Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

So I’ve been asked recently, “Hey Jeff, when I search for something chicago, it comes up with a map of Chicago with local businesses pinpointed on there. How do I get on there?”

Well, if you have a business, you can easily add yourself to Google’s local business center. It only takes a few minutes and they will mail you a postcard to verify your address or give you a call. I’ve set up a number of business in Google local, and never had the opportunity for verification via a phone call. This is the legitimate way of setting yourself up.

The “other” version of setting this up is via a PO box. So say, you have “Tony’s IT Consulting” and the nature of your business is distributed. You probably only have one office in one city, but technically you can work in any city since you either do everything over the web or you will fly to that location if business requires. For example: Tony has an office in Cleveland, but the clients he wants to obtain are in El Paso. Just follow these easy steps to show up in Google local results, sans local office:

1. Decide what markets you want to be in. (i.e. El Paso)
2. Search Google maps for the city center of El Paso.
3. Then search for the closest UPS, FedEx, or other business which offers PO Box service.
4. This is the hard part: Fly, drive, or train to that city, since the only way to set up a PO box at these offices is to get one in person, usually with two forms of ID.
5. Have your mail forwarded to your Cleveland office.
6. Set up a Google local business in El Paso, the mail is forwarded to your Cleveland office, and Voila!
7. You now have a Google local business listing in El Paso, when your office is in Cleveland.

This is right on the razor’s edge of Google’s terms of service, so proceed at your own discretion.

10 year old Silicon Valley Startup: 1
110 year old Detroit Auto Industry: 0

Well at least somebody is concerned with getting the electric vehicle off the ground. In a recent post on Google’s blog, they have been partnering with a few other silicon valley startups to get electric vehicles into the mainstream faster than the US auto industry seems to want to do:

We’ve been working with Google engineers and Hymotion/A123Systems to build a small fleet of plug-in hybrids, adding an external plug and additional batteries to a regular hybrid car so that it runs on electricity with gasoline (or even better, biofuels) to extend the driving range for longer trips.

Be still my nerdy heart. And with Congress finally getting into high gear, we may actually be making some progress towards oil independence, maybe, sort of, kind of.

Well, you have to start somewhere, and as my Digg traffic told me, consumers are definitely excited for a car that can deliver both fuel economy, practicality, and eco-friendliness.

Does anyone know the answer to this? I’ve been an avid Pandora listener since day 1 and wondered when they would either go to:

1. A subscription model
2. Have audio ads between songs similar to regular commercial radio.

Thankfully, Pandora is the best thing since the last best thing and hasn’t done either of those. I have to wonder though, are those ad placements around the audio player turning the kind of profits they would hope? I mean, my typical user experience is to launch the player, go to a new tab or window, and forget about the Pandora interface all together. The only time I return is usually to vote a song up or down and then move back to what I was doing. I guess the advertisers can hope that my brief interaction is enough to hook me.

Where I think they are definitely making their money is via referral fees from iTunes or Amazon where people buy music. I know that I often hear a great song, hop over to Pandora, and ad it to my Amazon wish list for a later date. So it’s not an immediate revenue stream for either Pandora or Amazon, but a postponed one.

Any others with similar experiences and/or interactions?

WARNING: SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION AHEAD!

Well, I was approached the other day by the Arts and Business Council of Chicago to speak at their July 10th conference on Blogs and Online Communities:

Blogs and Online Communities
Tuesday, July 10th at 10:00 AM
The launch of ChicagoClassicalMusic.org through A&BC’s E-Commerce Incubator marked the beginning of a continuing effort to explore and develop online communities. Learn from experts how online communities and blogs are developed and executed. Hear how they integrate and track with your marketing and communication efforts, and how they can be used to engage arts enthusiasts of all ages and interests.

Asked what I would like to present, I said “Let’s set up a blog in five minutes. Live!” So that’s what I’ll be doing. Setting up a blog at a property I registered just for this event: NorthsideArtist.com. I’m going to set up a shell of a website with a placeholder for “blog” and then install Wordpress, set up an administrator, apply a theme to the site, and make a post in around 5 minutes. This can only truly be done with the ease of installation of Wordpress and the readily available themes due to its fanatical open source development community.

The audience is primarily artists and non-profits in the Chicago area who are interested in getting involved in online communities, blogging, and all things Web 2.0, but anyone who is interested is welcome in attending.

Here’s another post about it:

Blogs and Online Communities Announced
Registration Form

Wish me luck! I’ll post any interesting happenings afterward here.

Yahoo announced today that Terry Semel will be stepping down as CEO:

Yahoo Inc. Chairman Terry Semel stepped down as chief executive in a surprise move Monday, ending his increasingly ineffectual pursuit of online search leader Google Inc. — a losing battle that had demoralized Yahoo’s shareholders and employees.

I couldn’t say it better myself. Semel has had one failure after another, believing that content will save Yahoo with their newly revamped mission statement earlier this year and the Panama engine redesign. I don’t mean to be harsh on the guy, as I’m sure he did many things to try and turn Yahoo around, but when you consistently lose money quarter after quarter why is he the highest compensated CEO in the country? This is another Enron in the waiting.
If Google is paying attention, now is the time to pounce on Yahoo and buy them out. I’m sure Microsoft is counting the pennies right now. If Google could purchase the content and application network that is Yahoo, which actually has a lot of great web properties (Flickr, Upcoming.org, Yahoo Answers, etc.) and the ad network, they could pretty much write Microsoft’s obituary in terms of online presence. It would definitely save Google from trying to build everything from the ground up, which I believe they are inclined to do anyway, but why make it any harder? Of course, there’s the pesky SEC that could block such a merger, but they seem to be all about huge mergers lately and I don’t think they would even bat an eye.