Small Business SEM

Although spam is not a problem I encounter often, Yahoo Answers is taking some pretty bold steps to combat what it calls “low-quality questions and answers.”
There has always been a way to report junk, but out of all the spam I’ve reported, I don’t ever recall seeing any action. That should change now that [...]

I think we can all agree that Sphinn has established itself as a great arbiter of what’s Good and Bad in the general search industry. There’s no “bury brigade” playing games with the system. There’s not much spam, and what little there is gets dealt with quickly. (Disclosure: I’m a moderator.) And most importantly, the [...]

For those of you who are new SBS readers & subscribers, here’s a list of noteworthy posts you probably missed from one year ago. I try to put together a post like this each month. Scroll to the end to see previous Flashbacks.

Strange goings-on with Merchant Circle
Linkbaiting for Small Businesses (or, What I Learned Last [...]

I had it in the back of my head to ask Chris Sherman to do an interview for SBS, but I’m glad Lee Odden beat me to the punch. I like the answer Chris gave to Lee’s question about search marketing tips for small businesses, which reads in part:
“If you’re in a high-touch business, it’s [...]

If you’re an experienced search marketer, feel free to move along; there’s probably nothing here for you. This post is mostly for current (and future) clients, so that I have a place to refer them when we talk about what they’ll need to do some SEO-type work on their own.
Web Browser
It all begins with [...]

The first piece of Local SEO advice you usually here is something like “put your address on every page of your site.” Yes, but what about when you have five addresses? How do you target local search when you’re “local” in several different cities or states?
Hint: hotels do it right, as Chris Silver Smith [...]

Longtime readers know that I love Yahoo Answers. As that posts describes, I get a lot of traffic from Answers. It’s one of the few social sites where a degree of marketing is allowed. Here’s what the YA Community Guidelines says about that:
“There are many professionals and business owners providing valuable knowledge and experiences on [...]

Several of my co-workers have been busy working on a couple projects related to local search, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them here on SBS:
1.) “Unlocking the potential of the local Internet” is a 13-page snapshot of where the local search industry is now, and where it’s headed. There’s a lot of [...]