Category: Google

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How to Get Your Google On!

Google is the top search engine and continues to stay that way even with increased pressure from Bing and Yahoo. So it is important that your marketing plan cater to this fact. So often I am asked what can I do to improve my search position on Google? Here’s how to “get your Google on”!

1. Redo your home page to include content and not mainly images. Search engine spiders cannot read images.

2. If you are using WordPress as the backbone for your website, contact a WordPress web designer to make these changes to your template:

  • If you have been archiving content like newsletters or blogs off-domain, get them on-domain now! If you aren’t blogging get your designer to create a page template just for your blog page. It must include the archives, categories, and tags.
  • Update your site navigation with links to point to the blog, create a new section just for your videos if you have them. If you don’t have videos get started creating simple ones and post them to YouTube.com ( a Google property) and embed them in your website. Start a regular informational content building program ON-DOMAIN.
  • Bring all old newsletters onto your site you have archived off-domain and housed at Constant Contact or other resource. Most likely a page will need to be created for each newsletter and then hard coded into the newsletter page.
  • Create a new reviews page on your website. Pull the favorable reviews from the web, link back to the original content. Build up the positive things. Link to the home page of the BBB showing your rating if you use them.

Get Google Maps going for any locations
Pricing is $240 per location for set up and then $40 each site for monthly account refreshes.
More info: http://www.mccordweb.com/internet-marketing/google-maps.php

Consolidate your efforts in Facebook. One page for all business. locations don’t be fragmented
Do Facebook Mini services for $8 per day
More info: http://www.mccordweb.com/internet-marketing/twitter.php#ghost

Get going on Twitter or remove the icon from your website
If you aren’t going to update something, don’t take a black eye remove the link from your website.
Twitter Mini $8.50 per day
More info: http://www.mccordweb.com/internet-marketing/twitter.php#ghost

Get blogging but only on-domain
Do the Topaz Level at the minimum two days a week for $50 per week. If you can afford a higher level do it!
More info: http://www.mccordweb.com/blog-writing/index.php

Get going with Google AdWords
Set up and first four weeks of account management is $699. I would recommend a landing page for each of the four ad group themes we would do. Landing pages typically take 5 hours at $80 per hour to create. You may need your blog designer to help with the contact form implementation as typically the landing page will have a small form at the bottom.

We recommend a click budget paid to Google of $500 per 30 days on top of our fees.
More info: http://www.mccordweb.com/internet-marketing/adwords-quick-start.php

Get your site confirmed and set up with the Google Webmaster control panel
Get a site map created and your site validated. Diagnostics can be done on demand to the site after set up.
Typically set up and validation is about 1.0 hours or so. We recommend monthly reporting once set up. We review placement on keywords, review your webmaster control panel, reload your sitemap. Set up is 1.5 hours and then monthly reporting is typically 1.5 to 2 hours billed at $80 per hour.

Build online reviews
I would highly recommend that you start approaching clients to build your online reviews. Get the email when setting up service, Offer to send coupons for the services you provide. In all your correspondence link to your Google Places pages for both locations and ASK for a review.

Remediate your online reputation
Make sure all employees know of any bad reviews you have received online and work to implement new procedures that solve those problems. Reviews may be scathing, but there is typically truth in them. Look at them as areas of constructive criticism.  All employees should believe that customer satisfaction is their job. It will show in your reviews, your referrals and repeat customers.

If you can’t afford everything I would do AdWords first, at the same time do Google Places, then the website changes, then the blogging, then Facebook and Twitter.

It is time to get your Google on!

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Google Add the +1 Button to AdWords Ads

Google is really pulling out all the stops when it comes to pushing the new +1 button. Now Google will be +1’ing AdWords ads. In fact I am seeing them already.

“The +1 button itself will appear next to your headline on search ads. Personalized annotations will appear beneath your Display URL. For example, Maria +1’s a page selling a neat laptop holder on a website. When a search ad
with that same URL appears, her friend Sam might see the ad with the note “Maria and 28 other people +1’d this.”

With the +1 button Google is banking on increased growth in the social sector. With your connections and friends now able to personally, via the +1 button, recommend sites and products ads are now instantly more relevant and personal.

Make sure as you allow the +1 button results to show up in your Google.com search results that you understand that others can see sites that you +1 and that this results can be tied to your name.

For AdWords, I would imagine that +1 button votes will count heavily into the hidden quality score factors in the months to come. Google may never tell us about this, but with relevancy being the code word for all Google does, I expect +1 to be SERP and ad changing pretty quickly.

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Google Rolls Out the +1 Button

This past week Google released access to the +1 Button. If you have not added it to your website or blog yet, here’s a link to the code generator. If you don’t know, Google has said that +1 button votes will be used to raise your position in organic results. Here’s what Google specifically says about that issue:

“Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For  example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1’s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search
quality. For +1’s, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”

That’s pretty big news! If you want to read all the FAQs here is a link to the help section on Google. Right now you have to sign u in Google Labs to have the +1 results be shown in your own personal Google.com search results. What is great is that you can +1 something right from Google.com or if the website has the +1 button installed, you can +1 it right from their website page.

We are encouraging all of our clients to get the +1 on their website and blog. We’ve only run into one problem with installation. In only one case it appears that there is an onLoad issue with other scripts that are showing on the page, but that is just one website out of several we’ve installed so far.

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Watching Your Site for Malware Intrusions

Website owners need to keep an eye on their website and blog to make sure that they are not unknowingly spewing malware onto the Web. Not only can this be bad for your site visitors, but you can actually get your website blocked by Google for allowing malware downloads; even if you didn’t know that it was happening.

If you have a blog on your site, there are lots of free, cool plugins that monitor your blog and help you to keep it safe, but how about a website? I found one tool recently that allows you to scan your website files for malware. It is called Sucuri. You can visit the free online website scanner here. I recommend not only scanning your root directory, but some of your top traffic directories as well just to make sure you are malware free.

Another tool you can use for malware monitoring of a website is the Google Webmaster Control Panel. To use this Google service you will need to verify your website ownership by downloading and then uploading to your server a small file. Once in place, Google will scan your site and you can review its malware detection results.

In many cases I have found that Google is very slow to report if you have had a malware attack. Eventually they will notify you if there is a problem, but it may be woefully late, and your notification may actually be that Google has banned your site in their index. I personally recommend a much more proactive and early prevention focus.