I have been a huge fan of local search (and Google Local) for quite a few years now, and have signed up for and/or recommended every client I have sign up with any and all search engine local programs. That being said, I am not sure how many have noticed what Google is now doing with their local results - check this picture out: (I did a search for Gilbert Arizona Web Design)

You will see much more then 3 results come back in the local results now (old version just showed 3 at most). I think this is a good move (even though the text is harder to read) because I always wondered just how many people actually clicked on the link to see more local results. This has the potential to give more local businesses exposure, users writing more reviews and make it easy for them to rank higher on the (more natural) search results for at least one of their most targeted phrases, and do it for free. Of course Google is going to benefit in the form of advertising revenues, but I still think this was a pretty good move.

If you are newer to local search on Google, you can go to http://local.google.com and click on the learn more for “add/edit a business” and sign your business up. It is pretty simple and easy to do, and most local businesses are not doing it, so this could give you even one more edge over them. Any of the major other engines have local programs to that you can sign up for Ask Local, Yahoo Local - you get the picture.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status and Social Media for FireFox Which is used by more than 500,000 marketers

I’m sure most of you have read all the posts that have been backing us up on removing Rip Off Report from the index. In case you didn’t you can see all the posts here

Public Spam Report: Google Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report has to Stop

The Anatomy of a Rip Off Report Lawsuit

Chris Bennett on Rip Off Report

Rip Off Report Ripping off those Reported

Online Shake-Downs: help persuade Google to ban Ripoffreport

Also I am speaking at SMX West in Feb. on Reputation Management. SMX is by far the best conference series, it has effected my business more than others, and it is really hands on and intimate it will be really easy for you to meet all the SEO’s you want to meet.

Let us know by email or in the comments if you are going so we can make sure and meet up.

Also Mat and I are going to add some structure to our SEO Blog, we will be starting two different post series that will be taking place on Mondays and Fridays. Mondays will be a list and some notes on the best Viral Articles/Videos from the week before. I am tagging and saving so many of these throughout the week I figure I should start sharing them and adding some tips and thoughts. I will try to include one from us as often as possible too so I can give you more in depth info.

On Fridays we will cover Viral/Link Bait ideas we will be listing some ideas you can use on your sites and we will talk about ways you can research. We believe that every site can create a linkable article that doesn’t compromise its reputation and greatly helps its marketing efforts. We have not had a site yet that we haven’t been able to execute a nice piece of link bait for.

If you are stumped and don’t know how to create something for your site that will be worth while, please post the sites topic in the comments or email us so we can create Ideas for you. You can use us to generate ideas for you, we love doing it, and we would love to be stumped.

Also I will be releasing beta invites to a startup I have with my brother who owns a web design company that I think will revolutionize Blog Stats, and Social Media for Firefox has some sweet updated coming soon.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status and Social Media for FireFox Which is used by more than 500,000 marketers

If you are thinking of going to SMX West let me try and convince you. One of the most important aspects of success is the old adage, “it is not what you know but who you know.” This couldn’t be further from the truth in SEO and the online business world. You know someone at TC or Mashable it is going to be easier to get a look, you know some top diggers you will front page more often, etc.

SEO Conferences and specifically SMX conferences are the best way to expand your network and grow your online “Crew.” SMX has been my favorite for networking, because the feel and the structure is more geared towards just that. Danny and Chris are working hard to make sure that there is an open environment to talk, discuss and meet pretty much anyone that you want in the industry. SEO’s are already cool by nature and all about networking so it makes it even better. If you are thinking of going in Feb, and whether it is your first conference or not, let me share a personal experience with you as to why you must attend.

Mat and I planned to go to SMX Advanced in Seattle, it had been a while since we had been to any conferences, and we had a lot of huge plans in the works for 97th Floor, clients and our sites. So we figured it was the time to go and really expand on our network. We have been doing SEO for a long time and I guess cause we had gotten into it together, we really didn’t network that much until this last year. We had just landed the sweetest client of all time, we had Social Media for Firefox in idea/alpha stage, we relaunched the new 97th Floor design and migrated our old blogs and we really wanted to get to know some people in the industry.

To make a long story short (you can read the rant) I ended up getting stranded in Vegas for 2 days, I missed the entire conference except the last session. Mat was chilling in Seattle on his own for two days and I was stuck on a laptop in a terminal with 60 super angry people. Yet it still turned out to be the most productive conference I have ever attended. After the last session everyone went and got some dinner and then headed over to the SEOMoz after party. It was a super intimate get together at a sweet little billiards hall and Mat and I got to know everyone. Specifically Cameron Olthuis, he and I had been commenting on each others blogs and emailing each other, he now lives where I grew up in Cali, and I live where he grew up in Utah and there aren’t very many SEO’s that Surf at least that I know of, so we had a lot to talk about. As a direct result of growing the contacts and expanding the online IM Crew, we generated over a million unique visitors in the last 6 months that we wouldn’t of if we didn’t go. Our eyes were opened up to some new avenues of marketing, specifically making boring sites go viral. Below is some snippets of just 3 sites that had their traffic and success increased because we went to SMX.

A Site Mat and I Run
May 2007 2,086
Jun 2007 2,362
Jul 2007 2,850
Aug 2007 9,975 (this is when we started to implement things)
Sep 2007 25,736
Oct 2007 19,143
Nov 2007 18,249
Dec 2007 32,653

A Clients Site
May 2007 19,704
Jun 2007 16,008 (I called client, we are going to switch our strategy and focus on certain types of content)
Jul 2007 12,348
Aug 2007 12,721
Sep 2007 10,736 (finally got site ready and started to implement for a push in Oct.)
Oct 2007 149,586 (One of the viral articles we did this month got over 4,600 links and counting)
Nov 2007 32,413
Dec 2007 94,786

Site I Partner With a Buddy
Jun -Sept (I have an idea for a site I got from talking to some people at SMX)
Oct 2007 47,458 (started the site brand new domain on Oct. 27th)
Nov 2007 66,534
Dec 2007 76,555
Jan 2008 17,767 (so far)

Together that equals 669,670 unique visitors not 1 million plus, but this is just 3 sites out of about 10 specifically that were all greatly effected by attending SMX.

So if you are new to SEO conferences, or you haven’t attended an SMX, you need to go. You will be surprised on how easy it is to meet the people you need to, in order to grow your business.

I will be speaking on Reputation Management so come and say hi. I am looking forward to getting to finally meet Chris Winfield face to face as we have emailed, and talked on the phone, but never in person. I want to sit down and chat with Rand as we have always said hi in passing and really the longest conversation I have had with him was when I emailed him and and went off cause my friends Pest Control website that I was marketing for pennies hadn’t been approved by SocEngine as fast as I would have liked. I need to digg up that email, I was like, “who is this Rand guy, I paid my $7 bucks over a month ago.” I also want to meet Tamar and many others, of course all of our readers.

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This is a Quick Update things are crazy this week, Mat and I are speaking at the eTourism Summit next week in San Francisco. We are pumped to be there. We plan on opening up the travel industries minds to Viral Content and SEO in general. We have some sweet screen shots of stats from our latest viral campaign that got our client over 109,000 Uniques in two days. It was sweet, it got 25,000 hits from Reddit which is the most I have seen from them, I would be interested to see if our readers have seen more.

Social Media for Firefox has been updated today to version 1.0.14 in order to fix some problems we have had with Del.icio.us. We also noticed last night that Reddit has changed how they handle things. We have fixed that as well, the only thing now is you have to be logged into Reddit in order for the tool to work. They changed their search function that we use.

Social Media for Firefox has had over 20,000 downloads, and according to Webmaster Central we got over 5,500 links. We also rank for “Social Media” in the top ten and are pretty stoked on that. Also I have had numerous people say that they have been able to drive their accounts into the top 500 users on digg because of the tool. I had a bunch of people email me and say they hit the digg homepage for the first time with the tool. Same with people focusing on Stumble and Reddit.

Mat and I are speaking next week at the eToursim Summit Nov. 8th and 9th. Im speaking on two panels one on Reputation Management and the other on Social Media. Mat is speaking on Blogging. They may be like 10 tickets left but I doubt it, if anyone is going that reads us regularly let us know.

All my family was evacuated in California but no one lost their homes, we were very fortunate. I had a friend whose entire yard front back was scorched, along with their truck sitting in the driveway. Yet their house was 100% untouched. Got to hang out with Cameron Olthuis and his family this week cause they had to leave SD and that was a lot of fun. Our wives hadn’t met before and our kids got a long really good.

Hope everyone else is doing well, sorry for the personal post and no meat on some new technique. We will be posting some sweet things we have been testing in Social Media leading to conversions soon.

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So over the weekend I took a little break from my computer (I know - hard to believe), and attended a 10 year class reunion for my wife. Class reunions are a whole different topic that I don’t think I will ever get into! The one thing I will say about class reunions if you have never been to one is that they are a big “size you up party” more then anything. Of course people wanted to know what my wife had been up to during the last ten years, and with 3 kids and me … that was pretty much it! Then the conversation would always come my way because my wife would tell people that I worked from home, and ran my own businesses. Then the question would come; “What do you do?”

I decided to turn it into a little un-scientific marketing research, and turned it into a question; “Do you know what SEO is”? I would ask, and not one of the 15 people that I asked had a clue. I am talking serious deer in the headlights here. It would not get much better when I followed it up with “search engine optimization?”. Even when I told them when they go to Google and type in a keyword phrase, those results that come back … they would interrupt and say, “oh you get those sponsored results” …. by this time I was DONE with the conversation, and just told them I ran Internet businesses, and helped others by consulting.

The point here is we have a great opportunity as SEOs. We are in a field that is ready to harvest. I am amazed how many people call me back after talking to them about what I do, even when they still have no clue exactly what it is. They just know that they need help online, and I seem like the person to do it. It seems almost everyone has a need, or knows someone who has a need for SEO services. It does scare me though with so many worthless companies out there claiming to know SEO, and I usually go in and clean up a mess, and try to polish our reputation as SEOs.

Anyway, I just thought it was very interesting that not one person out of 15 I talked to had a clue of what SEO was, or even understood the industry enough to have a conversation. My next post? I think I will talk to you about the lady who asked me how old my son was, and when I told her 13 months, she said … oh so almost a year? Um… yea….

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I do my best to teach (those who ask) about finding targeted niches and keywords when starting their business online (and sticking with them), and I want to spotlight a company that I think has been brilliant at this. The guys at DB Clay are friends of mine, (especially Mr. Diggles) and this is not a paid post, and I just wanted to thank them online for sending me one of the sickest unique wallets I have ever owned in my life!

DB Clay has been making unique and designer wallets for several years now and has had a humble beginning, but has managed to turn their niche into an empire, and stay true to their product line. The reason for their success is they figured out what people were looking for online when it came to wallets, and they hit that group of people hard, and did not venture out into other areas. They knew the keywords they wanted to be found for, and built a website around it.

They also understand about the power of social communities and getting people to talk about your product, so they started Evil Backwards (LIVE). DB Clay considers this their online business paper trail, but I think of it as an amazing idea to get people involved and actively talking about product. Every business owner can learn a lesson from the accomplishments of DB Clay, and their small little niche!

Again guys, thanks for the wallet!

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I did a post about Google News (and link building) a while back on YouMoz (SEOMoz) that quickly became one of their most popular blog posts with loads of comments back when they first launched. I was surprised to not see more SEO’s talking about Google News, or loving it as much as I do for finding powerful links that are very targeted and relevant. I have been doing case study after case study and have perfected what I wrote about back then. I wanted to share with all the updated information that I think is beneficial for all those trying to do a better job building relevant links.

I am not a big fan of press sites like PR Web, PR Newswire or PR Leap for the “SEO- Factor”, but rather for the exposure. However; I am a fan of getting my press release (or article) to the most targeted “Press” sites possible so they do the most good link wise.

Finding a powerful, relevant link inside a press site that was created for my niche is going to give me additional link juice and rankings that will help my bottom line. In turn I will get more traffic due to additional rankings, make more sales, and experience a higher conversion rate because of the targeted press.

Here is how it all works:

Go to Google News and type in a keyword that is the most targeted keyword for your site; Make sure you are using the “Search News” (see picture below)

Once you get a list of results that have made it on Google News you will start to see what I am talking about. Start paying attention to the targeted press sites that are related to what you are doing on your website.

I tested this on a site selling memory foam mattresses. I went to Google News, typed in memory foam mattress and got an amazing list of targeted press sites likes product review sites, home textiles sites, furniture today news sites and so on that would be perfect for link building. I ended up submitting the press to a “product review” site that was ranking fairly high on Google News. All I did was find the place on their website to submit, or just contact them directly and asked them to accept my release. They did the very same day I submitted it, and just like that I had a very targeted relevant link on a site that was already showing up, and ranking on Google News.

The links alone you gain would be worth it because of how targetd they are, but I want you to see an additional “bonus”. In the picture below pay attention to the very first result when memory foam mattress is typed in. It is the product review site that I submitted the press release to and has been in this spot (at time of posting this article) for almost a month in the #1 spot.

What does this teach us? Finding relevant links that are targeted to your business are not as hard as you might think. Google is giving up the tools to use (as well as other major search engines), we just need to take advantage of them.

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A few months back I was up late working, as usual, and was up so late, that the late, later, even latest show was over and the infomercials started. I happened to be watching one talking about making money online, and how easy it was etc. I like watching these anyway, because they are funny to me. I was paying close attention to the “keywords” (buzz words) they were using to grab peoples attention. The main reason I was taking notes was because one of our biggest clients at 97th is in the “make millions” industry!

So, in my process of doing a little late night keyword research I wrote down all of the “buzz” words they were using including the branding words they were using for their “new revolutionary money making system”. I came up with some pretty cool ideas, and keywords to test out.

I did a little competitive research online with the words and found out some of them were pretty amazing words, and the only thing I had to do is put them to the test and see if they converted worth a crap.

Long story short, After approval from my client, I pursued the keywords and found some pretty amazing words that are converting about 10% - 15% of the time (based on web analytics) for my client by watching infomercials.

The lesson here is to pay attention to non-traditional ways of keyword research. If you are still just using the old keyword tool from overture to find keywords, then you really need to think about better ways of doing keyword research (or get out of the industry all together).

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So we finally completed our redesign, as always there are some small changes that have yet to be done. But the overall design and the moving of our old blog from a different url to 97thfloor.com/blog are completed and those were my biggest issues.

A couple of things we are particularly excited about beside the incredible job my Bro. did on the web design, is our new client showcase, and our “Words We Rank” Tag Cloud.

Our new client showcase is the rotating logos on the nav, and while that isn’t anything new or spectacular, some of our clients are. Our old client page never got updated and we have been working with some really cool companies since.

The “Words We Rank Tag Cloud” is something that we wanted to do to show our stuff and back up our skills. Mat and I love SEO, and don’t consider working at 97th Floor work at all, but instead a place to fuel our passion. We have gained rankings for some pretty insane keywords and we wanted to list some of those on our site in a unique way that didn’t disclose the client but shared the success. Obviously every site has thousands of long tail keywords and some secret sauce keywords that convert like crazy that their competition doesn’t know about. We didn’t want to over extend the list and water it down so we took a handful of some words we feel share our advanced strategies along with our capability to market sites in many different markets.

One other thing that will be interesting to watch is how Google treats our 301’s from our old blog, ninetyseventhfloor.com/blog and from Mat’s blog eplanit.biz/blog. There were hundreds and hundreds of pages to redirect and categories to consolidate. So far Google is doing well with it, we already had one of our good rankings SEO Blog get replaced from the old URL to our current one, and that is good to see. It will be interesting to see how our articles that made Digg Popular on the old URL do with 301’s to the new one.

Still a laundry list of some tweaks to finish but overall we are stoked to finally get the design done and thanks to my Brother and his team at Modern Blue Design. If anyone needs serious design and php he is the one to talk to.

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I love the search industry with a passion that is second to none (ok - maybe Chris Bennett and I are tied). I am so lucky to be in an industry that has allowed me to meet some of the most amazing people on this earth! My roots in search engine optimization goes all the way back to 1999 when i first starting “dinking” around with title tags for a radio stations website I use to be a co-host on! (ok, so it was only small market radio, but I was still on the radio danget!) Besides my passion for SEO, I love Social Media Marketing/Optimization, Viral Marketing, Blog Promotion, Link Building Strategies/Baiting as well as Reputation/Brand Management.

Besides blogging for 97th Floor on SEO and viral marketing, I also co-author an Internet Marketing Blog where I share more insights into the search, and Internet marketing industry. I own several successful eCommerce sites selling products, as well as an internet directory. I have also had the pleasure presenting my SEO know-how during seminars at places like BYU-Hawaii during business plan competitions, and more recently the eTourism Summit in San Fransisco.

I have attended most of the big search engine conferences including Search Engine Strategies, PubCon and more recently SMX. My degree is in the Tech Industry, and have had a computer attached to me by the hip pretty much since 1997.

Please feel free to post questions, and ask me anything that may be on your mind.

Contact me directly - matsiltala [at] gmail [dot] com

-or-

Connect with me online at:

Matt Siltala on Stumble Upon
Matt Siltala on Delicious
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Matt Siltala on LinkedIn
Matt Siltala on Technorati
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