Neil's blog

Restaurants, dry cleaners, apartment management companies,

Social Media for business is hot right now; similar to blogging was four years ago for companies. Companies are in a mad dash to hire workers deeming themselves “Social Media Experts,” with most new Social Media jobs going to Millennials who grew up online.

It appears Google has recently changed its algorithm for Local Business Listings by only giving the top spots to those feeding the search engine’s ever increasing need for content. Keep reading to learn what are Google Local Business Listings, what’s changed recently, as well as how to optimize so your local business is on top of the map.

Pre-Wordpress' birth and the critical mass of blogs, Internet Marketing Professionals used many other tactics, one of which was writing value-based informational articles and submitting them to several article directories for online publishers and website owners to repost. This type of article marketing was done for years before blogging.

What is Article Marketing?

Wikipedia defines Article Marketing as:

The official Google blog announced recognition of the the nofollow tag in January of 2005. This tag did not reach awareness on a wide scale until Matt Cutts, Google's mouthpiece to the SEO world, further clarified in his blog the many uses of this controversial link tag.

These four organizations in Dallas are ideal for marketing/advertising professionals. Two are targeted toward those working in Interactive media in particular. I have personally attended functions with three of the four organizations and, in my opinion, they pass the test.

Recently a client came to us asking if it was possible to deoptimize a site so that it would not be listed on the first page of Google. After probing, we were told the reason for the inquiry was to protect the client's online reputation. When searching for that individual by name, a court filing against that person came up as the #1 result. Whether the case was unfounded, true, or untrue, it could have a negative impact on business.

Reputation Management 101

The New York Times blog, BITS broke the story last week that Google is now testing video ads in search results in order to offer even more diverse opportunities and media expansion for AdWords advertisers.

Sam's Club, a division of, Wal*Mart, is now offering small business owners local search engine marketing (SEM) programs through vendor Innuity.com, a publicly held Software as a Service (SaaS) company using their LeadConnect program.

This is hilarious such an unrelated industry giant would brand and offer these services. Although it should worry me that SEM could become commoditized by such a large non-industry company in this way, it may actually be a good thing for a number of reasons.