A few months ago, we added some additional social sharing features to every business profile on EZlocal. We kind of snuck it in, so here's the official blog announcement. It's now easier (and has been for the past few months) for users to "recommend" a business they like on EZlocal, and publish this on Facebook and Twitter. With these social sharing features, we've opened new ways for users to share information and for business owners to reach a much broader audience.
By Dave Cosper · June 10 2010
For children, summer break inspires excitement. Three months of freedom for playing, planning adventures and plotting assorted mischief. For mothers, on the other hand, summer break may provoke slightly different sentiments. The errands of everyday life remain the same, but during summer break, mothers often acquire a posse of high-maintenance, low-patience helpers. Suffice it to say, accomplishing these tasks becomes a much more burdensome chore.
However, a savvy mom will plan ahead, choosing businesses and shops that will keep her children entertained and content while she works her way down the to-do list. Therefore, a savvy business owner’s job is twofold: create a kid-friendly environment and then spread the word that you run a child-friendly business. Here are a few tips on how to accomplish both:
Provide Toys, Activities or Entertainment for Children While they Wait.
Does your business have a waiting room? Stock it with toys and kid’s magazines....
By Jorge Cordova · June 07 2010
kid-friendly business, family-friendly business, local seo, local search marketing
Today our SEO Program Director, Tim, gave me a task: compile the 5,000 most populous cities in the United States. I figured a quick Google search would turn up such a list, but didn't have any luck. Fortunately the U.S. Census Bureau has all the raw city data broken down by state. Thirty minutes later, I had found the top 5,000 U.S. cities by population (based on city population estimates from July 2008). Here is the list in Excel and CSV formats.
A few notes:
Technically, the list is the top 5,000 incorporated places and minor civil divisions.
Interesting factoid: the 2,092th most populous city in the U.S. is Lebanon, Indiana. It's estimated population, as of July 2008, is 15,400. Th...
By Jorge Cordova · June 05 2010
5000 most populous u.s. cities, top 5000 u.s. cities by population
A few minutes ago one of our senior account managers, Jordan, noticed a new feature in Google Places. A new alerts bar at the top of the page shows which profiles need action. Also, the profiles that need action (such as a PIN verification) are pushed to the top.
Further down the page he also noticed a new link that goes to a profile's analytics directly from the Google Places dashboard. Mighty convenient Google, thanks!
By Tim Scheer · June 03 2010
google, lbc, google places, seo
Okay, there isn't really a "Miss EZlocal," but if there was, Ashley Strohmier would be the favorite. A top 10 finisher in last weekend's Miss USA Pageant, Strohmier spoke out in support of small business owners:
My father owns his own heavy-equipment company and I've seen, time and time again, how people have tried to take advantage of his company. I want to be a corporate attorney to protect small business owners and what they have done.
By Jorge Cordova · May 19 2010
ashley strohmier, small business
If you want to determine how search engine healthy your site is, one thing you can do is find out how many indexed pages you have on the Big G. More specifically, find out how many of your site's pages show up as indexed as opposed to buried away in Google's supplemental index - where they put lower ranking pages. Pages found in the supplemental index tend to be crawled much less and usually never assigned Page Rank.
So admittedly, we're a little obsessed with how our site indexes on Google and in doing everything we can to improve this number and crack the one million mark :) With Google constantly making changes to their UI (especially over the last six months), we've had to rely on multiple query methods to approximate the number of indexed pages our site is registering on Google. Because we've often seen wild fluctuations on a weekly or even daily basis in the number of indexed pages, using multiple methods has allowed us to predict indexing more accurately.
If you want to find out...
By Dave Cosper · May 17 2010
index pages, gwt, sitemap, site-url
Within the local search industry NAP stands for “name, address, and phone number,” the most basic data any business profile will contain. Name gives you the who, address gives you the where and phone number gives you the how (eg. how to get in contact with the business). All too often profiles stop there, neglecting to offer further detail, thus miring themselves in a sea of bland search results.
Businesses, especially small businesses, must do better. Large chains can get away with this lack of detail because most people already know who they are, what they sell and when they’re open. Small businesses don’t have this luxury; their profiles must be robust, providing as much information as possible so potential customers have some idea what to expect. Here are three details that every small business owner should include in their business profile:
Hours of Operation:
If name, address and phone number are the who, what and how, hours...
By Derek McKenzie · May 10 2010
business listings, nap
Well we're all Chicago Blackhawks fans here at EZlocal (although there may be some rogue Detroit fans lurking) - so watching the Hawks take on the Vancouver Canucks in the Western Conference Semifinals series has without a doubt spurred the question among many, what the French is a Canuck?
Before rushing to Google to find out, take a look at the Vancouver Canucks team logo and see if you can figure it out. So what is a Canuck? We conducted a quick EZlocal office survey to find out. Here are the results (from a group of 25 surveyed):
If you answered "a Canadian", then perhaps you deserve to be an editor for Urban Dictionary. The word "Canuck" is slang for a Canadian citizen. Some of my...
By Dave Cosper · May 06 2010
vancouver-canucks, etymology, wikipedia
