Formerly the search engine of choice for spies, privacy freaks and possibly an occasional terrorist, DuckDuckGo has begun to waddle into the big time, with an 1000% growth rate in the last year. DDG has a water-tight privacy policy and refuses to feather its bed by passing on your search information to advertisers. When you click on a link in the DDG search results, some little bird strips off the search term so that information isn’t sent back to the site. Nor is there any quackery about personalizing your search into what it thinks you might be interested in, as Gaggle–sorry Google, does.

Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in his basement, DDG gets about 1.5 million queries a day, which may be  feathers compared to the 91 million queries that other search engine gets.  Still, DDG is more interested in Syrian and Iranian dissidents than American or European dollars. But Weinberg insists that he began his curious project out of technical curiosity as opposed to some kind of Mother Teresa-ism.  Plus, he was already a millionaire from the sale of his NamesDataBase startup in 2006.

Important enough to be banned in China, (although Weinberg says “there’s a way around that”) and facing greater growth, Weinburg says he can no longer run DDG by himself, so “we hired our first employee last October.  He’s sitting over there”.  So it seems that DuckDuckGo–a name with no “good explanation” is about to fly high.

If you don’t receive customers at your location, you must select the “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing” option within your dashboard. If you don’t hide your address, your listing may be removed from Google Maps.

So I guess we should consider ourselves warned.  Finally.

Then, just hover your mouse over the area we circled for you above and the Google Places mini-site for that business appears on the right side of the page, like magic.

But wait there’s more. Google actually lets you, the business owner, add content to this mini-site. Just go here to register your business with Google Places. You can add transit directions, hours of operation, a description of your business, pictures, videos and people can write reviews of your business. Click here to find out how expertly optimize your Google Places mini-site.

Because 20% of all searches on Google are “local searches,” Google Places is an invaluable– and did we mention free–tool for any businesses whose main customer base is local. The only thing that’s surprising is how many businesses haven’t taken advantage of this great service yet!

Blinding You With Science: Why This is Not Just SEO BS

A team of statisticians got together over at Bizable.com and looked online for all the pizza joints (let’s say) in Anytown, North America that had a Google Places mini-site. Then they created two sets of pizza joints: those joints that had “pizza” or “Anytown” in a certain place on their Google Places site and others that didn’t have “pizza” or “Anytown” in that same place but which were identical in all other respects. Then they did a search on Google for “pizza in Anytown” and noted which of these two sets of pizza joints were higher in the search results. They did this sort of thing a few zillion times for a whole ton of different industries and cities and now they’re quite sure they have enough data to tell you what words should go where in your Google Place min-site, if you want to rank.

All kidding aside, we should note that this study is not about just what some SEO soothsayer thinks is happening with Google Places rankings, it’s what is happening, statistically each and every time. They’ve done a very scientific job at correlating word-placement with page ranking, so heads up Google Place optimizers. Okay, so here’s what they found, in order of importance, without any statistical buzz-words :

How to Outrank the Next Guy in Google Places

• Google Places sites that had five reviews or more (yes people can write reviews in your Google Place site) greatly out-ranked sites that had less than five reviews, all other factors being equal. Sites that only had four reviews did not greatly outrank those that had only three reviews. Nor did sites that had seven reviews greatly outrank those that had six. So five is the magic number, folks. But keep in mind that if your average review score was low (people reviewed you poorly) then your ranking was hurt—not helped– even if you had five or more reviews, as you might expect. The takeaway: make sure your Google places mini-site has at least five reviews and that your average review score is at least more than 1. Rank improvement: 1.47.
• Businesses that had their city name in the “at a glance” section of their Google Places mini-site greatly out-ranked those that didn’t, all other factors being equal. For example, if your Google Places site had “Toronto” in the “at a glance” portion of the site and someone searched for “widgets in Toronto” your site would out-rank a site that did not have “Toronto” in the “at a glance” area. The takeaway: put your city name in your “at a glance section”. Rank improvement: 1.42.>
• Sites that had the search category (or a synonym) in their Google Places review content greatly out-ranked sites that did not, all other factors being equal. For example, if you had a good review that contained the words “Fish and Chips” and someone searched for “Fish and Chips in Timbuktu” your site would outrank another relevant site that did not have “Fish and Chips” somewhere in its review content. The takeaway: get review content that has what your business is selling in its text. Rank improvement: .97
• Sites that had the search category (or a synonym) in their Google Places business description or in their business name greatly out-ranked those sites that did not, all other factors being equal. For example, if your business name was “Bob’s Fish and Chips Bar” and someone searched for “Fish and Chips in Seattle” then your site will outrank another relevant site that had only “Bob’s Bar” as their business name. The takeaway: make sure your business name and description contains what you are selling. Rank improvement: .95 (for business description) .85 (for business name)
  
• Sites that had the search category (or a synonym) in their “at a glance” section of their Google Places mini-site outperformed those that did not, all other factors being equal. For example, if your Google Places site had “pizza” in the “at a glance” portion of the site, then if someone searched for “pizza in Anytown” your site would outrank another relevant site that did not have “pizza” in the “at a glance” section. The takeaway: make sure what your selling appears in your “at a glance section”. Rank improvement: .85
  
• Google Places sites that had a page category that matches a broader category than that of the search outperformed those that did not, all other factors being equal. This is a slippery one, but it means that if, for example, you define your Google Places page category as “restaurant” and have the word “pizza” in your reviews and “at a glance” section, then you will outrank another site that has “pizza” in all the places you do but does not have their page category set to “restaurant”. This will be true even if the searcher did not put the word “restaurant” in her search for “pizza in Toronto”. Obviously this applies only to businesses that have an obvious “broader category”. The takeaway: if there is an obvious broader category to your business, include it in your page category. Rank improvement: .68
• Finally, those sites which had either at least one picture in their content or that were “owner verified” marginally outranked other sites that did not have a picture or which were not owner-verified, all other factors being equal. Rank improvement .66 (picture) .52 (“owner verified”).

Location Location Location

You might think that your Google Places site would be out-ranked (or wouldn’t show up at all) if the city you are physically located in did not precisely match whatever city the searcher actually typed in. It turns out that less physical distance between your business and the location of the searcher ranks higher than a match between your business’ city and the city the searcher actually typed in. For example, if your address was in an outlying city (North York) and a searcher typed in “pizza in Toronto” your site would be ranked higher than another Google Places site whose physical location was farther away from the searcher but whose business address contained the word “Toronto”. Phew, that’s good to know.

• If only pages with a high Page Rank had a chance, it wouldn’t be possible to get new pages in Google’s result page. Yet, experience shows that new pages do in fact appear in Google’s results every day.
• In addition, the Page Rank that Google publicly displays is not the actual Page Rank that it uses in its algorithm.
• A person is more likely to follow a link to your site from another site if your site is relevant to what he or she was looking for in the first place, regardless of Page Rank.

A page that has a Page Rank of zero today, can have a higher Page Rank tomorrow. So when looking for a good backlink, ask yourself these questions:

• Does the linking page look good to the average web surfer?
• Does the page have interesting content?
• Is the content somewhat related to my website?
• Does it make sense if the web page links to your site?

If you can answer all questions with “yes” then you should try to get a backlink from that page without worrying too much about its Page Rank.

A Website is Open 24 Hours, 365 Days a Year

What if your business could be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without you having to be behind the counter or manning the phones?  There are tens of millions of people, from all over the world and around the corner, who are online at any time of the day looking for products and services.  If you operate a brick and mortar business, you can only attract people who drive or walk by your shop in a day.  But a website allows you to attract new customers that would otherwise never find you—and without adding any extra costs that would normally come with having a physical location.  You can actually rack up sales while you sleep!

Without a Website, It’s Like You’re Not Even There

It’s one thing when a potential customer knocks on your door and finds no one home, but it’s quite another when the customer can’t find your door to knock on in the first place.  A large percentage of the population searches the Internet first to find businesses in their area and if your business doesn’t have a website, your customers don’t even know that you have a door they could be knocking on. That’s almost like refusing a customer!

Websites Increase Customer Confidence

Even the Yellow Pages has woken up to the power of the Internet and will now let you pay for an on-line listing, even though you may not have a website.  But even if a potential customer can find your Yellow Pages listing in all the clutter, it tells them next to nothing about your business. A professional, well designed website, with the right content, easy navigation and quickly accessible contact details, greatly increases customer confidence in your company. A well designed website shows people that you are forward thinking and customer focused, much in the way a well designed business card did in the past.  A website can tell people a lot about the personality of your business too, not to mention including detailed information about what you’re offering.  This gives you a major leg-up because you’ve already presented your potential customer with more of the information she needs to cement her buying decision than a mere Yellow Pages listing does.

A Well Designed Website is an Excellent “Salesperson”

Your well designed website is one of the most impressive sales presentations that you will ever have. Allowing your customers to buy your products or services online is a wonderful and inexpensive way to expand your business. Spending thousands on advertising for a bit that is featured in one magazine for one month simply doesn’t compare to investing in a long term sales marketing solution that we call a well designed website.

Even if you do not offer a product or service that can easily be readily purchased over the Internet, a website still acts as an impressive first contact, convincing the potential client that they need what you are offering and inviting them to contact you via telephone, email or your contact form.

When a potential customer comes into your shop and leaves without making a purchase and without speaking to anyone, they are basically a dead prospect. When someone views your well designed website and doesn’t make a purchase right away, they can easily revisit anytime to make the purchase in the future. On top of that, you can use your website to collect the email addresses of visitors and send them periodic promotional emails, newsletters or updates on your product or service. So although they may not buy first time around, you have more than one opportunity to close the sale!

Websites Increase Customer Referrals and Return on Advertising Investment

Not only does a well designed web site give customers a reason to revisit the site in the future, but it also makes referring other people far easier. What’s easier to remember: mysite.com or 905-898-5795? A website address is much easier to remember than a telephone number, so it stands to reason that having a website increases the likelihood of referrals – and let’s face it, referrals are one of the most important sources of new business.

Including your website address on all of your advertisements, business cards, letterheads, invoices, etc. allows people to take action straight away, when they view an ad, or hear about your product or service. Visiting your website is so much easier than driving to your store, telephoning or writing a letter to you. When online, a potential customer can take their time and enjoy finding out about your products or services without the pressure of having a salesman floating around in the background.

Your Website Can Track Its Own Effectiveness

Ever put out a print ad and wonder how many people it motivated to buy your product or use your service? Thanks to Google Analytics, it’s very easy to see how effective and cost-efficient your website is.  In case you didn’t know, you can easily track how many people visited your site, what pages they viewed, how they got to those pages (a search engine, a link on another site etc.) and whether they did what you wanted them to do on your site (i.e. bought a product or filled out your contact form).  This way, it’s very simple to account for the cost of having and running a website.  Try that with print advertising or the Yellow Pages.

Website Design Toronto

But let’s have a quick review of the pageant rules first. Search engines use the number of incoming links (also known as ‘backlinks’— links on other websites that link to your site) that a website has as one of the most important factors in determining that website’s search engine ranking, popularity and importance. Google’s description of their PageRank system, for instance, indicates that they interpret a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. So here’s a few tips for grabbing those coveted incoming links that have been voted most likely to succeed:

 Beauty is more than skin deep: create a link-worthy website

Great graphics and cool layout are like bikini portion of the programme, but people don’t link to a website just because it’s semi-clad in a revealing swimsuit.  In order to get links, your site has to have interesting content such as tutorials, relevant and useful facts, top-ten lists and dialogues on controversial subjects.  If you don’t feel you can write those kinds of exciting things, don’t be shy about hiring a good copywriter.

Try to solve the world’s problems

If your website offers the solution to a specific problem, why not contact related websites and point them to the solution that’s just sitting around doing nothing on your site?  Just email the webmasters or bloggers of the sites that are related to the topic of your website and inform these people about your article. Chances are pretty good that those websites will want link to your site.  But if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Put your eggs in many baskets:  get links to many pages of your website and vary the text-content of those links

Some websites have all their incoming links leading straight to their homepages.  But it’s a good idea to have lots of incoming links that will land on your other pages as well. By targeting your incoming links to their specific and relevant pages, you’ll open up more opportunities for other more diversified sites to link to specific topics on your inside pages.

Furthermore, the text you use within your incoming link should be as relevant as possible to the content of the page it links to.  Varying the text-content of your links not only increases your relevancy for a given topic, but it also looks more “natural” to the search engines, a topic we’ll get to in a moment.

Don’t try to trick the judges: avoid automated incoming link systems

Ever land on a webpage that contains nothing but thousands of links to “affiliates”?  Really makes you head straight for the back-button, doesn’t it?  Some websites try to make themselves look really popular by dealing in fully automated incoming link “solutions” that deliver links from other web pages with a high PageRank .  All you have to do to get these links is part with a little of your hard-earned money every month.  But let’s face it: if you can find these automated linking systems, Google will eventually find them as well.  You might be able to trick Google for a while, but avoid these systems if you don’t want to risk the search engines finding out about your little trick and nose-diving your PageRank.  Remember, too that other people with a potentially high quality link won’t associate with your website if it’s just a collection of affiliate links, and you’ll feel like that little pimply nerd that no one talks at recess all over again.  So don’t do it.

Another interesting point –heads up social media dashboards— is that “overall cross-platform strategy” was the area that 62% of businesses wanted to learn more about. In simple terms, it seems businesses are excited about updating all of their social media sites from one place. With so many social media sites blowing up the Web, it’s no surprise that businesses are looking for greater productivity in this area. What may be surprising, however, is that so many business still report a lack of learning on the subject, especially given the number of so-called “social media dashboard” sites out there (HootSuite.com or threadsy.com, to name just two). Perhaps the sheer number of sites has worked to diffuse awareness rather than fuel it, as no one of these sites has risen to the titan awareness-status of a Google or Facebook.

It is in regards to how much relevant content (text) is found on your web page
above the fold. How much text can actually be read by the search engines when
they land on your page. Here is a link to the blog post!

In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality web sites in search
results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout
of a web page and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on
a result.

Google Algorithm Changes

If you use paid links you are certainly putting your website rankings in jepordy.

There are many ways Google can detect paid links. First competitors can send
spam reports regrading paid links. Google encourages anyone to report paid links
of other sites. Google says if you see a site that is buying or selling links
to let them know. Google uses your information to improve the algorithmic detection
of paid links.

Google has manual spam fighters which are employees who spend their day judging
the quality of Google’s search results. Some of these employees simply look
for spam and paid links.
It may take some time but they will find these sites.

The algorithm can also detect the paid links, Google is developing algorithms
that can detect paid links automatically. Google says, "We’ll use your
information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links."

Matt Cutts has said in many blog posts that Google has been able to detect
paid links before they were reported in a manual spam report.

It’s not easy and takes a lot of time and effort to get good quality relevant
backlinks but that is why they are so important to website rankings. That’s
why backlinks play such an important role in Google’s ranking algorithm.
Stay away from automcatic link building sites. These sites have been built to
to try and trick Google’s algorithm and that’s why Google will demote your website
as soon as they find out your website is using these techniques to get higher
rankings.

Read more on this subject at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736