Local Search Event in Spokane from GetListed.org

Many readers here are local to Minnesota although there are a few that live in eastern Washington. If you’re a 509-er, this is for you.

On Thursday, February 4th, some of the best local search minds will be presenting two half-day sessions in Spokane, WA. The event is called Local University put on by getlisted.org. The premise is to show Spokane-area business folks how to leverage the Internet to bring in local traffic.

To quote:

We’re bringing in some of the nation’s leading online marketing experts for an intensive, four-hour crash course in Internet marketing that will help you navigate the possibilities for marketing your business on the web.

Presenters include:

• Mike Blumenthal – Understanding Google Maps and Local Search (a must-read industry blog)
• Mary Dowling – Optimized
• Matt McGee – Small Business Search Marketing (overall good guy)
• David Mihm – Portland-based and well known for his Local Search Ranking Factors
• Ed Reese – Blogger at Sixth Man Marketing

It should be well-worth the $129. If you’re in the area, spread the word.

A bonus, it looks like Gonzaga has a home basketball game that night. During college, I spent some time at their music building. It’s a nice campus and it sounds like their McCarthey Athletic Center is a great place to see a game.

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New Google MapSpam – How Long Will This One Last?

Thanks to Mike Blumenthal for catching this.

My guess these will be taken down within 24 hours. Notice the same toll free number and fake addresses?

MapSpam

A person named Promoter Local is certainly clever by artificially manipulating local results with fake and/or existing physical addresses. How do they do it? Dunno. A few thoughts come to mind though.

• This seems very familiar to a different scam from the same geographical area months back.
• As Mike said, “why would they blow their cover with such obvious spam?”
• I’m sure this is a funny coincidence, but at least a few of their fake addresses land them right where McDonald’s restaurants are located.

I’m not a betting man. My guess is these results will be barred by this Friday, December 12th. 🙂

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Bro-Sis Photography Marketing Update – Google Maps (Local) & SuperPages

For those following the bro-sis photography/Internet marketing project and speaking engagements, there are a couple new updates. For those who wish to know more about it, go for it.

Heather has updated a very nice SuperPages profile as shown here.

Tin Shed SuperPages Profile

It’s nice to see this. Search engines often feed off of SuperPages data to be included in their local listings. It makes sense. Different Yellow Pages have structured data which can make Google and Yahoo local listings more relevant.

So far, Heather is not prominently displayed outside of Mazomanie, Wisconsin, which is 30 miles west of Madison. Since she’s highly regarded, she does get plenty of customers from Madison willing to travel and spend for her premium services. We plan on making her more visible for “Madison” area searches.

So, we’re updating her Google Maps and Yahoo Local profiles to make sure we include Madison in the mix. We could, but will not do the Google MapSpam thing because people who do that suck.

One thing that has worked for many companies is to display their categories exactly how they appear in Yellow Pages such as Dex or SuperPages. So, we will be including this in Google Maps and Yahoo Local profiles while adjusting SuperPages profiles:

SuperPages Info

The “animal and pet” photographers will most likely be weeded out, but the others accurately displays what she does.

A question comes to mind, and I always look for peers to help answer. Mike Blumenthal (and any others), do you have any opinions?

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