In October, I will be attending SMX East in NYC at the Javits Center. I was reading Danny Sullivan’s preview on the conference and one session, Ask The Search Engines: Best Practices Edition, is a must attend.
I do have a couple questions:
- Is it OK in Google Local Business Center to have a business listing for each of the 30 phone numbers my client has? Meaning for each and every tracking phone number, to set up a separate business listing as many businesses (or their marketing agencies) are doing. This is a tactic hugely rewarded, so I am just curious if after more than a year of this going on if it is accepted practice.
- My followup to the above question will be: How about a business listing for each address of every employee in the company?
- And one more followup: How about simply using randomly picked residential addresses from the yellow pages?
All three valid questions. I do have a couple other questions:
- Is jamming a dozen keyword-stuffed classifieds (backpages, craigslist, webcosmos, kijiji) and clogging up a SERP for any-given keyword a valid practice? Or can this get a business in trouble? After all, it’s not y site that I’m spamming with.
- Should I register a bunch of cheap .info keyword-rich domain names and auto-generate content for these to get 7-8 listings on a SERP for a very competitive keyword.
- My followup would be: Is it OK to build 10 sites for the same business (each with the content slightly re-written and placed in a different order on the page) to try to get each organic spot on a SERP.
You can probably all guess my final question, and like most questions asked at these conferences, the answer is self evident:
- Are all the above practices, used in conjunction, acceptable for marketing a Web site online?
One might think so, if one looked at the last year’s worth of SERP data.
SEO Rabbit says I rant, but I’m just a marketer trying to do best by my clients. And when, over extended periods of time, a marketing tool with a majority of users in the search vertical can’t keep the playing field level, it’s tough to forgive, and thus I rant a bit. Again, to Google’s credit, they are the only one worth griping about. And believe me, I bitched about the Yellow Pages forcing me into buying the double-page spread and then selling a leader ad in front of it.