, so i definitely recommend signing up for our Free Newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out on the weekly steps.

ONPAGE SEO GUIDE

Step 1: Find the Best Performing Keywords

Step 2: Find Out who your Competitors are

Step 3: Optimize Your Website Title using your Researched Keywords

Step 4: Optimize your Website Meta Tags, Keywords, Description for all Pages

Step 5: Optimize your Website pages using H1 Tags

Step 6: Optimize your Website Pics using ALT Tags and Titles

Step 7: Optimize your Website by adding a 301 redirect

Step 8: Optimize your Website by adding a Blog and add Fresh and Unique Content regularly

Step 9: Optimize your Website by adding a Robots.txt file

Step 10:Optimize Your Website by adding a Sitemap in both Html and XML format

Do let us know if you like the above SEO Guide and feel free to tweet it to your friends.  If you follow these 10 steps you will get higher rankings for your site in the top search engines over time. As you know nothing is guaranteed but you’ll never know unless you try.

In my last post i showed you how to get your Business Listed in Google Local Listings. Today, I’ll show you how to get listed in yahoo local listings.

Yahoo Local Listing are a great way to get targeted traffic to your site or qualified leads from people interested in your product or service.

Unlike yahoo adwords,  yahoo business local listings can be free or a flat monthly fee.

I’ll show you in 3 easy steps how to get your business listed in yahoo local listings.

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STEP 1 : Provide Your Business Details

Visit Yahoo Local Listings (US)  or Yahoo Local Listing ( Canada) and log in using your yahoo username and password.  Once logged in you’ll enter your name, business address, telephone, website URL ( if you have one ) hours of operation.  For those working as consultants from home, you get to decide if you want your business address listed or just your telephone and email and website.

STEP 2: Choose Your Categories

Only choose relevant categories for your business listings.  If you’re an SEO Firm then you may consider a category like Internet Marketing.  You’ll choose your main category and then choose the appropriate sub category. You may choose multiple categories for your listing.

STEP 3: Review your Listing and Confirm

Once you have added your details then you can review how your listing will be displayed and submit your request for a free basic listing or choose an upgraded ad for a flat monthly fee.

You have 3  options

1) Basic Listing for free

2) Enhanced Listing for $9.95/month that allows you to add a logo, links to coupons

3) Featured Listing for approx $25/month for top placement.

If you’re having trouble getting your site listed in Yahoo Local Listings and need advise do post your questions below or feel free to contact me here or on Twitter.

The Next Post will be on Steps To Get Your Business Listed in Bing Local Listings.

Ever done a google search for a service in your own area and seen listings for local providers show up on google maps BEFORE your normal google search results ?

Yes, you know what i’m talking about. You probably wondered how did they get there? I wish my Business was also listed on top of the local search results.

Well Now you can ! I’ll show you how in 3 Easy Steps.

I’ve seen firms have great Internet presence, however have weak local Internet presence. Its important to have a Strong Local Presence and this can be easily done using the 4 steps that i have listed below. It takes a few minutes to do it your self and is well worth it. This is Part 1 of a 3 Part Guide on How to Get Your Business Listed in Local Search Engine Listings. ( Google, Yahoo and Bing )

STEP 1 : Provide Your Business Details

Visit Google Local Business Center and log in using your Google/Gmail Username and Password. You’ll then be prompted to enter your Business Name, Address, Telephone, Email, Website URL, a Brief Description of your Business ( 200 words max ) and up to 5 Categories for your Business.

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STEP 2: Choose Your Verification Method

Once you have entered your Business Listing Details then you’ll have 2 Choices for Verification

(i) Phone Verification : Where Google calls the telephone provided

(ii) Mail Verification : Where Google sends you a postcard with a verification code

I’d recommend taking the mail verification as its better then waiting for a call. And you could get lucky and get a $100 Adwords Coupon from Google. Here’s what the verification card looks like.

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STEP 3: Confirm Verification Using Code

Verify your listing using the verification code either given to you on the phone or on the post card from Google and your listing will go live in about 6 weeks.

As you can see adding your site to be listed in Google Maps Local Listing is simple and easy. You dont need to hire a Professional SEO firm to do this for you. However for those who dont have the time and would rather hire someone to do this for them, feel free to contact me

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What i showed you was how to get the basic listing in Google Local Ads. Well recently Google took it a step forward and now offers an upgrade where you get a unique phone number from Google for tracking calls that you get from visitors to your local listing ad, ability to add Coupons, Detailed report on the calls received, clicks to your ad, driving directions to your business.

This upgrade is available for a flat monthly fee which varies based on your location, categories and is only available in San Francisco and San Diego, California for the moment.

If you’re having trouble getting your site listed in Google Local Listings and need advise do post your questions below or feel free to contact me here or on Twitter.

Next Steps To Get Your Business Listed in Yahoo Local Listings

This blog is covers topics like

• Full Disk Encryption
• Search Engine Optimization
• Online Marketing Strategies
• Point of Sale Systems
• Cellular Specials
• Automotive Reviews and Specials
• And occasionally a few good jokes.

If you’d like me to review your product ,  feel free to contact me as well.