What is a Google Map?

Google Maps is a free (yes, free and we will be coming back to that later in the article) web mapping service and associated technology provided by Google which is the basis of several services including the Google Maps Website, Google Earth and the ability to embed customised maps onto websites via the Google API. The service provides high resolution satellite* images for most urban areas in the developed world.

*Google calls the images “satellite images” although most of the imagery is in fact aerial photography taken from high altitude aircraft.

What can Google Maps do for your business?

Google Maps in conjunction with Local Business Center provides access to a service that allows you to list your business details within Google’s database for free. On top of that you can pinpoint your business on a map that anyone in the world can access from a quick search within Google. When someone has searched for your services, found your business and then clicks on your marker on the map, they not only see your full details but can also get directions to you. On top of this your information gets stored on a central database that then shares the business information with other Google services such as Froogle, Google Earth, and Google Web search. As has already been mentioned this service is completely free (with no catches!) and is just waiting for you to take it up.

Too good an opportunity to pass up? Well yes, actually it is!

So how do I get a Google Local Business Center listing for my business?

1. Go to the Google Local Business Center – www.google.com/local/add/ (if you have not already got a Google Account you will need to sign up).
2. Enter your business contact details including: name, address, city, state, country and zip/postal code.
3. Hit continue and then enter your phone, fax, mobile numbers and then email and website address.
4. Hit continue and then you will be prompted to enter a description of your business, forms of payment your business accepts and your opening hours. You will also be prompted to enter up to 5 categories which describe your business.
5. Select a verification method. This is usually either a phone call (automated) or a post card in the regular mail. You will be supplied with a PIN number and verification details according to which option you choose to use.
6. Once verified you will be able to edit your listing or create another.

Your business will now be visible on maps listed on certain geographical searches i.e. ‘Website Designer Bridgnorth’ brings up my normal organic listing plus my Local Business Center listing on a local map of Bridgnorth, Shropshire, UK (see below).

How do I use a Google Map on my website?

So long as your website is free for people to use and is not a paid-for service you can use a Google Map to display the whereabouts of your business. The simplest way to use a Google map on your website is detailed below.

1. Log in to your Google account and browse to www.maps.google.com.
2. Click on ‘My Maps’ and then ‘Create new map’.
3. Fill in the title and the description and choose whether you want this map to be unlisted or public (searchable within Google maps).
4. Edit the map until it shows the area you wish to show on your website and place any markers or information on the map by dragging the icons from the top right of the map to any position of your choice.
5. When you are happy with your map click ‘Save’, the click ‘Link’ (top right of map) and copy the code within the ‘Paste HTML to embed in website’ box.
6. Paste this code within the HTML of your website where you wish your map to be shown.

This is the most fundamental use of a Google map and there are many more interesting ways of using the Google Maps API to produce maps with varying degrees of interactivity and functionality. If you wish to use Google Maps API to produce something a bit more unique please see http://code.google.com/apis/maps/.

Advertising using Google maps

Although it isn’t free, this service presents an opportunity to use Google maps in conjunction with your AdWords campaign. If you already use AdWords you can start using Map ads right away. It works in two ways, with normal text ads – whereby your ad shows in the 3 paid ads on an organic Map search result or local business ads where your business shows as a special marker on the map. For more information see http://adwords.google.com/select/LocalAdsHomepage.

Haven’t read Part 1 or 2 yet?
SEO Basics – Part 1 , SEO Basics – Part 2

The Open Directory Project (DMOZ)

I have included the ODP in this guide for one simple reason. To tell you not to bother. In theory the ODP is a bunch of kind hearted individuals that give their own time to review your submitted sites and decide whether they met the criteria for the chosen category. In practice the editors of the categories are all mini-dictators who all take great pleasure in keeping their little bit of the internet how they want it and dashing peoples hopes of inclusion all for a boost of their own egos. Perhaps I’m wrong, but thats my experience.

If you do submit to the ODP then don’t hold your breath, they will either:

1. Throw your submission out with the rest of toys from their prams.
   
2. Never receive your submission because there are no editors for that category any more.
   
3. Put it in a queue and forget about it for a year or two

In my opinion (keep the comments clean please) I think the ODP is a relic from when the internet was a much smaller place and is now just an irrelevance.

Free and paid for directories

Submission to directories is an important part of website promotion for the simple fact that it will increase incoming links. As stated previously (see Links in SEO Basics Part 2) links from sources that contain lots of other relevant links are some of the most valuable to a search engine.

A quick trawl of the web will reveal a massive amount of directories that will list your site for a fee and listing to multiple directories can become an expensive business. Look for free directories with a good PageRank (PR) on their listings pages, (you can see the PR of a page if you install the Google Toolbar – www.toolbar.google.com). Try listing with as many of these free directories as possible before moving on to the paid for inclusions.

Large directories such as yell.com are worth joining if you have the budget but need to be set up carefully if you want your target market to find you. Don’t think that because these services have a massive marketing budget (TV, radio, web, print) that your work is done and that leads will come flooding in. Keywords have to be chosen carefully and your description worded correctly to enable searches for your products and services to highlight your listing and not your competitors.

Submit your site

There are some excellent tools out there for submitting your site to the search engines such as IBP/Arelis, particularly useful if you want to submit your site to all of the smaller search engines as well as the big players. Online web services such as Submit Express will submit to the top 20+ search engines for free but mind that you tick the boxes so that ‘special offers’ don’t start filling your inbox.

All said and done, arguably its only the big players such as Yahoo and Google that really count and once indexed by these, most others will follow anyway. Use the URLs below to submit your site but don’t expect immediate results, depending on what type of site its is/how long the domain name has been registered it can take weeks to months for a site to get indexed.

Submit to Yahoo (UK): http://uk.search.yahoo.com/info/submit
Submit to Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/

Haven’t read Part 1 yet?
SEO Basics – Part 1

Sitemaps

It is important to have sitemaps both for your visitors and Googles benefit. The sitemap that your visitors see needs to be a heirarchical visual representation of your site purely so if stuck they can navigate to the page they want. Basically a page of links to all the other pages on your site. The sitemap set up for Google is a different matter entirely.

What is a Google Sitemap?

A Google Sitemap is a small XML file that sits on your server alongside your webpages. It allows Google to see how your site is structured, how importantly you rate indvidual pages and how often those pages are updated.

Why do you need one?

Google Sitemaps was released in 2005, and up until then getting the optimisation right for Google was just a guessing game, with the algorithms that they use to rank a site kept secret and no communication from Google to Webmasters (neither of which have changed!). Once a site was submitted, all there was left to do was to wait and hope. Once submitted a site might not resurface at all or certain pages might rank higher than others with no way of contacting Google and controlling the process or letting them know when a page had been updated.

With Sitemaps, Google have now given Webmasters a chance of supplying them with valuable information about their websites and also given Webmasters the ability to see what Google thinks about each website and what can be done to improve its standing.

Lets eleborate on that. Within the Sitemap XML code there is the ability to ‘rate’ pages on how popular you think they should be from 0.1 to 1.0. So if you think your home page is the most important page, you could rate it 1.0, with your product pages at 0.8 and your contact page at 0.2 for instance.

In return Google lets you know what the Googlebot (an automated program that lists pages in sites) has found, whether its a page or a troublesome broken link. Furthermore, a Google Sitemap account will let you know what words Google associates with your website, judging by what the Googlebot has seen on your site (useful for accurate optimisation) and a list of words that Googlebot has found linking to your site from elsewhere on the web.

Linking

Arguably the most important SEO element of them all.

Simply put (as simply put as you are going to get from me anyway!) the search engines have decided that if lots of other sites are linking to your site then your site must be good quality. Therefore your site gets a boost in its rankings.

Confused?… you will be

You may have heard of PageRank (PR). This is another Googleism and must not be confused with link popularity. PR only takes into consideration the QUANTITY and POPULARITY of links, whereby link popularity also takes into consideration the QUALITY of those links. Unfortunately the two have become confused and people often talk of one whilst meaning the other.

Most if not all of the search engines place importance on link popularity in their ranking algorithms. Links from directories with industry specific categories and links from other sites that contain the same keywords and keyphrases as you have, appear to be the main contributors to link popularity, whilst linking from pages and directories that have nothing to do with your industry or subject have no value at all.

To clarify

Alans Grocery Store has a link to Barrys Computer Hardware Shop. If that link uses keywords such as ‘computer hardware shop’ within its anchor text (the clickable bit) it will increase Barrys link popularity slightly for those keywords. But if that same link came from a source more closely related to computer hardware such a Claires Computers the link would be far more beneficial. Even better still would be a link from a directory of computer hardware stores where there are a collection of links all related to the same business.

Reciprocal Linking

Views differ on just how effective this strategy is. Some people still swear by the ‘I’ll link to you if you link to me’ way of thinking, other experts would say that this form of website promotion is now defunct. I’m not certain how effective it is. You certainly don’t need to reciprocate a link if you don’t have to. Remember its the incoming links that are the valuable ones. A link pointing away from your site can always have the effect of moving viewers somewhere else.

In Part 3: open directory project, paid for directories & submission!

What is SEO?

SEO is the act of altering a websites code and content so it works optimally with internet search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL etc. This can be done to an extreme level but in this guide I will endeavour to give you nothing but the basic rules of SEO, just enough to get you listed on your favourite search engine… maybe.

I say maybe because SEO is something of a black art. No-one knows for sure what algorithms the search engines use to rank sites, it is a well kept secret. We know that incoming links play an important part in the ranking of sites, and that the quality of those links is also an important factor. How your page is laid out and the use of keywords and original content are also factors that we will be covering here.

We will assume that you have already registered a domain name, built a site of sorts and have said domain name pointing at your website.

I can’t go into what you should have done with the design of your site here, thats a matter or personal taste and dependent upon the market you are aiming at. At best thats another post for me to write at another time.

Different search engines have different rules for inclusion, so for the purposes of this series we will assume it is Google that you want to impress and that you already meet Google’s Webmaster Guidelines which can be seen here.

Please note that the points in this post are not written in any order of importance.

Organisation is King

Planning your website promotion strategy is paramount and you can start this by listing your strategy using good old pen and paper. Keep tabs of where you are by making a checklist of what you want to achieve with your promotion in the order you want it done in.

Content is King

You may have heard that phrase before. It is arguably the most important thing listed here because without quality content no-one will want to visit or link to your site. Simple. Ideally* content should outweigh the HTML used in a page giving the search engines plenty to get their teeth into. Aim for a minimum of 200 words on every page of your site but more is better.
*I’m a website designer, I know that a design will not always lend itself to containing lots of copy. Don’t fret, there are other ways of getting your site seen if there’s not much indexable content, only it’s a lot more complicated and I’m not going to go into it here…sorry!

Keywords are King too

Sorry, they just are. A person searching for the product you are selling or subject you are writing about is going to use a search term. That search term is going to have to match with something on your page in order for it to be found. That something is a keyword or keyphrase. For instance, if you are selling kitchen appliances and you know that people will be searching for items like cookers and refrigerators, then those words will need to be included on the website. Unfortunately its not as simple as that… read on.

Keywords, keywords everywhere

Ideally** the keyword or keyphrase is going to need to go within your description tag, in a <H1> heading, in bold and high up on the page to be effective. Not to mention using it within your URL.

**Dont worry, this is obviously going to be impractical in most cases, so aim to get your main keywords in one or more of these positions where possible.

Finding your keywords

Use free keyword tools such as those found at Google and Overture to research which terms people are using in their searches. Check what your competition is doing by looking at the source code of your competitors sites. Again, make lists and keep your research as organised as possible, you will thank yourself for it in the longrun. There are various paid-for applications such as IBP and Arelis that will do a much better job whilst automating all this for you (if you have deep pockets) but you can do just fine without having to spend a penny.

In Part 2: sitemaps & linking