Backlinks vs Google Maps

You hear a lot about backlinks.  You hear that you need them. Which is true.  You hear that they need to be quality backlinks.  That's also true.  But how many quality backlinks do you need?  Take a look at the image below:

It's from Market Samurai, my favorite tool for finding out which keywords are too competitive, which ones are right for me.

BLP means backlinks to the page.  BLD means backlinks to the whole site (domain). 

Do you see how many #5, the Wikipedia has of both?  Yet it's not ranking #1.  If you look farther to the right, you see that the page from Wiki that shows on page 5 is not optimized for the keyword 'Chicago home insurance, " the keyword I asked Market Samurai to gather info for me.

But, the one that shows first on the page, is not optimized at all for this keyword, has no backlinks to the page that shows up, yet it shows up first.  How come?  For a lot of keywords, Google shows local businesses that have a map profile. 

So, one thing you can do for your business, if it's the kind where Google maps applies, is to get signed up with Google maps and be #1 there.  It's a lot easier to show up high in the ranks.

AC Dies, I Plug Along

A few days ago, I was on the Internet, looking at car insurance sites (here's one) when the air conditioning died.  Today we're having 70 degrees high.  My ac decided to die when we had 99.  Yup, 3 days does make that much difference in Chicagoland.

The AC people were prompt but not so good, took them 3 tries to get it going again.  In the mean time, I sweated like a pig (even though I went to work in a Barnes and Nobles coffee house, then a Starbucks.  By the way, Starbucks is better; Barnes and pal Nobles haven't figured out they need more than one outlet.)

Much has happened since my last post, like I got hired to do SEO for a couple of companies.  One of them is a promotional products company.  Quite an industry, promotional products, yet you don't hear about them unless you're in marketing.  Or running a company and someone sends you personalized coffee mugs or something to get you to buy from them.

I just started the seo work, so no ranking yet, so don't bust my balls.  Yet.

Furthermore, my 7-year old's decided I'm short and she'll be taller than me by the time she turns 10.  And I think she will.  Looks like she'll be a giant, she's taller than 95% of kids her age.  No, she's not interested in basketball.  She loves soccer and swimming pools.

Internet Marketing Tools

Haven't been here in a while.  I've learned a lot about internet marketing and affiliate marketing since then.  Particularly that tools like Market Samurai (good Market Samurai review) save a lot of time.  Market Samurai is great for finding keywords and figuring how hard it would be to make it on page 1 in Google for them.

Particularly that I know a heck more about internet marketing than all the small business owners, managers, presidents, chief financial this and chief executive that.  So, of course, I've started to propose my Chicago SEO services to them.  And they're saying, yes, man.

But some of them aren't working with.  Anyway, that's not what this post is about.

I've had reasons to look at a bunch of sites.  Accounting sites, mortgage sites, insurance sites, marketing sites.  Many are gorgeous and useless, many are ugly and useless.  But they're very much alike in what they say.  Check it out for yourself: a ton of small business owners have sites that say: We are great.  We love you.  We'll take good care of you.  Then there's a long list of services.

Not all of them.

Here are some of the sites I looked at today (including some good and some that need work):

http://www.swias.com
http://eurobankmortgage.com
http://www.callero.com
http://www.myadvanceddentistry.com

But the way to do it, is to look at all accountant sites, all dentist sites, etc.