It now seems possible for UK businesses to submit to a third party site and thereby gain a local listing in Bing.
Bing Local Listings are similar to Google Local (or Google Maps) in that they can come up above the algorithmic (organic) search engine results when a searcher includes local place names in a search query, for example: “SEO Company Cheltenham” rather than just “SEO Company”.
Up until now I had assumed that Bing Local listing submissions could only be completed by US based companies, with the few UK based local search engine results being cobbled together from the listings on third party business directories.
All that changed after I read Matthew Elshaws’ Blog on ineedhits.com entitled “How to Setup a UK Bing Local Listing” where he talks about Daniel Dutton who has identified where Microsoft gets UK local business listings from, in his blog post entitled “Get Listed in Microsoft UK’s Bing/MSN/Live Business Directory”.
Anyway long story short if you are based in the UK and want to see if it works go to http://www.marketlocation.com/changereq/ and enter your company details.
Please note that this is rather speculative and it will probably take some time for results to be seen, so please no e-mails. I have submitted my own site and put the word out about this and will let you know the outcome.
Justin March offers this set of instructions as ‘Guidance Only’. Therefore, Justin cannot be held responsible for any work carried out by YOU and/or ANY third party using the instructions.
Having started up this blog only a short while back, I am still in the throes of adding quality content to get the blog up and running properly. I am enjoying the process and writing is fun but… as the floodgates begin to open, the spam starts rolling in…
Obviously this Blog is moderated and I delete blatant spam as soon as it appears, the trouble is I’m getting a lot of comments that are in between being blatant spam and being insightful.
I have therefore been struggling with the nofollow / dofollow question and whether I should apply these tags to the post comments on this Blog.
What are Nofollow / Dofollow tags?
A link with a nofollow tag will appear the same to the general web going public as a link without the tag, but by implementing the nofollow tag the Blog or Forum owner is telling the search engines that this link has not been checked (or is not from a trusted source) and that the link should therefore pass no link juice or power to the resulting page. At least that is the official line; there is some debate as to how the tag is really being dealt with by Google and the other search engines. Tests have been run that prove that the Search Engines at least follow the nofollow links to their destination whether the resulting pages receive any link juice is open to debate.
Nofollow tags are implemented as follows:
Visit my <a href=” http://www.justinmarch.com/cheltenham-gloucester-web-design-seo-offer/”>SEO Company Cheltenham</a> site.
Which would look like this: SEO Company Cheltenham
Applying a nofollow tag, the comment would be transformed to:
Visit my <a href=” http://www.justinmarch.com/cheltenham-gloucester-web-design-seo-offer/” rel=”nofollow”> SEO Company Cheltenham</a> site.
Which would look like this: SEO Company Cheltenham
As you can see both of the above links look exactly the same to the casual observer.
NB: There is no dofollow tag; essentially dofollow is simply a “normal” hyperlink (or the absence of the nofollow tag).
Find out more about the background of the nofollow tag here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
See David Leonhardts’ blog post for even more insight into this debate.
So what to do about Nofollow / Dofollow tags on this Blog?
I act to prevent spam as much as possible but am also willing to reward insightful comments with a dofollow link, the trouble is I’m getting a lot of comments that are in between, they aren’t blatant spam and they aren’t quite as insightful as I would like.
The problem is it’s a trade off, I don’t want to put people off, and I don’t mind a bit of banter as it helps to humanise my Blog, on the other hand I don’t want to necessarily reward banter with a dofollow link.
Option 1:
- delete the spam
- nofollow the in-between comments
- follow the insightful comments
Option 2:
- delete the spam
- delete the in-between comments
- follow the insightful comments
Option 3:
- delete the spam
- follow in-between comments
- follow the insightful comments
Conclusion
For the moment anyway I think that option 1 is the most ideal I will just have to put up with the questions relating to why some comments are assigned nofollow where others are given normal link status.
I look forward to pleanty of insightful comments on this below…
It has been a long struggle but I am finally seeing some major results for the effort that I have been putting into the SEO work for my site. My site has finally been ranked for one of my main target phrases SEO Cheltenham the page is low at present but as the content of the page itself is not new I have every reason to believe that this will only improve.
Since inception the site has been gradually improving in the natural search results bringing me leads and business for the longer tail search phrases (those of 3 to 4 words or more). But now I’m starting to see real increases in natural qualified traffic.
A higher ranking for “Freelance SEO Cheltenham” has also been achieved along with a ranking for “Freelance SEO UK”.
For some time now I have been targeting certain phrases with local place names in the Search Engines, as such I keep looking at the resulting web pages and am very familiar with the normal results. This weekend I noticed that the Google Maps listing are no longer appearing under some of these phrases I first spotted this under a search for SEO Cheltenham see image below.
-
SEO Cheltenham Google Results
Now I have been conducting SEO work since before Google was the next big thing, so I expect to see fluctuations in the results from time to time. I wouldn’t have been so concerned except for the fact that:
- I was in the middle of researching an article entitled “How to add your Local Business Listing to Google Maps” and I needed screen shots.
- I had just read an article about the new Google Local Business Listings Guideline Changes Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-targets-spammers-with-new-local-business-listing-guidelines-29077
The guideline changes in Google Local relate to the business name and the physical location of the business. In terms of the business name that is used the new guidelines state that this should now be the full and legal business name, this suggests that keyword inclusion in conjunction with or replacing the business name will no longer be tolerated.
Examples of Business names that are now officially not allowed by the new Google Local Business Listings Guidelines:
“Business Name – Keyword1 Keyword2”
“Keyword1 Keyword2”
In terms of the location that is entered when a Google Local Business Listing is applied for this should be the central offices and not a PO Box or virtual location.
For further clarification see Business Listing Quality Guidelines at: http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
Was this a penalty handed down by Google to punish all SEO’s? Having dug about a bit obviously not as the search for SEO Bristol shows:
SEO Bristol Google Results
And it wasn’t anything to do with the area either as a search for Carpet Cheltenham shows:
Google Results Carpets Cheltenham
I also discovered many businesses breaking the new guidelines so it seems unlikely that they are the cause of this sudden change.
I posted a question here: http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=132017
The consensus seems to be that this is a blip on the landscape and that the listings will soon reappear thanks to Ali-v-8 for his thoughts.
