As part of your ongoing effort to increase your website’s visitors stats, it is important to include your business to Google Local. If anything, it helps your current customers find you quickly after typing your company name, but it is FREE! Be sure you include all of your locations.

Here is how:

1. Go to www.google.com/local/add. If you don’t already have a google account (such as a gmail or a google calendar), register for an account with google.
2. After logging in, search for your business address to see if your business is already there. If it is, there is a link  Google will ask you to enter things such as address, phone, fax, website, email address and description (see below)
3. If you do not, you’ll be asked to add a business listing.
4. Once google has located your address on google maps, you will need to fill out are the details about your business. Enter your hours of operation, a description of the products you sell, and your category(ies) to help people find you, visit your location, read reviews, and link to your website.
5. The final page will help google to verify that the location is truly yours. You have the option of either verifying your location by postcard or by phone. If you plan to verify by phone, make sure the phone line is open and google will have an automated message sent to your phone with a verification code. Verifying by postcard is much slower, but may be necessary if you utilize a call center. Once you receive the verification code, log into the Google Local Business Center and enter the verification code. Your business will become active after the code is entered.
6. From here you’ll be able to access reports on who came to your location listing and the actions they took, for example, from where did folks get directions?

Most web pages include resources that change infrequently, such as CSS files, image files, JavaScript files, and so on. These resources take time to download over the network, which increases the time it takes to load a web page. HTTP caching allows these resources to be saved, or cached, by a browser or proxy. Once a resource is cached, a browser or proxy can refer to the locally cached copy instead of having to download it again on subsequent visits to the web page. Thus caching is a double win: you reduce round-trip time by eliminating numerous HTTP requests for the required resources, and you substantially reduce the total payload size of the responses. Besides leading to a dramatic reduction in page load time for subsequent user visits, enabling caching can also significantly reduce the bandwidth and hosting costs for your site.

Basically, the .htaccess file is telling the bots to cache certain files at various times for returning visitors.

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0

<FilesMatch “.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$”>
ExpiresDefault A29030400
Header append Cache-Control “public”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|swf)$”>
ExpiresDefault A604800
Header append Cache-Control “public”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(xml|txt|html|js|css)$”>
ExpiresDefault A7200
Header append Cache-Control “proxy-revalidate”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(php|cgi|pl|htm)$”>
ExpiresActive Off
Header set Cache-Control “private, no-cache, no-store, proxy-revalidate, no-transform”
Header set Pragma “no-cache”

</FilesMatch>

Sometimes it’s not the design but the trust you evoke. Some ugly website scream, “Hey, I am a small business and couldn’t afford a big marketing firm. So I built it myself.” But if you are conveying that you are trustworthy by including phone numbers, addresses, your policies and make sure you site is easy to use, you can be sure that your customers will appreciate it and respond with loyalty.

Google understood this. It can barely call it self a web designed site as it is primarily made up of a logo, search box, and some small text. That’s it. It’s fast, easy, simple.

Lesson learned, don’t assume your website has to be filled with high-end graphics and animation. Just be sure it conveys your business in the best possible light and that your customers can quickly get what they need.

From these pages, we register your website by uploading robots.txt and, if needed, a sitemap file. Below are the online tools that you can review yourself.

Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster

1. Your website should be complete with no broken links, unique content, and keyword optimized.
2. Include a sitemap formatted with an XML extension and add to your webserver.
3. Add your site using the Google Sitemaps tools.
4. If you can, add a link to a site with PR (PageRank) of 5. I have been able to help my clients get indexed quickly by google by simply adding a link to their new site from my homepage which has a PR of 5.

Other notable ideas:

• resubmit your sitemap each time you make a dramatic change to your website.
• continue to add unique content to your website.
• Make sure that you utilize your specific keywords on each of your pages. Your title tag, description tag, and content should each reflect your keywords and phrases.

Copy/paste or write the error message on a piece of paper and copy the message into the search box. You will see results from others that have had the same problem, and if you are lucky a solution.

Don’t see a solution? Try Google groups to see archived discussions that may relate to your problem.

1. Google Local shows above the organic listings allowing your business to show at the top of the page.
2. Searchers looking for a specific location will more likely click on your business listing because they have purposefully entered that city or address.
3. Local allows you to enter detailed information about your business like phone, address, list any coupons or specials.
4. Your customers can review your business.
5. Websites linking to your site, and any pages indexed by Google, and any photos you’d like to show off.

To the left is a screenshot of my Google Local listing when searching “web designers richmond tx.” Because I have two phone numbers listed I show twice.

Which brings me to my next reminder, take some time and check your Google Local listing. Then claim your listing by clicking the “Edit this Listing” at the footer of the detailed page. Follow the instructions to validate your listing using a mail post or phone call.

1. Google has the largest market share of U.S. based web searches at 64.49%

• 2007 September 63.55%
• 2006 October 60.94%

2. Yahoo is second with a market share of 21.65%

• 2007 September 22.55%
• 2006 October 22.34%

3. MSN is third with a market share of 7.42%

• 2007 September 7.83%
• 2006 October 10.72%

4. Ask is fourth with a market share of 4.76%

• 2007 September 4.32%
• 2006 October 4.34%

“Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending Oct. 27, 2007, Sept. 29, 2007, Oct. 28, 2006) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users.”
Source: Hitwise – Dominance continues with a six percent increase over last year.

Top 5 Search Engines in the United States (The Majors) by Rank

• Google
  Yahoo! Search
  MSN Live Search
  AOL Search – Powered by Google
  Ask – Powered by Teoma