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I think you would be well advised to proceed with caution here, especially if your site is already making "very good money" from adsense.  You say your site is not a directory at all, but then say you have State pages that lists vendors and are considering adding a paid option for these vendors... well, without knowing anything more about your site, it sounds a lot like a directory to me. I would set all as nofollow just to cover yourself because the last thing you want is to take a hit from Google and lose all that very good money from adsense!

Hey Prime85-

With regards to your question, I have found that the more information you provide on a blog subject the better. However, that does not mean that every blog post needs to be super long. It's good that your focusing on creating unique, fresh content for your blog. I can imagine it's difficult to really get a cult following from a blog on storage bins but providing relavent information and addressing consumer and commercial storage concerns and techniques will give your users the best information possible.

Some feedback for your blog.. and I mean this in the nicest and most constructive criticism way :).. maximizing the user experience for your blog is the best way to gain a loyal following and consumer trust. Not only in relavent and informative content but also in design and usability. As a third-party looking at your blog for the first time I have to say that it's not very appealing to the eye. It looks a bit cluttered and your color scheme could use some work. Consider color matching more aspects of your site to your logo to create a uniformity that flows on every page.

Good luck with sales!

Mike

Hey Wendy-

I haven't seen any data on the click through rates on the places tab for search results so I can't be much help there but fundamentally the places local map system, from my experience, is typically dependent on a more industry specific keyword rather than a product keyword (i.e. "Flooring company" rather than "non-slip floors"). With that said, I have seen product searches generate map results but the search volume has to be at a certain volume for a map to be generated without having to click on places. I think in the case of marketing a non-slip flooring solution I would focus more of your attention on organic, ppc and other marketing avenues.

Good luck!

Mike