Tag: Google

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Now You Can Create a Badge for Your Google+ Business Page

Just this past week Google rolled out a badge maker for your Google+ Business page. You can find the creator here: https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config With the free creator you can make a badge for your Business Google+ page just make sure to insert the correct ID that you can find in your page’s URL.

For example, here is my Google+ Business page address: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/111658254454469926987/#

See this number 111658254454469926987 right in the middle of the URL, that’s the number you grab and put in the badge creator tool in the spot it asks for it. Then you can select your size icon like the one at the top right of our post that is red. You would then insert your code into your website in two places or send the code to your webmaster to install for you.

Now you can let the world know where to connect with you on Google+. For me, connect with my business here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/111658254454469926987/#

I’ve been taking another careful look at Google+ and I feel that you should too. There is just too much money behind this site to discount it too early in the rollout. Google+ is also testing scheduled updates with one of the tools we love HootSuite. Stay tuned on that topic!

 

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Google+ Requires Another Look

I was an early embracer of the Google+ platform, and then I grew tired of it. Google simply did not move fast enough to engage me in the long run. Issues were that I could not schedule my updates, the people who I wanted to connect with were not on Google+, it seemed like just another attempt to coral my time on a social platform, and there were no tools for businesses.

I have to say that Google+ is winning me back bit by bit. First, just this past week Google+ released the ability for businesses to set up Google+ Business Pages. Then AdWords has allowed the integration of Google+ Business Pages to your AdWords account.

Wow, those are very important new and exciting features. Additionally now on many websites and blogs, you can click the Google+ button and Google allows you to post an immediate post to your Google+ page making social interaction more immediate. These are all very good things! In fact so good that I am taking a much more careful look at Google+ again and how I can use it to connect with others, improve my organic placement, and promote my business.

First, here are a few articles you may also want to review about these new changes on Google+

Connect your Google+ Page to your AdWords campaigns
This article gives a screen shot and information on how to connect your Google AdWords program to your Google+ account for your business. You use the new ad extension called “Social Extensions” and enter the URL of your Google+ Business Page.

Get closer to your customers with Google+
This article gives you the information about how you can promote your business on Google+ and a link to go to set up your own Google+ Business page. It is very simple and is tied to your own personal Google+ account.

What is important to know is that first, by connecting your Business page to your AdWords account, you will be able to benefit from all your Google+ activity and likes both from your ads and your website. You will also be able to review your statistic of engagement in one location.

Google has been very clear that this social activity (clicks on your +1 button) will be factored into their organic search algorithm. It behooves all business owners to keep a very careful eye on what Google is doing with Google+. Just like early embracers of Twitter are reaping organic benefits from Google and Bing’s new SocialRank metric, Google+ activity, although seemingly unimportant right now, may translate into big gains and improved search placement for those businesses that are working the Google system now. We’ll be one of those businesses working the “Google System” for sure! What about you?

 

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The Truth on Affiliates for AdWords and Organic Placement

I was asked this question recently:

“Writing for healthcare websites is one of my specialties. An owner of a start-up company in the field wants me to work for him part-time. The company is an affiliate site and makes money from a third party whenever somebody fills out a form at his website. Is it worth my time and effort? Will this site make money?”

That’s an interesting question. Google has long had a “hate” relationship with affiliate sites both organically and on Google AdWords. In fact Google will only show one site, either the parent site or one of the many affiliate sites on a search query for Google AdWords. The key penatly appears to be a duplicate content both in the organic and paid search arena.

The truth is that it is very hard for a website to place when it is an affiliate site both organically and in AdWords. The only way an affiliate site will rank is if the look and feel of the site is very different from the parent site AND the content is different from the parent site. Unfortunately, this is typically not the case. So, do I recommend investing time and money in affiliate websites and investing in promoting them with Google AdWords? No I don’t.

If you are thinking of investing in an affiliate online business. Be very cautious, you may spend a lot of money and find out that Google is simply filtering out your site from the results both organically and in paid searches.

 

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Google is Now Indexing Facebook Comments

Don’t get too scared yet as Facebook probably will not allow this for long, but all the Facebook comments from your wall and from websites using the Facebook comment widget can cause your comments to appear in the Google index.

“This is not something that Facebook have actively introduced, but rather is a change brought about by Google and the way in which they index comments. Now when you comment both within Facebook and on a third party site, that comment is now crawlable by Google, leading to it being indexed on the search engine.”

This change to how comments are used and appear in Facebook has been done this past year to allow a more viral exchange or information within Facebook and Google has recently grabbed the content. To read more information, I suggest you read these two articles: Two important changes coming to Facebook Comments and Facebook adds ‘subscribe’ feature to comments. Both give more information about this important change and one that may be able to be leveraged for now for search placement.

Of important note is also the change on Facebook, clearly driven by Google+ to allow others to subscribe to your news feed if you have allowed this setting even if they are not your friends. This is particularly concerning for parents and those that really do not want to share their status updates with the world.

“Facebook is also letting people subscribe to news feeds of users they’re not friends with. Upon doing so, they will see the public updates the person has shared on their profile. And like with friends, users will be able to determine how many of those updates they will see in their news feed.” Read the full article.

With some of these important changes that Facebook has made in the recent months, it is now more important than ever to review your own account privacy settings and that of your children to assure that you are clear on what is being shared with the public and what is not to be shared. On my own personal profile, which I had locked down to friends only, the default button is Public meaning that by not changing the button for each status update or at the minimum making sure it is set to Friends, I unknowingly had been publishing my personal status updates publicly. Make sure you check as well. There are some things I just really don’t want to share with Google or the wider world on Facebook.