2014 Trends for Business Websites and Online Marketing – Part Two

Looking into 2014.
Looking into 2014.

In continuation from Tuesday in this blog post on trends for business website marketing and visibility, I’ll talk about Google+ Local pages and YouTube.

Google+ Local Pages Also Known as Google Places

Big changes happened last year for Google+ Local pages. First, Google removed many of the fields you can use to add information, removing any degree of optimization you could previously do on keywords. Once the account is set up, what the customer sees about your business is limited. Google now returns listings not based on optimization or the number of reviews but based on the smartphone user’s location. For desktop searches, Google Places/Local Page listings are shown based on proximity to your location and possibly in some markets based on the number of reviews and possibly again on click through rates.

What a business owner used to be able to do to get placement on location specific keywords is gone. We do still recommend a regular update of videos and pictures on the account, but there is simply not a lot of updating to be done once the account is set up. In fact in the last three months, Google even removed the owner’s comment field where promotions and specials were listed.

YouTube Videos

For many businesses we work with, YouTube is still “undiscovered country”. Many business owners feel that they have to pay to have professionally created video for YouTube, but actually even videos made with your phone or camera are considered the same to Google. Videos that show your products, explain your services, explain briefly a concept are still excellent for business owners to use for exposure. As videos may be shown in with organic results and not even associated with a link to your website utilizing YouTube better should be a New Year’s resolution for business owners for 2014.

Product Listing Ads Now Called Google Shopping Campaigns in AdWords

If you have an ecommerce store and are an AdWords advertiser and are not using Product Listing Ads – soon to be called Google Shopping Campaigns, you are missing out on one of the best things that Google has brought to the AdWords arena. Google shows pictures of products within the organic results and you pay be the click for activity on your store products. Although the data feed is onerous to create and requires much more than just a download of your products (it requires the use of Google’s own taxonomy for each product,) implementation can really boost your individual product sales. Your competition is already embracing Google Shopping Campaigns!

2013 has brought us some sweeping changes at Google. It will be interesting to see how these important changes will impact business and visibility as we enter 2014.

Is Guest Blogging Dead? Part Two

Today we’ll talk about when you can and should guest blog for others to improve your own organic placement.

First, I have to say that I do guest blogging on a regular basis for two sites in my own industry: the Bing Ads Community and SiteProNews. I personally find guest blogging in certain parameters authority and visibility building.

Here’s when I feel that guest blogging can be a workable strategy for you:

1. If you have an industry or trade publication that shows articles to the public (not locked behind a gateway) online I would consider the opportunity to write an article that would include links back to your website writing as an authority a great opportunity. I would highly encourage you to see out and write in these types of situations. Make sure that before you write you have your personal Google+ profile set up and that you link to this profile in the article bio block using the rel=”author” syntax. This discreet action will tie the article to your Google+ profile which you in turn link to your website. This type of guest blogging article may help with your own business exposure.

2. If you have been approached by someone in your industry outside of your geographic area and they are willing to allow you to guest blog on their quality blog and you have vetted them as a respectable business, I would consider a once a month guest blog post a wonderful opportunity for you. However, I would properly vet them to make sure that the link from their site to yours is not tainted by other types of activities they may be participating in that would be a high negative for Google which would bleed into your own site’s Google profile.

When would I steer clear of guest blogging:

1. If your SEO firm says “we’ll charge you $XXX a month to send out guest blog posts and they’ll be placed on hundreds of sites so you’ll get a high number of links”, I would be very cautious. In a recent analysis I did for a client we queried exactly where the content was placed and were shocked when the blog post for a medical call center was found on a hemorrhoid medication website and numerous off-topic/no name blogs. There is NO VALUE to your content appearing on sites like this! In fact, links from sites like this you may actually need to disavow with Google.

2. If your SEO firm says “we will write one article but then slightly reword it so it is different for every site we place it on.” Steer clear! This is called article spinning and one clear practice that Google has very clearly disavowed and has stated it considers content spam.

Quality content and the right type of guest blogging opportunities can actually be very good for your own organic placement. Find out how my firm may be able to help you with special quality pieces to use as guest blog posts for your own business.

You’ll want to check out Matt Cutts full video on the topic of guest blogging in this webmaster video from the Google Web Spam department for more information.

My Tips for Securing WordPress

My firm blogs for many clients and in the process we’re on blog sites more frequently than the blog owner. In some cases my team was the first to notify the client of a hack. Typically when a site is hacked, we cannot login to write or see the WordPress site when we go to gather links for a blog post.

To keep your WordPress blog or WordPress website from being hacked these are my tips for security.

1. Make sure you are using a secure password. Many times the client’s webmaster will send us our logins and the password is something like 123456. For security, I like passwords like this A&Ji3nGba*3!. Impossible to remember but really hard for a hacker to guess.

2. Secure your site from brute force login attempts. I like the WordPress plugin Login Lockdown. This plugin allows you to lock out intruders who are repeatedly trying to get in by blocking their IP address.

3. Monitor your core WordPress files. I really like this plugin. It monitors your core WordPress files and emails you when there have been changes and advises you what files have been changed. I cannot begin to tell you how easy this  makes fixing a hack attack by having an idea where to start.

4. Use an exploit monitor. I use the WordPress plugin called Exploit Scanner. We’ve found several deep hacks with roots in a parent website feeding into an on-domain blog this way. By scanning the WordPress files for explode and hidden elements we have been able to quickly identify a hack and work fast to remove it.

There is nothing worse for a website owner than to do a search for themselves on Google.com and find a note next to their site for users not to visit it due to malware or Google to turn off the links to their site.

These simple preventatives are what we suggest for every blog owner they are easy to install and require just  minimum of vigilance.

Working with WordPress Backbone Websites

I am in the process of finishing up and readying for launch a new website built on the back bone of WordPress. I have to say the website has turned out nice, but I wanted to share with you a few of my thoughts on using website built like this for search engine placement.

I think that if you want to save money on webmaster services, like the control of being able to add and update your content at will; a well designed website using WordPress has no comparison. But for people, like me, who are used to full and complete source code control for SEO purposes a website built with WordPress leaves much to be desired.

Professionals in my industry know that template based websites (and that is really what a WordPress built site is-  a custom template) do not allow you full source code control. Although the designers that have worked with me on building this site have really done a great job, there are instances when I wanted to name my uploaded images my own way; I wanted to custom design my site architecture and be able to change the names and structure easily if I needed to down the road; I wanted to add special design or style elements to my pages without having to create hacks to make the page work the way I wanted it to within the template constraints. In other words, there is an element of control, subtle though it may be, that is simply missing with a WordPress site versus a custom created, built from the source code up, website.

I guess with all new improvements to allow customers to control their own content there are trade offs, but I’m not sure that I want to lose that control for every customer.

Have You Spent Time With Google Insights?

With the world of organic search optimization having changed significantly and few really good keyword research tools for website placement on the Web, Google Insights has become a very important tool as you consider making changes on your website. Personally, I use the Google AdWords keyword tool hand in hand with the Google Insights tool. What the Google Insights tool helps me to understand is if a keyword phrase I am thinking of using for optimization on a website or for creating a new content page for a client is worth the expense and trouble.

Here’s an example, I have a client in California who wants to do a page on their website for climate controlled warehouse space. I used the AdWords keyword tool to find phrase variations that are popular for clicks in the United States. Then I used the Google Insights tool to review which of those phrases were important and in what locations since 2004. The information has helped the client access how much they want to push this service.

As it turns out climate control keyword phrases are not important to his local or state customers but for the East Coast and Southern markets it is. If he does not have clients in these eastern and southern areas, it may not be worth the time and trouble to do a new service on his website nor promote the service on AdWords. In fact based on the information, he may not move to a new warehouse with climate controlled space.

That’s how powerful Google Insights can be to a business which is developing a new strategy or service. If you want to check out the tool yourself, visit Google Insights now. I think you’ll find the tool useful and very interesting.

Matt Cutts on WordPress SEO

If you can’t see this YouTube video, you can watch it on YouTube.

In this video you’ll see pure unvarnished personable Matt Cutts, cat lover, talking about blogging and WordPress. Although the video is really for a newbie webmasters and not really for hard core SEO pros.

There are some good nuggets in the video and here they are:

  1. WordPress takes care of about 90% of the mechanics of search engine optimization.
  2. You can optimize WordPress with a few simple plug-ins.
  3. Matt likes Cookies for Comments and Enforce www Preference for his own blog.
  4. PageRank is the number of people that link to you and how important they are. The higher your PageRank the higher you’ll place organically. Quantity is not important, but rather the quality of links.
  5. You can flow through your PageRank to other sites by linking out to them. But the authority decays with each link.