Have a Cracking Christmas!

No, there's not a Nick Parks character in sight. This is a reference to the Crack On! Christmas Food Appeal.

Crack On! are planning to feed 500 people this Christmas in and around Bury St Edmunds and need donations and volunteers to assemble parcels for 23rd December.

Mark and Gary have made a great start and already have storage donated by Home Store and a growing band of volunteers - and a growing mountain of packets, jars and tins - but of course they need much, much more.

More details about how you can help the Crack On! Christmas Food Appeal are on the Crack On! website.

Roy

Very Special Offer - Massive 880,000 List for Sale

Here's an offer we don't get to make every day.

We've managed to secure a very special deal on a massive 880,000+ list of British businesses, with contact details, ideal for email marketing, telesales or direct mail (about 50% have full postal addresses - that's still 440,000 addresses!).

We've set up a special page with more details of this massive B2B list here.

Or you can email the list brokers directly at info@webshotlocalbusiness.co.uk

The price will astound you - just £199 for over 880,000 names!

Roy

A Very Special and Exclusive Website Offer

If you have a website that’s ‘killing it’ in the search engine results and bringing you lots of customers or clients, you can save yourself some time and stop reading now.

If you don’t have a successful, profit-making website yet, please read on…

We recently made a very generous offer to a few select firms in and around Bury St Edmunds and it occurred to me this afternoon that there was no reason we shouldn’t make the same exclusive offer to you!

This is the offer:

A brand-new website, optimised for best search engine rankings, and all yours for a whole year, for just £1950.

That includes hosting and domain rental (the website address), design, and even search engine optimisation.

It also includes exclusivity for your business in your area.

Because we’ve included SEO we’ll also do your essential keyword research and we’ll secure you the best available domain URL (web address) for your best keyword.

To sum up: you'll have a website that will do well in the search results and should bring you more clients and pay for itself in no time, for less than two thousand pounds for a whole year.

For best results we recommend you have this new site in addition to your existing website, so that you boost the results from that website too, or you can use your new site as your main one.

At the end of the first year you can keep the site ‘live’ for another year for just £950, and we’ll guarantee that annual fee for the following year, too.

Alternatively, you can choose to own your website and address outright for less than four years' rent by paying just £4750.

It's a pretty simple offer, but as the ad says, 'Life doesn't have to be complicated'!

Email me for more information.

Roy

Google Places' Latest Guidelines

Google Places has seen some 'interesting' changes lately, as you'll see from previous posts. So here, for your information and straight from the horse's mouth, are Google's latest guidelines (read 'rules') for Google Places:

Your Google Places Account
Ownership: Only business owners or authorized representatives may verify their business listings on Google Places.

Account Email Address: Use a shared business email account, if multiple users will be updating your business listing. If possible, use an email account under your business domain. For example, if your business website is www.google.com, a matching email address would be you@google.com.

Your Business Listing
Business Name: Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world.

Do not include marketing taglines in your business name.
Do not include phone numbers or URLs in the business name field, unless they are part of your business name.
Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business in the business name field.

Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.

Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed.
Use the precise address for the business in place of broad city names or cross-streets.
Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.
Businesses that operate in a service area, as opposed to a single location, should not create a listing for every city they service. Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas. Learn how to add service areas to your listing.
Businesses with multiple specializations, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties. You may create one listing per practitioner, and one listing for the office.
Do not include information in address lines that does not pertain your business’s physical location (e.g. URLs, keywords).

Website & Phone: Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.

Use a local phone number instead of a call center number whenever possible.
Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or “refer” users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business.

Categories: Provide at least one category from the suggestions provided in the form as you type. Aim for categories that are specific, but brief.

Categories should say what your business is (e.g. Hospital), not on what it does (e.g. Vaccinations) or things it sells (e.g. Sony products or printer paper). This information can be added in your description or as custom attributes.
Categories should not contain location-based information (for example, Dog Walker Los Angeles is not permitted).
Only one category is permitted per entry field. Do not “stuff” entry fields with multiple categories.

Custom Attributes & Description: Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. Learn more about acceptable custom attributes.

Other Items of Note
Ineligible Business Models: Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing.
Businesses that are under construction or that have not yet opened to the public are not eligible for a listing on Google Places.
Rental properties, such as vacation homes or vacant apartments, are not eligible for a listing on Google Places. Create a listing for the central office that processes the rentals, rather than the individual rental properties. If you'd like, you can then add your real estate properties to Google Maps so that they are available on our Real Estate layer.

Disclaimer: Google reserves the right to suspend access to Google Places or other Google Services to individuals or businesses that violate these guidelines, and may work with law enforcement in the event that the violation is unlawful.

So there you have it. The guidelines aren't actually that complex or difficult to comply with, but we are getting reports of people adjusting their listings to meet the new guidelines and being penalised as a result - listings are being demoted or are disappearing altogether.

I suggest you stick rigidly to the new guidelines for any new listings you create (and use a new account for each listing). Meanwhile, you might want to watch and wait as we are with any existing listings - I'll let you know how that works out!

Roy

PS. There's more about Google Places Anomalies on our Marketing Manual Blog