The Benefits of Using Google+ For SEO

Although Google+ is still struggling to establish itself as a viable social media alternative to Facebook, the number of users is increasing as Google integrates the tool with other services and starts to create a community around the range of features being offered. There are also some SEO advantages to having a well set up Google+ profile with both personal and business pages.

With any link-building strategy, it’s very important to network and build genuine connections and relationships that will help spread your content. Google+ facilitates this by allowing the linking of all of your social media profiles, sites and blogs in an organised manner. It’s also possible to link to sites to which you regularly contribute and, importantly, all of these links are “followed”, rather than “no follow” links and you’re able to select the anchor text (in your bio).

Google will follow the links in your posts and the more people share them, +1 your posts or link to your profile, the more valuable these links become to you. If your post goes viral or is shared by a high authority profile, the value of the links increases more. Content on Google+ is indexed rapidly – some say almost instantly – so it’s a great way to get posts by you into Google’s index quickly when there is a hot topic.

With many social media sites, you have little to no ability to edit your content once it has been posted. However, Google+ allows you to go back and make edits to posts as you see fit. Furthermore, Google provides the option for you to take ownership of that content and so it’s important to set up an author tag (for an individual claiming content on a page) or a publisher tag (for a business to claim ownership of a site).

Both the author and publisher tag can’t be used on the same page and if the publisher tag is used, it’s only for the homepage, not internal pages. You can use the author tag for internal pages with content. It’s still a good idea to use Google’s “rel=publisher” tag, but you won’t get the image in your SERP listing like you do by using the authorship tag.

It’s important to remember that a Google+ profile needs to be set up in order to implement the Authorship Markup and take advantages of its benefits. To set up a personal profile, you can go here. Business profiles can be set up here.

The benefits of doing this are:

• It makes your listing more robust, because it includes a photo, your name and links to more content by you. There are also indicators that your authorship markup may give you a boost in rankings. While some say it doesn’t directly help, others have reported an increase in rankings after implementing it.
• Your authorship markup also helps you build trust as it establishes you as a real person in the often-anonymous online world.
• It also allows you to claim your name (you don’t want someone trying to steal your name!) and your content (you’ll be seen as the original and rightful owner of the content and won’t have to worry about a “copy scraper” outranking you).
• You can improve your click-through rate by playing with your profile image that’s shown in the SERPs. Images that perform best seem to be close-ups where the eyes are looking to the right towards the listing in the SERPs.

Once you’ve completed the profile and you start posting, keep in mind that the first sentence of your Google+ post becomes part of the title tag, which impacts rankings and influences click-through rates. A word of warning is that Google doesn’t tolerate “spammy” practices, so it’s vital not to turn your profile into a link farm!

There are a lot of different ways to connect with influencers in your industry and networking on Google+ with those is one of the core focuses of Google+ users. It’s fairly easy to do because there are so many ways to do it, but be sure you don’t abuse the privilege, as if you become seen as a spammer, it will be very difficult to grow your presence.

While Google+ numbers aren’t as large as Facebook, they are growing and as with most things, it’s the early adopters that do well in the long run. So it’s worth beginning now to establish your position. Google+ is probably here to stay and also likely to get more important to your rankings and traffic.

If you’d like more information about Google+, or help with setting up a profile, please contact us now.

During May, Yahoo! acquired one of the leading blogging services – Tumblr – for US$1.1bn. This is a notable deal, made by Yahoo’s chief executive Marissa Mayer who was appointed in July last year, and she has called the move a “unique opportunity”. However, it could also be a huge risk for Yahoo!, which now has to generate revenue from the deal without alienating the Tumblr user base.

The plans for the acquisition are for Tumblr to continue operating under its own brand and independently of the new owner, with co-founder David Karp continuing as Chief Executive. Tumblr combines elements of blogging with social networking, and its simple design has attracted millions of users since its launch. According to the site, it now hosts 108 million blogs, with over 50 billion posts. Crucially, it also has a significant presence on mobile devices.

Observers says that the move is partly an attempt by Yahoo! to regain favour with the younger ‘hip’ market, where Tumblr has proved a great success. Yahoo! has lost favour in recent years, both in terms of search and also as a social site, although the initial reaction from Tumblr users to the takeover has been mostly negative – which would be expected.

However, Yahoo! is hoping that its purchase of Tumblr will boost traffic to its other properties, such as the photo sharing site Flickr, which is being relaunched with new features to compete against Instagram. But the question is really whether the US$1.1bn fee will also help to boost revenue?

Analysts suggest that Yahoo! has significantly overpaid for the deal – Tumblr’s 2012 revenue was just $13m, according to a recent report by Forbes magazine, and despite its fast-growing user base, it has struggled to make money and has traditionally resisted advertising. Yahoo! says they will be working with Tumblr to create ads that “are seamless and enhance the user experience”. However, there is a danger of alienating users with more advertising – a challenge that faces most social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter.

Yahoo! has struggled in recent years, with a lack of direction and innovation, which is the reason why Marissa Mayer was brought in from Google. Despite this, Yahoo! remains a major online property, with around 700 million visitors to its website every month and the majority of its revenues comes from advertising. However, it has limited mobile reach and lags behind Google in the search engine rankings. It also shed more than 1,000 jobs during 2012 and has long been divided over whether it should focus on media content or on tools and technologies.

If you’d like to know more about this deal and the role of Yahoo!, please contact us for details.

In January, Facebook announced their new “Graph Search” tool, which is gradually being rolled out to users of the social networking service. As with many product developments by Facebook, there have been concerns raised about privacy, as the tool now allows greater in-depth searching of the user database.

The launch of the Graph Search function provides a new type of social search that can’t be completed through Google or any other existing search tool. It therefore fills a gap in search because, if used regularly, Facebook has a massive amount of social data on users which can now be mined and used for different purposes – giving Facebook an advantage over Google’s range of search options.

The search function will now enable users to search for ‘people, places or things’ with results shown based on your network of friends and the things they have posted, liked or commented on. For example, if you typed “movies my friends like” into Google, it would have no idea what you wanted, whereas Facebook would potentially provide this information, as the new feature allows members to search for this and find results, as long as your friends have posted this type of information in the first place. (If search results are not widely available from your friends network, then Bing will provide results and this search engine is becoming more integrated with Facebook.)

While this data – called the “social graph” by Facebook – has always been on the site, it’s not previously been easily accessible. Only advertisers could use this type of data previously, through the targeting options provided, such as showing an ad to only “18-24-year-old males who like video games and live in Australia” for example. This has now changed with the wider access to this “social graph” for all users.

The new Graph Search has been getting a lot of media attention, but not all is good. Facebook often faces privacy concerns when they launch new features and this one is no exception. There was an immediate impact on the company’s already battered share price as concerns were raised over how this tool could be used, but Facebook hopes that it will place them in a stronger position for increased usage and, of course, better revenue opportunities.

The privacy concerns revolve around the changing usage and access terms for information posted on Facebook, and from the potential for personal information to be collected by criminals to build profiles of individuals that could then be used to target victims for identity theft. However, users of Facebook also need to be aware of what information they post online and who has access to this through their individual security settings.

For more information about the new Graph Search feature, and the implications for Facebook users (and advertisers), please contact us for details.

In this article we examine the benefits, features and uses of a company page on LinkedIn. This is a topic which should interest companies that are keen to discover how the use of this business networking website can deliver tremendous reach to business professionals and organisations, for a relatively small investment.

LinkedIn is useful for companies’ recruiting, business networking, development, and research. A company page is a centralised location where millions of LinkedIn members can go, to stay informed on company news, products and services, business opportunities and job openings.

It’s relatively straight-forward to create a company profile, with a company logo and weblink. A recent addition has been the option to add a larger image for the business page, in a similar way to Facebook or Google+. It’s then very important to ensure that the page is regularly maintained and stays up to date. Many larger organisations assign a LinkedIn Administrator to look after their profile as part of their social media activity.

The profile includes an overview of your company and key company statistics that can be used to promote your services and products, which can attract leads and opportunities. As it’s a communication and information exchange that’s based on expertise and resources, it provides the benefit of being able to create business relationships with those in similar, or other industries. Creating or joining groups facilitates this as these act as forums for members to have real-world conversations about products, issues, opportunities, events, and referrals of information.

The company profile is accessible from each company employee’s individual profile. So every employee you have on LinkedIn will give you the opportunity to promote your company. Also, each company profile has an area to post careers, so this can replace a traditional job board and expand the company’s reach via its network by posting vacancies on LinkedIn.

Another useful feature of a company profile is that it can be used as a hub for the employees to receive latest news and updated information, such as organisational changes, or promotions. It’s also possible to create posts about forthcoming events, such as tradeshows, conferences, and training seminars.

LinkedIn company pages can be viewed by anyone, whether they’re signed up for LinkedIn or not, or whether they’re following the page or not. The page can be connected to Social Links, such as Facebook, Twitter and your blog’s RSS feed can automatically update the page. A strong company presence will let LinkedIn users follow your company and its updates.

Ensuring that your customers and clients know that they can find you on social media sites will help them to constantly stay up to date about projects that you are working on and advances with your business. Fans of the company page can like, share and comment on the page’s updates, which can be highly effective at increasing the online reach of a company.

This is where you can find out more about LinkedIn Company Pages, or contact us now if you’d like details about how we can promote your company’s online presence through LinkedIn.

The Gmail video chat tool (which was originally introduced in 2008) has now been upgraded to a much more modern version, called Google+ Hangouts. This provides significant advantages over the original version and allows your business to easily collaborate with colleagues, wherever they may be.

Gmail video chat used to use peer-to-peer technology, whereas Hangouts improves the reliability and quality of it by utilising Google’s network. So it’s now possible to chat with people not only when they’re using Gmail, but also when they’re on Google’s social network, Google+, either from a PC or from a mobile device.

Another significant advantage of this updated technology is that it’s now possible to chat with up to nine people at once. An interesting feature of this is that there is voice recognition technology, which automatically switches the camera view to the person that is speaking.

The new features also include the ability to watch YouTube videos together, collaborate on Google documents and share your screen. This is another useful function that lets you give other people the ability to see what’s on your computer screen. For example, if there’s a picture open on your computer screen, Hangout participants can look at it without having to download anything.

There are also “Hangouts Apps”, which are programs that you and your contacts can use while in a Google+ Hangout. They let you do things like create documents, play games, and add fun effects to a Hangout, all without having to install complicated software.

Skype has managed to reign supreme in the video chat / conferencing arena up until now. But Google+ Hangouts seems poised to take over Skype as the most popular video chat service in the market with its ease of use, lack of downloads, YouTube integration and great quality video.

If you’d like to know more about how Google+ Hangouts can enhance your business’s communication, contact us now – including by a Hangout if you wish!

Facebook introduced a new “Timeline” feature in December 2011 that arranges posts according to their date and shows a history of a fan page. Many companies that use Facebook for social media networking may have been discouraged by these changes and not taken advantage of what they have to offer. So there are a number of useful points that business owners should know about Facebook’s timeline.

If you had previously set up a business page on Facebook before the implementation of the new Timeline format, some of the old functionality has changed. There are therefore the main features you need to consider for the new format:

Use an effective cover photo
This photo has a strong impact on the look of your Facebook business page and should be used effectively to support your branding. There are tight restrictions on the usage of the cover photo (including not being permitted to include a call-to-action, or a request to “Like” the page), so the cover photo should be interesting enough to convey the business brand image and its services, as well as draw visitors into the page’s content.

Use personal & private messages
Since the new Timeline has been implemented, it’s possible for companies to reply to personal or private messages that people can now send to them. This helps businesses to network with potential clients, and provides another avenue of customer service.

Use the screening option for comments
A company’s Timeline shows all comments, replies and posts, which everyone can see. But it is possible to turn off this feature so that posts can be screened to determine whether they are generating negative publicity.

Use the improved admin controls
It’s now easier with the new Timeline function for a business to monitor all aspects of a company’s Facebook fan page from one place. There’s also now more information about what activities are attracting the most attention.

Use the default landing page effectively
Visitors to a business’s Facebook page now land directly upon the main Timeline page, instead of a default landing page that could be chosen by the business. This is to facilitate how users can explore a business, so as the old calls-to-action on Facebook landing pages have been replaced, it’s important to ensure that the page and Timeline of a business is interesting and provides concise information.

Use apps to promote the business
Now that it’s no longer possible to promote and make offers through a business’s Facebook cover photo or landing page, it’s important to use approved Facebook apps to keep the social media campaign generating these types of useful leads. For example, Shortstack is a free app that can be used to embed a business blog into Facebook with the app and point it back to your website with links.

There are more aspects of Facebook’s Timeline that be utilised by a business to generate additional engagement from existing and potential customers and fans. So if you’d like more information about how we can help your business achieve this, please contact us now.

As Google makes every effort to encourage web users to participate with the Google+ social network – such as through the rebranding of Google Places which we have covered above – it’s important for businesses to consider how they could or should be using this network to market their business and to communicate with customers and prospective customers. As with Facebook, Google+ gives companies the option to create a business page, which can be used to market their brand and communicate or interact with users.

Google+ is Google’s social network, designed to generate more traffic and activity through Google and to compete with Facebook. Since its launch, Google+ has only attracted low levels of usage, because many people who are already using Facebook don’t want to recreate their social networks and migrate to this new service. The only way Google+ will succeed is through offering something that Facebook can’t (like the integration with Google’s wide range of services), or by Facebook antagonising its user base (which it tends to be quite good at!). For Google, the success of Google+ is paramount and they are doing everything possible to increase the awareness and usage of this service.

As we have covered above, it’s important for businesses to set up or claim and manage their Google+ Local listing/s. Alongside this, having a Google+ Business Page is also something to consider sooner rather than later, to create a presence on this service and to make a business more ‘social’ for those customers or prospects who might be using Google+ and want to interact through this tool. At some stage, Google may also make a significant move that ensures Google+ becomes a more important, and therefore popular, tool for web users or businesses, so it’s good to set up a business page now.

A Google+ business page can be in the form of one for a company, institution, organisation, or a page for a particular product or brand. There are clear parallels with Facebook business pages, whereby users can recommend your business, products or services to friends and contacts across the web through the use of the “+1″ button. It’s also possible to share different aspects of the business with different groups of people, as it enables the targeting of the particular sections of the customer base with news, updates, promotions, links and photos by keeping “followers” up to date.

As well as being able to share information and promote your business through Google+ business page, it’s possible to measure how the interactions of ‘followers’ on the page affect your brand and business. The data that Google provides through Google+ and through Google Analytics, makes it fairly easy to understand Google+ activity – in particular, what people are saying about the business, how many +1′s the business receives and how these affect the traffic on the page.

If a business is using Google Ads (AdWords), they can also use a social extension to their adverts and so give the option to web searchers to link through to their Google+ business page. There is also the advantage of having the power of Google’s search engine connected with these business pages – Google calls this “Direct Connect”, which allows the inclusion of a “+” before the page of interest in a search (e.g. +Pepsi) which then generates the results for that business page.

Although web usage is still comparatively low for Google+ at the moment, it doesn’t take much to create a Google+ account and then set up a business page. That will at least establish a presence on this tool and content here can be generated in tandem with any activity on Facebook (or Twitter). Having a page available also gives your customers the option to follow it if they choose to do so. And, should Google+ suddenly get a significant boost in value and usage, your business will be well positioned to take advantage.

If you’d like to know more about Google+ Business Pages and how these can help to promote your business, contact us now.

Did you buy Facebook shares in May? Last month saw the long awaited Facebook IPO (Initial Public Offering) on Nasdaq, which was launched with much fanfare and anticipation that also made founder Mark Zuckerberg a multi-billionaire. However, the outcome was not so expected, with a fall in the share price on the first day which has since continued. The fallout from this has generated much comment and finger-pointing, leaving Facebook and their advisors looking embarrassed. So what went wrong?

Facebook launched with a share price of $38, but despite a short initial gain, this price has since dropped to a current price of below $30, which is nearly a 25% reduction in value within the first few weeks. For investors, this is not a good start, particularly compared to Google’s launch in 2004 and the more recent IPO for LinkedIn. Although they should be looking at long term value, it appears that the share price was overvalued based on the business model and current revenue levels.

The main issue revolves around their advertising revenue and future business strategy to increase this. With access to a massive user base around the world, Facebook has an attractive, captive market for many advertisers. However, there are questions about the model. Just prior to the IPO, General Motors decided to pull its $10 million ad campaign from Facebook because they were getting a poor return compared to other ads such as on Google. Many have seen the move as a sign that Facebook’s ad offering may not be as robust as the company would like it to be.

Facebook’s advertising offering is essential to grow their revenue, yet the basic model is very different to Google’s highly successful AdWords system. Advertising works differently on Facebook because users are not searching for something, as with Google, but interacting with friends and online content. Therefore ads need to be distracting and engaging, plus they may work better for branding rather than immediate response. For advertisers, who may well be comparing the cost per click and ROI against Google, Facebook’s results will not compare favourably and therefore it’s not going to be the ‘must-have’ network to use.

In addition to this, there are concerns about how the advertising model will work on mobiles and this is one of the key issues from the IPO process, and many investors say that a key report was not made public before the sale. As more and more people access the web, and Facebook, through their phones, the advertising opportunities are reduced since Facebook’s current model does not transfer well to phones. These concerns have impacted the share price and it’s something Facebook needs to address – only this week, they announced plans to launch their own branded mobile phone in response to this.

Market analysts also say that one of Facebook’s big problems is that its advertising technology, although powerful, is far too complicated for most marketers to figure out. Firms that can’t afford the ad software have been turning to specialized ad agencies to update their ads and run multivariate tests. The Return on Investment (ROI) of these ads is also poor for many companies so that although Facebook can attract large audiences, the question is whether the advertising system is effective and sustainable in the long term.

For the time being, the share price is languishing well below the launch price. Facebook now needs to start performing ahead of expectation, to satisfy investors and to develop systems and strategies that drive new and higher revenues. Being a public company, there will also be more scrutiny and the start of a new challenging period for the leading social network.

If you’d like more information about the Facebook IPO or their advertising options, please contact us for details.

Following on from our May 2011 newsletter where we reported on Google’s move into social networking with the “+1″ button, they have now launched a full social networking service called Google+. At the moment this remains in a beta version and is gradually being rolled out, but initial estimates are indicating a rapid take-up of the service.

It appears that Google+ is not shaping up to be a flop, like “Buzz” and “Wave” – the company’s previous forays into social/shared content. At least one independent study indicates that Google+ is growing at rates that rival those seen by Facebook. The author of this study, Paul Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com, suggests that by mid-July, there could be as many as 20 million users signed up to Google+.

Allen based his work by counting surnames on Google+ and then comparing that count to Census Bureau data. If his figures are correct, then more than one million new people per day have signed up to Google+ since its launch on June 28th. According to The New York Times, in 2009 Facebook was gaining nearly a million new users a day. However, Google has not announced officially how many users are on Google+ at the moment.

Allen’s data does involve some assumptions, for example, that there were 2.12 non-US users for every American on Google+, so cannot be deemed as entirely accurate (and neither does he claim it to be). But he believes that his figures are in the approximate vicinity and this is sufficient to portray such amazing growth.

The reason for this could be due to the recent publicity for Google+ in the technical press which has prompted many sign-ups. Whether or not these users are actually active or will continue to use the new service is a key question and one that will determine whether Google+ will really challenge Facebook or head the same way as Buzz and Wave.

If you would like to know more about Google+, or how social media marketing can enhance the success of your business, contact us now for details.

At the end of March, Google launched their “+1″ button, which enables people to recommend content on the web. Widely compared to Facebook’s “Like” button, this is seen as another attempt by Google to enter the social networking space, after the poor response to Buzz last year.

The Google +1 service (pronounced “Plus One”) is gradually being rolled out from its beta development stage and is mainly available to users in the US at the moment. It’s designed for people who are logged in to their Google account to recommend web pages and other content to their social networks and Google hopes that this will become a widely accepted and used system.

Searchers will see the +1 button against all search results in time – both organic and from Google Ads (AdWords) – and these will be greyed out. Once a user clicks the button it will appear as a coloured icon and the recommendation will be logged against the user’s Google profile, so that they will have a record of the recommendation and their network of friends will also see these details. The user will also see those sites that their friends have recommended as being tagged with the coloured +1 button.

In addition to the +1 button showing up in the search results, Google will be also be making a +1 button available for web users to recommend something without leaving a website. This is part of Google’s goal of providing quality search content on the web and thus will allow good quality content that is shared to positively impact its SEO rankings. This is expected to have a significant effect upon SEO, as content that has many +1 “stamps of approval” will probably rank better in the search results, at least as one of the signals used by the search engine.

There has been much talk about how the elements of social networking will be used to contribute to search results, in the same way that links do at the moment. However, after the initial “buzz” around the launch of +1, Google has to get this system accepted and used by people and +1′s will clearly face an uphill struggle to compete with “Likes” from the Facebook system.

If you’d like to know more about the Google +1 button and what impact this may have on search results in the future, contact us now.