Thunder SEO

What!?! That’s My Competitor in My Google Places Listing! Or, How to Change the Street View Image in a Google Places Listing

 
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3 Things You Should do to Right NOW for Success in Google Places!

With all of the changes to SERPs for searches with local intent, you not only need to be concerned with ranking, but also in how your place page looks when a visitor lands there. The following tips may seem like no-brainers, but a number of top local listings fail to deliver on their place page. The better optimized your place page, the better luck you will have converting a searcher into an actual customer.
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Max Makes an Appearance at YOUmoz!

A new potential client calls and starts talking about how they don’t rank and what can be done to help. Or…an existing client calls and says they want to rank for a new set of keywords. These are all familiar situations. As a SEOer, what’s the first thing you do?

Go to YOUmoz to read the rest of my guest post!
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Going With The Flow While Still Maintaining Your Identity

When I first began working in the field of SEO (blogging, content, press releases, etc), I quickly discovered that a lot of people had no idea what SEO stood for, what it meant, and how it helps them with their website. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) continues to grow in popularity, and now when I tell people, "I work in SEO." I don’t have to explain what the acronym stands for, nor do I need to state what the heck it is either. At least for the most part.
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Dust Off Your Social Shoes, it’s Time to Throw an Awesome Party!

Gone are the days of boring Evites and untargeted email blasts. Today’s event attendee is much more socially savvy, and it’s time to step up your game. Traditional event planners are starting to learn…
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5 Takeaways From SMX East 2010 NYC

Last week I participated as a presenter and attendee at SMX East 2010 in NYC. It was a great experience. I think the true value of SMX conferences comes from the conversations and content. It’s the chance to talk with industry experts while standing in line for coffee, or talking over lunch, or finding a common interest. Yes, these experts are all *real* people who love what they do, and like to talk with others about it…along with life in general too
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Reviewing Reviews: How to Jump-Start Customer Feedback

The importance for customer reviews in local search is nothing new. When it became well-known that reviews were making an impact in the search engines, business owners, along with their friends and families, started…
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Implementing hCard for Local Search

What is an hCard?

hCard microformat is not it’s own programming language, rather, it’s HTML that is appended to certain snippets of information to tell computers “Hey this is a person’s name,” or other commonly published attributes such as an address, review, event, blog post, or phone number. An hCard is technically a virtual business card for a particular person, but for local search you can use it to denote a business location.
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Social Media is the Red Power Ranger : “Let the Power Protect You!”

I always wanted to be the Red Power Ranger. Forget the utterly "girly" Pink or the “just sorta there” Yellow, I had to be the Red. I longed to be the strongest. Being a child of the ever nostalgic 90’s, I was a huge fan of the show that teamed up five teenagers in skin tight suits and pitted them against destructive monsters who they would in turn save the world from. The Red Ranger was the leader of the team, had the most powerful weapons and was the main character.
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Is Local Search Really The Most Efficient Use of My Time?

I recently received the following questions regarding a "local search" presentation that I gave to a group of businesses in San Diego at SCORE. For a little background, the presentation covered the basics of local search, including setting up the Google Places listing, best-practices in regard to business name, description, etc., creating citations, the primary directories that Google indexes, review management, etc.
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