WARNING-THIS VIDEO IS BREAKING THE RULES, ADDING YOUR BUSINESS TO GOOGLEMAPS

Bob,

You're not breaking the rules per se, but you are giving away an unknown secret that many charge for. As to the feedback, it via the eye of the beholder - but sometimes...

When I was in Guadalajara with my then friend, she had been paying $300 to have a form translated from Spanish to English and back. When I walked into the Export office, I spotted the form she mentioned on table. It had Spanish on the side up. When I turned it over, the form on the other side was in English. I showed this to her, and she gave me a hug and a kiss. I did not make her contact happy, but I felt no regrets.

Excellent video demo.

You are correct on one point, there is some rule breaking going on. You advocate creating listings in other towns and using a keyword rich phrase instead of your company name and a single listing.

Google is starting to crack down on this behavior. What you are suggesting, while it makes sense and does work is gaming the system (some folks might call this black hat optimization).

Google does not like people who game the system and the penalties can be severe, such as all of your listings being deleted!

As far as doing it yourself versus paying for it, well that's how an economy works! I can wash my own car, I can paint my own house, and many other things on my own. Yet, I pay to have them done because someone else can do it better than I can.

I've seen plenty of people do their own local business listing and in most every instance they do a lousy job.

Richard G. hit the nail on the head. Yes, I, like Richard, "actually charge you money for this" (doing local search optimization). In fact, my Biznik special offer is to do just that: get your business "found" locally. Have I had any clients complain? None that I know of. Most say things like: "I never would have gotten around to it!" "My time is worth a lot more than this cost, and I know it would have taken me a lot more time than I have!" and "I got several thousand dollars worth of business in the first week, directly off your Google/Yahoo/Bing/ etc. etc. local search work".

What I typically invite potential clients to do is: figure out how long it's going to take them to watch and follow your video or something similar, follow all the steps to post in Google Maps verify the information, then post not only on Google, but also on Yahoo, Bing, Yelp and other local search sites.

Got that figure -- how long it took? Multiply the hours by how much your hourly rate is in your business.

If my fee for local search optimization is 50% or more than that total, you could do it yourself. If it's less ... it's not good time/money management.

And, as Rich G. said, most people doing it themselves do a lousy job.

And that's why they pay for me to do local search optimization for them, and appreciate the service.

Oh, the other reason people hire local search optimization experts like Richard and me? We specialize ... which makes us (generally) faster, more effective, and more accurate.

For example, I checked out your website. Design is good, but the words could use a lot of help... which I won't go into (that's what people pay me for :-D)

However, you may want to fix a couple of items in the first paragraph: "Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Newark, New Jersey, (NJ & NY website design) Bobson Consulting Corp is a technology solutions company who's focus is helping clients levarage the power of technology and the internet to maximize growth and profitability."

Do you see the typo?

Do you see the other one?

Dave Kuhns, local search optimization / web content consultant, writer and editor

http://www.cyranowriter.com

oops. something happened when posting the first one ... I didn't know a double dash in Biznik would bold a line. :-D

BTW I had that complaint and delete happen in Craigslist. I put my ad in local cities too close by Craigslist's definition and got deleted. I am not surprised that Google has done the same thing.

David Kuhns is right that is all about the value to the client. Too many hours and hassles from Google from over doing it doesn't make good sense for the do it yourself mode.

Craigslist does not delete ads unless they are duplicates. One ad in one city, period. If you want duplicates you need to chage titles and description so they don't look the same (then they are not duplicates).

Users delete ads because they violate the terms and conditions of Craigslist, or because they simply don't like them (affiliate ad, improper category, etc.).

I'd like to see comments,not a length self promotion or advertising..it's a waste of others time.

thanks jack

Point taken, Jack. The comment is this: I thought Biznik was a place to support each other in our work, not a place to say:

"Oh, you can do your own local search/Google Maps, can you believe people charge for this?" "Oh, you can take your own wedding photos. Can you believe people charge for this?!?"

"Oh, you can make your own desserts. Can you believe people charge for this?" etc.

My point in my earlier comment was not self-promotion nor advertising. It was to point out the ways that doing-it-yourself is not time, resource or results effective.

I suppose, when I get right down to it, I'm not pleased that someone on Biznik says "Oh, you don't need that service. Do it yourself." Because we all probably could do everything ourselves. But just because we could, doesn't mean we should.

Dave Kuhns, web content and marketing writer, local search and SEO consultant http://www.cyranowriter.com cyrano@cyranowriter.com

PS: Bobson still hasn't fixed the two typos in his website's first paragraph.