Comments on: Local Search Engine Optimization for The Sam’s Club Crowd with Barnacle SEO

By: The Pros and Cons of Google Place Pages

The Pros and Cons of Google Place Pages — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:43:10 +0000

[...] listings, it would seem wise to use them to “leverage advanced image and video tagging, push Barnacle SEO to a new level and leverage the heck out of them” to claim a bigger slice of the local search [...]

By: Barnacle SEO Hits The Big Time

Barnacle SEO Hits The Big Time — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:40:45 +0000

[...] this post I argue that with a judicious application of Barnacle SEO The Haunting of Molly Hartley [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:06:33 +0000

Might want to add Matchpoint.com to your list of directories to visit as businesses can get a free profile page as well as a lot of SEO tools to help them drive traffic and ranking.

By: Manny

Manny — Tue, 26 May 2009 01:42:44 +0000

Nice .Very good .Barnacle is a good term than parasite.

By: Tim Coleman

Tim Coleman — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:15:51 +0000

Barnacle SEO is now my new term for this is as well… it is so much nicer than parasite. So, when I explain this concept it doesn’t sound so bad.

These sites wouldn’t rank without using the listing information from small businesses so I ask; Who is the parasite?

By: Will Scott

Will Scott — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:42:47 +0000

Thanks Don!

Now all we need is a Wiki entry

Will

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:39:39 +0000

Good post Will.

I see you’re using keywords/phrases in the business names (”Property Damage Rhode Island - Puroclean” and “Accounting Firm Louisiana - ASU LLC”).

I’ve seen this working well for many businesses, but believe it is only a matter of time before places like Google Maps, Yahoo! Local ,etc. stop using keywords in the business name as a ranking signal - it’s too easy to game.

Also, do you run the risk of sending mixed signals to the search engines when you use keywords in the business name. For instance, if Puroclean has a listing in the print yellowpages, it probably has them listed as “Puroclean” - not “Property Damage Rhode Island - Puroclean”. So then you have a listing in G Maps (et al) that you change to include the keywords. But Google still sees the listing from yellow pages (or maybe it’s getting the listing from InfoUSA, Axciom, etc.) that just lists the business name - sans keywords.

Do you think G Maps would end up with duplicate listings? Would they conflate the records? As we all know, G Maps isn’t exactly bug free, so who knows what could happen.

Personally, I have stopped including keywords in the business name - instead I focus my efforts on increasing citations. But it is interesting that using keywords in the business names on places like Merchant Circle, Superpages, etc. that those listings come to the top in organic. But for me, I’d rather focus on having my clients’ websites outrank their Merchant Circle profiles page.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the potential complications of using keywords in the business name.

By: Don Campbell

Don Campbell — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:48:17 +0000

Another classic Will!

You had me laughing me head off - I love the term “Barnacle SEO.” We’ll all be using that term for a long time…

But seriously I appreciate the concrete examples in here. Great post.