What are local businesses to do?

Aggressive webmasters can take traffic away from local business names quite easily and push surfers to third parties versus their direct query.  It is a great way for an aggressive webmaster to make some extra cash, but it may cost the business money over the long haul.

Some things that businesses need to do to make sure that they do not lose a lot of local web traffic:

• Make sure you search engine directory listings have corect relevent keywords listed in them.
• Own the first page of the SERPS for their name.
• Own multiple extensions of their business name and have those indexed.

I will cover how to do each of this things in future post.  As a test of generating local search traffic I have set up a site to push offers to people looking for Tulsa Special Financing and Brunswick Car Dealers.  I will also report back on traffic stats and income levels generated from these sites.

Adding More Layers - Livejournal and Vox

Just stumbled upon something while setting up my profile at Vox.com. They allow you to cross post to Livejournal. What this means to you is that if you make a new post at Vox.com you can automatically send an excerpt to LJ.

I have not tested it out you, but I will add some screen shots here in the near future as I test out this feature. For now though you can take a look at my profile on JL (Paul Rushing on livejournal.com) and at Vox (Paul Rushing at Vox)

Also I set up a network on Ning.com as part of setting up my profile at Vox. Not real sure how I am going to use that but you can take a look at it at Paul Rushing on Ning.

Setting up another blog, again...

Sometimes you just can't do enough to get as many layers of content out there as possible. I have heard a lot of good things about Vox so I set up a blog there as well. I really do not know how I am going to be able to keep all of this stuff updated but it will be fun to try. See another one of my levels of separation visit Paul Rushing on Vox.com

Using other tools to Manage your Online Reputation

I have created an online business card for people to use as a layer of online reputation management. You can see an example at Paul Rushing's Online Business Card. Granted this particular one is not perfect. I need to get some professional photos done.

Sometimes in my quest to get as much out there about me as fast as possible I overlook some of the smaller things, like the photos. Eventually I will have the perfect online portfolio and control the entire front few pages in the search results for my name.

It is a lot of work no doubt and I am competing with some other very established Paul Rushing properties that are not related to me. Oh well the quest continues.