Here’s how you give someone access to your site’s Google Analytics without having to give them your username and password.

After you’ve logged into GA and selected the site you want to give the new user access to, you click User Manager.

Type in the new users e-mail address, highlight the site you want to give them access to, and hit Add. Then, when the highlighted website is in the box to the right, hit Save Changes.

Then you’re done!

Here’s how to get a free local phone number and separate voicemail for your local business.

So you’ve got a local business, and a cell phone. Maybe you don’t want the whole world to have your cell phone number, but you don’t want to pay for a landline to your business. Enter Google Voice, a fast, free way to get a local phone number and voicemailbox for your local business. All the calls get routed to your phone, or they can go straight to voicemail if you prefer.

Here’s how to set it up. Log in to your Google Account and Google “voice.” It’ll be the first result. Click on it, and it’ll ask you if you want a new number. Hit “I want a new number.”

That takes you to a page where you get to pick your new number.

Put your zip code in where it says “Area or zip code.” Then hit “Search numbers.”

You’ll get a list of options. Pick any one. Hit Continue. Then you’ll need to enter a PIN number for your voicemail.

You’ll need to give Google your cell phone number so they can verify that you’re a real person. They’ll call you, give you a code, you’ll enter it, and then, voila.

Here you can set up your voicemail message. You can send calls straight to your voicemail if you desire. All your voicemails are transcribed. They can also be sent to your Gmail. Lots of features here. Remember to use this number consistently when setting up your profiles, and encourage everyone who mentions your business online to use this number.

Blingy phone photo by saxarocks.

Here’s a quick and dirty guide to finding the keywords your established site should target next.

Let’s say your site has been live for a year. It was optimized when it was built, but your traffic from search isn’t what you’d like it to be. Nothing has been optimized since, and you’re wondering where to start. Here’s what I’m doing for a client in that same situation.

Create an initial list

First, gather up all the keywords the site was optimized for when it was built. If you don’t have that information, just think up some words the site should probably rank for. If you have no idea, do not pass go and head straight to analytics. In analytics, get the keywords driving traffic to the site currently. If you use GA, you’ll want to head over to Traffic Sources –> Keywords and then hit Export and choose CSV.

Add Some Helpful Data

Add your keywords from analytics to your original keyword list in Excel. Then add three columns to the spreadsheet. They should be labelled Ranking, Traffic and Difficulty.

As you find the rankings for these keywords, go ahead and add which URL ranks for each keyword. You might find that the wrong URLs are ranking, which is an area of opportunity.

Sort the Keywords

Find traffic and difficulty before you do ranking. Cull the keywords with too-high traffic and too-low traffic to be worth targeting.

For the remaining keywords, find your current rankings. Cull any keywords for which you’re already ranking number one.

This should leave you with keywords that are already driving traffic, have low difficulty and high traffic. These are the keywords you should target next.

Rootin’ shooting photo by brentdanley.

This is what you want more of

Want to offer value to your Twitter followers while increasing their quantity and quality? Live tweeting a seminar or webinar provides your followers with helpful information while letting others in your niche know that your feed is a good source for high quality information about their niche, enticing them to follow you as well.

For those of you new to Twitter, live Tweeting is when you tweet about something while it happens. You can live Tweet any event, from the ill considered, like a funeral, to the fun, like your favorite tv show.

You’ll get the most value out of live tweeting if you live tweet an event related to your niche, or whatever it is you usually Tweet about. If you usually Tweet about baseball, your followers won’t get a lot of value out of your live-tweeting an SEO webinar. Similarly, the webinar attendees won’t necessarily want to follow someone who usually tweets about baseball.

Your best bet is to pick an event within your niche, attended by the type of people who could get value out of your tweets going forward, because they are exactly the kind of people you want following you.

This is how people usually live-tweet seminars and webinars. They obtain the event’s hashtag, generally supplied by the hosts. Then they Tweet the presenters’ insights with the hashtag appended. Usually it’s word-for-word or close to it.

But here’s where you can go one better. Instead of just repeating exactly what the presenters say, which is what everyone will be doing, summarize their thoughts. Make statements stronger, punchier; hyperbolize a little bit. Here’s an example of a Tweet during my last webinar that got retweeted 24 times.

The text: “Social media doesn’t just help content rank, it compels people to click through when they see their friends shared it. #mozinar”

Why did this get retweeted so much? One, the audience found it useful. Many of the people following this hashtag have social media responsibilities as part of their jobs. Social Media professionals are constantly having to justify why they should get paid to play around on Twitter. This tweet explains how social media is important, helping content to rank in search engines and achieve higher click-through rates.

The second reason this got retweeted so much is because it says a lot in a few words. The presenter probably spend a good few minutes explaining this concept. I distilled it into less than 140 characters. People love that.

Here’s my process for rewriting presenters’ ideas. First, I take notes in Word or Google Docs as I watch the presenters. I’m also following the conversation in Twitter. I like to click on the hashtag and then save the search so I can write my tweets and watch new tweets appear on the topic in the same window. When the presenter says something worth remembering, I write it in my notes. I check to see if anyone’s tweeted the thought out better than I can. If not, I copy the whole thought into Twitter and try to rewrite it to come in under 140 characters with the hashtag in there too. Here’s an example. The idea is that if you’re not the first to publish your story, Google News isn’t going to feature it and you aren’t going to get a lot of traffic from it. So if you can’t be first, it’s probably not worth your time if your goal is traffic from Google News.

People love this stuff. Remember, you don’t need to dumb it down. It’s okay if someone who knows nothing about Google News wouldn’t understand your tweet. That person isn’t your audience.

Remember to thank people as they retweet you. You might get responses like “thanks for the great tweets,” which helps attract followers. And it’s just good twetiquette.

What have I missed? Any other good tips for live tweeting events, or any other reasons to do so? Let me know in the comments.

If you weren’t able to read every important blog post related to local SEO in May 2011, that’s okay, because I’ve compiled the best here. Enjoy, and if it helps, Tweet or Share it!

First the most important thing to happen in local search in May (might have actually come in June but why make you wait a month?) The 2011 Local Search Ranking Factors is out! This is the Bible of local SEO.

Google Wonders…

An interesting message in a local results page makes David Mihm wonder whether Google is moving towards getting its data on local businesses from searchers instead of third party sites.

Regardless of the internal algorithm that determines when this prompt is going to be shown, to me, this is a clear showing of the cards as to where Google is headed. The company’s underlying mindset is to crowdsource without cost as much as it possibly can.

If David’s right, that means it will become even more important to get your customers online to interact with your local listing. Get used to communicating with them and encouraging them to find you and review you online.

Andrew Shotland reminds local business owners to get their customers to review them on a variety of sites in A Little Light Reading On Google Maps Ranking Factors. Read more about getting customer reviews in my post, which includes an e-mail template for review begging.

Friday the 20th’s SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday had some great tips for local businesses. The video began with an interesting statistic. Apparently 95% of searches on a mobile phone are for local data. I’m on an Android, and my usual behavior is to go to my Google Maps app and search for what I want, let’s say hair salons or coffee shops. I’ll click on pinpoint based first on proximity to me. Then I’ll check to see whether the listing provides me enough information to make a decision. The video seems to indicate it’s important to optimize your site for mobile visits. I disagree. I only click on a website in the local listing if the listing is incomplete. And that’s always a terrible user experience. To me, a visit to your website from a mobile phone means your local listing is failing to provide adequate information. Fix your listing, so people can go straight from your listing to your location.

Mike Blumenthal is beginning to see testimonials from small business’ websites beginning to show up in Google Places listings. To get credit for your great reviews in Google Places, you need to mark your reviews up with the hReview microformat.

Chris Silver Smith (great name!) has a super article up at Search Engine Land with 10 Unorthodox Ideas For Local Citations & Links. First he goes over what citations are and why you need them, then he gives some great, off-the-wall ideas for getting them. Solid.

This could be happening to your link juice

Got a question on a very common SEO issue from entrepreneur Drew Knapp, founder of A Greater Town. I introduced A Greater Town earlier in a post titled A Greater Town offers followed links and helps you rank locally.

The question had to do with a very common occurrence. People are used to accessing a site’s home page without anything after the .com except maybe a slash. For example, my domain name is cathyreisenwitz.com. So people expect to access my home page by typing in cathyreisenwitz.com. Likewise, they are likely to link to me using that address.

But say my actual home page lived on cathyreisenwitz.com/default.asp, or cathyreisenwitz.com/home, or cathyreisenwitz.com/global? Well, some people would navigate to my home page and grab the URL in the address bar to link to me. Others would just look at my domain name and link to me that way.

Result? Since Google sees cathyreisenwitz.com/ and cathyreisenwitz.com/default.asp as two different pages, my link juice, or authority, is split between those two pages. So I have two weak pages instead of one strong one. Bummer!

The fix is to 301 redirect from one URL to the other. It’s the same solution with the same rationale as the www-versus-non-www problem that I’ve written about previously. Pick one and go with it.

So Drew took my advice and 301 redirected http://www.agreatertown.com to http://www.agreatertown.com/global. But he still had questions.

Here’s some of the e-mail I got from Drew:

Now that we made the change you suggested [the 301], can you see any impact on http://www.agreatertown.com from the links which point to http://www.agreatertown.com/global?

It seems we have many links more pointing to the [the /global URL]:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.agreatertown.com/www.agreatertown.com%252Fglobal/a!comparison

He was concerned because it appeared the problem of split authority persisted even after the change.

What he was seeing is that existing links are still split between http://www.agreatertown.com and http://www.agreatertown.com/global. That’s going to be the case. A 301 redirect does not go onto other sites and change the URL that site links to. That’s one reason it’s important to get this SEO stuff right, especially URLs, when you build a site.

So, if you analyze a URL with a 301 redirect on it with Open Site Explorer, OSE will show links to that URL, not to the final destination URL. It will give you a warning that you’re looking up links to a 301 redirected URL, and ask you if you want to see data for the final destination URL.

The difference between what OSE shows and Google is that now with your 301 in place http://www.agreatertown.com/global gets most of the benefit of the links pointing to http://www.agreatertown.com/. It’s not a 1-to-1 authority transfer. Some is authority is lost from one URL to the other in the redirect. For that reason, again, set it up right in the beginning. But, enough is transferred to make it worth implementing the 301.

So, webmasters, don’t despair. The fact that OSE is showing that some people link to one URL and others to another doesn’t mean your 301 didn’t work.

Anyone got any more fascinating SEO questions? Let me know in the comments and you can be the next lucky winner to have your question answered in-depth in a blog post of your very own.

Photo via Travis S.

Did you know running a sweepstakes on your Facebook Fan page can get you kicked off Facebook? It’s true. Check out the guidelines:

These Promotion Guidelines, along with the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, the Ad Guidelines, the Platform Policies and all other applicable Facebook policies, govern your communicationabout or administration of any contest, competition, sweepstakes or other similar offering (each, a “promotion”) using Facebook.

Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or an app on a Page Tab.

Here’s a great article from Social Media Examiner explaining the rules: Facebook Promotions: What You Need to Know.

Basically, Facebook won’t let you run sweepstakes except within a Facebook app.

So your first step is choosing the right app provider. There are many, many options out there, varying in price and features.  Here are a few:

Here are some I looked into:

Wildfire

Plans range from $20 – $150 a month for all their apps, which includes a sweepstakes app. If you pay the $150, you can install every app on up to five Fan pages.

Here’s how their sweepstakes app works:

You need to create three custom images for the sweepstakes:

• An image telling people to fan your page to enter (if you choose to fan-gate, or require entrants to like your page to enter)
• An image with instructions on how to enter on it
• An image that says thank-you for entering

Fans enter by filling out a form provided by NorthSocial. You’ll have to decide which fields to require.

Something to note: sweepstakes and contests are not the same. Here’s how Facebook defines them:

c. By “contest” or “competition” we mean a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria).
d. By “sweepstakes” we mean a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner selected on the basis of chance.

NorthSocial does sweepstakes, not contests. If you need to run a contest, you’ll need a more sophisticated app. NorthSocial is working on a contest app, but doesn’t have one yet.

So here’s a rundown of the good and bad of using NorthSocial for your sweepstakes:

The good: The app makes you legal for cheap. It’s got the mandatory text from Facebook absolving them of liability built in, so you don’t have to worry about it. Also, the share button makes it easy for sweepstakes entrants to share the sweepstakes with their friends. Optional Fan-gating is nice. The apps are easy to install and easy to use. Their customer service is good.

The bad: There is no space for text on the app; I find this clunky. Also, the images you have to create must be 520 x 650 pixels, so no landscape orientation for you. Realize that you’re on your own with this. If you need someone to sit down with you and tell you what your Facebook page needs, this isn’t the app for you.

Overall, NorthSocial is probably the best option for brands that want to easily, legally run a sweepstakes on Facebook.

Does anyone have any other options that I’m missing? Is there anything cheaper out there that does the same thing? Let me know in the comments.

Attended one of SEOmoz‘s wonderful webinars today. Here are my favorite takeaways.

Local SEO
Sometimes lower-ranked results get more clicks than higher-ranked results in local listings. This means having a compelling listing can get you more clicks than ranking number one.

Figuring out what kind of results Google shows for your keywords tells you what local SEO tactics you need to pursue. We saw a screen shot of four different ways Google displays local results. Each display correlated to a different set of ranking criteria.

Here are two blog posts with tips on getting citations. http://www.seomoz.com/blog/google-places-citations-5-tactics-to-earn-links-for-your-local-business

http://www.seomoz.com/blog/one-deal-simple-tactic-for-better-rankings-in-google-local

To find out where YOU need to get citations, go through all your competitors’ Google Places listings to find out which sites Google is using for sources of Places info. Then get citations from those sites.
Check out your competitors’ related places (at the bottom of each Places Page). Get included in any lists they’re in together, for example, Seattle Scandinavian restaurants.

Social profiles can function as citations if you can add your address to your profile.

Blended Results
Videos often get higher CTRs than regular results.

Your image’s folder doesn’t matter like it used to. But it’s still pretty bad to have the image live on a different root domain.

Image SEO: Go crazy with keywords.

Google Shopping Results
Ranking number one for shopping results gets your image featured.

The nearby stores link is a boon for local businesses.

Other
Sites with forums can dominate SERPs through discussion results.

Brands in related searches – Google uses offline factors to establish entity associations.

Get into these brand results through large-scale offline brand building.
Co-citations help establish “similar-to” results.

Getting Google to suggest your brand name in search suggest is a must for established brands.

Google Suggest is virtuous cycle, getting suggested dramatically increases your number of queries.

Social Media and SEO
Social media doesn’t just help content rank, it compels people to click through when they see their friends shared it.

All your Quora followers see your My Social Circle results. Get followers by including images/graphs in answers.

Ranking in Google News
Google News: Take a different angle to gain a separate result.

Google News: Optimized headlines are essential.

Google News: Be first on the scene or go home.

Who knew duplicate content could be so cute?

Had my good friend and talented web designer Jean Campbell ask me a question today about the duplicate content on her newest WordPress site.

Here’s the question:

I’m stealing content I wrote on ‘spread good stuff‘ until I get [my new site] built out and get a schedule going to produce new, exclusively yoga content for the ‘yoga blog’. Is this a bad thing? I can take it down off the spreadgoodstuff blog if I need to.

That’s a great question because I think it could be a bad thing if done wrong. Let’s say Google crawled her new site and found all the content to be exactly the same as the content on her older site. That would make her new site look essentially like a scraper site. Google could penalize her new domain for spammy behavior before Jean ever gets the chance to upload the unique content.

To avoid this potential problem, all Jean needs to do is make sure “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors” is selected in her privacy settings. (I guess this setting keeps out the abnormal visitors, haha.)

screenshot-of-wordpress-privacy-settings

This helps prevent Google from walking in on her site before it’s got its original content on and getting the wrong idea about what kind of site it is.

Anyone else got any questions like this? Let me know in the comments and I’ll write a post about the interesting ones.

Photo via the talented Donald Macleod.

Reviews are essential for ranking in local search results. Plus, they help convince searchers to choose your business. Google ranks local businesses with reviews higher than those without because

• Listings with reviews are more likely to be accurate than a listing without reviews. A customer is less likely to leave a review on a listing that contains inaccurate information. So reviews bolster trust.
• Listings with reviews are more helpful to users than listings without them.
• Recent reviews ensure the business still exists. Why would a customer bother to review a business that no longer exists?

But how do you get reviews? Your approach should be two pronged. First, when a customer transaction is complete, send the customer an e-mail asking for a review. Make sure the e-mail has links to online profiles (like your Google Local Listing, your Yelp.com profile, etc.) where they can leave their review of your business.

Here’s a template.

Dear (customer’s name),

Thank you for choosing to do business with me. (If you want a better response rate, specify what service you performed or product you sold). It would really help me tremendously if you would take a few seconds to write a short review of your experience.

Here are a few places you can leave a review:

(Your company’s) Yelp profile:
(Your company’s) Google page:
Any other listings you have out there

Thanks again,

(your name)

You should also include those links on your site, so people who lost/deleted your e-mail can still find them.

You could also consider handing out cards to your customers as they leave your store/office asking them to review you. Include a link to the page on your site where the links reside.

Here’s another great resource for learning more about how to get reviews: Getting Your Business Reviewed.