It’s official: Google+ is big and poised to get bigger. Google recently announced that its social network had surpassed 100 million 
users just nine months after its launch, and that means the value to small-business owners is both high and on the rise.
Rather than wasting your time with a “Google+ Basics” post filled with generic social media tips, today we hope to offer seven specific ways to give your Google+ Page a boost.
- Create a catchy link. First things first: Have you ever seen the URL for a Google+ Page? It’s a horrific mass of numbers guaranteed to impart no brand awareness whatsoever. Fortunately, a number of link-shortening services exist that can help you turn your forgettable string of characters into a memorable customized G+ URL. GPlus.to is the most-used link shortener, but Plus.ly, GoPlus.us and GPlus.is offer similar services.
- Put a pretty face on things. Google+ Pages lack the visual flair of Facebook’s Timeline. By default, the only image on a Page is a square company logo in the upper left corner. However, your Page can support up to five additional photos. (Enter the editing mode and click on the Add Some Photos Here box at the top of the page.) Images are arranged horizontally and can achieve a Timeline-esque feel; check out the Pepsi and Ferrari G+ Pages for examples.
- Use a short, powerful tagline. When a user hovers over a link to your business page within G+ — either in search results or in the midst of a discussion — a small preview box pops up displaying your business’s picture, tagline, and an option to follow your page. Only the first five words or so of your tagline appear in the preview box, so make them count!
- Harness the power of Hangouts. One key point of differentiation for G+ is its Hangout feature, available to the right of your business’s Stream (the equivalent of Facebook’s Wall). Basically, it’s a group video chat that allows multiple people to converse at once. How can you use that functionality for your business? Michael Dell of Dell Inc. envisions using Hangouts for a more personalized customer-service experience. Others have used Hangouts for Q&As, roundtable discussions, and as a Skype conferencing replacement. Keep in mind that the person talking becomes the face of your company to people participating in the Hangout.
- Different posts for different Circles. Circles are Google’s way of allowing you to sort your acquaintances on G+. When you write a post, you can choose which Circles to share the content with. This functionality allows you to send highly targeted information to specific G+ users. You could, for example, share one promotional deal to the general public, a slightly better deal with your regular customers, and a blockbuster special with your key clients. The targeted marketing possibilities are almost endless; however, you can only add individuals to your Circles if they’ve added your Page to their Circles first. With that in mind…
- Add a G+ badge to your main website. No one will Follow your business if they don’t know your business is on Google+! Fortunately, Google offers simple coding tools that allow you to add a Google+ badge and +1 buttons (the equivalent of Facebook’s Like button) to your website to help you spread the word. Ask your webmaster to work them in.
- Optimize your business Page for SEO. Google indexes its social network in its search results, so a finely tuned G+ business page can create a lot of organic Google juice, boosting your web site’s rankings. Adding links to your Google+ Page’s About section is only the tip of the iceberg. (Note: We covered optimizing your Google+ Page in-depth here.)
Of course, true social media success only occurs when you engage in active discussions with your customers. Be interesting! All the superficial tricks in the world won’t compensate for a nearly blank, rarely updated slate.
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Thanks for visiting and I hope to see you back next week for our Monday Marketing Series.
- The Benefits of Link Building
What are the benefit of link building? Below are five instances that we hope you can benefit:
- Links Build Credence With The Search Engines: If the search engine see links to your site from reputable web sites also called authority sites, the credence of your site increases. You see, each link to your site from these authority sites is like a “co-sign” for your site from the search engine point of view. After receiving enough “co-signs”, the more important or reputable your site becomes. This in turn increase your ranking and is referred to as link popularity.
- Link Building Increases Search Engine Rankings: Let’s face it, the web wouldn’t be called the web if there were no connection. Networking is what make the web so powerful. It’s the links that connect your site to other sites that either offer merchandise or information related to your business, which in turn connect your website to the world. When a gradual and consistent link building campaign service is provided to your site, this increases your ranking in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The whole point of increasing your search engine ranking is to increase traffic to your site.
- Link Building Increases PageRank: What is page PageRank? PageRank is a numeric value from 1 to 10, that represents how important a page is on the web. Google and other search engines measure the importance of your web site as it relates to other sites. So in simple terms, if you are not connected to other sites, then you are not a viable source to the web. This makes sense on the web and in business, I think. When you connect links to your site with high PageRank, this passes to your site and gives your site credibility, making it a resourceful measure to the web.
- The More Links The More Traffic: Other benefits of link building services is naturally occurring referring traffic also called “organic traffic” from these sites that are linked to yours. The more quality sites you are linked to, the more quality traffic that you will receive for your business website. Link building can be the one thing that keep you ahead of the competition.
- Links With Good Anchor Text: What is anchor text? The anchor text, link label or link text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. For example: Link Building Services. The more hints from various sources, the better your site does in the search engine. Simply put, links give you better and faster search engine indexing.
Linking from trusted sources to your site can get your pages indexed more quickly. Google and other search engines crawl trusted web sites frequently and follow the links that are on those sites. Let’s make sure that you are there on those trusted sites.
Category : Blog &Marketing &Marketing Mondays &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO &Websites
For those of you who are beginners, the first question you mights want to consider is, what is SEO? According to the dictionary definition, SEO refers to “The process of maximizing the number of visitors to a Web site by ensuring that the site remains high on the list of results returned by a search engine”.
How to get your website indexed by search engines?
In other words, SEO is just a fancy word for bunch of things that can make a website more or less important in a Search Engine’s (such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) eyes and as a web master, you want your website to be the most important.
However, the first step in SEO requires you to actually get your website indexed or submitted into the search engines; because you can’t have rankings in something you are not a part of and that is what this article is going to be about.
Category : Advertising &Blog &Business &Networking &Newsletter &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO
Submitting Your Website to Search Engines
Before submitting your website to search engines, make sure that your web site has been optimized for indexing. (If you would like to see an article on optimizing, place in the comment section below.) Submitting your website to the search can be a very simple process.
Don’t be fooled by the many services that promise to submit your site to hundreds or even thousands of search engines or guarantee placement with different search engines. These services do not necessary mean that your site will be successful; to be honest, it’s possible that your money can be spent in better ways. On the other hand, if you don’t have time to submit your site, this may be a good option for your company. Just make sure you use a reputable company.
Take preventive measures before you write the check or let someone charge your card. Companies have been charge with spamming. And once your website/domain has been labeled for spamming, this can cause your site to be blocked or banned from the search engines. This is a not a title you want, trust me!
Although there are said to be close to 4000 search engines out there, the top four or five — Google, Yahoo, Bing, and AOL — are responsible for the majority of the traffic. So, this is the obvious place to start.
In order to submit your site to Google, go here and enter your site’s URL. Search Engine such as Google has powerful spider engine that will crawl your entire website, this way you need to submit your website only once. Submitting multiple times does not get you in any faster nor does it get you listed any higher.
Yahoo submission process is simple also, visit their submission page and enter your information. Keep in mind there is no guarantee that your site will be listed after you have submitted your link. It is up to their discretion.
Click here to submit your site to Bing. AOL’s search is powered by Google, so submission to Google will be inclusive to AOL searches.
As I allude to above there are thousands of engine out there, and you are welcome to drill down to second-tier engines such as Ask, Lycos, and Excite. But, truth be told, the most effective are the major four listed above.
With the popularity of Social Networking such as FaceBook, and Twitter, and too many others to name, it is wise to get your website as much exposure as you possibly can. This can also help with search engine ranking; you see the more sites that your site is on, the higher possible ranking you will achieve in the four major search engines.
Category : Advertising &Blog &Marketing &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &Web Design &Websites
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a fairly hot topic these days. Every business wants to know how to get found online.
Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends is running a short information-packed webinar entitled:
Getting Found in Search Engines, for Beginners
These two bullet points jumped out at me, since I have clients who are trying to navigate this new frontier:
- Simple techniques you can do yourself to improve your website so you can get found by potential customers in the search engines more easily
- When and how to hire SEO professionals — over the years I have hired a number of search optimization and marketing experts and I will share some tips for what to look for
I’m planning to listen in and tweet about it. Please join in, if your schedule allows. If not, you can check the Twitter feed using the hashtag #SMBTOOLS. I’m a fan of TweetChat.com for these sorts of events, so you can use the hash tag to enter the room, as they call it.
Category : Advertising &Blog &Business &search engine optimization &SEO
I think this is a really informative article, especially if you are trying like everyone else to get your site listed higher in the search engines. It is small things like this that always takes you over your competitors.
In great news, Google, Yahoo and MSN have agreed upon a XML sitemap standard.
What’s this mean to you? Well, you just need to create one XML sitemap and you can submit it to all three engines. I’ve been doing that for a while and didn’t seem to have any problem but now it’s official.
Category : Advertising &Blog &Business &Business Cards &Marketing &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO &Sitemaps
So, what are keywords and how do they help to increase traffic to your website? Keywords are words that depict for the search engine what your website is all about, this will then cause search engine to rank you so that surfers can find what they are looking for. Truthfully speaking, I am a good example for improperly choosing keywords in the past, I’ve setup sites with keywords that I thought were good and relevant to my website and the thing is, they were. The question is though, does the users associate this keyword with the niche of your products and services.
Do your research! Properly choosing the right keywords for your website can be very helpful in increasing your websites ranking in the search engine. Well, a lot of companies have an idea about what keywords are relevant for their products or services for their company, but these keywords may not be what users are searching for in the search engines. Doing your homework, and research to find what your potential clients associate with you products and services can be very helpful in increasing traffic to your site.
If your website is optimized for the keywords or keyword phrases that people are actually using to find solutions that your company offer, you will increase traffic to your site and in turn lead to increasing sales.
Here you can find out more about choosing keywords and search engine optimization.
If you have questions or comments, don’t hesitate to post them below. I will do my best in responding and answering them.
Category : Advertising &Blog &Internet &SEO &Websites
Consumers use search engines 72% more than they did two years ago.
Source: Nielsen Online / Webvisible Survey, February 2009
Category : Advertising &Blog &Marketing &SEO
Search Engine Optimization
is very vital for your online marketing campaign. Do your due diligence and you will reap the rewards, especially when that traffic starts rolling in. Here is a great article for you to get started with. Title, Anchor, <h1>, <H2>, What Matters? What Doesn’t?
By Mike McDonald – Tue, 06/16/2009 – 15:31
Search Engine Marketing and SEO have always been very dynamic fields. Search engines make changes all of the time. Sometime they announce their changes, sometimes we are left to guess at them. In either event, more often than not, we are left largely to our own devices in terms of assessing the impact of these changes and what to do about them – if anything.
This makes sessions related to ranking factors pretty popular at shows like SMX Advanced. This year was no exception and I was able to get a few minutes with one of this years speakers, Rand Fishkin, to chat about the state of SEO ranking factors.
Category : Blog
A new SEO software tool promises businesses guaranteed top 10 positions on Google for keywords that are related to their businesses. The new software offers a unique keyword tool that helps businesses to find targeted keywords that that might not be used by competitors yet.
Germany, Staudt, August 13, 2009 – Businesses around the world are fighting for the top spot in Google’s search results. Google’s enormous market share makes it crucial to be listed on Google’s first result page. The better a business can be found on Google, the more customers it will get.
The new version 11.5 of the popular website promotion software tool iBusinessPromoter (IBP) is the latest release of a proven search engine optimization (SEO) tool that has users all over the world. It is a SEO tool that helps businesses to get rankings on Google with ethical SEO methods.
Spam-free search engine optimization with a guarantee:
“Search engine optimization must be a win-win-win situation for web surfers, businesses and search engines”, – says Johannes Selbach, CEO of Axandra. “It’s not advisable to cheat search engines. IBP uses efficient search engine optimization methods that are approved by search engines and that lead to better results for all involved parties”.
Read More…
Category : Blog
