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By David Jackson in Featured

A couple of weeks ago, I visited one of the Internet Marketing/Small Business forums that I’m a member of, and noticed a new member had posted a typical newbie question in the SEO forum. The member wanted to know how she could be guaranteed to get her website on the first page of Google. As usual, members came crawling out of the woodwork with advice – including members who didn’t even own a website.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty typical on Internet Marketing/Small Business forums… members who don’t own a website instructing other members how to get on the first page of Google… members who don’t own a business dispensing business advice. So be careful where you get your advice from… but I digress.

Not surprisingly, not a single member responded with the correct answer. And what is the correct answer? The correct answer is there is NO magic bullet that will assure a first page ranking on Google. Never has been, never will be. By the same token, NO reputable SEO company will promise first page rankings.

By the way, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about this topic. In my article How to Choose a Reputable SEO Company ), I wrote the following:

“No SEO company can guarantee you a first page or top 10 ranking. I repeat: NO SEO company can guarantee you a first page or top 10 ranking. Here’s why: There are far too many variables involved in the ranking of a website – not the least of which are the age of the domain, relevancy and quantity of content, number and quality of inbound links, competition, and of course Google’s ever-changing algorithms. That’s why legitimate SEO companies don’t make those kinds of outlandish promises.”

By Jill Whalen in Featured

articlewriting 2Have you heard of Google’s Authorship program yet? Whether you’ve heard of it or not, you’ve likely seen its fruits in the search results. You know those listings that have a photo of the author next to them? Most likely they get that extra cool stuff because they’re using Rel=Author correctly and Google has accepted them to participate. Unfortunately, it’s been a bit hit-or-miss as to whether your content gets accepted or not. I saw mine accepted for a day or two many months ago, and then *poof!* it was gone. I reviewed their new guidelines recently, however, made a few changes, and sure enough, within a week or so, my content started showing up… yay!

While you may or may not get your content into the program, the only way to know is to try, and persistence is definitely a key.

If you’re thinking it’s just not worth the trouble, here are 5 reasons why it’s super important:

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

google+Recently, Google+ further opened up its platform to now accept “Brand” or “Company” based accounts or profiles. This means that business and site owners can now promote and brand their companies within Google+. This might seem like a small change, but one only has to look at the tremendous success of Facebook’s Fan pages, to see why this move is very important for companies and site owners.

While Google Plus doesn’t have anywhere near the numbers Facebook has, it does hold one major trump card in its hand, that being the Google brand itself. Not only does Google bring its well respected reputation to the table, but you can’t dismiss all those countless free programs and services which Google now offers to an ever admiring audience. Associating your own business or company with a brand like Google does score you some brownie points, not to mention the whole issue of trust. On the web, building instant trust with your potential customers is vital for your overall success and building a large community via Google+ will definitely help in this regard.

Besides its stellar reputation, Google brings much more to the table than Facebook, especially when it comes to marketing on the Internet. As you have probably already noticed, Google does run a little search engine that controls much of the world’s lucrative search traffic. And you can bet your last dollar, Google will be keeping track of the number of followers a Google+ brand receives and how vibrant that community becomes when voting or clicking those +1 buttons for your content. All of this will no doubt have a significant effect on your SEO and rankings within Google.

Google+ also presents an attractive and inexpensive way to build buzz and momentum towards any product or company. Especially when it comes to SEO and getting your brand out there on the web and in front of the marketplace. However, it is the SEO aspect of Google+ that could make it a very useful marketing tool, especially for those businesses just starting out and/or that have small marketing budgets. Google+ can help build your brand’s visibility both in the SERPs and in the real world.

In addition, any marketer will also have to consider the advantage of buying ads on Google+ which can be displayed all over the web. These social ads have already been very successful for Twitter and Facebook, but just imagine the extra marketing power Google can bring to these types of ads. One only has to look at Google’s Adwords program to realize this could be another major advertising venue for
Google and another way for companies to fully expand their advertising dollars.

One of the main reasons Adwords has become so effective – it closely targets your marketing to exactly match what buyers are looking for at the exact time they’re ready to buy. Now with Google+ any business has the potential of reaching a very specific targeted group of potential clients via the circles and hangouts features in the Google+ social network. It is this targeted marketing that could possibly make Google+ the ultimate web marketing tool. Only time will tell how effective Google+ becomes, but all signs are pointing in the right direction.

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7 Day Marketing Course here: http://www.marketingtoolguide.com Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

By Edwin S Huertas in Featured

google+The Analytics tools for Google+ have many excited about the new Google+ Business Pages.

Businesses know that when it comes to BI and decision making, data is king. Google has had years of experience building and honing its data gathering, analysis and reporting tools within the business framework, and it leverages this competitive advantage by integrating its leadership in search and API development to offer an easy and reliable way for businesses to measure the success of their online initiatives. This is a notable strength of the new social network’s business page features, because the Analytics component has been conceptualized and built from the very beginning. In stark contrast, Analytics and business intelligence seem to have been an afterthought for competing networks.

Search

It always makes sense for businesses to build on and extend their core competencies. Google is the dominant search engine in the online world so it’s no surprise that it brings its search expertise to the social networking table. Google+ Search focuses on allowing users to search through Google+ content, returning information from profiles, member posts and shared content from the Sparks engine.

You can narrow your search down to a specific area and -yes-it’s a great feature, but I’d be willing to bet that Google is tracking your search activities to subsequently provide data and insights that can help you (and others) analyze social business behavior.

Ripples

The new feature launched by Google+ was hardly noticed at first, but those who have used Ripples are astounded by the amount of data the feature can provide to users. The main interface is an interactive info-graphic that summarizes the ripple effect caused by content you produce, visually presenting who among your contacts has been sharing your content with their own circles.

This is an easy way for you to find out and track the “influencers” within your Circles, allowing you to focus on these people for future marketing campaigns and activities.

Social Analytics

How serious is Google about its social analytics? Its recent addition of real time data to Google Analytics and its acquisition last month of social analytics startup SocialGrapple seem to indicate that they are very serious indeed. Users can check out the new social engagement report on Google Analytics and monitor the behavior of users on their Google+ business pages.

Google’s strategy for social analytics also seems to indicate that the company is trying to eliminate the distinctions that currently set “search” users, traditionally identified as Google’s user base, apart from “social” users that are claimed by social networks such as Facebook. Google is instead aiming for a single massive-user population that reaches sites from a variety of sources using a variety of discovery tools.

Google seems to be making a strong push to attract business owners and if they continue to offer tools like these, you might see a shift in population among the top social media networks one day. This is a prize audience that Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all vying for, and I’m pretty sure those guys are watching very, very closely. I can see them responding to many of the tools that Google creates in the near future.

API

Perhaps the most powerful feature within the Google+ Analytics framework is the newly available API, which currently allows users to readily access public and Hangouts data. Developers can create tools and objects that work with these data sources to provide dynamic interaction opportunities with end-users. It’s exciting to imagine and anticipate what these new data-driven apps and tools will look like, but these will certainly be game changers for online businesses and social networking.

Article by Edwin S Huertas. At Isis Toolbox we have created our social media marketing tools with a lot of help from Google. We plan to incorporate any and all API tools that Google+ offers into our free tools to help marketers make the most of their social media marketing efforts.

If you know anything about online marketing, it is that SEO, video and social media channels are your best options for delivering high quality traffic to your Website.

That’s why we’ve put together a suite of tools that will allow you to not only improve your traffic, but also help you make the most out of the time you spend branding your business and communicating with leads and clients via social media platforms.

Check out Isis Toolbox at http://www.isistoolbox.com

By Joseph Baker in Featured

SEO2As we all know, SEO is evolving by leaps and bounds every day. As we all chase after Google’s meticulous algorithm updates, we continue to find ways to help companies increase their Internet profile, though some of those methods often go under even our radars. Here are a few advanced techniques for SEOs looking for innovative ways to secure links for clients.

LOCATION BASED SEO
The key tenet of SEO is always and has always been relevance. How is your content relevant to the searcher? In the nebulous wilderness of the Internet, it can be hard to find relevance that goes past identifying a searcher’s interest and presenting them with information about that interest. What becomes important is location.

The explosive growth in smartphone sales and innovations in location-based search have led to an expansion of location technologies. Companies like Groupon have capitalized on this by offering street-specific deals through their mobile application Groupon Now. SEOs can also utilize this powerful metric in developing content for clients.

Specific location adds relevance in the eyes of Google. If you were creating content about what to do in Chicago, it would behoove you to mention actual locations within the city. Reference places like Navy Pier, Millennium Park or any of the numerous museums, as long as you do it by name. Not only does this deepen the topic for potential searchers, it increases the amount of searches in which your content will place.

AUTHOR STATUS
Author clout is becoming increasingly important in Google’s SERPs; the more a certain author has written about a topic, the more clout they will get in search engine rankings. For example, if you and Paul Krugman both write posts for the same blog about economics, he will be ranked higher because he has a long web history of writing about economics (not to mention innumerable links and comments). However, if Krugman and I both wrote posts about Tamagotchi I just may come out on top; my expertise and cataloge of writing about digital egg friends goes back to the early days of the Internet.

Successful SEOs will look at the potential of author clout and begin cultivating relevant experiences in order to build that up for future results.

FACEBOOK COMMENTS
In a shocking twist of events, Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that the search engine Now has the ability to execute AJAX/JS to index some dynamic comments. PC World states: “Google bots can now see comments you’ve posted in public forums, which include websites that use the Facebook commenting system, as well as public pages on Facebook itself. Remember–these comments were public to begin with, just not easily searchable.”

Because these comments are now more easily searchable, they can be used as forums to discuss clients and thereby build links to their sites. Webmasters using Java-based commenting systems will likely see a boost in their rankings thanks to user comments that will now be a key element of PageRank. Since comments are indexed, so are commenters, and so active users who comment often will be instrumental in increasing rank as well.

There’s a lot of interesting activity taking over SEO in The Year of the Panda, and it’s all looking like it will lead to the most relevant search results for users and better placement for clients.

Joseph Baker is a freelance writer living in the Midwest. He enjoys working on his novel and drinking large amounts of Earl Grey tea. He writes this article behalf of American InterContinental University.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

gumby-doodleNot many people will recognize the name Art Clokey. But a lot more people will recognize the green clay animated character Gumby that he created.

Art Clokey was the pioneer of stop motion clay animation, bringing to life Gumby and his horse Pokey, who first appeared on the American kid’s show Howdy Doody. Art Clokey died last year, but to celebrate what would have been Clokey’s 90th birthday yesterday, Google’s home page featured the tribute doodle you see pictured.

The initial image shows a toy block and 5 balls of colored clay representing the letters in GOOGLE. Clicking on any one of the clay balls launches a delightful animation of the clay taking the shape of one of Clokey’s famous animated characters. A link above the doodle takes you to SERPs for Art Clokey and his life.

One of Google’s better doodles!

By Alesya Krush in Featured

SEO2I bet all SEO’s have faced this problem at least once – a client looking up their target keywords on the Internet and seeing different website rankings than the ones stated in the rankings report. How do you explain to clients that you are not trying to cheat them?

Users may get different search results for one and the same search term because of their:

1. Web History

Personalized search results are no secret to anyone. We know that nowadays search engines (particularly Google and Bing) custom-tailor your search results based on the queries you make, websites you visit and search results you click. What’s interesting is that your results get biased by default, unless you specifically opt out.

Search engines collect users’ browsing history in 2 major ways:

(1) by tracking signed-in users’ activities and
(2) by planting cookies into signed-out users’ browsers.

By Jill Whalen in Featured

SEO2When I teach my SEO classes, I begin by telling the students all the things that SEO isn’t. I’ve always felt that it was important because they’re often expecting to hear some secret formula for SEO success. And why wouldn’t they, with all the myths and outright wrong/bad information that constantly swirls through the SEOsphere? When I finish telling them that everything they thought was SEO really isn’t, they stare at me with their mouths hanging open. So I tell them what SEO actually is:

Making your website the best it can be for the search engines and your site visitors.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much to alter their blank stares. After all, it’s an incredibly open-ended definition of SEO. Still, it’s the only one that truly encompasses what good SEO is all about, as well as why you need to do it. While my method of SEO has always been based on that principle, more people are coming around to it in the wake of Google’s Panda Algorithm.

Pre-Panda, many people built thriving businesses using the following basic SEO process:

* Buy a keyword-rich domain name that encompasses the products you want to sell.
* Build a templated website around it.
* Link internally to the product pages with descriptive anchor text.
* Use those same keyword phrases in the Title and H tags.
* Submit the website URL to lots of directories.
* Drop links to the website in other people’s blogs and forums.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

ppcI was talking to a small business owner the other day, who was complaining to me about how difficult it is to run Pay Per Click ad campaigns on Google when you are faced with conflicting information all the time. I asked him to elaborate and he said:

“I talked to my Google AdWords rep recently and he said that using company names in an ad violates Google’s terms. Also, in some of your blog posts, you seem to suggest bidding on common brand names is also a violation. But I was under the assumption that this was common practice. Is it not? I’m sure our competitors are doing that and I’m wondering if I could report that to Google?”

It did seem like a confusing issue, so I decided to research it a little more.

Use of Your Company Name or Trademark in AdWords

Putting your own company name or trademark in your ad is certainly not a violation, it’s encouraged, particularly if yours is a well known brand/name. In the section of AdWords Help called Use of Trademarks in AdWords, there is an authorization form you can submit to be able to use your brand / trademark throughout your account.

Use of Your Company Name or Trademark by Competitors

The use of your trademark by competitors is where things get complicated. It differs between region and differs again between ad text versus keyword bids. Google actually opened up trademark keyword bidding two years ago, however AdWord’s trademark policy is now dependent on the region your trademark is registered in and the region/s your billing account is located in.

This is a crucial change and one that has likely gone unnoticed by many advertisers. So here are the main regional trademark policies:

AdWords Regional Trademark Policies

1. In certain regions, Google allow some ads to show with a trademark in ad text if the ad is from a reseller or from an informational site. There is covered by a separate trademark policy for resellers and informational sites.

2. For regions that are NOT included in Google’s trademark policy for resellers and informational sites, if their investigation finds that the advertiser is using the trademark in ad text, Google will require the advertiser to remove the trademark and prevent them from using it in ad text in the future.

3. In most regions covered by the Trademark policy (250+ countries including UK, USA and Canada), Google will investigate ad text only. They will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint in these regions. Furthermore, their investigation will only affect ads served on or by Google rather than those served on partner sites.

4. In EU and EFTA regions, Google does not prevent the selection of trademarks as keywords. However, in response to a complaint, they will do a limited investigation as to whether a keyword (in combination with particular ad text) is confusing as to the origin of the advertised goods and services.

5. In some limited regions, Google may investigate the use of trademarks in ad text, in keywords, or in both ad text and keywords. These regions include:

• Australia
• Brazil
• China
• Hong Kong
• Macau
• New Zealand
• North Korea
• South Korea
• Taiwan

Because Australia and New Zealand are included in the above list (and these are the countries in which I operate), I have witnessed a few keyword trademark infringements and represented some clients who lodged complaints procedures based on this policy. I have also been following closely a landmark case playing out in Australia about this very issue:

Landmark Test Case

In 2005, Australian telecommunications company Telstra found themselves in legal hot water when an online publication owned by one of their subsidiaries purchased Google AdWords blatantly using the names of competitors in their ads.

As a result, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched legal proceedings against the Trading Post Australia and Google Inc. in 2007.

In their Federal Court case hearing earlier this month, the ACCC challenged the use by Trading Post of the keyword phrase “Kloster Ford”, which was the name of a car dealership in Newcastle, as misleading conduct in breach of the then Trade Practices Act. When “Kloster Ford” was searched for using the Google search engine, this advertisement appeared:

Kloster Ford
www.tradingpost.com.au New/Used Fords – Search 90,000 + auto ads online.
Great finds daily!

The ACCC argued that Trading Post’s use of “Kloster Ford” in its sponsored link was misleading and deceptive as it represented that there was an association or affiliation between Trading Post and Kloster Ford and the ad suggested that information regarding Kloster Ford or Kloster Ford car sales could be found on the Trading Post website, when it could not.

The ACCC also alleged that, by publishing the results pages with these AdWords, Google had itself engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. In response, Google raised a defense that it was engaged in the business of advertising and did not know that AdWords purchased by Trading Post amounted to an infringement of consumer legislation.

On 22 September 2011, the Australian Federal Court held that the Trading Post had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct under the Trade Practices Act 1974. However, they dismissed the claim against Google, stating that while Google provided the technical facilities that permitted the relevant advertisement to be seen, it did not follow that they had endorsed the information conveyed. Consumers would understand that the message being conveyed to them was an advertisement from the advertiser, they stated, rather than the publisher. A settlement between ACCC and Trading Post has since followed.

This case is significant for all Australian businesses that place advertisements through Google AdWords and other pay per click models, because it means that use of competitor trademarks, business names, brand names and URLs could potentially breach Australian consumer protection laws.

Navigate With Care

So the upshot of all this is that unless they have your explicit permission, your competitors generally aren’t allowed to use your brand/name in their own ads, but if you’re located in the US or other areas outside the limited regions mentioned above, they ARE allowed to bid on your brand/name as a keyword.

But it’s not all bad news – it means that you are allowed to bid on their brand/name as well.

However, as with any legal issue, tread carefully when using trademarks in your ads. Accidental or not, a violation of AdWords policy can result in the closure of your account by Google and possibly even land you with a lawsuit.

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

By Steve Shaw in Featured

googlelogoOftentimes when marketing with articles, it’s easy to get the impression that you need to do something tricky or fancy to make your marketing efforts “work”.

In actual fact, getting a higher website ranking and the accompanying upsurge in visitors is really very simple:

1 – First, you have to focus on your website or blog.

Fill your site with lots of really interesting and helpful information for your viewers. It’s a great idea to have a website that is loaded with valuable content and that is updated with new information regularly.

Your first task is to make a website that is really pleasing to your viewers. If your viewers are happy, then Google will be too. Google’s goal is to please its search customers, so if its customers (who are also your viewers) are happy with what they find at your website, then Google is going to be delighted as well.

2 – Once you have produced a fantastic website you start to think about marketing it.

In the same way that a brick and mortar store has to market itself to attract customers, so you must also market your website.

Don’t forget that both you and Google have the same agenda – you want to please your customers and Google wants to please its customers. By delivering value to your customers via the content on your website, search engines will understand the value of your website and rank it accordingly.

It would be easy for you to get the impression from other website owners that Google and the other search engines are their enemy, something they feel they need to outwit and is a little scary. This is just not true – just like a travel agency can be an ally to a hotel that it refers to, so The search engines can and will be an ally to your website.

Within the world of search engines and website marketing, the main language is links. The links that are going to your website tell Google a lot about the topic and value of your website.

A link serves at least two main purposes on the internet:

* It’s a kind of transportation. By clicking on a link on one web page, you are “transported” to another web page.

* It communicates information to Google and the other search engines about your website’s topic and value.

It is possible for you to affect where your website sits in a search engine’s rankings by how consistently you market your website and the quality of the information on it.

Submitting articles is a fantastic way to promote your website. It achieves these goals:

1 - Marketing with articles builds good quality links to your website. Niche specific publishers are always on the lookout for good quality, relevant content, so there is a good chance that your article will be published on a site that is on a topic related to your own website.

Keyword terms can be utilised in your resource box to create the link back to your website. The words that form a link are called “anchor text”, and they also help Google and the other search engines to understand how to rank your website and what it is all about.

2 - Article marketing gets the word out about your website and drives traffic to it to it. Ezines and other websites can republish your articles. People who see you article either in an ezine or on a website simply click the link in your resource box and be taken to your site.

3 - Article Marketing grows client confidence. As soon as a potential customer of yours reads a well-written and very knowledgeable article they will think, “Do you know what, this person really does know what he is talking about, I am sure they can give me more excellent advice”. The more confidence that prospect has in you, the more likely that he will become a customer of yours.

The articles that you produce with article marketing are referred to as ‘free reprint articles’, this is because publishers are able to republish them online without any charge. The author benefits from the process through the 3 items above. The vehicle for receiving these benefits comes via the author resource box, which usually will include a link to your website, a brief description about you and your company and a good reason for the reader to visit your homepage.

Your Homework:

* Start creating articles that teach your readers something they need to know.

* Create a well thought through resource box designed to inspire readers to click the link to your site.

* Start submitting articles to publishers on the internet and article directories.

Steve Shaw has helped thousands of business owners worldwide build traffic, leads and sales to their websites, and he wants to help you do the same – grab his free report giving you a blueprint for attracting sustainable, dirt-cheap, long-term, targeted traffic to any website … including yours! Go now to http://www.submityourarticle.com/report – some people have used the same information to boost their traffic by up to 600%!

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