A couple of months ago I wrote a post about how Google broke the local business listings that show up on Google Maps. I surmised they did this to push searchers to more profitable links, like their Adwords Sponsored PPC links. They didn’t come up with this brilliant idea themselves. They copied Bing, which launched with atrocious local business lisitngs in their results and drove people to paid AT&T Internet Yellow page ads. It’s all about money.
Today I needed to find a local office supply store in Pleasanton. I know about Office Max and Office Depot, but thought there might be a place a little closer. So I searched Google for “office supplies pleasanton.” Here’s what I got:
Besides listing OfficeMax twice, missing Staples and listing a strange closed business named “Vanguard Legato,” Google lists the name of an individual as its third result. Clicking on the details, let me know that this indeed was an individual, categorized under “office supply store.”
My first thought was, “that is pretty lame.” And it is. My second thought was wondering if any people searching for office supplies have ever shown up at this guy’s house.
It’s pretty common to have the same global navigation items it both the main navigation and footer links of a website. Be careful though, if you are using an SEF URL extension for Joomla 1.5, such as sh404SEF. Having multiple menu items pointing to the same article or ItemId can disable the active menu styling. Instead, use the standard Joomla menu links for the main navigation, and set up the footer navigation with external type menu items, pointing to the sef urls created for the main navigation.
Link exchanges are one way to help with link authority, especially if you have nothing else going for you. Promoting blogs and fresh quality content are preferrable, but some people don’t have time, and reasonable, content targeted link exchanges can at least get you on the map. But you need to be very careful.
1) Beware 3 way link exchanges with junk sites. Generally the person requesting the link will want you to link to their client’s site, but all you get is an incoming link from their throw-away wordpress site that looks like it was put up in 15 minutes. Don’t bother.
2) Ignore link exchange requests that require you to put your link up first. If you do, they won’t. Credible link partners will always place your link first (not necessarily before they contact you though).
3) Ignore link exchanges showing y0u some great PR sites that will link to you, but you have to put up your link first. Hint: those aren’t even their sites! A certain percentage of webmasters will see that high PR and put the link up.
4) Don’t exchange links with any website that is unrelated to yours, i.e. don’t put a viagra link on your golf club ecommerce site.
5) Don’t swap links with any low quality website. The search engines will never count the link anyway, and you will be wasting your time and credibility.
We launched this website a couple of months ago. The company manufactures special plastic bags that keep artisan bread fresh for a long time. I could sure use these!
Manufacturing Company Web Design
I just put up a quick and simple website for a friend in Sacramento who runs an annual book fair. If you are a book collector, this is the place to be this spring: Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair.
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