Google Local Optimisation Search Made My Day
Posted on | April 14, 2011 | 1 Comment
Google’s constant under-performing with Local results never ceases to irritate me. At least today they managed to make me laugh at the irony.
Having conducted a search for ‘google local optimisation‘ in Google.co.uk (UK) I was more than a bit amused to see PPC results for the US, Belgium and Thailand.
I had to take a screen shot in case no one believed me 
SEO Headline Here – Washington Post & Google Fail
Posted on | February 27, 2011 | No Comments
I really should be in bed but figured this might raise a smirk/grimace amongst other SEOs.
On doing a search for ‘SEO’ in Google.co.uk I noticed that the News result had the title ‘SEO headline here’. Looked a little odd so I thought I’d check out the story. Turns out its an article on The Washington Post site with the real title of ‘Weather Beaten‘. Nothing to do with SEO!
I couldn’t find any reference to SEO on the page or in the source code (apart from a class tag) but then I spotted that if you looked at the preview for the site in the SERP, the text was there.
So it looks like whoever uploaded the article forgot to add the correct title for the article, the page got cached, they corrected it later.
Interesting that The Washington Post class the article title as an SEO headline.
Annoying that they ranked for ‘SEO’ in Google news with only the mere mention of the word apparantly once on the page content and of course in the meta title.
Funny that the next article under this one is about Google cracking down on SEO spam.
Kind of ironic really………….
Keywords in Reviews are Ranking Factor for Google Places Pages
Posted on | December 21, 2010 | No Comments
Despite the Hotels London Google Places page still being corrupted I’m pleased to see that it’s recently started to rank in mobile and map search results.
Reviews and citations are an important factor in getting these Places pages to rank as we know but consideration should also be given to the use of keywords in reviews.
I certainly wouldn’t advocate writing your own reviews or trying to influence the writer’s intention but if you can suggest certain phrases or if you’re in the lucky position of Google using some of the reviews from your own site then I would definitely recommend inclusion.
The following image shows a search in Google.co.uk Maps for ‘travel lodge’:
Hotels London Places Page is appearing in the map search result even though we don’t actually have Travelodge stock and don’t have a Travelodge landing page.
The reason we are ranking appears to be solely down to a few mentions of travel lodge phrases on the ‘London Carlton Hotel reviews‘ page.
Obviously these are misspellings and there is no gain for Hotels London in ranking for the phrases ‘travel lodge’. It is good evidence however of the use of keywords in reviews to aid ranking of Google Places pages which can be used to positive effect on optimised phrases.
This is What I Do
I seem to have had my fingers in many pies over the years so please have a browse round the above sections for examples of my work including SEO, web design and graphics projects.
I have varied experience of all aspects of search engine optimisation and internet marketing including social media optimisation, website editing and content writing.
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