Some businesses (like mine!) don't have physical premises as such - and certainly not any that are ever visited by customers in person.
But if you do have a business address, it's increasingly important to make sure it is listed accurately on services such as Google Maps.
With the new Google Maps, moving a marker is not so easy, but it's still not impossible - you just have less direct control over where your marker ends up.
Gender Bending in 140 Characters or Fewer
So a curious thing happened yesterday; the comedian Dara O'Briain suggested that female panellists on BBC shows should be treated the same as male ones, and was reported as having said pretty much the opposite.
The Guardian, for instance, ran with the headline Dara O'Briain hits out at BBC ban on men-only panel shows, opened with his reference to female panellists as appearing to be the "token woman", and the first sizeable blockquote was this one:
The Guardian, for instance, ran with the headline Dara O'Briain hits out at BBC ban on men-only panel shows, opened with his reference to female panellists as appearing to be the "token woman", and the first sizeable blockquote was this one:
"I wish a tenth of the energy that was put into the women-on-panel-shows debate was put into women in computer coding, in which there are hundreds of thousands of jobs in Europe, and 11% of them are done by women."
Mixed Messages and Risky Backlinking
This week I received an enquiry from a potential client - I'm not going to name them or give away anything identifiable, but in general terms I think their enquiry is worth a little discussion.
Firstly, because it seems to suggest that I'm ranking pretty highly in the search results (I think that's how they found me) and, indeed, as far as I can tell I'm now the top result for one of my main target keywords, 'didsbury copywriter', on Google.
I've seen some shuffling around on other key terms too, which is as it should be - as I frequently say, SEO isn't something you do once, you've got to keep at it to stay on top.
But the main thing that caught my eye here was what they were asking me - and other freelancers and SEO agencies - to actually do for them.
The enquiry was a call to tender for a decent-sized ongoing SEO contract, with only one definite requirement:
Uh oh. Does that sound familiar?
It sounds to me a little like what Matt Cutts described two weeks ago.
Or what Duane Forrester wrote about last week.
So I replied, in no uncertain terms, firmly recommending that the client reconsider their SEO campaign and steer it away from intensive link-building efforts, to focus instead on on-site content-building and on-page SEO (which still work, and always will work - good-quality content is the purest form of SEO).
Their reply was confusing, to say the least (I've paraphrased only slightly, to preserve anonymity):
Eh? "We are not link-building, we're just prioritising link-building"??
I know I said I've paraphrased, but believe me, that is the message without any change to its general sentiment, it made no more sense than that.
Let me take this opportunity to say:
That being said, if you're looking to move away from unnatural link-building practices, I can help you build your own on-site content (on-page SEO still works, mmmkay?) and help you to rank highly using methods that Google will never penalise you for.
Food for thought :)
Firstly, because it seems to suggest that I'm ranking pretty highly in the search results (I think that's how they found me) and, indeed, as far as I can tell I'm now the top result for one of my main target keywords, 'didsbury copywriter', on Google.
I've seen some shuffling around on other key terms too, which is as it should be - as I frequently say, SEO isn't something you do once, you've got to keep at it to stay on top.
But the main thing that caught my eye here was what they were asking me - and other freelancers and SEO agencies - to actually do for them.
The enquiry was a call to tender for a decent-sized ongoing SEO contract, with only one definite requirement:
Pitch content to B2B publisher sites, e.g. blogs and industry websites, with the intention of obtaining links back to the client's website.
Uh oh. Does that sound familiar?
It sounds to me a little like what Matt Cutts described two weeks ago.
Or what Duane Forrester wrote about last week.
So I replied, in no uncertain terms, firmly recommending that the client reconsider their SEO campaign and steer it away from intensive link-building efforts, to focus instead on on-site content-building and on-page SEO (which still work, and always will work - good-quality content is the purest form of SEO).
Their reply was confusing, to say the least (I've paraphrased only slightly, to preserve anonymity):
"We're not worried about being penalised by Google for unnatural link-building, as we are not link-building ... Writing the content is not our priority; our priority is getting links built."
Eh? "We are not link-building, we're just prioritising link-building"??
I know I said I've paraphrased, but believe me, that is the message without any change to its general sentiment, it made no more sense than that.
Let me take this opportunity to say:
- If you are spending four-figure sums on building links, you're engaged in unnatural link-building;
- If you are engaged in unnatural link-building, both Google and Bing are likely to frown upon it;
- If you talk in riddles, I'm likely to frown upon you too.
That being said, if you're looking to move away from unnatural link-building practices, I can help you build your own on-site content (on-page SEO still works, mmmkay?) and help you to rank highly using methods that Google will never penalise you for.
Food for thought :)
