Now if you are a business located in San Diego and want to get significant online exposure and get more business you will inevitably need a Google Places account.

20 Easy Steps To Create a Google Places Listing

1. You must have a valid Gmail account
2. Sign-up for Google Places
3. Add a new business listing

TIP: Top right there is a link  “Add another business” click on that and follow the next steps.

4. You must have a valid phone number

STEP 1: You will start by selecting a country and a phone number and Google will match these with any existing listings


5. Choose a Country form the dropdown
6. Company/Organization: add keywords along with your business name

TIP: Lots of the most successful local listings have “{business_name} + {keywords}” as part of their business name

7. You must have a San Diego based physical address for your business

TIP: The physical location of your business determines your ranking in Google local. The closer you are to the city you are optimizing for the better.

8. Phone number should already be filled out automatically by Google

TIP: Local area phone number tend  to do better and help the listings rankings as they are more user friendly, plus Google will detect the area code and use it as a local ranking factor. You may also add additional phone numbers.

9. Fill out an email address

TIP: Having a customized email address including the domain name (ex: info@domain.com) will show Google that you are an authority and are actively monitoring your website and email.

10. Add your website

TIP: Adding a website helps your listing and Google will feature your website in the results, which is a big plus in getting users to know your brand locally.

11. Add a description

TIP: Make sure to write your description based around the services or products you offer. Use relevant keywords within the description.

12. Make sure to select the category most relevant to your business

TIP: Try using the suggested options that appear when you type in a category. Also look at your competitors and see what categories they used. I would advise adding up to 5 categories.


13. Areas you serve in and location settings

TIP: You have two options here: all customers will come at your location or you serve customers at different locations. Option two will select your area range based on your location, or simply type out the cities you are servicing in and add them one by one.


14. Fill out your hours of operation

TIP: You can also setup one or more sets of hours for a single day


15. Choose payment options for your customers

TIP: Make sure you choose the payment options, the most important factor for most conversions coming through a Google local listing.


16. Add photos

TIP: I recommend adding up to 10 photos of your business/store or products. Images get crawled and included in the image searches as well and help with ranking.


17. Add videos

TIP: You need to go to YouTube and signup there first. Then upload your videos and provide the urls that YouTube will host your videos on. Up to 5 videos may be uploaded for a Google Listing.


18. Additional details

TIP: Add as many useful additional details as you can think of. Be careful don’t spam or don’t over stuff with keywords. Add relevant and important information about your business.


19. Submit

TIP: Finally submit your listing. If your listing has errors Google will notify you of them and mark them with red. Make sure you fix them and then resubmit.

20. Confirm your listing through receiving a PIN number through an automated phone call from Google, or through a postcard

Need more help with your Google Places Listing?

I can definitely help setting up a Google Places Listing for your business and further optimize and help with driving more customers back to your business. I am a San Diego based SEO consultant and I would love to hear more from your business. Contact me at: (209) SEO -7322 or via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

What is ORGANIC optimization?

The meaning of organic is well known: natural element or produce which has not been chemically enhanced
Organic SEO Definition: getting found in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing without actually paying for your website or add to show up. Placement is pretty much permanent, but it also depends on your competitors.

Where can ORGANIC searches be seen?

I know that most of the people still do not differentiate paid ads from organic ads in Google. Can’t blame them, they look almost exactly the same!

Why ORGANIC rankings are better?

There are several reasons why i like to go with organic rather than choosing the paid option that Google has:
- long term placement: organic rankings are most of the times permanent, once you achieve the desired results you can start focusing on several other keywords
- its FREE: well its free after you achieved the rankings, you still need to pay for your website and an SEO consultant.
- more clicks: statistics show that people click more on organic results than on paid advertising

- authority: you will not only work for ranking organically, but you will also build your brand, and become a recognized authority within your niche
- more conversions: statistics show that organic based conversions are higher than paid ones

what can you do to rank in ORGANIC searches?

There are a few strategies that you can implement along with SEO that will help you start showing up in organic searches. Pay attention to:

Website Structure

Make sure your website structure is relevant to your niche and optimized for the keyword you are trying to target. Menu items need to be carefully chosen so that they reflect you targeted keyword.

Websites Code

Stay away from all flash built websites and JavaScript code. Stay away from too many images. Plain simple HTML will do it just fine.

Add META Tags

Add unique meta tag information for every page you are planing to optimize.

Use Headlines and Subtitles

Use of the headlines and subtitles will help the robot crawling your website understand the most important keywords for the page.

Write Unique content

Make sure you write your own content, using your targeted keywords throughout the page. Don’t overuse your keywords, blend them in and make the page as useful as possible from a user perspective.

Get Links

Try and get links from trusted resources within your niche. Look for relevant links, engage into social media programs, participate in related forums and blogs. Get involved!

Want to rank ORGANICALLY in search engines?

Call me (209) SEO -7322 or contact me via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

On February 24th 2011 Google has made a major algorithm update called “The Panda Update“. They do update their algorithm a couple of times per year but most of the times us SEO’s don’t notice the updates because most of the times good sites are not affected by them. Well with “The Panda Update”, Matt Cutts – Google’s head of web spam team has stated that this is “a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries”.

The update was mainly focused on content farms, duplicated and content scrapped from other sites, but a large number of websites were affected.

Has your website been affected by “The Panda Update”?

Check and see if your website has been affected by this update:

1. log into your Google Analytics
2. click on the traffic sources
3. click on the search engines and choose non-paid
4. click on Google to see only the traffic from Google
5. now compare the month of January with February – select your date range from the drop down at the top
6. again compare January with March
7. if February and March show a significant drop then your site has been affected
   You should now hate Pandas too!

Why was your website affected by “Panda”?

Here are a couple of reasons why your website might have been affected:

• Duplicate Content – if you were publishing copied content on your website, or the percentage of uniqueness for your content was low
• Repeated Content – if you are repeating content over and over again on multiple pages
• Inappropriate Content – if you had irrelevant content, not niche specific
• Grammar Errors – unnatural language that does not follow the rules for correct grammar and/or expressions
• High Bounce Rate – if the amount of visitors that leave your website is higher than 60% (it really depends on the niche, but that’s an average percentage)
• Time on Site – your visitors spend only a couple of seconds on your site
• Returning Visitors – your visitors are not returning at all to your website
• Links - low quality or no links to a high amount of pages on your website
• Social Media – no exposure through social media, or no mentions in social media of your site

How to get your traffic back after The Panda Update?

• Original content – if your content is more than 90% original you were on the good side, write original content, niche specific, keyword focused
• Reconsideration - after making major changes to your site re-submit for reconsideration
• Redesign - if your site is more than 3 years old, consider a website redesign, use a modern web 2.0 approach
• Quality Content – improve your contents quality, write pages that are very useful for the users and Google will credit your work
• Links - do not excessively link out, choose your sources to link out too wisely, pick relevant sources, do not use more than 5 site wide links
• Clean-up – clean your index, remove the duplicate content pages from your index, redirect them properly afterward
• Structure - re-work and re-categorize your sites architecture and navigation
• Brand - start focusing on brand authority, become a leader in your niche, focus on a specific product or service
• News - spread the word out, focus on press releases and news worthy topics
• Adds - remove all excessive adds from your site, not recommend having more than 3 adds
• Blog - if you do not have a blog going , then get one
• Social Media – create social media profile and start actively participate spreading quality information

Why we don’t really like Pandas

• Pandas are expensive and high maintenance
• They spend their majority of time doing nothing (eating, sitting, scratching)
• Are very lazy animals
• Cant breed well, do you know how expensive it is to breed pandas

So you finally opened your doors for more business. I’m sure you already let your old customers know about the new business or you are working on getting new ones. You do not have a website tho, and you budget is tight and you wont be able to get one within the next six months.

Have you heard about Press & Media Releases? Since you do not own a website you can write a news release about your new business and target the GEO located audience, so that customers in your city or nearby areas find you. It only takes 1 day to see and measure great SEO results from this type of strategy.

San Diego Business Case Study

Hypothetically lets say you are a chef and opened your own restaurant in Carmell Valley, a city close by San Diego downtown. Did not have budget for a website yet but you would want new customers in the area to find out about your new business. Launching a press release will be fast, inexpensive and effective for a short time period and it will serve the purpose. But remember that a press release will only last for 28 days and you wont be able to launch a new one unless you have something newsworthy.

Why you want to launch a Press Release as a new business owner?

If you do not have a website:

• letting customers know your new location
• targeting new possible customers that might wanna stop by and check out the new place
• announce an incentive like: a coupon, a promotion, a contest
• you get immediate exposure and start ranking right away

If you already have a website:

• natural back links will add up to the value of your website
• new content development which attracts more links
• higher rankings for GEO located keywords

Press Releases Steps for New Business Owners

1. write your press release about your new opened business:

Tips on how to write your first press release

• write unique copy
• use press release writing guidelines
• include your business location
• include the services you offer
• include a coupon or a promotion

2. do keyword research to find out niche related keywords and include them in your copy

Tips on how to find keywords for your business

• Google relevant keywords for your business with a Geo located qualifier
• look at your competitors ranking at the top for these keywords
• use Google Keyword Tool for more keywords

3. get an account on PRWEB.com

Tips for getting an account on PRWEB.com

• see which pricing plans fits in your budget – PRWEB’s Pricing Plans
• get the Advanced plan – you will get your moneys worth out of this plan for sure

4. submit your press release

Tips on submitting your press release

• make sure you include your city and state Geo location
• make sure to complete all fields and get your press release 100% complete on PRWEB’s account
• make sure to fill in your website (if any)
• make sure to fill in your contact information
• pick categories that are related to your business
• submit your press release and make any editorial changes to it if you need to (staff at PRWEB will send you an email about it if needed)

Want to know more about launching a press release?

Call Hilda Mateiu at (209) SEO -7322 and/or get in touch with her on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Pick San Diego related keywords

Here are some useful automated tool to help with your search:
Google keyword tool – shows local monthly searches, competitive level, trends and estimated average cost per click
keyword tool – generate local adwords keywords
ScrapeBox – does a very good job at suggesting your keywords and finding keywords you might have overlooked
Wordstream – free keyword tool, sorting keyword based on traffic

Create a San Diego Focused Ad and Landing Page

Create a unique add for each city in San Diego County, or the nearby cities that you want to be found in. Having landing pages targeting the city the user is in will help increase conversion rate and your business will be recognized as local.
Personalize your adds as much as possible, add city name or region, add one of the services you offer, add a discounted service, add a local phone number.
Landing page must describe the specific service you offered, add a quick contact form on your landing page. Create a landing page for each of your location and list location and address in the page,

Tip 1: DO NOT create landing pages that will make the user enter a zip code. In order to succeed u need to make the landing pages as personalized as possible for the keyword they are targeting.

Tip 2: DO NOT SPAM! Don’t create adds for cities you are not located close enough. This will only make users click on your add, hence Google will take your money, your bounce rate will increase and the user will end up leaving dissatisfied, hence no conversion will happen.

Tip 3: Create video landing pages. Present your product or service in your video. Increases bounce rate and conversions.

Test your Adds Again and Again!

You can test your adds for same keywords or the same keyword group and see which ones do better. Keep the ones that improve conversions and keep changing and testing with the other ones. Try different keywords combination, different keywords and retest again.
what to test in your adds: keywords, location, calls to action, phone number, service
What to test on you landing pages: button colors, button verbiage, message, headings, images, video, long vs short copy, award logos, trust logos-eTrust, offers, pricing, video vs image, navigation, form length

Run Local PPC Campaigns for Google, Yahoo and Bing

Google is the leading search engine where you must place your adds.
Yahoo and Bing can also be useful and much cheaper with a higher conversion rate for small, local niches.

Need Help With a PPC Campaign?

San Diego SEO consulting services are offered for Pay Per Click Management, with PPC comprehensive report and plan included that will help you get started on your campaign.

Look for SEO Experience

Past companies he/she worked for and actual ranking results matter more than paper qualifications.
SEO experience levels:

• in-house background – worked for a niche specific company
• agency background – worked for several niches, usually for an SEO related business
• SEO consultant – worked for several niches, trained and documented strategies

Pay an SEO According to Skill Levels

Indeed SEO Salary Chart

Some of the salary ranges for SEO related jobs include:

• SEO Marketing Director (Corporate Company) – $100,000 to $350,000
• SEO Manager (Large Company) – $75,000 to $150,000
• SEO Expert (Medium Company) – $50,000 to $100,000
• SEO Junior (Any Size Company) – $30,000 to $60,000
• Campaign Manager (Any Size Company) – $55,00 to $100,000
• SEO Specialist (Any Size Company) – $40,000 to $80,000
• SEO Consultant (Any Size Company) – $60,000 to $200,000
• Link Builder (Any Size Company) – $35,000 to $100,000
• Content Writer (Any Size Company) – $35,000 to $75,000
• Project Manager – $35,000 to $75,000

see more about SEO salaries and jobs here.

SEO Employer Hiring Tips

Keep in mind that:

• there are few experts in SEO – many will claim SEO knowledge but few will survive and have results
• availability depends on pricing – some experts are not available unless you can compete with other clients
• there are no magic tricks in SEO – people who promise you such things are big time LIARS, for as long as i’ve worked in SEO there is only hard work, the harder you work the better the rankings are.

Grow Your Company – Get Fresh Ideas

• If you already have an In-house SEO, hire an SEO consultant for fresh and new strategies and ideas.
• If you have an in-house web team, hire an individual as an in-house SEO, or get your web team trained by an SEO consultant.

Help Your Current Employees Learn SEO

• product managers, content writers, human resources, publishers – train them the basics about keyword research and links
• coders, programmers, developers – training for on-page and off-page optimization basic concepts, advise them to use SEO tools for data and reports

Need More SEO Guidance?

Call a San Diego SEO Consultant at (209) SEO -7322.
Also reach me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn for more advice for SEO related questions.

1. Check placement for targeted keywords – gather data from Google Analytics, Google webmaster tools, keyword lists, past rank reports
2. Check your number of backlinks – use Yahoo Site Explorer, Majestic SEO or Open Site Explorer
3. Do an In-depth analysis in your Google Analitics account: check for your conversion rate, check for unique visitors, look at your bounce rate, see the top visited content and pages
4. Check for Flash files – if your site is built in Flash then you do need a redesign or you need to consult with an SEO consultant to implement different strategies in order to rank
5. Check for Javascript code – your site is using too much javascript code, your menu items include javascript, you include scripts and functions within your pages instead of having these in an external file
6. Check for <table> tags in your code – sites built with so called “tables” are usually old and are considerably slower then sites built with “divs” or <div> tags, and now that Google is considering page speed as an important factor you do need to consider improving your loading time on your site
7. Check for outdated information – if your site has old blogs, old articles, old information then it definitely needs an update
8. Check your CMS – if you do not have a CMS yet then you should definitely opt for a redesign and start using a CMS with your website – a CMS (Content Management System) will help you add new pages, update your information, delete old information, see stats, add images / links / videos, ensure you do have META information for your pages, without extensive HTML and development knowledge
9. Check for a blog – if you do not have a blog, articles or news section then you do need to add one – up to date and fresh information added weekly to your site will help search engines’ robots to crawl and re-crawl your website constantly
10. Check for 404 error pages and broken links – if you do have a lot of broken links then a new SEO re-design will help fixing them, and search engines will start seeing positive changes
11. Look at your conversions – if your conversion rate is lower than 5%, or you are getting no contacts through your website, then that’s definitely a sign that you might need an SEO re-design to help getting your website indexed and ranked
12. Check for navigation – navigation menus are important for your ranking and placement, if you do not have navigational menus i strongly suggest to include them in along with a re-design
13. Check for Cross Browser issues – check and see how your site looks like in Internet Explorer(multiple versions), Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Netscape
14. Check your competitors websites – if your competitors have better designed websites, you can easily find information and have calls to action buttons, then you do need to re-design and consider SEO packages in order to outrank them

Now if you need more SEO help with your redesign…

Call Hilda Mateiu at (209) SEO -7322 or Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. She is based in San Diego and offers SEO consulting services to businesses in San Diego County and vicinities.

How many of you own a Wordpress blog?

• Worldwide 106 million blogs are up and running
• 60%-75% of online users read a blog viagra (some are not even aware they are reading a blog)
• a website that has a blog shows increased traffic by 55%

The query “San Diego blog” returned 79,900,000 results, so I’m assuming many of you need help with optimizing  your blogs so it starts coming up in searches and start getting traffic. If you need help with SEO and blog optimization make sure to use one of my SEO consulting services, locally based in San Diego County.

Essential optimization Tips for Wordpress blogs

• use only 1-2 categories per post
• re-use tags already established (do not use variations of tags – keep tags exactly the same)
• categories & tags – block with robots.txt the OR add unique content to these pages – do not leave these pages to become duplicate content in Googles index
• allow posts to be indexed
• turn off pagination option – you want to show all comments in the same page as the post, otherwise wordpress will create duplicate content issues
• published dates matter – the older your post is the more google will favor it
• URL structure – use 3-5 keywords in your url, do customize the URL for every post (example: www.example.com/my-keywords-go-here/)
• list of comments – the older your post gets the more comments you will have, make sure to respond to your comments as well
• link keywords & relevant phrases in your content posts
• link your categories & tags
• display relevant topics with each post
• install Breadcrumbs links, helps with internal linking
• XML Sitemap – add the sitemap in your robots and GWMT
• Organized Permalinks – make sure to re-visit your posts and make adjustments to your permalinks and url structure (recommended permalink structure: /%postname%.php)
• Canonical Tags – setup your preferred canonical domain

Best wordpress tools and plugins

• Date Exclusion SEO Plugin – encourages search engine crawls and re-crawls by turning off the date display after a certain amount of days or instantly after posting
• Thesis Date Hooks & Theme – has all the needed SEO functionality built in
• Edit Core Theme Files – the good old wordpress codex files
• SEO Smart Links – searches for keywords and links back based on the terms included in your existent content
• All in One SEO plugin – meta titles, descriptions and keywords can be customized using this plugin
• Google XML Sitemap Plugin – by using this plugin will help search engines find all your pages on your blog
• Headspace – configure meta data for all your pages on your blog, including: author pages, homepage, search pages, categories, 404s, pages and posts
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) – shows a list of relevant and related posts on your posts
• Yoast Breadcrumbs – adds breadcrumbs links to your wordpress theme
• GoCodes – plugin helps with Affiliate Advertising urls and creates short user friendly urls
• Redirection – manages redirects 301s, finds your 404s, helps a lot when you redesign and restructure your old site to a new one
• W3 Total Cache – performance optimization improving server performance, caching files, reducing download time and provides a transparent CDN integration
• WP Super Cache – diagnosing caching problems within your blog
• WP Tuner – used for compression and caching

1. What is your Job/Project History Related to SEO?

Tip: All good SEO consultants are working already with big brand names or are working directly for companies or corporations. I strongly advise business owners in San Diego to check the work related history ans SEO consultant presents before actually starting working with the person. There are a lot of so called “SEOs” out there but a lot of them are not able to do the job. Make sure you do your homework as a business owner and avoid getting ripped off or paying to much.

2. What did you major in and what is your education level?

Tip: An SEO consultant level of education is an important part. The best degrees to have are computer science related ones or business or marketing. But again to judge the level of an SEO you will need to look at achievements and rankings. Education level is a plus and shows how much of a technical background the person actually has.

3. What are your achievements in regards to rankings?

Tip: As a business owner this is a must know topic. The SEO consultant needs to be able to show you rankings and explain the competitiveness level of the keywords achieved. Ask for several examples and several sites as well. If the SEO consultant cannot show you more than 5 different sites and examples or explain the methods used or give you more in-depth information about the competition then you shouldn’t hire or trust such individuals.

4. What guarantees can you make?

Tip: The SEO consultant needs to be able to guarantee or at least estimate the rankings for a certain site. I know a lot of companies wont do that because it involves a certain risk and a lot of the times depends on the competition as well, but still in any case scenario some guarantees and estimates can be made and included in the contract. Individuals that sign SEO contracts and the contract is confusing and doesn’t clearly state what its  being offered they have high chances of getting ripped off.

5. Do you offer SEO training sessions?

Tip: SEO consultants need to be able to offer training sessions for either the client either the web team working for a company. Companies or business owners in San Diego need to be trained so that they understand the strategies implemented and the process.

6. What is your niche related expertize?

Tip: Has the SEO consultant worked with your industry previously. Industry and niche focus for SEO consultants is very important. The best SEO consultant are only working with specific niches and industries, that way they stay focused and have the best results for those specific ones.

7. How long have you been doing SEO?

Tip: This is when history and experience matters. The longer you worked int the SEO business the more results you have and the higher your ranking achievements should be. Make sure to ask your SEO consultant about the level and years of experience.

8. Do you have experience with GEO targeted websites?

Tip: GEO targets are like niche related industries. If the SEO consultant has achievements within the same GEO targeted area where you, as a business owner, want to develop your online business, the better. This is an extra point and it helps a lot because the SEO consultant already knows what he/she needs to do in order to get your rankings.

9. What is the SEO level you can grow my website/websites to?

Tip: An SEO consultant must be able to explain and plan out the strategies involved for a longer period of time. Do not sign contracts or deals for shorter periods than 1 year. You might get ripped off and only get results for the couple of months you paid for. This can actually do more damage to your online presence than you might think. The higher the level of rankings the better for the website and the longer it will take to achieve the results wanted.

10. Can you provide references and/or contacts that you worked with?

Tip: Ask the SEO consultant you are interviewing for references. Usually local references are the best and will give owners a good idea who that person is and will say a lot about his work ethics and experience.

What you should know before hiring an SEO consultant!

Hiring an SEO consultant can help you take your online business to the next level, increase your profits and help you get more exposure in your industry. An SEO company on the other hand can help you recreate your website and increase your online marketing visibility for search engines such as: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and many others.
Before hiring an SEO consultant or company in San Diego make sure they understand the following:

• marketing strategies related to your niche
• GEO location you might want to focus on
• researching keywords related to your niche
• technical related issues going on with your website
• hosting requirements
• programming issues and solutions
• copyright requirements and best practices

San Diego’s SEO Scams and Fake Companies to Watch Out For!

Watch out for SEO consultants or companies that:

• contact you out of nowhere through email or by phone: A lot of companies overseas and a lot of unknown SEO companies will use these strategies to present to you amazing deals that you will end up getting ripped off for
• sales pitches that promise you a lot: Stick to “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”
• companies or consultants that promise you #1 rankings: no one can guarantee #1 rankings but Google, a consultant may guarantee rankings for top #10 placements or for top #5 placement for a limited number of keywords and a limited time
• will not explain the strategies needed for optimization: Usually the person on the other line doesn’t know these strategies, or they don’t want you to know the strategies used because they are bad practice for SEO.
  EXCEPTION: However at a higher level when a customer is very knowledgeable with SEO strategies and marketing plans, the SEO consultant or company will not give out his most valuable information in a free review or over the phone. You will need to pay for an SEO consultation in order to get these types of insights. But remember we are very specific to high level strategies in this case.
• promise you thousands of links within a short period of time: Usually these companies or consultants engage in link farms, link wheels or other shady linking strategies that will only end up in harming your website.
• offer extremely cheap pricing: Make sure to consult with at least 5 or more companies or consultants before you pick the right SEO company, and remember “CHEAP is not always GOOD”

Now Hire a San Diego based SEO Consultant!

My name is Hilda Mateiu and I can help businesses or individuals looking to either create an online presence or expand an existing one. I am based in San Diego County and I offer free webiste reviews to San Diego based businesses as well. As for everyone else i offer phone consulting and free quotes. Contact me by phone at (209) SEO -7322 or by email at hildamateiu@gmail.com