Underpinning the Google Local algorithm is a number of data providers.  The more citations to your firm from these data providers, the higher you will rank.

So get listed!

Google Local – Get your Listing
http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php

1.    infoUSA
Check – http://www.infousa411.com/Business.aspx
Listing – http://list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm?Vendor=099842

2.    Superpages –
Check – http://www.superpages.com/
Listing – http://www.supermedia.com/spportal/quickbpflow.do

3.    Localeze
Listing – http://webapp.localeze.com/bizreg/

4.    YellowPages
Check – http://www.yellowpages.com/
Listing – http://listings.yellowpages.com/

5.    Yelp
Check – http://www.yelp.com/
Listing – https://www.yelp.com/signup

6.    InsiderPages
Check – http://www.insiderpages.com/
Listing – http://www.insiderpages.com/friends/new?header_link=true

7.    Niche Industry Sites (BBB, Vertical Directories)
http://www.justia.com
http://www.findlaw.com
http://www.lawyers.com
http://www.martindale.com
http://www.hg.org
State Bar Associations
Local Bar Associationes

8.    Acxiom
Check – http://www.databyAcxiom.com (Not yet online)

9.    Yahoo
Check – http://local.yahoo.com/
Listing – http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php

10.    Citysearch
Check – http://www.citysearch.com
Listing – Click on Register in Top Right.

11.  MapQuest
Check – http://www.mapquest.com/
Listing – Data is pulled from InfoUSA.com http://list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm

12. Local
Check – http://www.local.com/
Listing – http://www.yellowbot.com/submit/newbusiness

Also check out listings here – http://www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm

From Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, to individuals, they are the firm that is called upon when exceptional legal representation is needed. BVRC’s roster of longstanding clients is testimony to its strong track record in winning trials and achieving desired results. Brady, Vorwerck, Ryder & Caspino is a full-service law firm with offices in California, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.

• Asbestos Litigation
• Bad Faith Litigation
• Business Litigation
• Business Transactions
• Construction Litigation
• Employment Litigation and Labor Law
• Environmental Litigation
• Insurance Coverage
• Premises Liability
• Products Liability
• Professional Liability
• Real Estate/Title Litigation
• Workers’ Compensation

You may already know this, but I thought I would share anyways.

When you run the quick research, if you highlight all the rows of data and paste that into another program (say a blog post, MS Word, an email, or even notepad) you get the raw numbers of the costs per click.

I am not sure if its the average, high, or low cost – I am assuming average cost to be in that position.  It at least gets us into the game quicker and on the phone I can tell a client “Hey, consumer law protection costs $3.33 a click”.

Neato!  Now I don’t have to setup an Adwords account or do more research to get the exact figures for a potential client.

Here is the output that I copied from this screenshot.  As you can see it shows positions 1-3 are $17.50 for dallas criminal lawyer.  Great data to quickly share on the phone or with a client.

It reaffirms a lot of what we do here at PaperStreet  (i.e. hire in different time zones, be agile, have 35 hour work weeks, be flexible, get stuff done and minimize meetings).

Some cool tips you can take away from the book:

1. Work time – Have uninterrupted periods where IM, Phone and Email are off.
2. Judo Solutions – Make “good enough” a viable solution.  Although you may not show off mad skillz or get accolades, it will get the job done.
3. Meetings – Should have a timer.  Should have a specific goal.
4. Pick a fight, but be able to back it up.
5. Be simple rather than complex.  If needed, cut clients to keep the product simple.
6. Be a drug dealer – give something away for free.
7. Marketing is for EVERYONE – phone, email, web site, software, errors, invoices, greetings, and anything is marketing.
8. Hire when it hurts.  Don’t hire to replace, see how long you can go without that person.
9. Fire delegators.  Hire Managers.  Managers get stuff done and don’t need hand holding.
10. Test drive employees.
11. Don’t hide bad news.  Let clients know immediately.
12. Getting back to people quickly is the most important thing. I REALLY AGREE WITH THIS, in fact we make it mandatory to contact all clients back same day, if not within same hour.
    
13. Allow employee control and not to have to ask permission on small things or even big things.
14. Don’t create a policy on the first issue or problem.  Just say politely, don’t do it again.

Cool stuff and really a quick read.  I think I pounded through all 250+ pages in less than an hour.

“How would I create a text version of these documents so that they can be crawled by search engines?”

Easy.  Google already indexes PDFs.  In fact, Google can index just about anything these days.  See a chart here.

• Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf)
• Adobe PostScript (.ps)
• Atom and RSS feeds (.atom, .rss)
• Autodesk Design Web Format (.dwf)
• Google Earth (.kml, .kmz)
• Lotus 1-2-3 (.wk1, .wk2, .wk3, .wk4, .wk5, .wki, .wks, .wku)
• Lotus WordPro (.lwp)
• MacWrite (.mw)
• Microsoft Excel (.xls)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt)
• Microsoft Word (.doc)
• Microsoft Works (.wks, .wps, .wdb)
• Microsoft Write (.wri)
• Open Document Format (.odt)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)
• Shockwave Flash (.swf)
• Text (.ans, .txt)
• Wireless Markup Language (.wml, .wap)

Now from an SEO perspective, we have found the following to be helpful.  In order to give them a boost, you may want to do one of the following:

1. Create a new page summarizing the PDF’s contents and then link to the PDF itself.  The theory is that the summary will add additional keyword phrases to index and by linking to the article, you will increase the documents authority.
2. Rename the PDFs to be keyword phrases you want to rank high for (i.e. instead of article1.pdf it becomes “real estate how to guide.pdf.”)  The theory is that the file name gives Google another indicator about what the article is about AND all links to the file will contain keyword phrases.
3. Alternatively, you could cut/paste the entire PDF as HTML text.  The theory is that HTML documents tend to rank higher than PDF documents.  You would create links to the PDF internally on the site and from other web sites.  This will give the document more authority and rank it higher in the search engines.  Make sure that you do not copy and paste the entire PDF document AND have the PDF indexed.  That is technically duplicate content.  You may want to indicate to Google to not index the PDF.   You can do this by disallowing the PDF folder of all files.

Law firms now need to pay attention to this area, if they have not already.  The good news is that getting a listing is relatively easy. Getting a top rank can be done with minimal effort.

Let’s read more though to understand the algorithm.

Business Quality Guidelines From Google

http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=107528

• Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website.
• Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist.
• Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title, address or category fields.

Other Top Articles on Google Local Optimization

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

• One of the best articles to read.
• Top 41 Factors
• Top 8 Negative Factors
• Most important data providers
• Most important data review engines
• Must read

http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/general-marketing/local-seo-citation-is-new-link/

• There is a difference between a citation and a link.  Citation can just be address.
• You do not necessarily need links, but citations to your office address.
• “Plenty of sites that are only listing address and phone number, or otherwise unspiderable links, are showing up as citations.”
• For the most part, the businesses with lots of citations rank higher than those with a lower volume.
• Two of the top 10 Local businesses have MORE citations than they have inbound links!
• Submit your site to the typical InfoUSA, SuperPages.com, and InsiderPages.com, but also submit to all types of niche sites.

http://www.seorabbit.com/optimizing-for-google-maps

• Priority to City Center is Key.
• Title tag is important.
• Categories are important – but don’t be spammy.
• Create multiple listings, if you are in different cities.
• Add in details, photos.

http://www.naturalsearchblog.com/archives/2007/01/11/extreme-local-search-optimization-tactics/

• Tip # 1: Change your business name to include a few of the top keywords that users type into search engines when seeking your type of business in your area.
• Tip # 2: Change your business name so that the first characters will be earliest in the alphabet for your locality.
• Tip # 3: Move your business so that you can have presence closer to your city’s center.
• Tip # 4: Get a separate directory listing for every city in your area for which you provide services.
• Tip # 5: Customize your address by having your street renamed to include beneficial keywords.
• Tip # 6: Lightly influence user ratings to your benefit.
• Tip # 7: Add the common nicknames for your locality into your site’s front page text.

http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/10-likely-elements-of-googles-local-search-algorithm/519/

• Use of Google’s Local Business Center (LBC)
• Availability/Trust of other business data
• A Business Web Site
• Listings in 2nd-tier Local Directories
• Listings in Vertical Directories
• References from other Web sites
• Reviews
• Proximity to location
• Location Prominence and User Query
• Use of other Google services

Any other articles?  Let us know and we will summarize and link up.

Emergencies

Is your pet hurt or sick? We are available for emergencies at any time, day or night.

Call us for immediate help at 561.272.1552. A licensed Florida Veterinarian will answer the phone.

Your emergency office visit, costs $100, plus cost of treatment and testing. We are here to help.

Pages on the Site

• Home
• Treatments
• Boarding & Grooming
• Vaccines
• Pet Emergency
• Products
• Contact
• About Us
• Articles & Media
• Forums
• My Pet

Main Clinic
Atlantic Animal Hospital
1950 W. Atlantic Ave.
Delray Beach, FL 33444
Tel: 561.272.1552

Emergency Clinic
10160 La Reina Dr.
Delray Beach, FL 33446
Tel: 561.272.1552

He serves all of Boca Raton – Get Directions from Boca

But IE 6 Sucks!

Yes, it does.  But losing business sucks more.  Spending a few more hours on a site can help the client.  For each client, I think we need to check their server logs and determine their traffic.  It takes about 3 minutes of work to determine their audience and will help our clients. 

• If a client has a HUGE population of IE 6 users (like 10% or more), then we have to still code for them.  I could easily see this happening if our clients have older customers, lower socio-economic customers, or customers in developing countries.  Why?  Because they probably have older computers.
• If they have a 5% or less share we can just drop features and make small work arounds.
• If they have a 1% market share we can just ignore completely – just like we do for poor Opera.

My Gut Feeling

I have a sneaky feeling that it will be not a dramatic drop as we want.  I would love to see our server stats go from 4.6% to 0% in the next few months.  I just don’t think it will happen. I think it will continue trending down, but by next year we will only be a few percentage points lower.

Big Question – Our Web Site and Our Clients Sites

The big question is should we cater to 4.6% of our audience.  I ran our numbers and that is the number of visitors that came back – see attached chart.  I say yes, we should still provide a solid experience in IE6.  However, we can kill any fancy features and just do basic things.

In the last month we had 700 visitors in IE 6.  That is quite a few people (20 to 30 a day).  We had an inquiry just today from an IE 6 user.  Yes, I know a mere coincidence, but still there are people who don’t use it.   Would you design your store or restaurant to exclude 5% of your traffic?  No.

I did run a report and since August we have had 40 inquiries with IE6 as the browser (about 8% of our overall inquiries via the web form).  So, would we want to lose 8% of our business?  At this time, I don’t think we would want to do that.

So, says the Zen Master….we’ll see.

McConnaughhay, Duffy, Coonrod, Pope & Weaver, P.A. has long enjoyed a reputation as a premier workers’ compensation defense firm. Since the founding of the firm more than 30 years ago the scope of their practice has expanded to meet the needs of their clients, which range in size from small businesses to multinational corporations and span a broad array of industries. Today, they are also recognized for their work in employment law and a full spectrum of civil litigation.

The firm has nine offices throughout Florida and one location in South Georgia, from which they serve resident businesses as well as regional, national and international clients with legal matters in Florida and neighboring states.

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