Unfortunately this post is all questions and no answers. I have begun to investigate these mysteries and I will report back once this is solved. I’ve submitted a question to the company and I’ll post again when I get the results.

I can tell you that the competition to be #1 on any related phrase like “Manhattan Bakery” or “New York Bakery” is high. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool estimates there are 50,000 searches a month for the phrase New York Bakery. So to get a place as the #1 listing on Google Maps is hugely valuable. What’s it worth? Thousands of dollars a month IMHO.So I’m hugely interested in how they did this.

Google used to call these the LBC or Local Business Center Listings. And since they change things fast with Maps, it’s now called Google Places.

Here’s what it looks like:

Since the Google Places Listing is “above the fold”, surfers get to look at it first, before they see the main list of results. That makes it very valuable to a business that wants to get seen by prospects surfing the web. Most business owners simply don’t know about the Google Places Listings and how much business they generate which is tens of thousands of phone calls and website lookups every day.

How Much Does A Google Place Listing Cost?

It’s free. That is IF you know how to enter all the information correctly without violating the sometimes vague Google Quality Guidelines.

But most companies charge between $500 and $1,000 as a one time fee for getting your listing in the Google Local, Yahoo Local, and Bing / MSN Local Directories as they’re called. Web Design Workplace charges $500 to get you into all 3 directories. It’s something we’ve done around 100 times and we’re very good at it. Considering how much time it takes to get this done right, that $500 fee is downright affordable. For some businesses it can be the most affordable business advertising they ever paid for.

Claiming a Google Places Listing

Google may already have a listing for you even if you don’t own a website. It does this by using “citations” from other trusted sources like review blogs and listings in other websites like Best Of the Web. Whether Google has the information or you need to enter it for the first time, there is a verification process called “claiming” your listing. If you can do all that by yourself that’s great but most get hung up somewhere along the way. To avoid any hassles and ensure it’s done right call Mal Milligan the owner of Web Design Workplace at 201-696-5375.

You followed all the rules according to the Google WebMaster Guidelines. You watched 40+ Matt Cutts videos to glean useful information to help you to rank higher and avoid violations. And after all that, you got beat by a scrapper site. Wow !! Well here is what you can do… report them to Google !! Simple… yes. And I can tell you from experience – they do listen when you report sites that are in violation. They sometimes will remove the offending site from the first page of results.

How do you…?

Submit A Spam Report to Google

1. Go into your Google Webmaster Tools account (create one if you do not already own one).
2. Follow this golden trail https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en
3. Submit the report and check this to verify they got it  https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/message-list

Here is a video from Matt Cutts – the Google Spam Boss – telling the public that they do indeed take the spam reports seriously. On top of that if the spam site is having a serious negative impact on quality rankings, it will be dealt with at a higher priority. I presume that the spam site in the annotated screen print below taking a #1 ranking for a hugely contested competitive phrase will get looked at soonish.

Who Can I call To Help ?

If Your Ranking Was Hurt By A Spammy Site, Web Design WorkPlace can help you. Please call the owner Mal at 201-696-5375. Or use our Google Voice line at 41-99-GLOBAL.

You have a website and it is ranking for a target phrase on your homepage but you want to change it. And that brings up the 64 dollar question:

How long will it take Google to reconfigure your target phrase?

Web Design Workplace  was #1 and #2 for the phrase “NJ web design” for 6 months and we changed our homepage completely yesterday.We are switching our homepage target phrase to “affordable web design” now. It’s got lots of competition from some players that have been entrenched on the first page for a very long time – years in fact. But we decided we had to get out of the “NJ web design consultant” competition becasue we were not getting the number of clients we wanted. We were also shifting the business from doing a lot of higher end SEO jobs to making lots of affordable webs instead.

So look who took over 12 hours after we rolled out the new homepage, a guy who has multiple websites for the same company and gets away with it all the time somehow. The #1 and #2 now are the guy who black hats Google and seems to get away with it. What is a black hat? A person who is bad and uses tricks and cheats to get more clicks. The #3 guy now (Barry Wise) is a great guy and a real SEO pro. So at least we know Google is telling us it knows we changed our target phrase. We got moved to positions #5 and #7 for a phrase we dominated until we cut over the new content and look and feel for our site. Now begins the long march for the new target phrase…

We just answered the first part of the question… it takes a matter of hours for Google to recognize a big change has occurred and start to reflect those changes in the main index. Wow – it used to take weeks or months but now it was that fast. Part of the reason is that our website has been a solid PR4 for over a year. We are very proud of that. Google spiders sites that have higher page rank more often so we expected they would find out soon that we did the big change.

How Long Till We Start to Rank for the New Target Phrase?

We are not in the top 500 yet after 12 hours. That is expected. If I had to bet on this one, I would say we will enter the index for our new target phrase somewhere between 51 and 550 over the next week. And if we blog a lot and get more new links we can move up to the 40′s within a month. But this is what we do for a living here and I can tell you it is so much fun we are laughing our butts off and having a great time. From the armchair we can only guess. Top 40 within a month, top 10 within 2 months. That’s my guess. If we are very lucky and work hard, we might be able to get on the first page (Top 10 results) for our new phrase withing a month.

Where are the Rules For Switching a Target Phrase?

Year ago we thought the black hat game was the fun one and we found over time there was a lot more reward playing by the white hat rules.  If you want to know where those white hat rules are… look no further than Google WebMaster Central. The guy who uses multiple sites to try to get more clicks is a looser. He’s a cheater. Sure he is gaming the Google system now… you can see for yourself by looking at the sites. But in the long run Professional SEO’s like our team and the hundreds of SEO’s we know all frown on the black hatters for being non-professionals. We will keep you posted as to our progress on the new phrase!! Cheers everyone !!

I built a WordPress site for a friend to showcase his bakery products and I am currently the #1 result for “chocolate strawberry cake”. I’m so honored for a number of reasons. Google images reports it has over 3 million images results for the phrase, and my big beautiful Nikon picture is on the top of that very big, and mostly delicious looking pile of cakes.

How Did I Win the Chocolate Strawberry Cake Popularity Contest in Google Images?

1. Well, first, I took quality photos with a camera that might be considered an entry level professional rig – the Nikon D-60. I also bought 3 Nikon lenses and a professional grade Nikon flash unit. So I got started with about $2,000 worth of photography gear.
2. Next, I made the picture look as beautiful as I could using PhotoShop CS3. I’ve actually been using Photoshop professionally for more than 15 years and it’s too much fun to call it part of my work.
3. I put several sizes of the picture on the website with the largest being about 1 MB in total size and 2500 pixels wide. Wow, that’s a lot of high resolution cake.
4. I got the site ranking well and garnered an overall PR2 for the homepage which helps me to get interior pages some home made link juice by linking right from my own homepage.
5. Eventually the picture got really popular and the website for the last 4 months has done nearly 10 GB (Wow that’s Ten Giga Bytes) of bandwidth a month. For a bakery that’s through the roof. I have Google Analytics installed on the site so they do know how popular the site is. I don’t know if that is factored into the reason they put my picture at a #1 position but I would hope so. This is one of the Holy Grail questions in SEO and I need to get to the bottom of it. Did Google actually apply the popularity it can grasp from Google Analytics to help rank this photo at #1? I would love to know and I will let you know if I find out.

So my advice to you if you are looking for a #1 picture in Google images is “don’t try to game the system”. Just walk the walk. Is that the “Cake Walk?”

After more than 9 years as a full time Web Design Consultant to get the #1 position in the natural results on Yahoo for the phrase is very gratifying. We are going into a redesign phase during the next week and this will stoke our furnace moving forward.

We are Web Design Consultants, but we are also SEO Search Engine Optimization Experts as well. Can you be #1 for a category on Yahoo where they report 500 MILLION results without being an SEO expert? No way – no how.

Sometimes being #1 on Yahoo or Google is short lived. We are going to enjoy it while it lasts though. There is a never ending battle to be the king of the hill and in SEO to be on the top of a hugely competitive phrase like this makes us the targets of thousands of other I.T. firms. Honestly we don’t care that much because our focus is working for the best customers in the world providing the best web designs in the business. Whether it’s WordPress web design or HTML.

Web Design Consultants have more fun.

Web Design Workplace has always been just a bunch of consultants who have worked together for years. We all worked together for one company or another and as independent consultants now, we work on each other’s projects as requested or needed. Do we have more fun now – you betcha. Working for a big box company has some advantages and some big disadvantages. For one thing, as a group of world class consultants, we never ever have to lay down a corporate lie to a customer. It’s not in our play book and never will be. You always get a straight shot with us and we sleep like babies at night knowing we did the best job for our clients that could possibly be done. Down to the last pixel in design and ranking in SEO.

NJ web design consultant?

Good question. I’ve been working as a professional SEO since 2001 to be able to tell you the answer to that question. Even better, I can tell you how we could get YOUR business listed at a #1 position on the search engines for competitive phrases.

First of all, if you are talking with a so called “web design consultant” and she or he guarantees you a #1 Google ranking, thank them for their time and steer them towards your competitor. They are lying and they are unethical. I see this sort of thing all the time unfortunately. A prospect will tell me they are going with a competitor because they guaranteed them a #1 Google ranking in the contract. Wow. That’s totally negligent and morally wrong to guarantee a Google #1 ranking in writing. Companies and individuals that do that are scam artists and there are lots of them out there – beware. None of those people owns Google. And if they have a secret method that will trick and manipulate Google to making your site #1 then I can guarantee you that the trick won’t last long. Google has a team of engineers that look for what we call “black hat” or manipulative techniques. In the long run it could be bad for your ranking health to be involved in these bad practices.

I got to be the #1 and the #2 ranking on Google for the phrase “NJ web design consultant” because of more than 200 reasons that make up “the Algorithm“. First and foremost, my site has been live for a few years so I have a good “aging factor”. Next, I have lots of solid inbound links from relevant authority sites. Third, I have lots and lots of excellent unique content. My site is structurally perfect or close to it and I have all the latest patches and updates. And the list goes on for 200 more reasons that we will get into more on another blog post.

The bottom line is I got to the #1 and the #2 positions for NJ web design consultant due to a lot of careful planning, honest effort, and hard work. Sometimes you may find a bogus listing in a #1 spot in the Google main index but it got there most likely due to an error in the Algorithm. Major ranking errors like that are usually corrected within a week or two. How do we get your site to a Google #1 position? I’ve got the same answers for you: we carefully plan a strategy and we work on the plan using techniques that are recommended by Google in their WebMaster Guidelines.

I hate spam on the internet but when a site with 50% Google AdSense advertisements that has pure scraped content becomes #1 for a highly competitive phrase in the Google main index it makes me cringe. Here is a site that fits the description:

• 50% of the entire screen is simply PPC advertisements. In this case it’s Google AdSense that’s paying this spammer to do his spam thing.
• the rest of the site has zero unique content. It’s all duplicate content that was scraped from other websites.
• The quantity and quality of the inbound links to the scraper site is always poor

The spam scraper site is called OfficialSite.com and it’s at: http://www.officialsite.com/index.asp?regionid=9&categoryid=61

Here is a Link Diagnosis Report showing all the backlinks and their PR plus the Link Type (is it a do follow which is good or a no follow). Basically this is showing that the entire spam site has very little in terms of quality do follow inbound links. The page that is ranking #1 for the highly competitive phrase has only a single inbound link known to Link Diagnosis. Hardly enough muscle into the poll position against thousands of other competitors for this lucrative phrase.

Search Phrase on Google

Manhattan Bakery

AllInTitle:manhattan bakery    6,500  That means there are 6,500 other pages Google knows about that have the words “Manhattan Bakery” in their meta title… Thats a LOT of competition.

I looked at a phrase that I found on the spam scraper site… and I found it on 7 websites on the internet:

At Fat Witch Bakery, we’re not in a hurry. * We bake in small batches and do what is known in the trade as “scratch baking.

Of course it was stolen or scraped from the original site at: http://www.fatwitch.com/FWBphilosophy.html
The troubling question after looking at all this evidence is:

How did a spam scraper site get to be #1 on Google in the main index?

For years SEO pundits have suspected that garbage MFA made for adsense sites got a boost from Google in the main index because they were putting out lots of impressions and making lots of money advertising for Google’s paid search clients. I really believe that was true years ago – probably due to errors in The Algorithm. Google created a philosophy called the “Chinese Wall” where they claimed you could never again effect your ranking on the organic search side of the Chinese Wall by either paying for PPC advertising or selling it on behalf of Google from the paid search side of the wall.This example is one that has somehow slipped through the cracks.

Although I rarely rat out the bad guys I reported this one yesterday from my main Google WebMaster Tools account. Anytime you can help take out the trash on the internet I encourage you to do so. Spammy scraper sites used to litter the SERPS and now when they clog the highway like a log on the road I try to scrape them off.

Learning WordPress SEO – All You Need To Know

Here is my WordPress SEO Checklist you can use as a guide:

1. Figure out what keyword phrases you want to rank well for and assign 1 or 2 per page.
2. Use the great WP plugin “All In One SEO Pack”.
3. Don’t use the WordPress default permalink structure… I use /%post_id%/%postname%/
4. Get inbound links from high PR authority sites using your keyword phrases as anchor text.
5. Add good H1 or H2 titles and use more h2′s for subtitles throughout your blog post.
6. Include bold or italics or even some bold + italics text on the page.
7. Link out to at least 1 high PR authority site per page.
8. Create interior hyperlinks with a keyword you need for the target page.
9. Make bulleted lists (ordered and unordered) whenever you can.
10. Write in targeted keyword phrases and their derivative variations in your text.
11. Add Alt tags for some images using your target keyword phrases.
12. I always add images to every blog post and static page.
13. Use Google’s drive toward Universal Search to your advantage.
14. Encourage commenting with do follow links and respond to good comments.
15. Be cleaver with your blog post titles and use 3 or 4 word most of the time.
16. Check your robots.txt file to make sure you are not blocking search engine spiders.
17. Update your sitemap.xml file automatically with a plugin.

If you type “wordpress seo” on Google, the first entry on the SERP is from WordPress legend and SEO pundit Joost de Valk. Joost is from the Netherlands and his name is actually pronounced like “yoast”. And that’s why he named his famous and incredibly high (I’ve been to Amsterdam 7 times so far) PageRank 6 website yoast.com.

OK so you can see what one of the brilliant stars in SEO and WordPress says about the subject by going to his site first. Joost is one of the world’s leading WordPress plugin developers and he is almost scary smart. It’s a good article.

We all know Google Loves WordPress right? Well it’s true. The Master Mind Anti-Spam King at Google is Matt Cutts and he himself uses a WordPress blog even though his company makes Blogger. Matt talks about WordPress in positive terms because there are many features that just lend themselves to automatically following the recommended Google WebMaster Guidelines. That being said, here is what you can do to improve the built in linky goodness.

I take a straight forward approach to WordPress SEO that may be simple, but for the person out there who needs help, you can get by on this and maybe get some great rankings that might have otherwise escaped you. As a web design consultant I don’t do this for the sake of art. I build beautiful WordPress sites that rank well on Google, Yahoo, and Bing so my clients can get new prospects from the internet and make millions of dollars. These recommendations are what I do for every professional site I build and maintain.

1.) Figure out what keyword phrases you want to rank well for.

Assign one or 2 phrases per page and know that your homepage and your about us page are going to get the most views and have the best luck getting ranking for your primary keyword phrases. Most websites do best shooting for 1 or 2 primary keyword phrases and a total of 5 phrases all together. Professional SEO’s sometimes will map out 50 keywords on a large website but it takes a lot of work and it’s really for professionals. My personal record so far was a site that I got 34 Google #1 rankings for at one time in English and almost as many in Spanish. I also had a total of 110 Top 10 rankings on that site in English the same month. So it is possible to map 50 or even 100 keywords to a website but it’s hard. Most of you out there would do well to find 1 keyword or 2 and go for it.

2.) Install the plugin All In One SEO currently maintained by Semper Fi Web Design.

Every blog post and every static page on your website should have a custom written meta title and meta description. This plugin will do the job of making these meta titles and meta descriptions automatically for you. It also gives you the option in every blog post and static page to enter your own titles and descriptions. Being a professional full time SEO, thats a big part of my job every day and I make custom titles and descriptions that are way better than the automatic ones the plugin creates. But I’ll tell you about that in another post. For now just know this is the single most important thing you can do for yourself in terms of WordPress SEO. Plugin developers need your support with a small donation every once in a while by the way.

There is a 3rd field that is optional called the meta keyword field. Google does not use it but I think they still look at it and I’m sure other search engines do look at the meta keywords. I enter them. Just add a few words that appear on your page and don’t do any keyword stuffing here. That might give you 1 strike with some of the SE’s.

3.) The WordPress default permalink structure is bad for SEO, don’t use it.

I use this permalink structure: /%post_id%/%postname%/    That gives me keywords right in my url so search engines can grab onto them.

4.) Get inbound links from relevant high PR authority sites using your keyword phrases as anchor text.

Don’t pay for them from cheap outfits – that will get you caught and it won’t get you banned, but it won’t help you. Don’t ever get involved with any linking schemes – they don’t work anymore. Those “you link to me and I’ll link to you” schemes are terrible… your PR out and PR in negate each other. You get a tiny bit of credit but it’s simply not worth your time to do it any more. The single best way to get inbound links from high PR authority sites is to use paid directories like Best of the Web and Yahoo Dir. If you have a huge spend available then buy every directory listing that gives you a do follow link that you can find. Avoid any directory that links to a lousy community of course.

5.) Add a good H1 or H2 title as the opening characters on a blog post and use more h2′s for subtitles throughout your blog post.

6.) Add some bold or italics or even some bold + italics text on the page. Use secondary keywords for these.

7.) Link out from the page to at least 1 high PR authority site. You can link out to a hand full but try not to go over 5 for an average post. If it’s a list of some kind then by all means link out like crazy. If it’s a site you like and trust, use do follow outbound links. It’s going to take PR from your page whether you use a do follow or a no follow anyway.

8.) Use at least one interior hyperlink with a keyword you need for the target page. You can use 2 or 3 internal hyperlinks if you want but remember each takes a percentage of the potential PR on that page.

9.) Add bulleted lists and ordered lists when you can. I try to get one per post at least.

10.) Use targeted keyword phrases in your text. Use them several times and especially at the very top of the page where they are deemed “prominent”.

11.) Add Alt tags for images using keyword phrases. Don’t over do it with alt tags. I don’t use them on every photo but I do use them maybe once or twice on a page.

12.) I always add images to every blog post and static page. I don’t know if this helps much with ranking but I think it must because it makes the blog posts more robust.

13.) Play the Universal Search game.

Google loves to find references for search phrases in meta titles, on page text (especially in H1 or H2 tags), anchor text from inbound links, in alt tags, and in Podcasts and Web Videos. It’s called Universal Search when Google includes all forms of media. Get yourself some web videos that are relevant and use keyword phrases you are trying to hit for in their titles.

14.) Encourage commenting and respond to good comments.

Allow Do Follow on good and relevant comments but strictly do not allow spam comments. If surfers know they can get a good do follow link from you they will more often than not leave you a good comment. Spammers and spam bots will feast on it if you let them. Use the Akimet plugin developed by Matt Mullenweg and delete all spam comments frequently. I eyeball every comment and delete all except for the 1 or 2 decent comments from real people and friends. When your WordPress site is popular enough you can just do away with the do follow and go to the default of no follow.

15.) Be cleaver with your blog post titles.

On WordPress sites I have that are “heated up” where they have been around a while and I post to frequently… my post title goes to #1 on Google within a few minutes of me submitting the blog post. That’s not just because I’m a good SEO, but also because I use 3 or 4 word titles that I carefully construct that will get me hits for my keywords but will not be competing with IBM or HP for top ranking on 1 or 2 word phrases. Trying to rank top 10 for a title like “web hosting” is nearly mission impossible. Trying to rank top 10 for a title like “cheap reseller web hosting” is doable.

16.) Check your robots.txt file every once in a while to make sure it is not blocking bots and search engine spiders.

The robots.txt file is an ascii text file at the root level of your WordPress site that gives specific instructions to search engine spiders that they may or may not abide by.  Usually the directives tell bots where they are welcome to look and where they are not welcome to look. The big SE’s will usually agree to your robots.txt directives but sometimes in the search for images even the big bots will ignore exclusion directives here. You can even try to tell “bad bots” to stay away from your entire site, but that rarely works. You can also specify the location of your sitemap.xml file.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

17.) Keep your sitemap.xml file updated, and since it’s so time consuming, make sure you do it automatically.

Search engines look at the sitemap.xml file on your WordPress site to see if you have added a new file. They also spider the site and discover files but they will get the new content faster if you automatically update the sitemap every time you add a new blog post. I use a couple different plugins for this on different sites but mostly I use the “Google XML Sitemaps” plugin by Ann Brachhold and I recommend it.

(I was not paid by any persons or companies listed in this post – Cheers – Mal)

Web Design Consultant Test

How do you know the self proclaimed “web design expert” you are talking with has real skills? Give them this test:

1. Ask to see their best 3 pieces of website design work and then check their Google ranking for their top phrase. The most beautiful website in the world that does not rank well on Google might as well be under a rock because it’s not going to bring you in new business. Web designers that don’t understand the design has to be integrated with SEO on every page should work for your competitors – not for you.  I’ve talked with many web designers that told me they were a “real graphic artist” and their artistic vision was more important than visibility on Google. Wow, that’s from the stone ages of the internet and they just don’t understand clients in competitive industries want more business from their websites, you are not interested in “supporting the arts”.
2. Ask to see their top 3 most competitive Google #1 rankings. If they tell you that Google ranking has nothing to do with web design tell them they are right, don’t waste another minute of your life with them, and hope they work for your competitor. I want to rank top 10 for my most competitive phrases on Google so I can get more business. I really want to rank #1 for several phrases but I’m realistic and I know just getting on Google Page One in the top 10 rankings is outstanding.
3. Ask your web design consultant how they built “relevance” into each page of the website. If they can tell you that the page name, the page title, the page headings, the page text, and links to that page from other interior pages of the website all more or less have a relevant match on the primary and secondary keyword phrases for that page… you got yourself a web designer that knows SEO. That’s vital to bring in more internet shoppers. If you just want to look at art you can always go to a museum. I want a beautiful website that ranks well on Google so I can make more money.
4. Ask your prospective web design consultant to show you the meta title for your “About” page and the meta title for your “homepage”. If they are identical, it means the so called “expert” was either lazy or really did not know what they were doing in terms of integrating their design with search. That’s not going to get you any new business. Send them to work for your competitors.

Old School Web Design Has Nothing to do with Search Engine Optimization SEO

• 9 out of 10 web design consultants don’t know the first thing about SEO (search engine optimization) and that can cost you millions in new business.
• The same 9 out of 10 web consultants will tell you how design and SEO are 2 different things and you don’t need SEO for a website.
• I can tell you from experience 9 out of 10 web design consultants will tell customers they are an “expert” on SEO when they don’t even know the basics.

First of all, no matter how beautiful a website looks, if it does not rank well on Google… it’s nearly worthless in terms of attracting new prospects for your business. A website that does not rank well on Google might as well be invisible. Why bother?

Is it Important to Rank Well on Yahoo and Bing?

85% of all searches are done with Google. Many Professional SEO’s don’t bother doing anything for Bing or Yahoo. So the short answer is: No. I do a few things for Bing and Yahoo including verifying websites in Bing Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer… but in terms of on page optimization Google is like the 800 pound Gorilla these days and you don’t get much in return when you score big on Bing or Yahoo anyway.

Web Design for business goes hand in hand with SEO for business, they can’t be looked at as different entities anymore. Web design and SEO are intertwined. They compliment each other. If your web design consultant tells you any differently, get a better one and send yours right to your toughest business competitor because you will be able to outrank them and gain an advantage using internet marketing.