What`s Around Here?

“What`s Around Here” is a feature that can be enabled within Google Maps if you are part of Labs. You can bypass that without being part of it by simply conducting a search say for NYC

Google Map of NYC

Nothing remarkable to see here, but now replace that search while on that result with an Asterisk (*) and keep clicking on the + under the orange Street View fella until you are faced with a map full of acne.

Acne Splattered NYC

If you clicked through that link you should hopefully see the same version of that map as highlighted above. If you hover over any of those markers you should also see alternate text about that place.

Now the whole purpose of this post is to highlight a search operator you may have overlooked.

Why Would I Want this Data?

Would you be more inclined as a native New Yorker to link to someone who has a relevant theme to yours to boost YOUR local relevancy? Other than that it is giving a new opportunity to discover other sites in your neighbourhood to begin fostering for future linking opportunities.

Still Not Precise Enough?

Well how about searching NYC – “What`s Around Here” for Travel Agents? A simple operator, use the Asterisk followed by Travel Agents and now you have more actionable data to work with!

Search for Travel Agents Using Whats Around Here followed by your keyphrase

Give it a try for any town or city on the planet and a keyphrase then tell me we need a tool to pull all of that juicy data.

Could you think of another use for the data pulled?

Incoming search terms for the article:

• prospecting local link gold (4)
• google maps (1)
• role of local links in SEO (1)

Looking beyond that and from an SEO perspective what advantages does this give me?

Well after verifying my RSS feed in the last post I went straight to the SERP`s to see if the post ranked, sure enough it did in a few seconds, it was not about the keywords I was trying to rank for, it was simply to have the feed verified first.

At first I thought yep that`s it set and forget and continue to push articles and Digg will pick them up, Simple.

Then an afterthought, OK if Digg are picking up my latest posts that obviously gives them a steady flow of fresh links and a snippet of text from the article, a quick and easy user generated content win, but what does this give me in return other than the obvious link back?

Well all of those link metric tools you use, the ones that give a more authoratitive edge if your link gets picked up in Digg, Delicious and the like, well surely the increase in backlinks alone will tilt inyour favour simply because of the verified RSS feed.

So the mass increase of UGC for Digg and the increased backlinks are surely a win win situation?

Other than that you are still getting eyes in front of your content  which is what it was all about anyway and with the new social interaction Digg has put in place this can not be a bad thing because that will naturally lead to more editorial links, yeah those juicy “in content links”.

Lets see how the referrals pan out over time and I will revisit this post and let you know.

Incoming search terms for the article:

• digg for seo 2010 (2)
• digg feed verified (1)

See what you guys make of it, if you have not done so already.

This post  is also a required step to verify my RSS feed (commented out key in the HTML )

There are only 5 so it will be first come first served, although Kevin Rose may give out thousands more at a time.

Incoming search terms for the article:

• 5 Invites to the New Digg (1)

*You said 13th didn`t you?

No?

Well that`s where you are if you expended all of that time and effort to gain what you thought was the #1 spot if your strategy was to rank for “travel agents in London” where is your number 1 spot now? Just below the PPC? Well if you clicked through that link you will see it is sat below the 7 pack.

I am not going to go into query numbers for that term but i know if i was allinlondon.co.uk i would be pissed at all of the potential traffic i was missing out on. Now compare that search term to “travel agents in Oban“!

Oh you spotted it! Yep, a 2 pack. See an opportunity there? Of course you do.

So what do you do if you want to climb the rankings for these local search terms and you are a travel agent in London going after that term?

You don`t run.

Any half arsed SEO will start to look into the competitions backlinks and citations, which is part of the meat that makes up local SEO but not the whole pie. Trailfinders for example have put a lot of effort already into getting to where they are in that 7 pack for London travel agents. Now grab there phone number and search for it, no wait i`ll do it for you. “020 7292 1888” quite a few results returned right?

Now which of those backlinks are you going after? Which ones are you already on?

Now wouldn`t life be as sweet as Eric Smiths in Oban if we had a tool that would tell us which sites we were already listed on and which we need to be listed on. That`s what i thought.

While honing my SEO Ninjitsu on Huomah i became aware of this weeks upcoming SEO Dojo chat with Garrett French and Darren Shaw who will be giving an insight into their new tool Whitespark Local Citation Finder .

Of course i gave it a whirl yesterday and after waiting what seemed like an age i received the results as promised for my local search term by email. Nothing fancy, no singing or dancing, just a sweet couple of lists which included the 7 pack, unique domains and a 3rd list which included all URL`s for the term.

One search and results by email. Sweet.

Now i know via Dojo Radio that Darren wrote this in a day and spent another day polishing and refining the tool but i well believe that he and Garrett are well on the way to a tool i will be happy to put into my arsenal for local SEO clients and i am looking forward to tomorrows chat.

Yours Sincerely

Eric Smith

I am kidding of course, oh to be an Oban travel agent

*I used artistic licence to derive the number 13 by including “Local Business Results for…” and “More results near…” which together with the 3 PPC and 7 pack gives your “organic #1″ a 13th spot.

Video signal converting apparatus and a display device having the same - Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Disclosed is a video signal converting apparatus and a display device having the same which may convert a low-resolution video signal from a host into a different-resolution video signal capable of being displayed on the entire screen of a high-resolution supporting display device. The apparatus has a detector for detecting a first resolution signal indicative of a resolution of the first display signal using horizontal and vertical synchronization signals related to the first display, a comparator for comparing the first resolution signal with a second resolution signal indicative of a reference resolution; and a converter for converting the first display signal into the second resolution signal, if there is a difference between the first and the second resolution signals.

System for reducing the number of programs necessary to render an image - Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Disclosed is as system for reducing memory and computational requirements of graphics operations. The system provides techniques for combining otherwise individual operations to apply filters to images. The combined filter emerging from the combination spares the processor time and the creation of an entire intermediary image. The system further provides for application of these techniques in many contexts including where the operations are fragment programs in for a programmable GPU.

Computer-implemented system and method for defining graphics primitives - Tue, 31 Aug 2010
Systems and methods for generating graphic primitives. Data is received that is indicative of a gesture provided by a user. It is determined whether the received gesture data is indicative of a graphic primitive. A graphic primitive is generated for use on a user display based upon said determining step.

Image distribution system and client terminal and control method thereof - Tue, 31 Aug 2010
When a viewer resizes an image window while displaying image data distributed from a server on the image window of a client terminal, the client terminal notifies the server of the size of the image window after resizing. The server resizes the image data so that an image has the same size as that of the window, and transmits the resized image data to the client terminal. In this way, the need for the resizing processing in the client terminal can be obviated, thus reducing its load.

In-page full screen internet video method - Tue, 31 Aug 2010
A method is provided for playing a video clip on a computer monitor in a full screen mode. Activation of a link to the video clip on a web page results in the video clip being played automatically in full screen mode on the computer monitor. Upon the video clip ending, the full screen mode ends and returns the display to the previous view of the web page. The full screen mode plays the video clip with an integrated transparent video control panel that has controls to enable user control of the playing of the video clip.

“No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.”

If all you have to do is provide a bunch of keywords to target, set and forget then you are on a path to misery. If you have to pay to maintain these rankings on a monthly basis, then you are on path to misery.

SEO is not a set and forget marketing effort, it is part of strategy, a strategy that is revisited and reviewed. Does submitting a few hundred keywords to a company that you pay $30 per month to maintain sound like a viable long term solution to strengthening your brand and establishing yourself among your competition?

OK, now stop paying your $30 per month and as promised that firm that controls all of your keyword positioning among X thousand of their carefully controlled and positioned websites pulls the plug and you disappear off the map.

Congratulations, you get exactly what you paid for and we as an SEO industry have to mop up the mess and defend what we do again because another scam artist found an easy way to make a quick kill.

The $30 a month sounded good right?

Now if someone came to me and said  “i value you and your product at $30 per month” i would be a little worried from the start.

Again i will refer you to Google themselves and what they have to say about SEO;

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

It`s a great starting point, but beyond that be very, very careful about any company that tries to baffle you with bullshit, bullshit like “Guaranteed page one rankings”.

Incoming search terms for the article:

• guaranteed page one rankings (1)

SEO was brand new. Nobody really understood what they were doing and even those that did were still at the genesis stage of developing what we have now become accustomed to as a strong tactical advantage when it comes to bringing targeted qualified traffic to our clients websites.

Deploying the right combination of keywords after painstaking research to give visitors exactly what they were looking for seems like a no brainer now. It`s the visitors late into the buying cycle that we are all after, this is the qualified terminology we use.

You may have won the SEO battle

Those long tail target keyphrases have brought those visitors to the site. That`s the end of the SEO process right? Opinions here are split.

SEO is such a diverse industry and we are all seeking that small competitive advantage that will tip the rankings in our favour. The majority of SEO`s have “the basics” nailed down. That seems like a profound statement because if you locked us all in a room for a week we would still come out the other side disagreeing about what the basics are. You see the basics for one client will never transfer to the next one. It`s not a one size fits all solution that you set and forget.

There is NO SEO checklist to tick off against a project. Yes you may have been one of the lucky ones that got right in there at the design and planning stage of the site, you formed or co-operated in the SEO strategy. So what if you have just taken on a new client that has a 2 year old website? Time to pull your checklist out right?

For as long as i have been a student of SEO and in my case is 2 years longer than it would be to train a UK paramedic, even i am still scratching the service of our still very young industry. I have made and still do make mistakes, i really do have “head desk” and “face palm” moments. Usually this is down to me trying to be clever when the simplest answer is staring me in the face.

How do i combat my own personal SEO battles?

To begin with i used to turn to web design forums, then with the emergence of SEO the enevitable forums arose, so i sought the advice of peers there. So where am i now? well as you may have established i have been around for a little while now and if you knew me as personally as some of my clients and family i am a famed tight-arse. I will not part with a penny of my hard earned money unless i had a true belief that it will benefit me.

This is where the SEO Dojo comes in. The SEO Dojo is a band of SEO brothers and sisters that combine to offer SEO training on a level playing field. Brand new to the SEO industry? no problem, you are as equal a member of the Dojo as let`s say, erm, (she`s gonna kill me) @jillwhalen. I did not mean to insinuate that you were the opposite of brand new Jill! I meant it as a compliment to your pioneering and learned skills.

So that`s 3 sides to my genetics you have learned.

I am a tight-arsed, selfish SEO that makes mistakes!

So for less than the price of an average night out (depending on your usual alcohol intake) get over to http://www.huomah.com/ for all of your insights and let the SEO training begin.

We are in a small and still largely unheard of industry. We send out the signals that we are applying seo practices, but if we don`t do, we get stung all the same?

We look towards others for the perfectly optimized page and hope that if that`s right then the signals we are sending are as close to the money as possible. But even then there are slightly different opinions, mostly they are in agreeance. Personally i prefer this one.

Whichever way you source your information and whichever rules you want to apply to your campaigns one thing will always bug me in the back of my mind. Are all of these closely followed practices really sending a signal back to Google? Are we really being profiled though our GA accounts and anything associated with them is going to be viewed with a bit of caution?

Paranoia over.

I do not know of, nor have i seen any evidence to suggest you are going to receive the beady eye just because you apply seo best practices, if anything it should send a positive signal to suggest you are actually taking great care not to piss the googlybot off, unless of course you are really taking your time to present bots and visitors with seperate content for the sake of rankings.

Whichever methodology you apply to your SEO campaigns there is always one thing to remember, nothing is static, your campaigns and your clients business strategy towards it need constant review.

Did i mention i liked David Harry`s (@theGypsy) guide to search engine ranking factors? i did? well let me leave you with another juicy and probably not complete or even accurate (who knows for sure?) google doc with 200 Google parameters.

Incoming search terms for the article:

• google parameters (1)

Search for something random for whatever city/town you want to have a look at as normal in Google.

Now click on maps (top of your browser) apologies if you are viewing this via your phone, i don`t know how it looks in that format.

Now when you are in Google maps.. just to the right of the search box you should see “Whats around here?”

Clicking that button should bring up all the popular destinations for what you just searched for.

Do you see that little orange fella? get closer in by clicking on that + symbol (probably twice) will bring up a load of orange dots all over that map.

Those dots have been plotted by yocals that have either listed their site within Google Maps or have ben plotted via “street view” references.

Now if you are going to ask “what the hell does all this mean?”

My answer is 2 fold

Firstly not only have you just glanced at everything nearby but now you may well have an amazing array of potential new local ink prospects.

What advantage does this have?

Well from a personal point of view if you are not exhausting local links for citation purposes you are firstly overlooking potential opportunities, but you may well be missing an opportunity to gain or share a link of real relevance within the exact same space that you are sharing online. For example in the UK, there is seemingly a growing market within Manchester for SEO Services and those that are taking a local building opportunity will grow a competitive advantage.

This is of course my own opinion, but those Manchester SEO`s and you in your local space should take a look a little closer to home.

Without going into too much detail i know who my local competitors are and so should you beyond your normal web search. Even for me this Maps method threw up some suprises.

I did try to find a mashup that would extract links without success and the closest i came was when Aaron Wall mentioned a nice little bookmarklet “Simple Google Results” (onlinesales.co.uk).

First and foremost that simple little script is awseome in its simplicity, but alas in this instance trying to grab URL`s from Google Maps it does not serve the purpose. Shame really, but if any of you guys are reading this i would be your first customer if you were ever to develop a paid or unpaid version of extracting links from these results.

I have probably not given the “What`s Around Here?” enough justice.

So if you have landed on a local map from your random search, you can actually dive a little deeper.

You can do this by category

There is no apparent navigation to do this, but if you did click on “Whats Around Here?” you should notice that the search box contains an *

This * is your starting point to search by category

Try a search for *travel agents

This is a popular category so it should throw up all those travel agents in that local search.

This local link building opportunity is just a small facet of what makes up any profile, but i for one will always look here first before venturing elsewhere.

There is a whole lot more to local search than this brief post and is by no means a resource, it is simply highlighting something that you may have overlooked along the way.

10 likely elements offers the next step in local search and you will gain small and big wins via that site.

Rajan (Rajan [rajan@technologuss.info]) directs his email straight at my email address, no hit or miss but the exact one to get to me.

———

Dear Sir/Madam,

Do you want to see your website in Top 10 position in Google or other major search engine?

Do you want more targeted visitors on your website?

If yes, please let us know your domain name which you want to optimize.

We will analysis your website and send full SEO proposal with plan and activity which will implement on your website.

Most firms overseas have achieved a significant amount of savings by outsourcing either complete or part of their SEO Work to us in India. All our work remains in the background and the end client never knows that the work has been outsourced resulting in both savings and brand value for you and your company.

We are looking forward to a long and fruitful business relationship with you and your company.

We are waiting for your positive response.

Thanks & Regards

Rajan

Internet Marketing Strategist
P.S. This is an advertisement and a promotional mail strictly on the guidelines of CAN-SPAM act of 2007 . We have clearly mentioned the source mail-id of this mail, also clearly mentioned the subject lines and they are in no way misleading in any form. We have found your mail address through our own efforts on the web search and not through any illegal way. If you find this mail unsolicited, please reply with “Remove” in the subject line and we will take care that you do not receive any further promotional mail.

——

Ok Rajan if you know my email address and then why begin with “Dear Sir/Madam”?

Then you go on, no really you did just punt an seo with your offerings did you not?

I am not going to pull your email apart completely, that`s your worry, but when you were building/buying that list from whatever source did you not stop to think even for the teensiest moment about what may happen, if let`s just say you sent it to an SEO by mistake? Oh you didn`t?

Ok did you think for minute that let`s say said SEO just accidently copied and pasted your email into a blog post which will be pinging it`s way to Google as soon as i hit that publish button?  you didn`t?

Oh OK

For any other would be touters, feel free to send me more of these emails, i will happily publish you all right here on this very post with continuing updates.