Web Design Adelaide Blog

It seems two have become one! Although this time it’s far from a match made in heaven. My two Google Local Listings have gone crazy. After updating my two business listings (for two separate businesses) today I found my self in a bit of a conundrum. When I searched for “web design Adelaide”, my first business, if came up first position in the local listings as we have for a few weeks, but in a quirky twist, the link goes to the second business I added to local listings, not the first one!

Now because clearly I want both my businesses listed in local listings and seeing they both operate out of the same office, I put one listing under our post office box which is generally accepted as the correct way to list a business within a city.

Some how Google (now don’t get me wrong I never doubted their intelligence) after realising that I own both business has decided to merge both my listings into one, and its not pretty!

Let me explain:

The Second Business, Optimise My Website (OMW), still displays correctly:

But The First Business DBG Technologies when clicked - links to the OMW website! See the green address after the first listing below:

But that’s not all, when I clicked “more” at the end of the listing I went to the more details page only to find that the information from both listings had also been combined DBG heading, OMW postal box, OMW phone number, with email addresses, website addresses, logos and the works in one giant “web design-optimisation mash up”!

I went to the local business centre, logged in and checked both listings. Each individual listing was exactly as should be. Separate email, separate website addresses, different contact details, information and different logos, not a hint of similarity, or this merger mambo jumbo. But then I found it…

My two businesses use the same land line phone number (which I used for Google verification of my listing). This is the ONLY thing connecting these two listings. So I have now updated the second website to have a different phone number. I await eagerly to see if the problem corrects itself and what affect this whole charade is going to have on my local, and perhaps even the organic listings.

Optimise My Website lisiting here has the DBG logo:

DBG Listing has the Optimsie My Website Contact Details!

If anyone knows anything about this “Google Local Listing Merger Phenomenon” I’d love to hear about it! I’ll keep you posted on the latest developments.

Well, its already Tuesday afternoon but it feels like it was Monday just this morning! After a great couple of days at SMX Sydney listening to Danny Sullivan and Rand Fishkin argue about everything from sub-domains to “The gay cowboy movie” and ultimately finding some interesting techniques used by one of Australia’s biggest travel agentsto gain good search engine positioning, I’m back with the nose to the grind stone, filtering through my notes and drinking lots of coffee!

My full report on SMX Sydney will online later, but one of the topics that were discussed wasGoogle Sitelinks. After getting back to my PC and doing a web search for “DBG Technologies” I was chuffed to find that Google has indeed decided our website has been around long enough and has enough decent content to add some Sitelinks! For those of you who don’t know, Sitelinks are cool little links in the Google results that pop up under your business listing. See example:

So thats pretty cool. Another topic discussed was keeping your Google Maps local listing up to date. So I did a simple Google search for “DBG Technologies Adelaide”and was again impressed to see that Google was nice enough to include a map of our location next to our results listing.

What is also cool is that our website is listed under the results, followed close behind by this blog!

It goes to show the power of all these little online tools we have available these days, and businesses are going to get left behind if they don’t start taking note.

In a week or so we are off to Sydney again to attend the SMX Sydney conference, Australia’s biggest search engine marketing conference.

We went last year (when it was called Search Summit) and had a great time networking, making new friends, learning some cool stuff and brushing shoulders with the likes of Adam Lasnik from Google and Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim. We hope to catch up with a few other SEO /SEM gurus this time round and further our knowledge in the field.

We’ll be writing a review of the event to post when we get back to little old Adelaide! But until then you can see what its all about at the SMZ Sydney website.

Hi guys! Funny thing just happened, I typed “getting number one on google” into my google search box and was surprised to see that my SEOMoz / YOUMoz article on how frames based websites are holding strong at the top of Google search results for “website design adelaide” is now ranking number 3!

So incase it’s moved down a few pegs lately, I took this cool screen shot as proof!

Just goes to show the power of blogging / article writing.

Update:

In an interesting twist to this article there are some latest developments! Turns out my article on SEOMoz is no longer number 3, its sad i know, but search engines are fickle creatures. The good news is though - this blog about my article getting 3rd position is now at number 4!

The origional article is no longer in sight but both this article and my article about the SEOMoz article are at number 4 and number 5 in google.. you can see the proof here:

I wonder what will happen next? Only Google can tell…

If you thought I was going to give out some magical secret as to how you can achieve this result, sorry, I’m merely pointing out that it can (and has) been done!

Earlier this week I was analysing local web design firms in Adelaide, Australia, and I noticed something interesting about the website that came up in first place for the phrase “website design Adelaide.”

My blog article on SEOMoz created quite a bit of discussion, it also managed to spread the word of the great city of Adelaide around the world and even created an inadvertent plug for Mcleod’s Daughters! If that isn’t inspiration for you to start a blog I don’t know what is!

Read the full article on Getting Number One on Google with Frames here!

I just took the SEOMoz.org online SEO Test. Wow lots of tricky technical questions.

If you think you’ve got what it takes to be an SEO Expert, click the link below and try your luck!

Apparently I am an:

SEO Dark Lord - 93%

Interesting…

Are you an SEO Expert?

As I listen and watch and podcast and twitter and scribefire and fleck and stumble and youtube and web 2.0 my way through the pre-season of the 30 day challenge I find myself learning more about the tips and tricks and leverage of the social media sites, blog tools and new media than I could have ever thought possible within the given time frame.

As someone who spends all day online as part of my job I found it amazing how much I managed to learn from watching Ed’s videos and taking part in the challenge!

If you’d like to learn more about internet marketing and using social media sites to increase your brand or product awreness online check out the 30 day challenge. But be prepared to listen… Ed likes to talk!

Have a great day

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Top signs that you are addicted to search engine optimisation!

1. You check your rankings every day just to see if they ‘might have changed’

2. You hold your breath when your ranking analysis program says ‘updating’

3. You open up 200+ SEO blogs per day and never get to read half of them because you keep clicking links to ‘other blogs on this topic’

4. You have 40 social media profiles

5. You see the sites ranking above you as your “Arch Nemisis”!

6. You check to see if someone has written a wiki entry about you or your business.

7. You analyse every site you visit for linking potential

8. You check the PageRank of every webpage you visit

9. FLASH, FRAMES & JAVASCRIPT = EVIL!

10. You dream about the day you are ranked number 1 for ALL your key phrases

Hi there! A couple of weeks ago we attended Search Summit 2007 for 2 days of fun and exitement hearing all the latest thoughts, news and techniques from the leaders in the area of Search Engine Marketing.

We got to rub shoulders with the likes of Andy Beal who’s Marketing Pilgrim Blog is always an informative read. Chris Sherman, partner and Executive Editor of Search Engine Land, and Adam Lasnik, Search Evangilist from Google to name a few!

The summit consisted of presentations, interactive workshops and time to chat with the presenters at the end of each day. All in all it was a great couple of days with everyone learning a lot and enjoying discussions on the different methods of improving search engine rankings and what the next online craze might be.