My NEW local marketing ventures

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invinceable

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Nov 14, 2008
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Ok guys so I put my time in for a while and have a few clients (8 actually) where I make some decent coin monthly by running their sites. I have been doing this for about 2 years now as a 1 man show and it requires quite a bit of work as I'm sure some of you guys have seen who have done something similar. The problem with what I do is if they are set up for a low competition keyword (some specific city + dental work) and I get them to #1, and they decide to stop paying, well chances are they will stick around for #1 for a while. This is no good.

Last summer I was going to set up a few general directories and try to get them to rank for the #1 spots, that way I could pitch it to a few clients in terms of selling them an ad block or something monthly, but no matter what I control the site that is ranking as #1.

When Google Places came out, it through a little barrier in my way, it appears as if ONLY legit businesses can be ranked as #1 when you search for say "carmel ca dentist" from now on, completely trashing my directory idea. What are people doing to get around this? Or can I set up a "carmel-dentry-work" and somehow get that to rank as a place?

If I cannot it looks like I am just stuck where I am at now, since nobody is going to scroll past those 6 places entries? Can anyone offer any legit insight on this? Thanks
 


Hey i would say join the google places side... Google places is definitely taking over and is growing as a higher authority than organic search results. A key thing to getting to top of google places is verifying your owner listing.

Also are you pitching to your clients that not everyone only searches on google? what are their rankings on yahoo/bing for the keywords?
 
Agree that Places is quite important. However, I wouldn't post a fake company as it's against Google's TOS. Why not offer to claim and customize Places listings for your clients? Be sure to name any photos with keyword terms and encourage the business to solicit reviews from their customers.
 
If you do PPC you can approach the subsequent listed businesses (#2, #3, #4 . . .) and offer them PPC management to get to the very top of the page. The thing is, once they taste high rankings in Places and someone tops them then it becomes very competitive to get even higher. They know that anything other than the very top they lose customers. Offer to help at all angles and let them battle each other.
 
I own a directory that is ranked above Places on all related search phrases but I was already at the top before Google started pushing Places much harder. Traffic has increased (growing industry) over the past 2 years. It's a good earner (I sell leads at $10 a pop) but Places is a growing concern.

Keep in mind, I'm in Australia so I don't target "keyword geo" but just the keyword itself as our population is much smaller so it's harder for Google to understand what searches have local intent or require it.
 
There are some good courses out there, like Marios, regarding Google Places.

I recommend you check them out.
 
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