The Portal is Officially Online with Every Niche Filled...

After a few delays, all the current niches are filled with "placeholders" for appropriate businesses, professionals and targeted local traffic. You can also find active listings for local businesses that are special favorites of the portal manager. If you are considering getting in on this chance to get your business in the best possible place in the Search Engine Result Pages, decide quickly. Your competition may beat you to it!

Right now there are listings available for:
Accountants
Architects
Chiropractors
Consultants
    Building
        Code
    Business
    Executive Search
    Financial
        Planning
    Forensic
    Lighting
    Zoning
Contractors
    Building
    Concrete
    Drywall
    Electrical
    Equipment
    Excavating
    General
    Heating and Air Conditioning
    Insulation
    Landscape
    Painting
    Paving
    Roofing
    Swimming Pools
    Waterproofing
Cosmetic Surgery
Dentists
    24-Hour
    Braces
    Emergency
    Endodontists
    Neuromuscular
    Orthodontists
    TMD-TMJ
Doctors
    Cardiology
    Dermatology
    Gynecologists
    OB-GYN
    Obstetrics
    Ophthalmology
    Orthopedic
    Plastic Surgery
Engineers
    Civil
    Consulting
Fences
Golf
    Courses
    Equipment
Insurance
    Adjusters
    Auto
    Aviation
    Brokers
    Business and Commercial
    Consultants
    Contractors
    Health
    Homeowners and Renters
    Life
    Marine
    Motorcycle
Lawyers
    Aviation
    Bankruptcy
    Construction
    Contracts
    Corporation
    Estate
        Planning
    Immigration
    Incorporation
    Medical Malpractice
    Real Estate
    Securities
        Fraud
    Tax
    Trusts and Wills
Mortgages
Physical Therapy
Plumbers
Podiatrists
Real Estate
    Appraisers
    Developers
    Managers
Surgeons
    Cardiac
    Maxillofacial
    Oral
    Orthopedic
    Plastic
Tree Service

Remember, there is only one first place in the search engines. These listings are available on a first come, first served basis. If it is your desire to get targeted local traffic to view your business in the best light, this is the place!

A Local Scranton Directory of Businesses and Professionals that's Actually Local: The Scranton Portal

The "Local" Scranton business directory that pops up in the search engine results when you search for a Scranton business or professional is usually put up by a big advertiser who is trying to cross promote its own paid classified listings. It's not even in the area, as a business. Whether it's a "Yellow Pages" directory, a "scraped" directory (that grabbed all its listings from the Yellow Pages) or some other generic classified site, it's usually useless. If you want to actually find out something about a local business so you can pick up the phone and call them, you're usually out of luck.

Gee, wouldn't it be great to find a local directory that's actually based here in Scranton? Even better, how about a directory that targets the specific things that people in Scranton are looking for? Say, for example, you're looking for local attractions in Scranton. You search for "Scranton Attractions" and, lo and behold, actual Scranton attractions show up in the search engines (like the Zoo at Nay Aug Park and the Houdini Museum), not just a page full of irrelevant stuff and a few lame links to yet another classified directory listing. Would that be useful?

I'm just asking...

Are You "Geo-Located" on Your Website?

You can stuff all the local keywords you want into your Web page that tell people "I'm in Scranton". That's so 20th Century. Haven't you heard of GPS?

There's a nifty tool you can use to narrow yourself down to the exact spot in your parking lot reserved for special customers or clients: Address Fix. Just go there, type in your address (don't worry, your information isn't stored or given away) and bingo! You get a map with a pointer that's very close to the right spot. Zoom in on the map, move the pointer around until it's exactly where you want it and the exact latitude and longitude for that spot is calculated and ready to go as code you can put into the [head] portion of your Web page.

Here's the location of the Scranton Portal:
[meta name="geo.position" content="41.437426; -75.658175" /]
[meta name="geo.placename" content="Scranton, PA" /]
[meta name="geo.region" content="US-PA" /]

The Scranton Front Door Portal is online!

After hunting around for a decent portal to showcase the businesses that could use it the most, it was time to DIY -- Do It Yourself. In the spirit of "don't worry, be crappy and get something up there NOW", you can see the first draft of the Scranton Front Door Portal at: Scranton Front Door Portal

This portal will be very exclusive. It will be for particular niches or sub-niches that have a top spot available in the search engine results. These particular niches typically spend heavily to promote their businesses or professions, but clearly haven't gotten their websites (if they have them) indexed for their main keywords.

Only one category is live at this point: scranton equipment rental services. Within a very short period of time, you will be able to put those four words into the search engine and see the "placeholder" page for that niche. If you are just dying to see what a plain vanilla placeholder page looks like, go to Scranton Equipment Rental Services. Thrill to the trenchant text there! Click away at the poll for readers! Imagine your own rental service with a great spot in that search engine I mentioned.

Now imagine that same spot in the results leads to your website. Through the magic of computers, a kind of call forwarding can make that happen! Best of all, once yours truly either fixes your current page to rank well in search engines or has an exclusive team of Web page builders craft a website for you that will present the right face to your prospects and clients, you'll be able to stand on your own!