Month: February 2013

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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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Facebook’s Graph Search – Instant Search Only Better Kind Of

This past year Google created Instant Search, you know those suggestions that pop up under what you are typing at Google.com that recommend finishing your query based on other popular searches that Google has seen and recorded. Well you could consider Facebook’s Graph Search like Instant Search for Facebook, but with a twist – it delivers results from friends, friends of friends, and friends of other friends.

It’s kind of cool to have really personalized results from people who you may trust more than a search engine algorithm. You’ve got to enable Graph Search on Facebook first to use it. Once you do, Facebook inserts a search bar on the top left of your Facebook page. Results are personalized based on your friends and if your friends don’t have the answer, the answers come from Bing.

I did a search for best Chinese restaurants in Waldorf and got ratings on two from friends of friends. The page of the restaurant actually even showed images of people eating including children, shared ratings, and the location.

After reading the information I thought I’d better check my Facebook privacy settings as clearly anything you post, images you share, or locations you log, Facebook is now using for their Graph Search results. I am not so sure I want everything I do and say used in a personal search engine. As a result, I blocked many of the things that I allow Facebook to share so you probably won’t see my comments in a Facebook search in the future.

With Facebook Graph Search you are just losing another piece of privacy that can now be used to sell products, encourage shopping or visits to a restaurant, even if you didn’t even know your comments were being used. Kind of scary when you think about it.

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Where Will SEO Be Going in 2013?

Talk to any SEO expert and you’ll get many different answers in regards to what they think will be important for search engine strategies for 2013, but there are a few things that everyone seems to agree on; the world of search engine optimization has changed.

As for me, I am watching and moving into several things in a very strategic way for key clients and my own business this year.

Here are a few things that I like and that others are talking about:

1. Mobile Search
My Google AdWords company rep. tells me that Google expects mobile search to eclipse regular search this year. If you have not already moved into to the mobile space with a mobile version website you should soon. If you aren’t testing AdWords advertising for mobile I would recommend considering doing so fairly quickly before your competition moves in.

2. Google+ Communities
I think this will be a new landscape with serious SEO benefits for those who strategically move into moderated communities. I am actively working towards this goal for my own business and several key clients.

3. Additional Emphasis on Personalized Search Results
We are already seeing this happen right in front of our eyes. If you are not on Google+ building your circles you are missing one of the biggest opportunities to be an advocate for your own business and to skew other’s search results to show what you like. Activity on Twitter, maybe Facebook for Bing but probably not Google, and social media interaction and sharing will impact the search results of others in your networks.

4. Excpect Organic Click Through Rates to Impact Search
I fully expect Google to start using organic search click through rates to impact the search engine results in the near future. If you’ve followed Google’s patent disclosures over the years this was in one over three years ago as was AuthorRank. We are just now seeing the some of these technology improvements impact search results this year. I expect to see more emphasis on these two areas AuthorRank and Click Through this next year.

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Did You Know That Share-ability Impacts Who Sees Your Facebook Updates?

Did you know that most likely only 15% of your Facebook Business Page status updates are actually seen on your fans’ walls? Scary isn’t it, to know that the time you spend in keeping your Facebook wall updated may actually have marginal impact. Why? It’s about EdgeRank and share-ability.

Just like Google has an algorithm to rack and stack websites to determine where they appear in the organic or unpaid search results, Facebook has an algorithm to determine when your updates will appear on the walls of subscribers and fans. Not everything you write will be shown, but why such a little amount and how can you get more updates to show?

A great article that explains this topic further and really digs into EdgeRank can be found at SiteProNews.

The bottom line is that the higher your EdgeRank the better your chance that others will actually see what you write and post to your Business Page’s wall. A very simplified explanation of EdgeRank is share-ability. If more people comment, like, link to, and share an update you’ve posted on your wall, the higher the EdgeRank and the more likely this update is to appear on the wall of people who have liked you or subscribe to your news feed.

One way to work to raise EdgeRank is to be specific in a status update and let the reader know what action you really want them to take upon reading your update. Do you want them to share it? Ask them to do that. Do you want them to like your update? Ask them to click like! If you are linking to a download back on your website – ask them to click in and download your paper. Be specific and make the action simple and easy to do.

Improving your EdgeRank is all about action that people take when they read your post. Make sure you are doing your part to help to raise your own EdgeRank by changing your wall post to be more share-able and actionable. EdgeRank will rise when you do so and are successful in engaging reader activity.