Starting on Friday October 17, 2014, Google began refreshing the Google Penguin algorithm update. The previous update was last October (October 2013). It’s been more than a year, and there are plenty of websites that were hit back in 2013. Some of those sites, if they did a proper link cleanup, are now seeing some recovery of Google organic traffic. Officially, Google announced that this is a Google Penguin refresh and could take weeks to complete. It’s not necessarily the Google Penguin 3.0 that we were all hoping for. It’s just a refresh, in fact.

So, if you’re not currently seeing any good results (better rankings or more traffic from Google organic search) from this latest Google Penguin refresh, then what now? What can you do right now to help your website possibly benefit from a refresh of Google’s Penguin algorithm? Is there anything you can do? Yes, there is.

First off, let’s get a few things straight:

– This is a refresh of the Google Penguin algorithm update from last year. It’s not technically Google Penguin 3.0. Although Pierre Far’s Google Plus post refers to “Penguin Update rolling out”, we need to pay attention to what he said: it’s a refresh and not an update.
– An update of the Google Penguin algorithm would indicate that there are new “signals” or “new ways” that Google is calculating low quality, inorganic links to your website.
– A refresh indicates that there are no new signals being included: we can use what we know about the previous Google Penguin algorithm update to work on cleaning up our site’s link profile.

It’s important to note what Google’s Pierre Far said: “This refresh helps sites that have already cleaned up the webspam signals discovered in the previous Penguin iteration”. So, if you have already cleaned up your site’s link profile, and you did a good enough job of getting rid of the link spam, then you could see more traffic from Google organic search in the future as this begins to roll out over the next few weeks.

But, if you have not cleaned up your website’s link profile, and there are still spammy links pointing to your website, then it’s very unlikely that you will see any increased traffic from Google organic search. I think it’s very clear: this Google Penguin refresh will reward websites who have cleaned up their link profile in the past. Again, it’s important to note that this is not necessarily Google Penguin 3.0. In any case, there’s still time to clean up your links. And, I would add that most likely you will be rewarded by this refresh if you cleaned up your site’s links in the past year, up until about a month ago. But if you just cleaned up your site’s links in the past week, you will most likely not be seeing any rewards from the Google Penguin refresh that just started on Friday.

Why?

Well, it takes time for Google to review links to websites. In fact, we don’t even know if the link reviews are technically done by an automated process or if Google uses the Google Quality Raters (human reviewers) to review websites. And, typically, any new links that a website receives (especially links from low quality websites that aren’t crawled that often by Google) takes time before it’s “applied” to your website’s actual search engine rankings. Even though Google is fast a crawling, any changes we make to our websites or even our link profiles may not take full effect for a period of time.

So What Now?
Well, this news about Google Penguin being refreshed is actually good news. It’s not an update. So, we can use the typical information we know about Google Penguin to continue to clean up our site’s link profile. Even though it’s highly unlikely that a site’s profile cleaned up this week will benefit from this latest Google Penguin refresh, there’s no better time than right now to start cleaning up your site’s link profile (or re-reviewing all of the links to your site).

So, let’s get started cleaning up a site’s link profile using these steps:

– Review Google’s Webmaster Guidelines regarding link schemes. It’s important to make sure that your site isn’t violating any of those guidelines.
– Download all of the links to your site, from several different sources:
– Majestic links
– a hrefs links
– Google Webmaster Tools links
– Open Site Explorer links
– Put all of your link data into a spreadsheet and remove the duplicates.
– Start reviewing the links, paying particular attention to non-branded “keyword rich” anchor text links.

There are several ways to review your site’s links. There are tools out there that will help you come up with an updated list of links that includes more data, ideally in a spreadsheet form.

– Crawl the links yourself using Screaming Frog SEO spider.
– Crawl the links yourself using IBP (Internet Business Promoter) link building tool. Could be useful for contacting sites who links you want removed, as it has built-in templates for sending emails manually to site owners.
– Use a paid tool like Link Risk by Kerboo to crawl and analyze the links.
– Use a paid tool like Link Research Tools‘ Link Detox tool to crawl and analyze the links.
– Use the Majestic site to determine which links are low quality versus higher quality. For example, you can perform this search at Majestic to see which sites have low Trust Flow but high Citation Flow:

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Whatever tool you use (free or paid tool), you’ll still need to manually go through all of the links and determine for yourself if that link is “spammy” and inorganic or if it’s a good, natural link. Most likely will be obvious, and will need to be removed and/or disavowed using the Google Disavow links tool. But, to be highly effective, you need to get those links removed completely.

Look for these types of links, most likely most sites will need to get rid of them:
– Low Quality Directory Links. Links from “directories” other than Dmoz.org, BOTW.org, and Yahoo! Directory (soon going away).
– Comment Spam. Links included in comment spam. If the link is from a comment on a blog post and includes “keyword rich” anchor text as the commenter’s name, for example, then it should be removed. Yes, and that’s even if it’s a nofollow link.
– Web 2.0 links. If the link is on a “social bookmarking” site (other than StumbleUpon, Pinterest, etc.) where people “vote” for the links (vote up or down or include a point system) then most likely you need to get rid of the link.
– Links that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for link schemes.
– Links that are in press releases on low quality press release sites (other than PRWeb.com and PR Newswire, etc.).

That’s just a start of the types of links that most likely need to be removed. Again, it takes a manual review of the links and a decision by you on whether or not you need to remove the link or not. If you have a lot of links or are not comfortable making the decision as to whether or not you can do the link cleanup, feel free to contact me.

At this point, the Google Penguin 3.0 refresh is just that: it’s a refresh of the previous Google Penguin algorithm, with no new “linking” signals included. So, technically speaking, can we really call this Google Penguin 3.0? Maybe not. There still is no better time to start cleaning up your site’s links than now.

References:
Google Releases Penguin 3.0 — First Penguin Update In Over A Year
https://searchengineland.com/google-releases-first-penguin-update-year-206169

Google AutoCorrects: Penguin 3.0 Still Rolling Out & 1% Impact
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-3-impact-roll-19321.html

Google Confirms Penguin 3.0 Update, Here’s The Reaction So Far
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-confirms-penguin-3-0-update-heres-reaction-far/118404/

Update February 2015: We have updated our research, and you can find the results here: .COM Vs. New gTLD Domain Names: 8 Months Later.

Globe Runner did a search engine marketing study to find out which are better for marketing: .Com or a New gTLD Domain name.

Since the beginning of the Internet, we’ve been mainly using three main Top Level Domains (TLDs) for our websites: .COM, .NET, and .ORG. We typically are used to seeing and using the top three TLDs, and those websites currently make up a majority of what we see in the search engine results pages, such as in Google’s search results. Since January 2014, however, there are literally hundreds of new Generic Top Level Domains (New gTLDs) coming available, and many are already available for registration.

New gTLD market share courtesy ntldstats.com

The most popular domain name amongst the new gTLDs is .xyz, but when it comes to “keyword rich” TLDs, .photography is on top. It is widely thought that one way to potentially gain some search engine marketing advantage would be to buy a keyword rich domain name that includes the TLD as one of the main keywords. This strategy has been said to not matter when it comes to search engine ranking advantages in Google, though. In March, 2012, Matt Cutts, from Google, addressed a myth about the new gTLDs.

Specifically, Matt Cutts said regarding organic search engine rankings in Google:

“Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.”

So, buying a keyword-rich new gTLD domain name apparently does not carry any extra weight when it comes to actual search engine rankings, at least not in Google’s organic search results. But what about actual real-world search engine marketing (PPC)? What if we were to see what real consumers desired?

We had so many questions about the new gTLD domain names that we set out to find out, using real-world data, whether or not the public cares about the domain name when they see it. We set out to set up tests, a search engine marketing study, where we could determine which are better for search engine marketing: .COM domain names or new gTLD domain names?

.COM Vs. gTLD Test Overview
As a leading interactive marketing agency based in the Dallas, Texas area, Globe Runner wanted to find out, first-hand, which TLD (or new gTLD) performs better from a website marketing or search engine marketing perspective: this is our first search engine marketing study. For the purpose of testing the overall marketing performance of .COM domains versus new gTLD domain names, we thought that it would be important and most appropriate to use Google AdWords, a leading source of paid internet traffic.

In the case of our primary test, we were able to secure two keyword rich domain names: one with the keyword in the domain name, and the other with the keyword in the domain name and in the new gTLD.

We chose these domain names for the primary test:

www.3CaratDiamonds.com
www.3Carat.Diamonds

and we chose brand-related keywords for the second test. We chose these domain names for the second test:

www.MattitosMenu.com
www.Mattitos.menu

We wanted to make sure that the domain names we chose were very close in nature—but they also presented us with an opportunity to measure the results based on the .com domain name and the new gTLD being used. We created two separate landing pages for the tests. One landing page was used on the “diamonds” domain names:

For the “menu” test, we use one landing page on both domain names:

We put the same landing page on both domain names and used the same ad copy in our Google AdWords ads. We bid on the same keywords, with the same budget. Both ad campaigns ran at the same time. Those sites are still up and running today, so you can see the landing page that we used on both of those domain names if you go to those websites. Essentially they were exactly the same–except for the domain name.

The Results
After we ran our Google AdWords campaigns for a specific period of time, it was clear to us, in many aspects, that the .Com outperformed the .Diamonds domain name in certain key areas. However, in other key areas, the .Diamonds domain name performed much better.

Based on the results of our “diamonds” test, it ultimately cost us more to use the .Com in a Google AdWords campaign than it did a .Diamonds domain name. The overall cost was $.43 cents more (the .Com was more expensive).

We also looked at the results for the test on MattitosMenu.com versus Mattitos.Menu. These results were, in fact, quite different than what happened on the first test. Let’s take a look at the test results first for the .Com versus the .Diamonds doman name, and then the resutls of the test for MattitosMenu.com versus Mattitos.Menu.

It cost less per click for a .Diamonds domain than to run the same keywords on a .Com domain name, and the total campaign cost was lower. With a higher CTR on the .Com domain name, it appears that end users may favor the .Com domain name over the .Diamonds domain name. The .Diamonds domain name, however, was given quite a few more impressions than the .Com domain name, giving the .Diamonds domain name more visibility. In fact, it appears that Google AdWords actually favors use of the .Diamonds domain name, giving it more impressions and even better positioning. The average position for the .Diamonds domain name was better.

Another of the data points we looked at is the effective CPM for the keywords. We calculated the effective CPM for each of the .Com and .Diamonds campaigns, and they are as follows:

3Carat.Diamonds
Effective CPM (cost per thousand impressions): $4.02 per thousand views

3CaratDiamonds.com
Effective CPM (cost per thousand impressions): $7.24 per thousand views

Based on the “Effective CPM”, it cost nearly twice as much to advertise a .COM domain name than it did a .DIAMONDS domain name. So, it appears that Google AdWords favors the .Diamonds domain name over the .Com domain name.

What About Conversions?
Where it really gets interesting is when we look at the conversions. We set up two different goals for the “diamonds” test. One was the download of a PDF file, and the other was a “Shop Diamond Rings” button located at the bottom of the landing page.

There were more conversions on the .com domain name for both the download of the PDF file and for clicks on the “Shop Diamond Rings” button on the site, and the total conversion rate was higher on the .Com domain name than it is on the .Diamonds domain name. So while the Google AdWords tends to favor the new gTLD domain name, consumers appear to favor the .Com (we saw nearly a 20 percent better conversion rate on the .Com domain name).

Our Other gTLD Test
Similar to the first test, using .Com versus .Diamonds, we set up another test using a .Com domain name versus a .Menu domain name, using a local restaurant in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas, called Matittos.
We set up two campaigns, one for each domain name. We used the same ad copy for both campaigns, except that the display URL (and the landing page) was different.

We set up a landing page (the same one) on MattitosMenu.com and on Mattitos.Menu. On the landing page, we did not intend to “sell” anything—we just wanted to drive traffic to the website and allow potential customers of the restaurant to view the menu. Here’s what the landing page looked like at the time of the test (it’s still live on MattitosMenu.com and Mattitos.Menu of you’d like to look there, as well).

Based on the results of our test, it appears that Google doesn’t necessarily prefer the .Com domain name over the .Menu domain name. Google served up nearly 10,000 more impressions of the .Com domain name than they did of the .Menu domain name. The CTR was actually better and cheaper using the .Menu domain name. Also, the average position of our ads using the .Menu domain name was better (it was higher) than the .Com. So it was clear to us that Google AdWords actually prefers the .Menu domain name over the .Com.

Final Thoughts
Our overall goal when setting up these tests was ultimately to determine whether using a .Com domain name or a new gTLD domain name is better when it comes to search engine marketing and Google AdWords. We are not totally convinced that one is necessarily “better” than the other.

What we did see, though, is that Google AdWords tends to favor the new gTLDs, as they served up more impressions, for less cost, and a better average position then the .Com domain names we used. At the same time, though, when it came to conversions, the public appeared to favor the .Com domain names.

We want to be totally transparent when it comes to our testing and the tests that we performed. We have compiled all of the data, including the actual CTR, CPC, budget, and even the keywords that we used during the tests. Use the following form to download our full 27 page research report.

It seems as though it is now a regular occurrence around here: we are able to get a Google manual action (a Google manual penalty) revoked for clients. With this latest client, we got word today that their manual penalty from Google has been removed. This is bittersweet, because the client came to us after having paid another “Penalty Removal Service” to remove the penalty. Turns out that this penalty removal service had filed THREE Google Reconsideration Requests already, and was getting ready to file the 4th reconsideration request.

Globe Runner stepped in, manually reviewed all of the links using our proprietary process, took the time to send and document all of our efforts properly, and then filed the reconsideration request. Within days the penalty was revoked (removed) by Google. It didn’t take us 3 reconsideration requests. It only took us one.

Here’s the email that the client received from Google, declaring that their manual action was revoked:

When you receive a manual action from Google, it’s important to take it seriously. You’re most likely already seeing a significant drop in organic search engine traffic. And you won’t see more traffic from Google until the penalty is removed. Keep in mind that a manual action is not related to any sort of Google Algorithm Update like the Google Penguin update. If your site’s traffic has gone down drastically all at once, then first check to see if the date of the drop in traffic corresponds to a Google Algorithm Update. Check the Moz.com list of official updates.

Then, if you cannot find any date that corresponds with a well-known Google Algorithm Update, you need to look in Google Webmaster Tools to see if the site has a manual action filed against it. Log into Google Webmaster Tools. Select the website, then on the left side, choose Search Traffic, then Manual Actions, as shown below:

If you have a manual action, then it will be shown there. If you don’t, then it will say “No manual webspam actions found.” If your manual action is due to link issues, then it will say that. And there are two separate types of manual actions: Full and Partial. Both need to be addressed.

What To Do Next
In any case, if you suspect that there is a linking issue, or low quality links pointing to your website, you need to identify those links, clean them up, and then upload a disavow file.

If there is a manual action, you need to identify them, take the time to remove those links or try to get them removed, and show proof that you’ve done so. We typically use our proprietary process to clean up the links, detail everything that we’ve done (even show emails to Google), and then disavow the the links we couldn’t get removed. We then file the reconsideration request with links to spreadsheet(s) and all of the documentation that we’ve been collecting during our efforts. Those spreadsheets and documentation is listed specifically in Google Drive, and a link to the documents are given to Google when the reconsideration request is filed.

If you don’t have a manual action, then you will need to clean up the links and upload a disavow file. If your site has been hit by the Google Penguin algorithm, then you’ll need to wait until they refresh that algorithm. There has been recent confirmation of that, and I can tell you that there are lots of sites (even sites whose links I’ve cleaned up) that are still waiting for a Google Penguin refresh.

As for this particular client who I just got their Google manual action removed? As I said earlier, the previous penalty removal firm (who I won’t name here) tried 3 times unsuccessfully to remove the penalty. Here’s what happened:

– Client hired SEO firm. That SEO firm created low quality or inorganic links to the client site.
– Client got penalized.
– Client hired “penalty removal service” which is a company owned by the SEO firm.
– “Penalty removal service” failed to see that their own links were inorganic, and failed to remove them.
– “Penalty removal service” filed 3 separate reconsideration requests, unsuccessfully.
– Client hires Globe Runner. We review the links. We get links removed. We file proper disavow file. We file the reconsideration request.
– Client’s penalty removed.

In this case, sometimes it takes someone who really knows that they are doing in order to get a Google Manual Action revoked. If you have a manual action and your “penalty removal service” has tried to get the penalty removed without any luck, then contact us–we’ll get the penalty removed. Sometimes within days, as with our latest client.

Google has officially removed Google Authorship. Apparently they’re calling this one of their tests that they decided to remove. That’s interesting, as I actually thought that Google was actually using Google Authorship as a search engine ranking factor, and it was fully integrated into the Google organic search algorithm. But apparently we were all hoodwinked, it was only a test. And all tests must come to an end.

In a Google Plus post today, John Mueller announced the end of the Google Authorship test:

I’ve been involved since we first started testing authorship markup and displaying it in search results. We’ve gotten lots of useful feedback from all kinds of webmasters and users, and we’ve tweaked, updated, and honed recognition and displaying of authorship information. Unfortunately, we’ve also observed that this information isn’t as useful to our users as we’d hoped, and can even distract from those results. With this in mind, we’ve made the difficult decision to stop showing authorship in search results.

(If you’re curious — in our tests, removing authorship generally does not seem to reduce traffic to sites. Nor does it increase clicks on ads. We make these kinds of changes to improve our users’ experience.)

Frankly, I really liked Google Authorship, and am sad to see the Google Authorship test be completed. What did Google Authorship do for me? It caused me to want to write more, to write great content, and claim my authorship: and be proud of what I write. To show it off, so to speak. To tell everyone that I am the one who wrote the content, and no one else. That’s ultimately good for the web, and good for users. Apparently it just wasn’t good enough for Google. After all, it was just a test.

So, at this point, what are we supposed to do with Google Authorship? What about the code that we put on our websites?

Leave the Authorship Code
Well, you can leave the code on your website and the websites that you wrote for. It will, in no way, harm your website or your search engine rankings–or the search engine rankings of where that content appears. John Mueller from Google has confirmed that it’s perfectly fine to leave the code alone. It might actually help users to know that you were the one who wrote the content, and it provides a link to your Google Plus profile. That might provide some additional interaction.

What about Google Publishership
Officially, Google has stated that Google Publishership is totally unaffected by this announcement. So, Google Publishership is alive and well, and Google will apparently still be using it in some way or fashion. So, it’s important to make sure that your Google Publishership code is applied to all pages on your site, and it links back to your site’s Google Plus profile page (your business page).

Google introduced Google Authorship back on June 7, 2011. The Google Authorship test was killed today, August 28, 2014.

I have known for a while now that Google doesn’t care too much about the nofollow attribute that’s added to links. I won’t go into statements from Matt Cutts about nofollow links, since he’s currently on vacation and not here to defend himself. But, nonetheless, let’s look at some recent proof that you can rank really well in Google organic search with nofollow links from Twitter.

Let’s take a not-so-recent blog post of mine, right here in this blog, where I wrote about Business Insider’s Top 100 Tech Influencers on Twitter. The post is a topical post, and I refer to it as a list to use to start connecting with tech influencers. It’s a helpful post for many. But that’s not the issue here. What’s the issue here is the statistics for this blog post:

To see the live stats, you can go right to Open Site Explorer and enter the URL of the post. I have personally done no link building for this post. As you can see, the “normal” links are only really from our own site, whereas the links are from the home page and other blog category pages. So, the fact that the post is on our blog isn’t necessarily a reason for the post to rank well in Google organic search.

The majority of the activity is ONLY from Twitter. As of this post, there’s over 30,000 tweets or mentions on Twitter. Those are 100 percent “nofollow” links. As a result of those tweets of the blog post’s URL, the blog post is ranking number one for many related keyword phrases, such as “tech influencers”:

The links to this blog post (all of the Tweets and RTs) are tagged as being “nofollow” links. So, they’re not supposed to “count” when Google analyzes them for organic search engine rankings. Let’s take a look at some sample Tweets of this post. You’ll see below that the links have a dotted line around them. That’s from my Firefox browser add-on, which highlights links that are “nofollow” links.

I’ve written before about the marrying of social and search, and even spoken about it at several conferences, such as Pubcon. Social media plays a huge role now in SEO, and if you’re not Tweeting, Plus 1ing, and Liking your new blog posts, then you’re missing out–and not doing proper SEO. SEO is not just about on-site optimization, it’s about getting real human eyeballs to your site. And Google knows that. That’s exactly why that post is ranking well in Google organic search.

So, frankly, there’s proof enough for me that Google doesn’t care much about nofollow links anymore. At least when it comes to Twitter.

Bill Hartzer is Globe Runner’s Senior SEO Strategist. Follow him on Google Plus. You can also follow him on Twitter as @bhartzer.

On July 24, 2014, Google rolled out a new algorithm update that has been dubbed the Google pigeon algorithm update, which affects local search engine rankings. Local search engine rankings refer to search queries that include a city name in the query. Since the update on July 24th, there have been some changes (fluctuations) in the search results, so as of the time of writing this, we still may see some further changes to the search results for certain keyword phases. Here is what we know about the Google pigeon algorithm update.

So far, there is speculation that this latest Google Pigeon update could be a version of the Google Venice algorithm update back in 2012 that included two main local search improvements, as reported by Google:

— “Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.”

— “Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”

There has also been further speculation that the Google Pigeon update combines data from the Google My Business database with the knowledge graph database. Frankly, this 2nd speculation seems much more plausible, that the current data from Google’s My Business has been integrated with the knowledge graph. We knew this was coming, and even a few years ago I started recommending the use of Freebase because it is part of the knowledge graph. If you have not listed your company in Freebase, I recommend you do so as soon as possible.

Regardless of whether or not Google has integrated the knowledge graph with the Google’s My Business database, here is what we know so far regarding the Google Pigeon update:

— There are less local listings are displaying in the actual search engine results pages (SERPs). Commonly referred to as the 7 pack, 3 pack, and 1 pack, those local listing callouts don’t show up as much as they used to prior to the Google Pigeon update.

— More review-type websites are showing up in the SERPs. Websites like Yelp.com and other Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) sites seem to have benefitted from this update.

— Some industries have taken ranking hits across the board, with all of the sites in the same industry having been affected.

— Some small businesses are seeing huge search engine ranking increases. It used to be that many multi-location brands were ranking well, but with this update there appears to be some rankings increases for single-location small businesses.

Chris Sanfilippo reported some of his findings, which are in line with what we’re seeing:

1. Some keywords are no longer showing a 7-pack
2. Some keywords that never showed a 7-pack are now showing a 7-pack
3. Some 7-packs are now “3-packs”
4. For “tampa house cleaning”, one website is ranking organic 1 &2, which are above the map listings, they are also ranking in the map position A. (location set to Tampa)
5. KW + city results have changed, and are no longer the same as “keyword” with location set to city.
6. Yelp’s rankings haven’t improved for my niches, it’s actually the opposite.
7. For my niches the Google+ centroid has changed in a major way and the map is zoomed out, showing results much farther away.

Linda Buquet, from the Local Search Forum, is reporting that “Geo searches are different now. In past if you search for City + KW and your location was elsewhere, didn’t matter much. You could change search location that that city and results would be the same. But now they are wildly different. So to do an accurate search you need to reset to location of the query.”

At this point, it does appear that the Google Pigeon update has affected a significant amount of local SEO, but at this point it’s still too early to tell specifically if it will have as much of an impact as other recent Google updates, such as Google Penguin and Google Panda.

I’ll keep you posted, as local search and local SEO has definitely been shaken up a bit by this Google Pigeon update. There are certainly winners and losers in this update.

The Necessary Steps to Achieve Rankings Quickly

Starting a local SEO campaign could not be a more exciting, yet important time. Whether you are conducting a campaign for a client or going to take on the effort yourself, there can be an overwhelming number of steps and ‘hidden tips’. Read on, as all is revealed in this guide toward getting ranked quickly in the local pack and generating traffic.

Phase 1: Research and Prep

The very first phase in any successful local SEO campaign is to lock down the NAP (Name, Address, Phone) and other business details. NAP consistency is one of the most critical elements of ranking in local search results. View all the local ranking factors for 2014. Create a spreadsheet, ideally in Google Drive with a sheet for NAP Data. You can share with the business owner and in real time, they can view all the updates.

Name

Use the legal name of the business. For very small and local businesses, make sure they have gone through the steps to register Doing Business As Name (DBA). It’s not surprising to find many businesses that haven’t and some states don’t require it. Using the legal name in citations is important, as several directories will pull data from the DBA or legal name filed with the state.

Don’t add keywords to a business name unless it is the legal name of a business. Although, keywords in business names are one of the top local ranking factors. If you’re building a brand new business and have yet to invest in the brand, consider changing the legal company name or “Doing Business As” and add keywords. The only exception is for multi-location businesses, add south, north, or the city name to the company name to differentiate it from other locations in the same area.

The criteria for one of the most strategic and strict citation sites, Acxiom includes the following:

NOTE: You will need the following documentation to validate your business. We do not accept documents obtained or scanned from Internet sites or W-9 Forms. This documentation must be submitted with account information or your listing will be denied and you will have to reenter the information and resubmit.

*** BUSINESS NAME AND ADDRESS ON DOCUMENTATION MUST MATCH TO YOUR REGISTRATION REQUEST

1. Federal Tax License Letter *submit the letter that includes your ID#, name, address and/or phone number of business
2. State, County, or City Business License or Sales Tax License
3. Doing Business As License
4. Fictitious Name Registration

One informative blog post goes over the importance of limiting the length of your business name. That’s right, don’t create a name that generally is longer than 40 characters or you won’t be able to add it to many citation directories, including Acxiom. Abbreviating the name is not an option, as again consistency on every directory is crucial.

Address

Just as crucial is the address of the business. Always check with the USPS for the official address and proper formatting. While it’s been proven that small differences such as STE and #, which both represent suite don’t affect local rankings, larger discrepancies do. Be consistent, by adding the correct address to the spreadsheet you’ll be sure to copy it properly every time.

Phone

Always use a local phone number as the primary, add 1800 numbers or specific department numbers to additional fields available, but always use a local phone number that is truly a business phone. I had a client that told me her main business phone number, when I discovered later the number although local, was a cell phone. Always validate what your clients won’t tell you and check if it’s a business phone.

Other Business Information

In your NAP spreadsheet, also lock down the following (by getting approval on all details)

1. NAP (Name of Business, Address and Phone Number). Also add to the spreadsheet (website URL, social media URL’s, company email address with a domain name such as sa***@*********me.com, and 1800 numbers and other contact details. For a multi-location business, using a location specific URL has a bigger impact. It ensures the data between the multiple locations is unique and does affect rankings.

2. Categories. One of the most important areas of ranking locally is choosing accurate categories for a business. Max out all related categories, usually 5 for most citations. Think of different ways to call your service or work, and start board and go narrow. For example, a real estate brokerage might use the following categories: (Apartment Rental Agency, Real Estate Brokerage, Real Estate Brokers, Condominium Rental Agency, Real Estate Rental Agency, Apartment Finder & Rental Service). Category diversity is also important). You can use a tool to find new categories, I find that throughout a campaign, you’ll find new categories just by using different citation sites. Categories aren’t universal, but realize the more times you use a category in a citation, the more often you are to rank for that category term.

3. Approved Business Hours (Tip on 24/7 hour businesses. Google doesn’t enjoy displaying hours for a business as open 24 hours. A representative told me it can trigger a listing for further review, and even be removed or unverified. Unless a business has an office with a secretary at a desk, 24 hours a day, they prefer you specify normal office hours. Many citations on other sites allow for a checkbox on 24/7 and normal office hours. For Google, just add to the additional detail section)

4. Approved Payment Information

5. All languages spoken by employees

6. Year established. (This may be an area of contention at some businesses. I usually err on the side of the earlier, the better as customers do place trust in more established businesses, but don’t make up an earlier date. Some businesses may choose to take the year of a business they acquired. A business that has a history of opening and closing may also choose the first date they opened their doors.

7. Approved associations (Chambers of commerce, Inc500, local industry chapters)

8. Approved certifications (gather detail on all areas of employees, what certifications to employees have that can boost the credibility of the business?)

9. Short and long description. Write a unique paragraph for a short business description and multiple paragraphs for a long description. Include keywords in the copy, category keywords work well too… On Google + make sure to hyperlink to important areas on your website. For a local business with high competition, rewrite the description for each major citation. Otherwise the content is duplicated and isn’t as valuable.

10. Approved company logo and pictures.. For a service business, get logos of partners, vendors, company logo, the team, the office location. For product based businesses, photos become even more important and easier. Show your product in an engaging way, research has discovered local businesses with pictures get 60%  more clicks. Use descriptive and keyword rich file names on images and include alt text.

Phase 2: Cleanup & Build

After gathering the above information in Google Drive, it’s time to begin cleanup. This will be the most time consuming phase of your local SEO campaign. If you’re starting a campaign for a new business (you have zero citations or websites online that reference you or your client’s business location), you’re at a much better starting point. For everyone else, assume the worst. Don’t skim through the search for duplicates, incorrect data, missing information and more. You’re goal is to find and catalog all unique problems (ideally in a spreadsheet). The name, address and phone, any and all deviations, should be recorded. Later you’ll use this list to search for more problems.

Begin with asking the business owner for any and all old phone numbers and location addresses. You should by now have the legal company name as well as any company locations. Don’t use the citation sites for searches. Many are poorly designed and can’t compete with Google. Use Google to find problems in the following ways. For the sake of the example, let’s say my business has the following NAP and I’m looking for problems on yellowpages.com.Pete’s Bakery4321 50th Street#254Chicago, Il 01234325-333-5743

• search for “site: yellowpages.com 325-333-5743”

This will help find businesses that share the same phone number regardless of name or address. They may be misspellings of Pete’s Bakery, duplicates of the address or even a completely unrelated business. Either way, any business that shares your phone number that isn’t the same entity should be resolved. Reach out to the owners if still open, or remove the entry. Sometimes I’ve even claimed a business, only to change the phone number to 111-111-1111.

• search for “site: yellowpages.com Pete’s Bakery Chicago”

This will find problems with the address, duplicates and the phone number. Often it’s an old number, a tracking number or even a 1800 number that is active on a listing.

Go through the list below of the most important local citations and check all for problems and duplicates first. Write down all unique addresses and phone numbers that are related to your business, you’ll use this list to check on all citation directories. Any new addresses, names or phone numbers you find, deserve a search on all existing directories.

You may find that none of the listings closely match the business. As you work through the problems, generally claim one of the listings and update it fully, remove all other duplicates. Although it is far easier to make an update with the original email and password, very rarely will clients have this information. Often speaking on the phone with support achieves a faster turnaround than an email. Review this handy guide for how to delete duplicates on popular directories. Add new listings that aren’t featured on the site, but triple check that they aren’t listed under the wrong name, phone number or address.

When you claim citations, use a generic or branded company Gmail account. It’s ideal to have this email not tied to anyone’s personal account. You will want ongoing access as many citations require email verification before making changes.

Most Important Local Citation Directories

Citation Directory	Type	How to Claim
Google +	Search Engine	Google Places, requires postcard verification
Yahoo	Search Engine	Update the data aggregators, over time Yahoo will update. Or pay for an update.
Bing	Search Engine	Requires email confirmation, postcard or contact support
InfoUSA/Express Update	Data Aggregator	Requires phone verification
Neustar/Localeze	Data Aggregator	Create an account, claim and update
Acxiom	Data Aggregator	Requires phone and document verification
Factual	Data Aggregator	Contact support
Yellow Pages	Review Site	Requires phone verification
Yelp	Review Site	Difficult process to remove and update without login, contact support
Angie’s List	Review Site	Contact support
Superpages	Review Site	Contact support for listings already claimed
HotFrog	Directory Site	Contact support
Manta	Directory Site	Call support
CitySearch	Review Site	Requires phone verification
Best of the Web	Directory Site	Paid
Foursquare	Social Media	Requires voicemail verification
Facebook	Social Media	Contact support
LinkedIn	Social Media	Contact support
Twitter	Social Media	Contact support
Mojopages	Directory Site	Contact support
YellowBook 360 (hibu)	Directory Site	Call support
Merchant Circle	Review Site	Contact support
Yellowbot	Review Site	Requires phone verification
BBB.org	Complaint Site	Requires payment
dexknows	Review Site	Owns Superpages, but process is still separate. Must call support.
Dunn & Bradstreet	Data Aggregator	Requires business owner verification
ibegin	Directory Site	Requires phone verification

Phase 3: Growth and Ranking

After fixing all issues on the most popular directory sites, it’s time to expand to any site that lists the business either correctly or incorrectly. Claim and update and use the techniques listed above to find all mentions of the business. Adding to Google Drive creates an easy way for a business to check in real time and see all the new citations and progress made.

Next, leverage software and there are many options available. I’ve used Whitespark and Brightlocal, but realize there are other solutions. Most do the same or similar functions. They track (although with some inaccuracies) all the citation directories where a business is located with opportunities to increase and add the business to new directories. They also help compare and track over time your competitors ranking in local search with your own business. There are some steps to use this software effectively:

1. Identify the terms that trigger the local pack for your geographic area. As you search for keywords you’ll often find other sites ranking that allow for a citation. Also note which terms are most aligned with your business and the search volume.

2. When looking at a local pack, there are two areas that can influence click through rate. One is position or where a business appears in the local pack. A higher position is better, although a business with reviews can outstrip traffic of higher results. Track using software the position of each keyword. 8th is just shy of appearing in the local pack, 7 is at the end for most terms.

3. Look for new opportunities routinely, especially in regards to competition. Where are they listed and perform and problems in search. Occasionally a data aggregator can receive the wrong information or create duplicate listings which require removal. Monitor and continue to optimize the growth of citations and the increase in rankings.

Review Strategy

With corrected and consistent citations and eventually, rankings, put a review strategy in place to increase CTR. Identify the top sites to receive a review, most of the time it should include Google +, Yelp and an industry specific site. Use software such as customer lobby, which can make reviews easier. Or simply put a process in place that asks every customer to review your business. This could be through stickers and visual reminders at your retail location, a conversation you have in person after completion of a service, or an automated email for an online business.

You can generate several quick reviews by simply sending an email to your marketing database. But for true success, put in place a process and realize it’s important!

Corey Barnett is a Globe Runner Online Marketing Specialist. Follow him on Google Plus. Corey also frequently writes on his blog – cleverlyengaged.com/blog

Globe Runner’s client roster has one new addition: Digital retail site NICMAXX Online.

NICMAXX Online conducts e-commerce for NICMAXX, an electronic cigarette brand that has grown in popularity in key consumer markets such as New York, Las Vegas and Florida. Developed over eight years by smokers for smokers, its proprietary blend of ingredients closely replicates the sensory experience generated by traditional cigarettes.

Based in Addison, Texas, NICMAXX Online comprises the retail site https://www.nicmaxxonline.com/, social media accounts for Twitter (@NicMaxxStore), Facebook (@nicmaxxonline)) and other digital assets.

Apart from US customers, NICMAXX Online caters to overseas customers who may not have access to the product. Some countries still forbid the sale of e-cigarettes but do allow for purchase and personal consumption.

In a recent Wall Street Journal story, Wells Fargo valued the e-vapor market at $2.2 billion. NICMAXX Online is seeing strong growth in ecommerce with revenue tripling year-over-year.

“It’s always exciting to work on a challenger brand making ripples in a relatively new category,” said Globe Runner CEO Eric McGehearty. “The opportunities to build NICMAXX Online into a strong brand are tremendous.”

Globe Runner was started in 2008 by McGehearty in Lewisville, Texas. In addition to its core business of search engine optimization (SEO), the agency also offers online advertising, content marketing, branding and social media services.

A while back, Google gave website owners an advanced link tool called the Disavow Links Tool. It allows us to tell the search engine which links to ignore when they calculate the links to our website. Bing.com has a similar tool, as well, and was actually the first to make the tool available to website owners.

With the Disavow Tool, you simply come up with a list of URLs or domain names that you don’t like and put them in a text file called a “disavow file” and upload that file to Google (and Bing). When the search engine crawls the links again and recalculates the links to your site for search engine ranking purposes, they are supposed to disavow those links (not count them or ignore them). From my experience, I’ve seen a disavow file really help in cases where certain links were super low-quality or “toxic” links. About 5 days after submitting a disavow file, I’ve seen traffic start to go back up. Sometimes it takes a lot longer.

But here is where I’m surprised. When you upload a disavow file and Google accepts that file, they know that you’ve disavowed certain links or certain domain names (all links from that domain name). Why does Google still shows those links in the “links to your site” section of Google Webmaster Tools? Google still shows those links in your list, as if those links still exist–and they do. But why would Google still show them? You’ve disavowed them.

Apparently the disavow file data is not taken into account when they generate the “links to your site” list in Google Webmaster Tools. If Google removed those links from the list (the links that you’ve disavowed) then we would know that Google is taking the disavow file into account when calculating links to the site. That would be very helpful for website owners to know.

Let’s look at a specific example. In January 2014, I disavowed low quality links from the domain name “articlesnatch.com”, which a previous SEO firm created (they submitted hundreds of articles to that site in particular). Now, I personally feel that those are low quality links, just there for “SEO value” and therefore should be disavowed. But 6 months later, after I disavowed all links from that domain name, Google Webmaster Tools still shows links from that website:

In fact, looking at this particular list of links to this site, I disavowed links to socialbookmarkssite.com, articlesnatch.com, basearticles.com, and amazines.com all back in January 2014, over six months ago. Yet they still appear in Google Webmaster Tools as links to the site. These links were disavowed because the site owners refused to remove the links or we were unsuccessful in getting those links removed. This was part of a reconsideration request because the site had received a manual action for it’s links. The manual action was revoked after we disavowed these links and removed other links to the site.

It would be really helpful if Google, in Google Webmaster Tools, were to remove those links from the list of “links to our site”. I understand it’s a random list of links, but the least they could do is remove the links we’ve disavowed. That would tell us that they’re taking our disavow file into account when they calculate the links to the site. Or, at least mark the links somehow so that we know that they’ve been disavowed. How hard is that to do?

Bill Hartzer is Globe Runner’s Senior SEO Strategist. Connect with him on Google+ or on Twitter as Bhartzer.