Help Me Support Legislation for Gun Control

Dear Readers,

I don’t usually write off topic on my blog, but I am so sickened by the events of Friday December 14 and the killing of young innocent school children that I cannot keep silent. Americans need to rise up to demand the control and licensing of guns.

Here’s how you can help.

Go to We The People create an account and sign the petitions you see to demand that our President work to enact effective discourse and changes on gun control and the right to bear arms.

This site is a part of the White House site. Many of the gun legislation petitions have received more than the needed number of 25,000 signatures in just a few days to demand a response from the White House on an action plan. Please join me in making a difference for our country and our children to prevent further incidents where mentally ill or temporarily deranged persons can access guns and subject our society to further terror and violence in places like movie theaters, schools, and shopping malls.

Although I am a gun owner myself, I recommend the licensing and required training of any gun owner. I recommend the total ban on automatic weapon sales and on assault rifles and military hardware to civilians. I would be willing to give up some of my freedoms to allow for a greater level of safety for our public benefit. It is shameful that we have allowed so many innocents to die just over this past year as our government has been paralyzed or held sway by lobbyists from enacting meaningful gun control reform. How many more must die, how many more families will suffer, how can we continue to allow the sale of automatic weapons to be in the hands of our populace where they can be legally used by unbalanced people?

I entreat you that your voice matters in this issue. Rise up with me and fight to demand that our government take actions to immediately prevent further violence and to protect the rights of families and children to be safe from fear in our schools, workplaces, and communities through meaningful gun control registration and legislation.

Nancy McCord
President of McCord Web Services LLC

Google’s Matt Cutts on Guest Blogging and Link Building Clarification

Google’s spam engineer Matt Cutts takes time in this video to clarify further how Google feels about guest blogging and answers if you use guest blog posts will your website be penalized for placement. This is an excellent video and well worth the minute or two to watch.

Here is the synopsis of the video in a nutshell.

1. If you allow just anyone without review to post to your blog or you accept blog posts that have been posted widely on the Web already, your own site’s reputation can be impugned by this tactic and placement may drop based on Google’s new filters.

2. If you are allowing articles that have been spun (meaning multiple versions created automatically with software changing the word order in an effort to provide seemingly “unique” content for each site you send to) to be used on your website or blog, you will most likely have your site penalized in Google for these activities.

3. Matt says point blank that if you are doing many guest blog posts or allowing many guest blog posts that may be of questionable syndication on your own website, that this is a “pretty good indicator of bad quality”. “If your website links to or receives links from sites like this, this can lower your own site’s reputation.” “Yes, Google is willing to take action against sites that are doing low quality or spammy guest blogging.”

My recommendation to you is that if you accept guest blog pieces, they should be written uniquely for your website. I would recommend you use a service like Copyscape Premium to test if a piece sent to you is unique. I would not post articles that appear in many locations on your own website. Better yet get your own blog writer. I invite you to review our blog writing service program.

If you do guest blog posts for others sites, I would be very selective of the sites you choose to write for and consider limiting your content to only one or two really high quality sites. Make the inbound links to your website be meaningful and not hurtful to your overall placement strategy.

Coming Soon Custom Vanity URLs on Google+

The current URL of your Google+ page is long and ugly, but the Google+ team does say that they are working to re mediate this issue.  at Google writes in one of his Google+ status updates that Google is currently trying out new vanity URLs on select brands at this present time.

Google+ vanity URLs will be in this format Google.com/+NancyMcCord (this URL does not exist yet, but you can connect with me on Google+ for now on this ugly URL: https://plus.google.com/104147012849953819334#104147012849953819334/posts.

You can read Saurabh Sharma’s full announcement online. Make sure to read the comment thread as it is interesting.

The first step in the process is to request Google+ verification. Here is the link to start.

So stay tuned when custom vanity URLs are available on Google+ I’ll make sure to let you know.

 

Placement on Google is All About Web Authority Not SEO Tactics

Since 2005 I have been focused on building web authority website as I felt that this was the best way to truly place on Google and insulate myself and my clients from search engine algorithm changes. I named my blog the Web Authority just for that reason. Authority websites communicate transparency and confidence to the potential client. Now it seems that my focus on organic placement is finally being embraced by mainstream SEO gurus.

In this last year if your website placement dropped because of the Panda and Penguin Google updates your only way to re mediate traffic is to move into Google AdWords and drive traffic to your poorly placed site or spend time and money and rework your content while changing your online marketing strategy.

I have recently read an interesting article written by Jill Whalen on SiteProNews that speaks to the same focus that I have taken in regards to authority building strategies. She very succinctly spells out what works now and what does not. The article is certainly worth a careful review.

This is the bottom line from my own view point of what you should do to get organic placement on Google

1. Re mediate your problems first. If you have duplicate content, duplicate websites, poorly written or thin content; get rid of it now!

2. Create a content building plan. Invest in creating rich informational content and share your expertise on your website through a regular plan of content building. Share your expertise, share your view point with white papers, blog posts, and new pages on your website, cross link where appropriate.

3. Work your social media plan. The key is to connect not just to vomit out updates on social media. Interaction and creating a rich network is key. I like Google+ and Twitter for my own uses one as Google spiders these and adds updates to their index. I see more of my updates from Google+ in the Google index and so I make sure to try to connect there. Additionally as Google+’s personal pages are where the real action is and your AuthorRank is tied to it as well as the fact Google allows no automation to Google+ personal pages your voice there is legitimate and Google knows this and rewards it as such. Keep your follower to following ratios in check. Make sure you have a difference with more followers than following. Google will reward your efforts with a higher SocialRank.

Authority sites do not get built in one week, one month or even in several months. It takes time to create and build and tweak content that gets rewarded for placement. As an example of an authority website, I invite you to visit my own and review the depth of informational content and writing style for transparency. The same tactic I have taken for my own business can work for yours. Just ask me how!

Google+ Tips – Bold and Verify

Here are a few tips for Google+ that I thought were pretty good and wanted to pass along.

How to Bold Something in a Status Update
This is pretty cool and I stumbled across this on the Web, but can’t remember where. To bold something specific like a keywords or hashtag in a Google+ update surround the text with a +. For example I want to bold AdWords Services in an update, I use this syntax +AdWords Services+. Check it out in your own account and you’ll see that once published it will appear as AdWords Services.

You may want to try bolding your Google+ hashtags or keywords to see if this helps you with Search Engines and indexing.

How to Hashtag Something in Google+
On Twitter you use # in front of a no space hashtag to let Twitter know that they should index your tweet with a special search phrase. For example referring to my business name on Twitter I would use #McCordWebServices. Note I have no spaces between words. On Google+ you will use #McCordWebServices also and your updates will appear tied to that search.

How to Mention Someone in Google+
When you want to link to and mention someone in Facebook or Twitter you use @mccordweb. Note the @ in front of their name? On Google+ you will +mccordweb or + and then name the person.

Verify Your Google+ Business Page with Google
To make sure that Google knows which business is yours. Make sure to verify your business page with Google using this online verification tool. This will allow Google to know who you are and may speed your ability to create a vanity URL for your Google+ pages.

Structuring Your Account to Use Dynamic Text – Part II

Continued from Monday.

  • I am very careful in crafting my ad text so that when the dynamic keyword or phrase is inserted it makes sense to a reader. This is why my keyword trigger lists are small and concise and include a desired reader action such as buy, order, or purchase in the phrase. I will not duplicate these action words in my ad text; rather let the keyword phrase contain them.
  • Bing Ads has recently added some nice new capitalization options that you may not be aware of when it comes to dynamic text use. Here are some examples that now allow you to have total control over how your dynamic text appears in your ad’s title and description. Using the keyword phrase buy roses as an example:
  • {KeyWord} translates into Buy Roses (note the caps on B and R)
  • {keyword} translates into buy roses (note all lower case)
  • {Keyword} translates into Buy roses (note the caps on the B and lower case on the r)
  • There are even options for All Caps where appropriate based on how you capitalize the keyword contained within the brackets. For all examples, please visit the ‘How to use dynamic text to insert keywords in ads’ article to see all examples and uses.
  • Did you know that Bing Ads allows you to use one keyword in an ad that is all caps? So my dynamic text for Buy ROSES would be installed in the account as {KeyWORD:Buy ROSES}. Note the all caps on the word I want to be in all caps in the ad text. If I wanted BUY Roses, I would enter in {KEYWord:BUY Roses} instead. Be aware that excessive use of capitalization is not allowed. Check the editorial style guidelines here.
  • Where possible, but not always, I use {param1} insertion for unique URLs by keyword, and sometimes even {param2} and {param3} for promotional discount text by item. Read more about how to use the different forms of dynamic text here.
  • I always include default text when I am doing dynamic text insertion. For a keyword, use this format: {KeyWord:Buy Roses} note the colon with no space and then the default text capitalized the way I want it to appear. Bing Ads will automatically show your default ad text when you exceed your character count with a keyword phrase you had wanted inserted.

I have personally found that the click through rate is higher on ads where I am using dynamic text insertion and in many cases the conversion rate will be higher as well. If you haven’t tried using dynamic text in your Bing Ads program, now’s the time to do a little testing by creating a small ad group. Use your top converting keywords crafted into meaningful phrases for your program to test if you can boost conversions even more by using keyword and phrase insertion. Remember Bing Ads will bold this special text item when it is inserted into your ad when your phrase matches a search query – drawing the reader’s eye right to your ad!

If you need a Bing Ads savvy account manager, please visit our Bing Ads services page to find out more about how we can help you.