alldaypa - Profile

Get yourself a Google Places page, it's free. And take the above advice. Also, take a look at the Google adwords tool to ensure there is some search volume around the keywords you are looking to market your website for.

You could run an adwords campaign and target Iran.

With so much information out there regarding SEO from penguins to the latest tools and things that are guaranteed to work, what sources do you trust the most and why? We've taken on board a lot here with regards to SEO but it only seems to take a minute to find something that contradicts the latest thing we've learned. Resources we've been recommended to use are SEO MOZ, SEO by the sea and we've been encouraged to be active in Google + communities. Tools range from the SEO Moz tools to monitor back link profiles and SEO Majestic for latest developments and tools too. Anyone else add to this?

Anyone spoke to you about Product Listing Ads (PLAs)? You'll need a Google merchant account and a basic knowledge of XML, or be good at following instructions. I know of a plumbing company who rely on this method alone.

Have to agree with you on that one. SEO, as it once was is almost becoming obsolete being replaced with what Google actually wanted people to do 10 years ago. Though, the locksmith on the high street has no idea of this and will more often than not fall victim to snake oil salesmen. So, Google didn't get their own way and so are slowly beating them out of the search market. Goodho! We speak to lots of people who have fell victim to these callous SEO salesmen.

We had a similar discussion recently with a big SEO company. They coined what they said was a new phrase being bounded around the corridors of SEO - linktation. A mixture of links (they need a link budget) and citation (getting people(other sites) talking about your site). They explained that citation was important so to show your website was active and had 'real' people behind it - running it. The link that would then come shows that the website has worth.
It came across as a slight PR campaign - generating a buzz with a thought leader in the niche, or reaching out to influencers in the hope they then start to chat about you that may eventually lead to the link being acquired. And we were told 'content is king' and 'social has become queen'.
We were unsure in regards to semantic mark-up though it was stressed important going forward, especially for e-com sites relying on PLAs and reviews.
Search is certainly changing, if anything becoming less technical and leading to more transparency and quality content creation. Social complements this and with clever content that fits in well with a coordinated strategy could be the future of SEO.