Google Launches Social Media Ads Called +Post Across Their Whole Network

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Paid ads on social media are becoming more and more prevalent, to the extent that Facebook finally admitted recently that businesses will be practically forced to pay for brand outreach on their platform. Which makes it so surprising that Google+ had, until recently, strayed away from paid advertising. But, the search engine giant may have had an ace up their sleeve this entire time as they have recently unveiled their form of promoted posts, called “+Post” and it is a doozy.

Most aspects of +Post are extactly what you have come to expect from paid advertising on social networks. A brand pays for priumium placement of a post, and more users are shown the ad. It is a simple model which has worked for numerous other social media platforms. What makes +Post different is where the ads will be shown.

The majority of social media networks are only able to show promoted posts on their social media platform. Facebook promoted posts show up in your Newsfeed, “Promoted Pins” will be appearing on Pinterest soon, and Instagram is rolling out their own curated form of promoted posting to ensure ads fit their market and the style of Instagram. But, Google+ is connected to something much larger: all of Google’s network and products. So, +Post will have a massively larger reach than other social networks’ forms of paid advertising.

As Google explains:

+Post ads amplify your brand’s content by easily turning Google+ posts into display ads that run across the web. The live, social ad format allows you to go beyond clicks to live conversations with your audience. People can join a Hangout On Air, add a comment, follow your brand or give a +1, right from an ad.

+Post Screenshot

This is an incredibly smart move for the search engine, as Google+ is still struggling to find a larger active user base, and the advertising model may drive more users to their social platform. The +Post ads act like regular posts in Google+ no matter where they are displayed, which effectively bleeds Google+ into all other aspects of Google (more so than before).

In Google’s own words:

Ads become more relevant with social context. Comments, +1s, and shares from friends can move people to engage with your ad. Social actions on ads and Google+ add up together, showing the full picture of engagement with your content. +Post ads expand in a lightbox to bring full screen social creatives across the web.

Jessica Lee from Search Engine Watch reports a few brands have gotten to try out +Post before the announcement, specifically Toyota who was used for Google’s promo video:

http://youtu.be/4yCUgx7H2zo

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How Can Local Businesses Optimize for Google Carousel?

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Most of the changes we see to Google are relatively minor. The average user might notice that the layout is a little different, or the ads are in a new place, but in general most of the massive changes to Google occur under the hood, in their search ranking and spam fighting algorithms. But, as you’ve probably seen by now, Google Carousel is Google’s latest update, and it is a fairly substantial change to how Google users see results.

The carousel is a row of images across the top of some search engine result pages (SERPs) laid on top of a black background. At the moment, the carousel contains up to 20 results, and it appears mainly on SERPs for travel, hospitality, or restaurant related searches. However, the carousel has also sporadically been appearing on queries for sports, entertainment, and education, suggesting the future directions the carousel may be expanding in.

Instead of getting what was called the 6- or 10-pack, users get these images as well as review ratings, property name, and address. To compliment the new carousel you also see the usual sponsored links you often get for other searches. Interestingly, the variation of terms for which the carousel appears seems to be random. Jim Yu from Search Engine Watch notes that a search for “hotels near disneyland” gets the carousel, while “disneyland hotels” did not.

The first bit of good news for search marketing professionals is that all of the results included in the carousel are essentially all in the first spot. Of course the majority of viewers will likely view the results from left to right, but they are not visually ranked in the same manner they were before.

The other good news is that the Google Carousel opens up numerous opportunities for local businesses to strengthen their brand online. BrightEdge research reported that the carousel currently affects 14 percent of keywords across all industries, with travel and hospitality being the most affected.

Restaurants are also highly impacted by the new layout, while entertainment terms only get the carousel for five percent of searches. Clearly, those most affected are also those with the most to gain: local businesses.
There are a few things you can do to ensure you’re business gets into the carousel for relevant searches in your area, and to be sure to beat the other competition within the listings. Yu suggests:

  • Set up a Google Places for Business and Google+ page. You can visit this post to learn more about the most important aspects of both services, and understand how to merge the two types of pages for a single business.
  • Make sure images for your pages are high resolution, unique, and up to date. Keep them sorted in terms of priority, so that users will see the images you want them to first.
  • Encourage happy customers to review your business on Google. Not only will it help you gain conversions online, research has shown it plays a large role in getting your business in the carousel.
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Breaking Down The Big 5 Social Media Platforms

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There’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. All offer something unique and a unique demographic to those that create a presence for their business there. So which one is best suited for the needs of your company?

Jen Wilson, of Business Journal, recently published an in-depth look at who exactly is using each site and what type of company will flourish there. Here’s a quick rundown of the findings.

Facebook: Best suited for established brands with a dedicated following that will share success stories. Ages 18-55.

Twitter: Great for developing relationships with customers and for PR. Younger demographic than Facebook with an added bonus of well-known personalities among the users.

LinkedIn: B2B sales is perfect here, but it can also be used to establish yourself as an expert in a given field. Wide age range, but users are college educated and often advanced in their careers.

Google+: Tech companies, internet services and gaming works great considering there’s a high concentration of young, tech savvy males here. Also, get a boost in search as your picture appears with your articles or web site.

Pinterest: Any image driven company, specifically fashion or design but could even be adapted for certain types of sales. The best place to market to women under 50.

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Now Use AdWords Express To Promote Your Google+ Page

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There’s been an interesting development with Google’s AdWords Express, which is marketed as a headache-free alternative for small businesses. Recently, Google announced that you could use the ads Google sets up for you with your budget in AdWords Express to drive users to your Google+ page. However, Google+ itself is an ad-free zone and you are unable to even set parameters so only Google+ users will be shown the ads.

For small businesses with no website, this could still be a valuable tool to create some sort of web presence. Google had been offering AdWords Express users with no site of their own the ability to create a free site, but with the included option of using a company’s Google+ page, that may be a thing of the past.

However, there are also some obvious glitches in this AdWords Express, Google+ relationship. For one, Google is essentially allocating your AdWords budget to promote Google+. Read more about the sketchy side of this deal in Greg Finn’s article at Marketing Land.

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Yes, The Disavow Links Tool Works

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After Google launched the disavow link tool in mid-October, there were a fair amount of doubters and those that claimed it doesn’t work. Dixon Jones from Majestic SEO, a well known and respected member of the SEO community posted in a Google+ thread that he used it for a site and it worked to remove a manual link penalty.

SEO Roundtable has the exact posts he made explaining the process and what happened. For Jones, the manual penalty was removed fairly efficiently, but those wanting to use it for a Penguin link penalty may need to wait for a new refresh.

The best option is of course to try to avoid link penalties or bad links, but the world isn’t perfect. If you’ve dealt with the root issue which caused the penalty, the disavow links tool may just be the solution you need.

 

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What Is AuthorRank and Why Does It Matter?

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It’s hard to keep up with Google’s constant adjustments, and AuthorRank is a future feature that isn’t as understood as it probably should be. Its history dates back to August of 2005 when Google filed a patent for “Agent Rank”.

This patent included ranking “agents” and using the public reception to the content they create to determine their rank. Basically, the more popular websites with positive responses would be higher in rankings than less-authoritive “agents”.

After the patent, “AgentRank” disappeared for a while, until in 2011 Eric Schmidt made references to identifying agents in order to improve search quality. A month later, they filed a patent for what is assumed to have become Google+, which acts as a digital signature system for identification, which can be tied to content. And that content can be ranked. Hello, AuthorRank.

It has yet to be officially implemented, but there have been rumors all year that AuthorRank is under development, and AJ Kohn has stated it could completely change the search engine game. It would act as a factor in PageRank, which makes high-quality content higher ranked.

Mike Arnesen at SEOmoz says it’s not a matter of “if Google rolls out AuthorRank, but when.” He also has some great suggestions of how to be prepared for when AuthorRank arrives. I highly suggest reading his extensive article, because I agree strongly with the idea AuthorRank will be here sooner rather than later.

With Google’s recent focus on social media, and the natural concept that people want to see quality content in their results, it is just a matter of time before AuthorRank is a serious concern to the SEO industry.

 

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How Aligning SEO Strategy and Social Media Builds Backlinks

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It is way too common for people in SEO to forget to align their SEO strategy with social media activity. Often, the two teams work completely disconnected from the other. This is in no way a comprehensive, efficient marketing plan.

SEO must be integrated into social media activity. Here are some suggestions for specific strategies you can take to bump up the effect your social media activites have on SEO performance.

1) Using Social Media for Link Development – Since search engines have begun incorporating social signals into their ranking algorithm, it has become essential for SEOs to pay attention to social media. Now Google+ has become a part of Google search, and Bing uses Facebook data to personalize what people see in their search results.

While all of that is practically common knowledge, Ray Comstock at Search Engine Watch believes “link development is the most important benefit that social media can bring to the SEO table.” Google’s Panda and Penguin updates has made using social media to foster relevant link connectivity has become as important as they could be. The most effective way to market content online is through social media.

It is critical for SEO professionals take advantage of the activities of their social media team to gain relevant links through marketing quality content.

2) Aligning You Blog for SEO and Social Media – If you can create consistently quality content, blogging is easily one of the more efficient ways to build links and authority. It attracts links within your industry, but it also becomes keyword focused content that tends to rank highly in the long-term. Most often, bloggers forget to create relating internal links from a company’s blog to their main website content. Blog posts are an opportunity to direct people to other relevant content, especially your own.

3) Aligning Your Blogging Team for SEO & Social Media – Blogging is an important part of an SEO strategy, so you want to make sure your blogging team is trained on the best SEO policies and practices, as well as giving them the most important keywords and landing pages on your site. If you do that, your team will be more likely to create content based around those keywords, and creating internal links within the blog assists with your SEO goals. Plus, it is always nice for visitors to be able to find more content on your site.

Bloggers should also be interacting with the authoritative blogs in your area of expertise by contributing in intelligent and thoughtful ways which will build relationships with other experts in your field. It builds your reputation as well as making valuable connections that can lead to guest blogging.

By making sure your SEO and social media efforts are alligned, you both streamline the process in an effective way, as well as boosting SEO performance from a link building perspective.

 

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How To Dominate Search With Content Marketing

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Google has made five recent SEO changes that will make most content marketers, writers, and bloggers quite happy. They play to your strengths. Some users may be less happy about these changes, however.

The changes were mostly made to keep more people on Google products, which isn’t a bad idea from a business perspective, but some may find the changes effect searching negatively.

The good news is, the changes were also made so that your results would be more personal by monopolizing on the fact that people are more likely to purchase something if they know their friend also likes it.

The even better news is these changes are great for anyone who makes content for a living. I will walk you through all of the changes and help you to take advantage of them.

1) Optimize personalized search – One of the biggest changes Google has made completely changed SEO by making search results personal. The results you get for a search will be different than mine, based on factors like your browsing history, the content you create and content shared by your social circles. People are finding their content more and more through social media networks and searching less.

So how can you optimize your content for personalized search? One option is you can increase your Google+ circles. Google is actively trying to get people to sign up for Google+, and in this instance, using Google+ and connecting with more people on there helps improve your search. The more people you have in your circles, the higher relevant content will show up in your searches. This also means that your circles can see your content when they search.

2) Increase social sharing – As a content creator, getting shares on social media is a great way to get your content high in the search rankings. According to a study by branded3, the more tweets leading to a URL you can get, the higher you will appear in rankings. For example, anyone that gets over 7,500 tweets (not an easy task) will appear in the top five results almost always. This type of logic most likely also works for Facebook.

As a content creator, capitalize on social sharing and you can beat your competition in the rankings. Just make sure to make the social sharing buttons obvious so that readers can find them, encourage your readers to share and try to court others with influence in your target social circles. Interview them or offer to do guest posts. Anything to establish a connection.

3) Employ semantic keyword research – Google is improving at segmenting search results, which gives you an opportunity to rank higher in verticals. This is a surefire way to get higher conversion rates because your prospective visitors are better targeted.

To take advantage of this, you’ll need to look for “advanced search” keywords. When you search, there is a way to refine results with a tool hidden in “show search tools”. Within this advanced search tool, you can look at “related searches”. Now you have semantic options you can test for the highest search volumes. There are also ways to improve your keyword list such as Google Insights for Search, which lets you narrow keywords down via categories.

4) Play with the Panda update – Google’s Panda update finally made life hard for spammers and content farms by harshly punishing sites with low quality content. This is good for all of the content creators who put hard work into long blog posts with useful content. Google even offered questions to determine the value of your content.

5) Implement the Google Authorship Mark-up – A search marketing firm proved rich snippet will increase SERP CTR and traffic. It’s that simple. Their analytics show a 150% increase when rich snippet was implemented. You might not get results quite that good, but it’s almost certain you will benefit if you implement the Google’s authorship snippet. It can be complicated, and it is slow to show results, but if you invest now you’ll see results in the not too distant future.

All of these Google changes have radically changed the SEO game, but they have made it a wonderful moment to be a content marketer. Those that put out shoddy content are being penalized, and there are all sorts of opportunities to really get your content out there.

 

For a more in depth look at author rank, read Neil Patel’s article at Quick Sprout.

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10 Steps to Great Online Connections

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Marketing your business online is a great way to build and grow your audience. In order to do that effectively, you need to network. Specifically, you need to make connections to bloggers and other content publishers. Sonia Simone at CopyBlogger has 10 steps to do just that, without turning in to someone people dread talking to.

1. Make Something Noteworthy

One great project brings influential people to you. If you’re doing something unique or game-changing, networking will be a snap. That probably sounds difficult, and it is. That’s why we aren’t all millionaires.

2. Be Positive

This isn’t just about the power of positive thinking, but rather about your positive online persona. Share helpful content and make friends through social media.

Being the bad guy could get you noticed, but it doesn’t make people want to do business with you.

3. Have an Opinion

Whatever your area of expertise is, be an expert on it. Stay current and be informed at all times, in order to contribute intelligently to discussions in your area.

4. Twitter

The Twitterverse is a popular spot for bloggers and content creators to congregate. What do you have to lose by attempting to connect with them with your own great content or intelligent questions? They’re a simple ‘@’ away.

5. Change Forums

Find the spot where the majority of your audience spends their time and deepen your Twitter connections there. Whether it’s Facebook, Google+ or another venue, you’ll sound more intelligent and competent than you did in 140 characters or less.

6. To the Real World

Soldify your online connections with real world meetings. Business connections are just like dating: face-to-face > online.

7. No Whining

Remember the step about being positive?  That means you don’t use your social media accounts to complain…about anything.  Try to read your posts from an outsiders point of view and be sure it’s engaging and positive.

8. Don’t be a Teenage Girl

OK, if you are a teenage girl with a successful business, congratulations to you. My point here is don’t talk about people behind their back, or in this case, online. No good can come of it, but plenty of bad can and probably will.

9. Don’t be a Geeky Fan

You will probably encounter some people who are both influential for your business and who you admire. Just be cool about it. Don’t gush over them. Rather, try to find a common ground by being enthusiastic about your shared interest, which also happens to be the area your business operates in.

10. Be Prepared for Twists

It’s great to set goals for yourself, but failure to reach those specific goals doesn’t necessarily constitute failure. Generally, if you are working towards the right goals and doing things the right way, you’ll have success. Just know it might not be the success you originally planned for.


 

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Google+ for Your Business [Infographic]

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With millions of searches happening daily, it’s no secret that Google can impact your business in a positive way. Google plus is a fairly recent social media platform that focuses on interaction and sharing. Thanks to Unbounce, they have created a beyond helpful infographic that highlights the importance of harnessing this power of Google+ and the hugely beneficial aspects of this service.

Google Plus for Business [infographic]

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