SEO Expert, Anthony Yap

While PageRank is not as important as it used to be, it does play a minor role in establishing a site’s rankings - especially if you want to rank well on Google. PageRank does affect spider crawl frequency.

An interesting PageRank tool at www.webmastereyes.com lets a user enter a URL and returns graphical PR bars on all the links on that page. With this tool, users can check the PageRank of pages linked to on any single page quickly and easily.

If you operate a brick and mortar business, here’s another great way to target local clients in one or more areas you serve.

Currently in beta like most of their offerings are, Google launches Local Business Ads.

The service is available for small or big brick and mortar businesses in the US, Canada and UK. These local business ads integrate mapping, text and search offerings from Google

Whenever a user enters a query that matches advertisers’ chosen keywords and business information, up to three local business ads may appear as “Sponsored Links” below the user’s Google Local search results. The ads display in two parts: a highlighted listing in the search results column and a map marker that expands to show additional business details when the user clicks on the ad title or the marker itself.

The highlighted listing consists of your business name, two description lines, your URL, and your business address, all of which is gathered from Google Local’s business listings.

The info window that expands from the map marker displays an optional phone number and image, along with the standard business information.

Finally, a text-only version of each local business ad automatically runs on Google.com and other sites in our search network. The text version has the same ad text and display URL as the enhanced ad on Google Local. A fifth line of text shows lists city (and state, if applicable). The text-only version of your ad is ranked and priced just like any other text ad running on Google.

Get the step-by-step instructions with screenshots on how to add your local business ads to Adwords here.

Too often, I deal with prospective clients who are looking to optimize their site and rank in the top 10. While this is a worthwhile goal, I emphasize to clients that it is important to consider marketing strategy as a whole and not in a vacuum.

I refer to this as looking from the perspective of a bird. From the bird’s eye point of view, it can see everything happening around it below. Few activities conducted below escape its attention. This is how you must approach your marketing as well. You must consider how each activity complements the overall strategy of what you wish to achieve - a sale.

In a recent study done between November and December 2005 by ComScore, they found that more than half of the consumers’ online holiday buying actually occured in subsequent internet sessions and not during the first visit.

What does this mean to you?

Being number one means little if they don’t come back. They may shop at ten different stores and yours doesn’t stand out from the crowd. This can be through a memorable domain name, searching/browsing experience, user-friendliness, etc. It also means that your site better be easy to navigate. Visitors must be able to find what they are looking for and not have to hunt high and low for the item they are interested in. Remember, it is as easy as a click away from your site.

What follow-up system do you have? Knowing that more visitors don’t buy the first time around, what do you do to make them come back? What incentives do you offer?

You’ll notice that I give no direct answers. Rather than give you answers, I like to “draw-out” the answers. By pondering on these ideas, you should develop a more comprehensive strategy to combat the information overload many of your visitors face.

Here are collection of ideas to consider:

I can guarantee that if you put at least one of these ideas in action, you’ll see great results. When you do, feel free to let me know.