Local Search Medical Marijuana

The Top Marijuana Directories & Citation Sources

Andrew Shotland

CitySearch Medical CannabisYou’ve got a marijuana dispensary or related business. You want to build awareness, rank well in Google for local cannabis-related queries and you want more customers. A good place to start is making sure your business is listed on the following sites: Top U.S. Local Directories That Allow Marijuana-Related Businesses Top U.S. Local Directories That Display […]

The post The Top Marijuana Directories & Citation Sources appeared first on Local SEO Guide.

Advertising Bryan Massey Case Studies content marketing Conversion Optimisation Conversion Scientists cro design events HeroConf Marketing

Predicting the Future with CRO: Excuses and Assumptions #HEROCONF

Events State of Digital

Jasmine Aye recollects Bryan Massey’s presentation of case studies from HeroConf, discussing roadblocks prior to asking to test new elements on a site.

Post from Events State of Digital on State of Digital
Predicting the Future with CRO: Excuses and Assumptions #HEROCONF

cannabis local listings cannabis-related businesses Channel: Local data aggregators google local search Google Place Pages Google Places Google Places medical marijuana listings Infogroup Local Search Column marijuana dispensary listings Search Engine Land Uncategorized

How To Get A Medical Marijuana Dispensary Into Google Places

Andrew Shotland

I was stoked when Chris Silver Smith turned us all on to the potential issues with marijuana and local search last month. As an early dabbler in helping marijuana dispensaries figure out local SEO, I, too, think it’s high time to help marketers recognize the challenges and opportunities in…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

All Things SEO Column Channel: SEO marketer identity Search Engine Land seo identity seo industry identify crisis Uncategorized

The Marketer Identity Crisis. Where Are The SEOs?

Jenny Halasz

Online marketing is dazed and confused. Not in the “dry herbs” style, but in the deer-in-the-headlights style. Or maybe both… to each his own. To begin with, I must state that I am an old curmudgeon by online marketing standards, having been in the field for over 14 years. I identify myself…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Keyword Research WordPress WordPress Plugins

The Snippet Preview: what it means and how to use it.

Joost de Valk

Our WordPress SEO plugin has come with a snippet preview from day 1. This snippet preview mimics what the current page would look like in the search results, by our best “guesstimation”. In this post I’ll explain what the different sections are made up of, and what you can do to optimize those. I’ll also explain why the…

This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!

Channel: Consumer Google: Logos Search Engine Land Uncategorized

Dorothy Hodgkin Google Logo Marks The Nobel Prize Winning Biochemist’s 104th Birthday

Amy Gesenhues

Adding another woman to the list  Google logo honorees, today’s Google homepage recognizes the accomplishments of British biochemist Dorothy Hodgkin. The logo depicts an illustration of penicillin’s molecular structure, a discovery made by Hodgkin in 1945. While it had already been…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

creative technical

Visualising Data with Google Fusion Tables

Sophie Webb

Fusion Tables: A brief overview Fusion Tables is a free web service provided by Google that has been around since about 2009, although it’s not perhaps as widely used as other applications like Google Docs it is still a really powerful tool that can leverage some great results. The sky is definitely the limit when […]

The post Visualising Data with Google Fusion Tables appeared first on Builtvisible – A Creative Digital Agency.

crawling and indexing Google Webmaster Blog hreflang localization Uncategorized

Creating the Right Homepage for your International Users

Google Webmaster Central
If you are doing business in more than one country or targeting different languages, we recommend having separate sites or sections with specific content on each URLs targeted for individual countries or languages. For instance one page for US and english-speaking visitors, and a different page for France and french-speaking users. While we have information on handling multi-regional and multilingual sites, the homepage can be a bit special. This post will help you create the right homepage on your website to serve the appropriate content to users depending on their language and location.

There are three ways to configure your homepage / landing page when your users access it:

  • Show everyone the same content.
  • Let users choose.
  • Serve content depending on users’ localization and language.
Let’s have a look at each in detail.

Show users worldwide the same content 

In this scenario, you decide to serve specific content for one given country and language on your homepage / generic URL (http://www.example.com). This content will be available to anyone who accesses that URL directly in their browser or those who search for that URL specifically. As mentioned above, all country & language versions should also be accessible on their own unique URLs.

Note: You can show a banner on your page to suggest a more appropriate version to users from other locations or with different language settings.

Let users choose which local version and which language they want 

In this configuration, you decide to serve a country selector page on your homepage / generic URL and to let users choose which content they want to see depending on country and language. All users who type in that URL can access the same page.
If you implement this scenario on your international site, remember to use the x-default rel-alternate-hreflang annotation for the country selector page, which was specifically created for these kinds of pages. The x-default value helps us recognize pages that are not specific to one language or region.

Automatically redirect users or dynamically serve the appropriate HTML content depending on users’ location and language settings

A third scenario would be to automatically serve the appropriate HTML content to your users depending on their location and language settings. You will either do that by using server-side 302 redirects or by dynamically serving the right HTML content.
Remember to use x-default rel-alternate-hreflang annotation on the homepage / generic page even if the latter is a redirect page that is not accessible directly for users.
Note: Think about redirecting users for whom you do not have a specific version. For instance, French-speaking users on a website that has English, Spanish and Chinese versions. Show them the content that you consider the most appropriate.
Whatever configuration you decide to go with, you should make sure all the pages – including country and language selector pages:
  • Have rel-alternate-hreflang annotations.
  • Are accessible for Googlebot’s crawling and indexing: do not block the crawling or indexing of your localized pages.
  • Always allow users to switch local version or language: you can do that using a drop down menu for instance.
Reminder: As mentioned in the beginning, remember that you must have separate URLs for each country and language version. 

About rel-alternate-hreflang annotations

Remember to annotate all your pages – whatever method you choose. This will greatly help search engines to show the right results to your users.
Country selector pages and redirecting or dynamically serving homepages should all use the x-default hreflang, which was specifically designed for auto-redirecting homepages and country selectors. 
Finally, here are a few useful reminders about rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in general:
  • Your annotations must be confirmed from the other pages. If page A links to page B, page B must link back to page A, otherwise, your annotations may not be interpreted correctly.
  • Your annotations should be self-referential. Page A should use rel-alternate-hreflang annotation linking to itself.
  • You can specify the rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in the HTTP header, in the head section of the HTML, or in a sitemap file. We strongly recommend that you choose only one way to implement the annotations, in order to avoid inconsistent signals and errors.
  • The value of the hreflang attribute must be in ISO 639-1 format for the language, and in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format for the region. Specifying only the region is not supported. If you wish to configure your site only for a country, use the geotargeting feature in Webmaster Tools. 
Following these recommendations will help us better understand your localized content and serve more relevant results to your users in our search results. As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please tell us in the internationalization Webmaster Help Forum.
Posted by Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analysts.