Google Place Pages Optimized for Mobile

admin    Web Marketing     google, Mobile, Optimized, Pages, Place

While Facebook is handing out stickers to the “Like” page businesses of the world, Google is continuing its move toward mobile integration of all things Google on the local level. The latest development is the introduction of optimized Place pages for the Android and iPhone/iPod Touch crowd.

As a result, I think the mobile experience of a Place Page trumps the desktop experience by a mile. One thing that I dislike about Google Place pages on a desktop or notebook is the amount of white space in the listing. You can never do enough to make a listing look like it has some depth. The presentation of the very same data on a small screen though, looks so much better and provides a much better user experience, in my opinion.

Check out the video that Google has so kindly put together for us non-Googlers found on the Google Mobile Blog.

There isn’t much else to say about the offering really. It’s just another instance of Google taking the mobile bull by the horns and making sure that all of the features that many people have some to depend on translate as well, if not better, when experienced on the go.

Your take?

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Google Place Pages Optimized for Mobile

admin    Web Marketing     google, Mobile, Optimized, Pages, Place

While Facebook is handing out stickers to the “Like” page businesses of the world, Google is continuing its move toward mobile integration of all things Google on the local level. The latest development is the introduction of optimized Place pages for the Android and iPhone/iPod Touch crowd.

As a result, I think the mobile experience of a Place Page trumps the desktop experience by a mile. One thing that I dislike about Google Place pages on a desktop or notebook is the amount of white space in the listing. You can never do enough to make a listing look like it has some depth. The presentation of the very same data on a small screen though, looks so much better and provides a much better user experience, in my opinion.

Check out the video that Google has so kindly put together for us non-Googlers found on the Google Mobile Blog.

There isn’t much else to say about the offering really. It’s just another instance of Google taking the mobile bull by the horns and making sure that all of the features that many people have some to depend on translate as well, if not better, when experienced on the go.

Your take?

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Google Search Offers Way to Easily Find Similar Pages in Results

admin    Web Marketing     Easily, Find, google, Offers, Pages, Results, Search, similar

Google continues to change the face of the SERP’s (search engine results page) by taking more real estate on the first page with information that expands on the traditional “blue text link” results. Yesterday, they took a feature that has been around for a while but, as they put it in the Official Google Blog, “hasn’t been too visible” until now. Simply put, Google is telling its users what pages are similar in specific direct searches and taking out the need for another click to find them.

From the Google blog:

We’ve offered a “Similar” feature on results for a while now as a way to discover new, useful sites, but it hasn’t been too visible. Since we’ve been continuously improving this feature and we think it’s really useful, we’re now going to start showing these alternative sites more prominently. Starting this week, for queries where similar sites are likely to be helpful, we’ll display a list of “Pages similar” at the bottom of the results page. For example, this is the list of sites similar to Direct Relief International:

I first became aware of this from Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land who posted before the official Google announcement and shared a result he produced below

This kind of a result is much more interesting in many respects because looking for the right charity doesn’t feel like you are doing something competitive. Looking for information on search engine and Internet marketing, however, is truly competitive and most folks won’t be too thrilled about Google “advertising” for the competition when someone is searching for your site directly.

So how this new feature is rolled out by Google should be interesting to follow. Imagine one day if Google would ask each business “Who are you similar to?” and starts to find another way to generate revenue. I would hope this would never happen because then that means that the SERP’s were truly “for sale” rather than on merit. Some would say that’s the case today already but I’ll let you fight that out amongst yourselves.

Your thoughts?

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Facebook Launches Community Pages for the ‘Unofficial’

admin    Twitter Marketing     'Unofficial', Community, Facebook, Launches, Pages

Facebook just released a new page creation option — the Community Page — specifically designed to support topics, causes and the ‘unofficial’ (pages created about but not by companies, brands and public figures).

Community Pages are similar to Facebook Business Pages, with the exception of their functionality.  According to Facebook, if a Community Page you’ve created spikes in popularity, its administrative capabilities will be removed from you and handed over to the Facebook community, making popular Community Pages akin to a public wiki.    

It seems this new page option has an obvious benefit for businesses on Facebook: Community Pages help eliminate previous discrepancy issues between officially and unofficially created Business Pages.  If used correctly, businesses will no longer have to worry about unofficial Business Pages cropping up about their own brands, allowing Facebook users to more easily identify a particular Business Page as the brand’s official Facebook presence.

The Marketing Lesson:

While the new page feature seems to have obvious benefits for Facebook in its management of distinguishing official from unofficial pages, the most important thing to note is Facebook’s attempt to introduce new features based on the recognition of its users’ needs.  In a nutshell, Facebook paid attention to its users’ activity and saw an opportunity to fulfill a need.  Facebook’s new addition was also another step toward building community and promoting interaction.

I think there are two major things we, as marketers, can learn from this:

1. Closely listen to and watch for feedback/hints from your customer base about their needs.  Is there a way you can improve your product/service to fulfill these needs or create a better user experience?
2. Look for ways to promote interactivity and build community on your own website.  I think we’ll start to see a lot more customer-generated communities sprouting up on Facebook about companies and products, particularly if that company or product is not already offering a community offering of its own.  Community is important.  Take advantage of using the opportunity to generate traffic to your own web site rather than Facebook.

Live Webinar: Social Media Optimization Is The New SEO With Brian Solis

Connect with HubSpot:

View full post on HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Facebook Launches Weekly Email Updates for Pages

admin    Twitter Marketing     Email, Facebook, Launches, Pages, Updates, Weekly

Many marketers have a love/hate relationship with Facebook’s Pages platform. Pages are Facebook’s way of giving businesses and organizations public profiles, allowing them the opportunity to communicate with customers and prospects within Facebook. Tuesday, Facebook snuck out a new weekly email summary feature to users who manage Facebook pages.

With this new feature, if a person manages a Facebook business page, they will receive an email once a week from Facebook that provides the number of fans added in the past week as well as the total fan count; posts, comments and likes for the week and the previous week; and total visits to the page for the week and the previous week.  This feature wasn’t formally announced by Facebook and has some users on Twitter pleasantly surprised:

Taking Facebook Analytics to the Next Level

While the new email notifications are a good start for Facebook, there is much more they should be doing. For many businesses, weekly isn’t enough. The social web has become a real-time environment where daily and instant updates have replaced weekly emails. In addition to only being once-a-week, the emails themselves could use some work. Take a look at the email digest we got here at HubSpot:

That is an ugly email, right? I am not suggesting they have a full-blown HTML template, but take a look at those links. Those are some of the longest links in an email I have ever seen. Likely, when those emails get forwarded to other team members, the links will break, leading to many frustrated people. Facebook could have easily used their URL shortener to solve this problem.

Additionally, data is only as good as the way it’s displayed. Users should be able to click on a link for each stat represented in the report, sending them to a dashboard in Facebook that provides information for that specific statistic. One link at the bottom of the email to the general analytics dashboard is not a practical solution for busy marketers and business owners. This point brings up a bigger issue with Facebook.

For a company that has an abundance of data and information, they share little of it with the business users of their site. The analytical data for page admins is minimal.

They’re missing a huge opportunity. I’m suggesting that Facebook should give business owners more data, but I am not suggesting they have to do it for free. Sure, it would be nice if they offered better, free analytics, but they could also generate revenue by charging business owners a monthly fee to access a more robust set of tools to analyze behavior and engagement surrounding the pages they manage.

What do you think about these new e-mails? Would you pay Facebook for better analytics and data related to your organization’s page? 

Live Webinar: The Science of ReTweets With Dan Zarrella

Connect with HubSpot:

View full post on HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Are your website pages being indexed by Google and Yahoo?

admin    Google Optimization     Being, google, Indexed, Pages, website, Yahoo

We have already discussed why strong internal link structures are so essential to your SEO strategy for the company website, and we looked at how to better promote strong internal linking.  Adding a sitelink map to your text link navigation menu was mentioned as one major way to ensure better internal links, and we also talked about how these maps should comply with both Google and Yahoo.  It would be a worthwhile exercise to login into both these search engines and confirm that they are both indexing each of your site pages.  Making sure that those pages are engine-indexed does not guarantee higher engine keyword rankings but it certainly does not hurt.  At the very least, you will obtain relevant and valuable data on how well those internal links are functioning as well as which external website pages are actually linked to your internal pages.

Webmasters and SEO guys have not always been able to go to Google and Yahoo and find out if site pages are engine-indexed.  These two engines use to steadfastly keep secret which external pages are linked to your internal ones.  The SEO world has changed, however, and now Google and Yahoo recognize the importance of helping Webmasters and SEOs find out which pages are linked.  So now they offer up the tools to help you.

After designing your site and engine optimizing it, and making sure that you have created an engine-friendly sitemap, you should immediately set up accounts in Google Webmasters Console and Yahoo Site Explorer.  With your sitemap established, you can employ tools from the two search engines to find out if your pages are indexed.

Google Webmasters Console (www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/)

After setting up an account in Console, you can actually add one site or several sites and have multiple ones all registered on a single interface.  There are several tools empowering you to obtain valuable information on your site pages:

ü      Diagnostics Tab: find out in detail if Google spiders are having problems accessing pages (i.e. URLS not found, timed out or restricted by robots.txt, http errors).

ü      Links Tab: click on External Links to view all external links pointing to each of your internal pages.  Click on Internal Links to discover which internal pages are linked to a specific external page.  In both areas you can select Numeric Link to access a list of website pages currently Google-indexed that point to each of your own pages.  Links Tab probably provides you with the most valuable information you will obtain in Console.

ü      Pages Analysis: access a Google Analysis of your site and/or page content

ü      Sitemap Tab: create the sitemap for each of your domains, and feature all pages you want crawled.

ü      Statistics Tab: learn about how Google PageRank is distributed on your site, and which page ranks the highest each month. 

Yahoo Site Explorer (www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com)

After setting up an account in Explorer, you can also add one site or several sites but you have to authenticate each of your unique domain names.  Tools allowing you to collect details on your pages include:

ü      Explore: located on the administrative interface, this tool lets you view all site pages which are engine-indexed.

ü      Inlinks: allows you to see how many pages are linked to the page you are “exploring”.  By selecting Except From This Domain on the Show Inlinks dropdown menu you can view just the external links pointing to your site. 

You are advised to visit both Console and Explorer frequently to find out which pages were recently indexed and which pages have external links pointed to them.  The great news for both Webmasters and SEO people is that Google and Yahoo are finally allowing them to obtain detailed and valuable information on their website links.  If you are a Webmaster or SEO person, you would do well to take advantage of such support, as it can only help you formulate a more comprehensive and effective SEO campaign!

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Google Adsense :google Ranks Pages Based on the Importance and Relevance of Pages

admin    Google Optimization     Adsense, Based, google, Importance, Pages, ranks, Relevance

The world today is dominated by computers and the Internet. With more and more entrepreneurs engaging in ecommerce, having a high site page rank is important.There are a million pages on the Internet today, each one having different page ranks. Page rank, in sum, is a measure of website link popularity. Google ranks pages based on the importance and relevance of pages, though some pages can be seen in context with the reputation of the whole site. The higher the page rank is the more people who get to see the page. In general, however, a website’s homepage can have a different page rank from the “articles” pages.Business owners and many Internets marketing professionals constantly study the algorithm being used by top search engines especially Google as most traffic comes from this site. for more help visit towww.google-atm-machine.com.Knowing the algorithm used to determine page rank; professionals can now create the fastest and easiest way to increase page rank.When Internet users search for information on the Internet, they use certain words to find what they need. Internet marketers use all sorts of techniques to find these keywords and focus their efforts to increase page rank by using these terms. Some use search engine optimization methods such as the installation of Meta tags and description to help search engine spiders understand what the page is about. Others take advantage of better web design while others buy text links so as to redirect traffic towards their site. Some webmasters choose to exchange links with other sites in the same niche.According to a survey conducted in 2005, majority of web traffic to sites come from major search engines such as Yahoo, MSN, Google and Askewest, with Google leading the pack and sending 37.3% of traffic to sites. This is the reason why most webmasters aim to increase Google page rank. Pages are ranked from 0 to 10 and it is said that 97% of sites are ranked between 0 to 6.When you buy web text link as a strategy, don’t expect that you can get an immediate increase Google page rank since Google uses a secret algorithm in ranking pages. You need to ensure that the site you are linking to is relevant to your site’s content. This means that even if you have 1,000 links to different real estate sites and but your website is about music production, you can still get a page rank of 0 because your relevancy factor is low.Targeting the right audience is the best way of increasing your page rank. As such, internet marketing is more complicated than what most people think as you will need to make your research so you have a better idea about the people who are actually using your product so you can for more help visit towww.guardadsense.com. Make the necessary adjustments for your marketing strategies.In sum, a higher Google page rank doesn’t guarantee higher traffic and sales but ranking good in search engines opens new business opportunities for these sites at the top.

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Google Adwords Quality Score for Landing Pages

admin    Google Optimization     Adwords, google, Landing, Pages, Quality, Score

Google announced that it will also include metrics based on the relevance and quality of landing pages (http://www.accuracast.com/services/ppc-management/landing-pages.php ) in the quality score, which affects ranking and CPC of sponsored links, will now also include. We discuss:
AdWords Quality Score basics
The Quality Score is a number used by Google to evaluate the quality of your keywords in order to determine your minimum bid and the position your ad is shown in for a given maximum bid value. The Quality Score was normally determined for each keyphrase you bid on, by the clickthrough rate for the keyword, relevance of the actual ad’s text, historical performance, and some other factors.
The Quality Score multiplied by the Maximum Bid gives you the value Google uses when deciding whether to set your keyword’s status as active or inactive, and to decide the position of active keywords.
Changes in calculation of AdWords quality score
With the new system for calculating Quality Score, Google will now also include the quality and relevance of the landing page and the site to the keyword.
This means Google will probably spider your entire site from your AdWords landing page(s) (http://www.accuracast.com/services/ppc-management/google-adwords/ ), evaluate it in a manner similar to how it evaluates sites on its organic listings, use techniques like Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to determine what the site is all about and then decide how relevant the site and the landing page are to the keyword.
Moreover, there is a high likelihood that Google will also use your conversion tracking values to provide an indication of whether or not their users are judging your site to be valuable and are converting into leads or sales on it, and include this as yet another metric when calculating the Quality Score.
How does this affect your search engine advertising?
On the face of it, this new metric does not change much for a scrupulous advertiser, who follows all of the Google AdWords ( http://www.accuracast.com/services/ppc-management/google-adwords/ ) editorial guidelines. The guidelines merely state that your landing page should be relevant to the ad copy and the keyword you bid on, it should include the main elements of the ad, should ideally provide details on any special offers quoted in the ad and should not attempt to mislead users.
If you follow the editorial guidelines and use AdWords scrupulously, the effect of this change should either be positive -marked by a lower CPC or better position – or none at all for your campaign.
Advertisers who chose to bid on low-price, high popularity keywords ( http://www.accuracast.com/resources/seo/seo-keywords.php ) just to gain visibility with the hope that a few inquisitive visitors might buy something from their site, will now find that they need to bid much more to keep these keywords active.
Keywords that don’t convert well into sales or leads might also be negatively effected. This again, can be good for you, since you don’t want to continue paying for words that are not winning you any money. This can be problematic, though, when your conversions tend to be offline, or over the phone for some keywords and not for others.
Google AdWords Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines

https://adwords.google.com/select/siteguidelines.html

Other articles to read:
• Search engines and Title Tags ( http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/title-tags.php )
• The future of online marketing ( http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/online-marketing-future.php )
SEO Weekly ( http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/ )

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage

How Do I Get My Pages Listed on Google?

admin    Google Optimization     google, Listed, Pages

I’m sure anyone in the SEO community has been asked this countless times and why many people reading this will be thinking about asking it in reference to their own site. It is as after all a very important question and the answer, if you can turn it to your advantage, one that could prove to be very valuable.

It is however, quite an easy question to answer, at least at a general level, the answer demystifying the oft said “black art” of Search Engine Optimisation. (I do however have to state again that this is an “idiots guide” and does therefore not cover some of the more complicated issues of “keyword density”, “deep linking ratio”, “code to text ratio” and others, all of which have a bearing on the effectiveness of any web page).

We can illustrate the answer to this queston by using an analogy.

This analogy is based on an old fashioned market place, the sort when men with barrows come in and then shout out what they have on offer, you know “A pound of plums for 50p” or “Genuine leather jackets for £50″, you get the picture. However, in my description of the system, these “market places” are actually set up by Google, one for each type of goods or services. So you have one for cars and another for plumbers and another for houses for sale, and so on.

Now every one who wants to get into any of these market places can try regardless of what they sell, however, Google will be quite ruthless in stopping anyone it feels is not in the right market from getting in (however, just like any process this is not fool proof). This leaves countless thousands of “web pages” (not sites, but pages) that want to get in to sell their wares. Why, because to get in gives them a chance to be picked by those “Google Agents” who come into the market place looking for the best pages to list.

But getting into the Market place is only the first step, how do they get picked by the Google Agent for one of those coveted top ten positions??

To better understand what is going on, you must first get to know the rules of these marketplaces.

The first and most important rule is that all webpages start at the back of the marketplace, which of course makes it very difficult for the Google Agents to “hear” them crying out their wares. As the sites to which the web pages get older, so the web page move up the marketplace, getting nearer and nearer to the front (and are thus more easily heard).

More Rules

In each marketplace you will find two types of webpage, one that is trying to catch the Google Agents eye for a listing place and the other, well they are saying, “go and have a look at this page, its all about x”. These are the “links” to pages from other sites around the web, and because these Google agents listen to them, they are, as you may know, very important indeed. They can even get an agent to look into the sandbox area, especially if there are enough of them and or they are deemed important in their own right. The rules for these links pages are simple enough, they say “I represent XXX website and we are all about YYY. I’d like you to consider ZZZ website, they are very good at what you are looking for”.

So much for these “link pages”, but what of the normal webpage. What are the rules for them.

First, each webpage must only utter the words on its page, it cannot say anything else.

It first shouts out its Title (the bit in the blue bar at the top of your browser), here it can really boom out the words, which make them easier to hear. Then it continues down the page, saying the words on the pages, pausing when it comes to paragraphs etc. Whenever it comes to a Heading in a page or something in bold or italics it can say the words a bit louder, and when it comes to lists, it can pause between each phrase, all the better to make the words more effective.

It can also make it quite clear to the Agents that there are other pages in its own site that are very relevant (these being the internal links), all with the aim of trying to impress upon the agent that the webpage’s website is very useful indeed and should therefore be listed.

So, what does the above mean to the unprepared website??

Well for many, although they have managed to get into the marketplace, they find to their horror that when it comes to shouting out their Title, they have to say “WM Cooper” and not “Plumbing Suppliers, Showers and Taps by WM Cooper”, which if the agent is looking for plumbers to list is far more interesting.

Then when they come to the words on the page, they have to drivel on about “Welcome to WM Cooper website. We have been in business for 30 years and have 1000’s of happy customers, come to us…”, by which time the Agent has “switched off” and started looking elsewhere.

Now, if the words in the page had had a Heading of “Plumbing Supplies” and then read something like “We can supply you with taps, bathrooms, tiles, wash basins” and so on the agent would have been far more likely to listen.

Other sites have different problems, sure the webpage’s exist, but they are not being pointed at in the right way by other pages in their own site. Such pages are barred by Google from even getting into the marketplace, their argument being “there is no record of your existence on the website you are claiming to have come from, therefore you don’t exist, please go away”. Thus such pages fall at the very first fence…

Then again there are those unfortunate pages, that even though they are quite clearly, to the human reader anyway, all about “hotels in Portsmouth” do not actually say this on the page in any convincing way, thus if another thousand pages (and there could be a lot lot more) are all shouting out, in no uncertain terms, that they are about “Portsmouth hotels” who are they going to pick, do I really have to say more…

Thus it is only those web pages that have done their homework and who come into the marketplace prepared that win those coveted first page positions. Well that is true to a point, but we have forgotten those “linking” pages we spoke of earlier, just what part do they have to play in this saga? quite a lot actually, in fact it is now calculated that our friends the Google agents listen to the shouting of these “links” to such a degree that as much as 50 % of the reason they choose A over B is down to them. So that means it pays to get lots of links pointing to your site into that marketplace.

But be warned, Google, in a perverse sort of way, and knowing that people know it listens to the shouts of these links, will only listen if the website that the link is on is relevant to the site it is talking about (pointing to). In other words a site all about Florida Fish Farms will be of little use “link pressure” wise to a site selling Combine Harvesters, and vice versa. Also, just to spice the pot a bit more (as if it needs it) Google also keep an eye on the number of sites in a marketplace “shouting” about other sites, and if one site seems to get too many new sites “shouting” about over a short period of time are likely to get a wee bit suspicious. Is, heaven forbid, someone trying to make a site appear more popular than it really is….

So the market place is full of dangers, but basically it is “trick” free. If the pages of a website do their homework and make sure that they are really “saying” what they are all about, making it quite clear in the Title of the page as well as the headings on the page, have plenty of links and references to other pages in their site (and even ones outside it) and, just as importantly, get some links pointing to them and the other pages in their webpage, they WILL get listed. Do anything else though and be prepared to go on asking that question “why do some pages get listed by Google while mine do not….?”

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage

Landing Pages – Ladder To Successful Ppc Search Engine Marketing

admin    Website Marketing Companies     Engine, Ladder, Landing, marketing, Pages, Search, Successful

According to a reliable market research, the total expenditure on PPC search engine marketing is more than half of the total spending undertaken on web marketing as a whole! In other words, entire search engine marketing expert community world wide gives its whole hearted endorsement to PPC search engine marketing as a highly effective and hence prominent form of online marketing and advertising. There are three factors that significantly contribute to the success or failure of any PPC search engine marketing campaign, namely

Landing page, simply put, is the page on which the visitor finds oneself upon clicking the PPC ad on SERP. It is a very important page from the point of view of any commercial venture, as it decides whether the PPC ad is able to fulfil its core objectives of having PPC search engine marketing in the first place. A search engine marketing expert from a SEO company of India is the world’s favourite SEO professional owing to his strategic advantages, including cost-effectiveness, competitiveness, proven expertise and sound infrastructure. You can expect a SEO company from India provide you with a dedicated and thorough professional search engine marketing expert for tending to your PPC search engine marketing campaign and implement the following strategies to achieve an effective landing page:

A faithful following of the above tips can actually do wonders to your PPC campaign. Worth a try, at least!

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage