Tag: Google

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Great Tips on Going Local With Google+

I just read this article at Website Magazine and wanted to share it with you. It has some great tips on going local with Google+ and how you can leverage exposure on Google. With local search results being pushed ahead of most organic results, leveraging your location makes great sense.

Here’s a quick synopsis as well as my own comments and suggestions on going local with Google+.

1. Make sure to focus on your About Page
Make sure your address and categories are listed as well as a descriptive paragraph about your business.

2. Encourage others to review you on Google+
I’ll add my own comments to this one… if you don’t ask you won’t get a review. Consider sending a link out to all your satisfied customers asking them to login to Google+ and leave some comments on your page. These recommendations can be a gold mine for your business so work to see if you can build your number of reviews. Don’t scam Google! I’ve seen some situations where reviews were clearly fake, don’t buy services to make fake reviews for your Google+ Local page. Google is getting too smart to not be watching the IP addresses on reviews at this point.

3. Build a free Google+ Community for your business
My comments again… Community pages are much more interactive that Google+ business pages. They operate more like a forum. You can have closed or open communities and even those by invitation only or moderator approved. For now Communities look stronger to me than Business Pages but Communities do not allow status update scheduling as Business pages do with third party apps.

4. Think about Google Offers
This could be good for local businesses. Here’s more information so you can dig deeper on this one. It appears kind of like Groupon but from Google. Interesting for possibly driving in discount traffic for certain types of businesses but not for everyone.

If you have another tip for going local, just click comments below and leave your own words of wisdom.

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More on the Disavow Link Tool from Google

So you’ve used the Disavow Link Tool to re-mediate your website placement and remove spammy links that have nailed you in the SERPs, so how long do you have to wait to see improvement?

In this interesting article two heavy weights from my industry weigh in with Matt Cutts from Google stating:

“It can definitely take some time, and potentially months. There’s a time delay for data to be baked into the index. Then there can also be the time delay after that for data to be refreshed in various algorithms.”

You’ll want to read the full article and exchange between Danny Sullivan and Matt Cutts on this topic at SiteProNews.

The bottom-line is that anything to do with organic placement takes time. Give yourself six months easily to be doing everything right after you have corrected problems to see even a glimmer of results. But be careful about when you first see your site pop up in the results.

I have found once you start to move your site will typically fall in the results after the initial ranking. I like to test placement again four to six weeks out after the site has popped up to see where it will really fall in the index. Sometimes I will see a temporary high placement and then a drop to a regularly maintained level. Use the second ranking to evaluate if you have more work to do at that point.

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Are Google+ Communities Better Than Google+ Business Pages?

Google+ Communities and what they mean for you.
Google+ Communities and what they mean for you.

Some interesting things just happened in the last few days, Google got very serious about Google+ and has started requiring Google users to enable Google+ integration. Now add to the mix Google’s new addition of Google+ Communities!I would definitely keep an eye on Communities, from my perspective. For some businesses, creating a Google+ Community for their business may allow more interaction with users than the typical Google+ Business page. For now, Google+ Communities look like a great option for merchants or brands with a strong following and not yet for the typical small to medium sized business owner. To see some examples take a look at this very interesting article on Google+ Communities from Website Magazine.

Google+ Communities are not like Facebook Groups, nor are they like a Google+ Business page. They are a hybrid and much more interactive than a Google+ Business page. First, you can invite people to join your +Community versus hoping someone will discover your Business page. Second, you can do video hangouts and others can post to your wall, share +1’s with other community members, post and hold events, and easily share content. Also typically, a Google+ Community page will have a moderator and a higher degree of interaction than would a typical Google+ Business page.

Think of your Google+ Business page like your business card or brochure and your Google+ Community like a free and wide ranging forum. The real power, from my point of view, comes into play with the ability of Communities to share +1 activity in the Google.com personalized search results. For those owning Communities that is a very, very powerful tool and may be the next big thrust for SEO and web visibility to be leveraged in 2013.

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Using the Google Tag Manager

If you are managing a large website make sure to check out this new tool from Google.

I am using the Tag Manager on my own website and some of the sites of my clients. I have found it easy to use and allows for the ability to grow as Google changes. I really like the ability to add new code without having to wait for a third party webmaster to get around to scheduling time for the code addition.

The only area of difficulty that I have seen from using Tag Manager, is the confusion some webmasters have on the publishing function. Some will set up the tags properly but forget to publish the Tag Container to the site again.

Make sure to watch the video as it will take you through setting up AdWords conversion tracking as well as Google Analytics code installation. With remarketing becoming popular for many AdWords accounts, having the Tag Manager in place on the website allows you the account manager to set up remarketing by just updating the container from within the Tag Manager control panel.