In this post I wanted to share some examples and discuss some optimisation techniques. The really simple implementations seem to work best with many approaches revolving around becoming a mayor. For example bars in America are offering free drinks to the mayor. It’s simple but effective as it gives many people a reason to revisit the bar.

Reviews

Some businesses have been using Foursquare to gain customer feedback. This approach can be extremely effective for businesses such as restaurants and makes use of the ‘to do’ list function on business profile pages. You will often see a task in a ‘to do’ list saying ‘share your feedback’. The information gathered from this could be potentially very valuable. It may highlight weaknesses or give you an insight into what your customers want. I have not seen any great implementations of this as of yet but if you come across any please do share them with us.

The Points System

Foursquare makes use of a point system where users are awarded points for checking in to different locations. Some businesses have been encouraging users to achieve certain scores. For each point they obtain a monetary value is assigned. At the end of the campaign run by the business the proceeds will be given to charity. This would appeal to users as they feel they are doing a good deed and enhance the company’s reputation.

Big Brands Using Four Square

Some of the world’s largest brands have been tripping over themselves to get in on the Fouraquare action. Some of the big players include:
HBO
Pepsi
Metro News

Local Search and Foursquare

Local search has become big business and anyone in SEO will know the value of it. At Think Visibility (which we attended last weekend) Tom Critchlow gave a great talk on local search. He highlighted the importance of getting a good number of citations and reviews. There are many places in which you can do this and Foursquare profile pages could be a possible location. The profile pages get indexed and you can list your address in the correct format on there. I have not had chance to test the value of it but it’s worth having there from a business stand point.

At PushON we have started implementing Foursquare profiles for some of our clients which include an umbrella company, a shoe retailer and much more.

Don’t forget to take a look at our profile page and if you come to visit check in with us. Our page can be found below.
PushON Foursquare

It has been unclear as to why Google as taken so long to release the feature as its been one of the most requested by SEO’s in recent years. Up until this point we have had to make do with alternatives such as GA Notes. GA Notes is a plugin for Firefox and in fairness does an ok job. The main drawback to it however is that you can’t view the notes on multiple computers. So for example if you add some notes at home you are not then able to see them at work.

It’s clear that Google has taken this issue into consideration when developing there version as they provide this functionality. Anyone with access to an account can add notes and they can be made either private or public. This is ideal as sometimes you wont want to share certain things with clients however its great that they will be able to see when key changes are made.

Google analytics annotations is also going to be a feature that will greatly appeal to large corporations. More and more big corporations are using Google analytics but with so many different departments workings on a site it can be difficult to track things. Annotations will allow people in different departments to see when different things occured and how they effected the site. It will acts as a type of central repository.

Anyway instead of me banging on about it i will leave it to the guys at Google to explain it in this hand video.

Ok so to get started you will need to login to analytics and click on the visitors option in the menu and select hostnames. This will display a list of all the urls including non WWW ones and how many visits have been made to each one. Hopefully the non www one won’t be to high.

Now er need to go a little deeper to find the links themselves. You will need to click on the non www version link and then once the new page has loaded click on the referral option in the advanced segment drop down. Finally you will need to select source in the dimension drop down. All the urls will then be displayed.

As you can see they are pretty quick and easy to find and can be a really useful tool in your seo campaign.

The problems presented by Adwords are set to be removed by Google’s new Local Listing Ads. The name pretty much implies what it is. Essentially they are geographically targeted lisings which show above map listings which show above map listings in search. These ads are unlike Adwords in the fact that they just display the business name, url and contact details. The screenshot below gives you an idea of how they look.

Local listing ads will be charged at a flat rate starting at £20 a month. Businesses who want to use the new system must be in Google Local Business listings and the trial is currently only available in San Francisco and San Diego. The service also offers full tracking and if your business has a unique online number it can track that to.

I personally think the idea will be very attractive to small businesses as it requires no maintenance. It can also be setup very easily and show provide better coverage than sites such as Yell. I also think it will be interesting to see how well it works in the UK (if rolled out here). At PushON we tried a similar system offered by Yahoo and found the results fairly disappointing.

As always Google have put together a nice little video about the service which you can see below.

http://www.k3scs.com/the-factory

For us this episode is going to be particularly challenging as we have to come up with some new angles to help generate new interest. The Factory story is no longer new but we have come up with a top secret idea which we think will bring some new fans to the series. Once we have put it in to operation we may share it with you guys in a blog post.

We hope you like the new video and that you will join in with some social media voting.
Thanks

Photo By fotographix.ca

Below I have listed some of my favourite tools but you can find a more extensive Flickr tools list here.

Flump – This simple application lets you download all of the public photos for specific accounts. I find it useful for when transferring files from computer to computer. Also many people are now uploading photos directly from their mobiles. This app means that users can have a backup of images on their home computers.

FlickrSlidr – I quite often suggest to clients that they upload their photos to Flickr. It can be a great place to generate traffic and provides a central location for clients to keep photos. Although its great to keep images on Flickr I will often need to embed them on a site in some way. FlickrSlidr provides a nice clean way to present these images on their sites.

Flickr Flash Badge Widget – There are literally dozens of Flickr Wordpress plugins but this is the best one I have found. It has some great effects options and lets you easily select how many thumbnails you want to display with what size they are. I have used it on several blogs and not had any problems with it so far.

Travelr – I have not found any places to use this commercially yet but its certainly fun. Travelr displays your photo’s geographically on a world map. The fact that you don’t have to supply the co-ordinates makes this app a winner in my book.

1001 – As a MAC boy I’m always on the look out for tools that will make my life easier and 1001 is certainly one such app. With 1001 you no longer have to log on to the Flickr site to upload photos. This desktop tool lets you quickly upload photos straight from this background application. It also notifies you when a friend adds an image or a new image is added to a group you’re a member of.

These are some of the most useful tools I have come across but if you have any other suggestions then leave a comment below.

The first one I came across (that I actually noticed) was on the Prototype website. Now, I love video games and spend many hours each month watching trailers and getting excited. What Activision have done is personalised the trailer watching experience by making you feature in a starring role in the trailer. The site pulls in data including photos from your profile and uses it in an interactive way. It’s probably the best implementation I have seen, good work guys.

This morning I got an email from the company I booked my holiday from telling me how they have also launched a Google Connect feature on there site. It’s not necessarily the most exciting implementation of Facebook Connect but I can see it adding a great deal of value to the site. This is because many of the people on this site are travelling on the trips alone. I should probably explain that this company offers group holidays for collective individuals or groups of friends and families. The value will be added by the fact that people can directly ask for reviews from people who have been on the trips. They can also talk to people who are planning on going on the same trip. I love the idea and can’t wait to use it myself.

Other interesting uses include EventBee which was designed to pulicize events and Beware Of The Doghouse for retailer JCPenney. I’m certainly look forward to seeing more uses of platform and will hopefully get to use it on one of my own projects in time.

If you have come across any other cool examples let us know by leaving a comment below.

Although there are many factors that influence where your website will be ranked in the SERP some factors are more important than others. After taking a look at Bing for a few days now and carrying out some analysis it has become apparent that Bing uses a very different algorithm to Google. A good example that shows this clearly is searching for SEO Manchester in both Google and Bing.

The two SERPs looks very different, only one of the top ten results are the same and many big SEO agencies in Manchester are missing from the Bing SERP. You’ll also notice that the Bing Local Listings are not very competitive at all with only one agency being listed.

So which factors should you focus on to rank well in Bing?

• A mixture of inbound links including a good number with good keyword rich anchor text (see this great article on Link Building Secrets by Patrick Atloft).
• Make sure you write keyword rich, unique meta data which is also human readable.

If you have any other ideas on which factors are most important to rank in Bing please leave a comment and let us know!

Here is an example of organic local listings for a Bing search in Manchester:

As you can see there is little competition for Bing Local Listings at the moment and the results are not great, one nightclub, a cafe and a strip club…

Google suggest has been around in the US and UK for sometime now and slowly yet surely also in other European countries and provides searchers with suggestions relating to what they have typed in to the search box. The new setup is slowly being rolled out in the US and should feature in the UK in the coming months.

At first I was a little baffled by the decision however Google has been smart in its approach as it recognises that the completion of what you are typing could directly apply to an advert. This is course falls in line with Google’s strong belief in delivering relevant results for its users.

As you can see from the Image the paid result does not interfere heavily with the main suggestions and is put in a clear and easy to use format. It will be interesting to see what the click through rates will be like.