Tag: Trends

Posted on

Are You Focused On Building Your Mobile Empire?

Everything I have been reading lately is really pushing the growth trend of mobile and I have to say I think that the growth and opportunities for doing business and connecting with others via mobile phones and tablets is a sector to really watch. I think that for pay per click programs there are some real growth opportunities for advertisers to move into mobile before the cost per click goes up to the level of desktops. I think that more casual surfing will be done with tablets, but I don’t think that laptops will ever go away – at least not yet.

As for me, I love being untethered to my desk, with full email access on my smartphone. Not only do I do email, but I use my smartphone for a mobile hotspot to power my tablet and laptop. I use my smartphone’s navigation tools and do review deals and discounts to decide if I will visit a new store for the first time. I consider having the information at my fingertips wildly freeing. But my usage only reflects about 40% of the US market at this time. That means there is about 60% more of the population who will, in the near future, be using new smartphones to connect the way I am now. That means astronomical growth and market positioning for those businesses who embrace this new way to connect with customers or at least to give additional options to connect now.

For many the first step into the mobile market it to advertise there, and that’s a great start. AdWords allows you to target smartphones with full Internet browsers and tablets separately from desktops. What I’ve found is that for high cost keywords the mobile and tablet click prices are cheaper, they do have less impression activity, but they do still generate conversions.

Think about what you should be doing in regards to positioning your own business to take advantage of this new trend in mobile and you may just find yourself riding a new crest of traffic and sales that takes your business to the next level.

Posted on

Our Recommended Strategy for Google+

Dear Friend,

Our February 2012 newsletter issue, is an important newsletter about my thoughts on Google+ and the strategic actions that I feel you should take now. Although my firm does not offer client services yet for Google+ account updates or business page updates, what you should do about Google+ should not wait for our services to be rolled out.

I feel that Google+ and +1’s will be extremely important to your organic search placement and warrant careful and close consideration now. In fact, there are several actions you should take within the next 30 days.

If I can help you implement these early steps, just let me know.

Best Regards,

Nancy McCord

What You Should Strategically Do About Google+ Now and In the Near Term

Much has happened just in the last month on Google.com and specifically with Google+. In fact so much so, that I wanted to make sure that all of our newsletter subscribers and clients knew my feelings about how to use Google+ and its importance for organic placement for the future.

First, let’s talk about the actions you should take immediately:

  1. Tie your preferred Google account with Google+.
  2. Lock down your business name as a Google+ Business page.
  3. Lock down a business page with your most important short keyword phrase.
  4. Link your Google AdWords program to your Google+ account user name.
  5. Implement Google +1 on your blog and your website.

These important first steps can easily be done by you or by us. If you need help, please ask us for it as what will be happening with Google+ in the near future is very important to your online visibility.

Second, let’s talk about what Google+ and +1’s are:

Google+ is a social platform. It is not like Facebook but more like Facebook and Twitter combined. However, is it much more important than any of the social networks we know and use now.

You could consider Google+ like a voting and popularity network but one that has the ear of Google. Anything you do on Google+ will most certainly impact your website’s organic placement and Web Visibility in the future. Google has said as much in their releases. Google has additionally stated just this past month that it will be showing social results from your Google+ network in their personalized search results.

What this means is that for people and businesses that embrace Google+ early and start building their network now, there will be strong benefits for their updates and links. This activity will be shown in your own personal and expanded network’s search/social results.

+1’s are Google’s versions of votes. If you like a page, like an ad, like a blog post, like a Google+ comment, you vote it up using a +1. What is crucial to understand is that a +1 is tied to your Google+ activity. These +1 votes will impact your visibility and placement on Google in the new Google Search Plus Your World results.

Third, let’s talk about Google Search Plus Your World:

In mid January, Google rolled out an important change to their search index. They named it Google Search Plus Your World. In my industry we call it Search Plus. Google stated that they will be using activity, updates, Google+ activity, and +1 activity in the search results that they deliver to your personally and to those in your Google+ network.

What is interesting is that even if you are logged out of your Google account, Google is still tracking your activity. Of additional importance is the announcement that the social related results that will be shown in the Google.com index are personally selected for you and WILL contain Google+ activity across your Google+ social network.

That means if you start building your network now, your information and website could be appearing in search results for a very broad network of readers and potential prospects. As this activity comes from your personal network, just like a word of mouth referral, links to you and your profile will most likely carry more authority and legitimacy in the eyes of potential clients. Everyone weights a reference by a friend about a business more than a written review found randomly on the Web. This will be the real impact of Google+ and +1’s in the very near future.

Fourth, why should you take the actions mentioned on this page now:

Based on this new focus for Google, you need to start flowing through search and social activity into your Google+ and +1 bank. If you don’t have accounts, Google can’t tie the activity to you specifically.

If you wait to tie up your business page and top keyword phrase named Google+ Business page, you may find that someone else has tagged it; locking you out of words and phrasing that will be very important to your Google presence in the very near future. Even if you do nothing yet with these new accounts, they will be tied to you so that when you do want to use them you can.

Fifth, why is this so important?

All of these actions to take and the information in this newsletter are important is because the business that is driving this action is Google. As Google owns 65% of the online search market, to be positioned well on Google means taking full advantage of what Google considers important. It is very important to understand that Google+ is not Facebook. Google considers Google+ and +1’s integral to the new face of search and how search results are shaped and delivered. Do not be fooled into thinking that this is just a social network. These new Google offerings are very important and should be embraced quickly and completely for your future organic placement benefit.

Don’t wait beyond 30 days to take the actions we recommend. When Twitter first came out many clients did not move into the platform as they considered it just a time drain. For the clients we work with that embraced Twitter early, many have networks of followers well over 2,500 active users; allowing for some serious marketing action and site promotion. Our recommendation is that Google+ is by far the most important new technology to have come out in the last three years. Don’t miss your opportunity to start now so that you can take full advantage of the future possibilities.

About Our Future Services

My firm does not offer Google+ updating services yet, but will when Google allows for the scheduling of status updates. For now keeping your Google+ page updated is done manually without any automation tools – by Google’s design.

We do however offer Google+ account set up and Google+ Business page set up as well as +1 implementation on your blog and website at our hourly rates of $80 per hour. If you have done set up yourself and we manage your Google AdWords advertising account, make sure to send us your Google+ information so we can tie your accounts together.

To get into our work schedule for set up, implementation or our Google+ services waiting list please contact me today.

Posted on

Brace Yourself How You Get Organic Search Placement Has Changed

That’s right how you get organic search placement has changed, not a little bit but a huge amount. I consider the change in how to get organic placement so significant that traditional search engine optimization is a thing of the past.

Remember when if we wanted to book a vacation, or for that matter buy an airline ticket, we had to go to a travel agent? Now, we go online to Orbitz, Expedia, or directly to the airline site and serve ourselves. Travel agents, to stay afloat, have had to specialize their services; becoming trip advisors or travel counselors. The world of SEO (search engine optimization) is changing in many of the same ways, which will be impacting the viability of their ability to remain vital in the world of today.

I am not saying that we will be self serving SEO, but rather that what the search engines consider important has changed so dramatically in this last year alone, that code optimization, black hat or even gray hat link building strategies, and massive link building programs that try to approach site webmasters for reciprocal linking are no longer workable strategies to achieve organic improvement. SEO firms will need to change dramatically to find the niche markets that do work in this “brave new world”.

As an SEO code optimization firm, we have dramatically changed our services to respond to this huge market change. We no longer offer search engine optimization services as we have previously. We’ve even removed those pages from our website. Does that mean that we can’t help clients who need to improve their organic search positions – no, it just means we must go about it different ways.

For our firm this has meant the introduction and reallocation of assets into different and new service areas. When you visit our website you will see services for Google Places, Twitter services, Facebook Business page management, four levels of blog writing, and article writing. We have focused on services that will create a great reader experience and will build authoritative information rich website and blogsite content. After all my firm is just like our blog is named, we are The Web Authority.

Posted on

April AdWords Trends

I have just finished doing my April reports for a large number of AdWords clients and I wanted to share with you a few interesting trends I am seeing.

  1. Impressions and clicks are up for many accounts.
  2. Conversions are trending up for many accounts as well. Some are showing results similar to February high conversion figures.
  3. Cost per click is really moving up for many geographic locations when local targeting is used. In some smaller metro areas the cost per click is staying static, but in major areas like New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the cost per click is really moving up strongly as more advertisers move back into Google AdWords and competition for the first page of results is ramping up.

If  you are thinking of Google AdWords, this is still a good time to get into the “game”. I am seeing strong movement that allows me to believe that real economic improvement for many business sectors is just around the corner. Get positioned in the “mix” before the crest hits!