#1 Search Plus is a Personalised Search Update and Only Applies to Logged-In Google Users

Well, for starters, the one most important thing to know is that the new search plus results would only affect logged-in users to a Google account and the impact would be felt more on the search results of Google+ account holders – which currently stands at 62 million users and to be honest has yet to garner mainstream usage traction. It is an update to Google’s personalised results and is geared to improving on the relevancy of Google results – so an electrician searching for ‘jumpers’ would more likely see the results for an electrical connector and a person shopping for clothes would more likely see knitted clothing in their results based on their Google+ shares and what people in their Google+ circles share.

Here are the search results for a key phrase I am quite familiar with (as I also run a property/real estate blog)

“investment property” on Google.com when I am logged into my Google+ account:

“investment property” on Google.com for a non-logged in:

#2 – How Many of Your Visitors Would See the Search Plus Results?

The simple answer would be to log into your Google Analytics account and check your current percentage of {not provided} Google traffic referrals. It should vary from 5% to as much as 30% (depending on your industry) of your Google referral traffic. All Google Search Plus results must be from secure (SSL) search result pages, which no longer pass-on keyword referral information to web analytics apps like Google Analytics. The long and short of it is that the new Search Plus results should affect between 5% – 30% of your traffic from Google.

#3 – What Social Networks are Featured in Google’s Search Plus’ Social Graph

Well the obvious answer is Google+ but also bear in mind that your Google shares/bookmarks, Google Reader feeds, blog posts on Google’s blogspot.com, content from Flickr, Friendfeed (owned by Facebook), and Quora are all featured in the new Search Plus results. The two major active social networks, Facebook & Twitter have yet to come to an agreement with Google on featuring their content on Google’s Search Plus results. Recall that back in October 2009, Google’s Realtime Search results predominantly featured realtime tweets from Twitter but after their agreement ended in July 2011, Google stopped displaying Tweets because Twitter did not renew their agreement. Stephen Foley of the Independent newspaper, makes some salient points about the need to preserve the open web and why Google and Twitter should come to some sort of agreement. I am not in the least optimistic that Facebook would sign up though.

#4 – The Real Potential Reach of Google Plus Search?

Google based the take-up of Google+ on the number of Google account holders, most of which are Gmail users. According to this report, Gmail had about 193 million users in November 2010 – this number should have grown by now – my guesstimate would border under 300 million users by now. Google+ account holders are now estimated to be about 62 million; whilst Facebook is geared to hit 1 billion users by August 2012.

#5 – Focus on not only ‘Great’ but ‘Sharable’ Content – ‘Shares’ are the new ‘Links’

Lets face it – it is easier to produce good content than it is to get an audience to share your content. Website or content owners not only now have to ensure that their content is ‘liked’ on Facebook and ‘tweeted’ on Twitter but also more crucially +1′d on Google+. Site and content owners now have to focus more on owning a Google+ brand page and more importantly maintaining an active member-base that interact with and share their content. The challenge for brand pages is to get as many influential people in their circles that would share and interact with their content. It is more likely that popular content shares on Facebook and Twitter are likely to appear on Google+, Success does indeed breed success – so focus on creating sharable content.

#6 Update Your Google+ Brand Page

As Google seems to be placing more emphasis on ranking it’s Google+ assets over other web properties especially for brand & personal name searches, it would be prudent for brands to start investing keyword rich (non-spammy) content to their Google+ Brand pages. Brands should have a content integration strategy that includes their Google+ Brand pages. Also start figuring out how you can use your Google+ brand pages to increase sales and generate more leads.

#7 Become an Influencer & Authority in your Industry

Every blog post and guest blog post or article, you write should always include the:

rel="author"

tag with a reference link back to you Google+ profile in order to send a clout signal to Google and a bid to establish yourself and brand as a social influencer or authority of sorts. Remember that all +1s are not deemed equal: +1s from Google+ users deemed as authorities (users that have a huge following) in relation to other less active people in their industry are a stronger ranking signal to Google. Also read this step by step rel-author guide.

What You Should be Aware of…

Start thinking beyond link building as it is set to become a lower ranking signal when users actually start using Google+ as a social networking site. SEO at this point hinges on the success of Google+ as a social network. It is paramount that all online marketers keep an eye on the progression of Google+ as a social network which at the moment it seems to be at an early adopter stage.

As Google+ continues to grow in popularity, it would become more and more of a challenge for marketers to determine their fixed organic rankings because Google plus personalised results would take more prominence over other web properties. I predict a variable organic ranking metric would have to emerge as a result of the hugely varied results searchers see.

The landscape would blissfully change if Twitter and Google were to come to some sort of agreement to integrating tweets into Google’s new search plus personalised results.

Google Search Plus: 7 Things You Need to Know for Your SEO is a post from: Fuzz One Media

What has been exciting me lately has been the convergence of social media (twitter & facebook to be specific) and old media (television & radio). I am not of the school of thought that one medium a.k.a new media would completely take over old media. Rather, I think that new media has matured enough to take a substantial share of media consumption in general and is available to support old media and vice versa. This is largely due to the added advantage of real time interactivity new media affords.

What fascinates me the most is how TV has become 3 dimensional. We now watch live TV shows and can openly discuss our thoughts about TV & radio shows to a wider audience of viewers & listeners on Twitter or Facebook. We get real time feedback on what others think and what we may have missed out. We throw thought provoking opinion open to discuss not only in our living room but to a network of living rooms. 43% of us watch TV shows and discuss on Facebook & Twitters at the same time. Twitter is by far the most popular social media channel for live TV commenting. The #hashtag feature of twitter morphs it to a highly topical discussion forum of sorts and almost eliminates the need for old style discussion forums. Facebook pages on the otherhand, give TV shows an insight into their audience and a medium to converse and mine opinion. They are a both massive research channels producers can tap into for assessing what works and what doesn’t. I believe producers can actually change the course of the popularity of their shows if they create efficient processes that get real time feedback from viewers of their shows.

Bring On Internet Connected TVs

Internet enabled TVs are going to be a game changer and seem to be overshadowing 3D TV. At the moment people use their mobiles, tablets & laptop computers to catch up on the discuss on social media sites about live TV shows. Well, imagine if you could simply change over to X-factor on a Saturday night and then hit the twitter button on your remote control? The TV picks up the TV show name and immediately figures out the hashtags. This enables your TV stream live comments from twitter about X Factor to your TV, either as a bottom scrolling banner or a side scrolling banner. You can then either join the conversation directly via your TV or via your tablet, laptop or mobile.

Patent Already Filled

It looks as if IBM has jumped the gun on Twitter & Facebook enabled TVs, they apparently filed for a patent back in 2009 that enables Facebook & Twitter to be accessible from a TV. I have so far not seen any ground breaking demos that take advantage of creating a hybrid experience of converging live TV and social media. It would be interesting to see how things pan out, now that major TV manufacturers like Samsung are beginning to take internet connected TVs very seriously. YouTube on internet enabled TV’s is a given and something I would be discussing in a later blog post.

Coming Soon….Twitter Button on Your TV Remote Control is a post from: Fuzz One Media

I’m not sure if you’ve seen this but my fav Sesame Street characters – Bert and Ernie are on today’s Google home page. I know it might be a bit of a mundane topic to blog about but I absolutely love them and appreciate the impact Sesame Street had on my education earlier on in my life that later gave me an edge in life. Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street.

Bert & Ernie on Google – Priceless is a post from: Fuzz One Media

As you probably already know, Google announced not just an algorithmic update but an entire architecture re-write of its web search called “Google Caffeine” a few day’s back. The head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts actually made a comparison of the Caffeine update to the infamous “Big Daddy Update” back in 2005.

The big question at the moment is what does the Google Caffeine update mean to SEOs? Here are seven things every SEO expert should know about Caffeine:

1. Test Caffeine

Caffeine is available for all to test on http://www2.sandbox.google.com/. This is a preview interface and is still work-in-progress. So expect changes in the SERPs as well as some downtime when it is under-going updates. You would notice it is a whole lot faster than the current version of Google

2. Do not Panic

SEO’s tend get into a frenzy whenever Google announces updates of any sort – be it PageRank updates or algorithmic updates. The advantage of Caffeine is that you can test it as well as give Google feedback. Just scroll to the bottom of the search result page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link, type your feedback in the text box and then include the word caffeine somewhere in the text box in your suggestion or observation.

3. Link building – focus on quality not quantity

I ran some tests on a couple of the sites I manage with higher proportions of either high or low profile backlinks. Sites with a higher proportion of low profile backlinks in comparison to sites with a higher proportion of medium and high profile backlinks, I found were not fairing too well on Caffeine but getting still decent page one rankings on the current Google search.

My advice to SEO’s kicking off new projects or managing existing SEO campaigns would be to focus on link quality rather than quantity. Ramp up your acquisition of high profile backlinks to stand a chance of getting decent rankings on Caffeine.

4. Test Caffeine based on location & language

Although http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ is Caffeine’s URL, using query parameters, you can view results based by language & your geographic location. The parameters are as follows:

hl = language
gl = country code

As an example:

Viewing UK results you would need the “gl=uk” parameter: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?gl=uk

Viewing French language results in Canada, you would need parameters;
“hl=fr” and “gl=ca”:
http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?hl=fr&gl=ca

5. Fix all your site’s Crawlability Issues

Fundamentally, Caffeine is a re-write of Google’s indexing system. Improvements have been made on Google’s crawling, indexing speed and result relevancy. The fact that Google has improved each of these key indexing elements means it is ever so important for webmasters and SEOs alike to make their sites more crawable and easier to index. Ensure you check your crawl stats, crawl errors and XML sitemap stats on Google Webmaster tools. Also ensure your house is in order to get your site is fully indexed. This way you can focus on link popularity.

6. Speed – Your Page Load Times

There is no question that page load times are important for crawling and indexing. Ensure that your site has decent page load times to get the best of Caffeine and to maintain a high crawl rate. I have noticed a slight drop in the SERPs on Caffeine for some of my slower loading sites – this is speculative and might be down to some other factors but I have nevertheless noticed.

7. Real Time Search

With the current advances in the real time search arena i.e. Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed and Twitter search, there is no doubt that Google’s architecture overhaul via Caffeine is geared towards real time indexing and real time search. At the time of writing this post, Caffeine’s SERPs were not too different from Google’s, but I expect to see more news, blog and social media a.k.a. twitter results to feature upon its full release. If you have tested Caffeine, you would have noticed how fast it results are (at least for the time being).

On the whole, exciting times albeit challenging times lay ahead for SEOs. Social media is going to play a more important role in SEO campaigns and Google would rely more and more on quality links to determine relevancy. If you have been practising good SEO, then there is really no need to worry about Caffeine as you would have noticed when you checked your site out.

Photo credits: D’Arcy Norman via flickr

7 Facts All SEOs Should Know About Google Caffeine is a post from: Fuzz One Media

Online News

Managing PR content on corporate websites as a tactic was short-lived and not sufficient enough in the ever changing internet. With the sheer speed of information on the web through news sites, PR professionals had to figure out how to also grab attention from ‘authoritative’ old and new media news websites.

Online PR & SEO

The major seismal change for PR was the emergence of professional ‘online PR’ sites and Search Engine Optimisation. Online PR sites like PR Web & i-Newswire are the new ‘wire’ PR professionals send announcements through to in order to grab the attention of journalists, their industry and the web in general. PR professionals have had to figure out how to use these PR websites to their maximum capabilities. This is where the SEO/PR crossover has taken place.

As you know, Search Engine Optimisation is a collection of methodologies and processes aimed at improving the search engine rankings of websites. PR sites work well with the search engine optimisation process because they improve the link popularity of websites they promote. Because of this change, PR Professionals have had to either work with SEO professionals who undertake keyword research in order to discover popular, more commonly used keywords and help with link placements or have had to learn SEO themselves. I remember I used to provide our PR department with a set of keywords to use for press releases they sent through PR websites.

Blog

The next major wave to hit the PR industry was blogging. The advent of blogging empowered masses of people to have an opinion. The blog publishing industry tree has hundreds or perhaps thousands of branches of subjects and genres with loyal followers. Blogs have meant more specialisation on topics in the publishing industry. There are obvious quality issues in the blogosphere but there are also established authoritative blogs in every industry. PR professionals not only have to think about getting their brands out on Top notch blogs but also need to build somewhat authoritative blogs for their brands. Corporate blogs at the moment are the medium through which of PR departments can self-publicize the brands.

Twitter

Like blogging was not enough, micro-blogging has arrived. With roughly about 2.5 million users, Twitter is the defacto micro-blogging platform at the moment and is an area PR professionals and brand managers need to adapt to. It’s brevity is its strength and its potential to reach thousands of people must not be overlooked. Twitter can take your brand to another level if your PR strategy is well thought through. Business owners might have to look for Social media professionals to work with the public relations and marketing team to get the most out twitter. Its probably not the last platform PR professionals would have to adapt to but its certainly the current platform garnering huge attention at the moment. Social media in general should be watched really closely.

I will be blogging about tips on marketing on twitter and social media in general.

For further reading read…

The importance of Online PR (slideshow)

A Short Story About the Romance between Public Relations and the Internet…so far is a post from: Fuzz One Media

So how can you leverage Twitter to aid your decision making? 

My advice is not only geared towards managers or business owners but the ever growing populace of Twitter Republic. Well… my the simple answer is to ‘Search’.

I would give you a simple example of how I used Twitter to make a decision on choosing a hosting company (a decision I am very happy to have made).

One of my sites on a shared hosting package on 1&1 internet was generating huge amounts of traffic.  I got several emails from the 1&1 tech support team to switch my hosting package to either a 1&1 dedicated hosting package or another hosting package. If I did not take any action, I faced the risk of having my 1&1 hosting account shut down.

In a frenzy, I started to email a couple of my friends and contacts who also have high traffic websites to seek their advice on an ideal hosting company to switch to. The feedback I got was quite mixed – ranging from regrets on their current choice of hosting providers to really over priced options.

I then headed to Google and started to run searches like ‘best web hosting’ & ‘robust web hosting’. I was bombarded with either highly optimised websites/blogs that were more or less sales pitches and Pay Per Click ads that I just didn’t really trust. I nevertheless started to make a shortlist.

I then had a ‘light bulb’ moment – to search on twitter! So I started to search through twitter’s hard to find search facility using terms like ‘web hosting’ , ‘best web hosting’ and then my list of top hosting companies. One hosting company kept popping up – it was Media Temple. I then started to probe tweets about Media Temple and started to get real time feedback on their service from their customers on Twitter. This to me was the key deciding factor to go ahead with them. I then rang their sales team and their pitch tallied with the feedback I got from fellow twitters.

I have also used this technique to find email broadcast providers and to verify real time facts. The beauty of Twitter is that it is largely organic, viral and moves with time.

If you are unsure about a product or service, try Twitter – Search, Research and Reach Out to fellow twitters for advice.

For business owners now is the time to embrace Twitter.

How I use Twitter to make Decisions and Answer Questions is a post from: Fuzz One Media

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO),
2. Social Media Marketing and
3. Online communications

I think these three aspects are the pillars of marketing a blog online. Remember that editorial aspects of blogging were covered in the first part of this series. The Golden Rule – To keep content flowing and consistent, always have a well thought & planned editorial schedule for you blog.

The key question I attempt to answer in this post is  -

If I just started a blog for my business, what should be the first line of action for creating awareness & marketing it?

Announce It

From a non-technical viewpoint, start with publicising your blog both through online & offline communications. Launching a Press Release (PR) would be the obvious starting point. If you have a PR agency handling your PR, be sure to let them know about the launch of your new blog and include Online PR as part of the release channels. If you however handle you PR internally, then there are a plethora of Online PR websites that your announcement can be published to; top on my list would be

1. PRLog (which is free),
2. PR Web (a paid service with very decent coverage) &
3. PR Newswire ( a paid service and one of the most expensive but highly extensive coverage)

Here is an extensive list of free PR websites – my advice would be to submit your release to no more than two good online PR sites.

Getting to announce your new blog is important for generating an audience at the early stages of publishing. It is indeed quite a refreshing feeling having a readership at the early stages of publishing; especially when you have a well planned schedule in place.

Other means of announcing your blog online are:

• Emailing your subscribers or customers
• Featuring your blog on your main website (be sure to make it prominent on your main site – I would advice including is as part of your website’s navigational structure) and
• Add your blog to your email signature and all marketing communication media you use both off and online

There might be other methods you can employ – think out of the box. Even employ some Guerrilla Marketing to reach your target market cheaply.

Social Media Marketing

Most blogs (if not all blogs) are setup to reflect the views of the author or a business. A blog steps out of the formal confines of a corporate website tends to emit; it is a more conversational  platform on the web. Social Media Marketing is therefore a perfect fit with blogging.

I would strongly advice you have a Social Media Marketing Strategy in place before the launch of your site.

You need to plan out how you intend to promote your blog online through socialising and interacting with other people, networks and blogs online. The primary idea behind behind Social media is building a followership by adding value across the web.

Blogging is actually a channel of Social Media Marketing. A single post would not be enough to cover all aspects of Social Media Marketing. But as a summary here is a checklist to get you started:

Interview

Reach out to other bloggers in the blogosphere – don’t email them asking for link swaps as they would tend to ignore such requests. Rather, email or contact major blog personalities in the your industry requesting for an interview (either email interview or podcast interview). This is a gesture of goodwill that would add value to their online personality and could also lead to a mention of their interview on your blog to their already established audience.

Remember to collaborate in any way possible so as to reach out – look at it this way; most organisations have interns who eventually turn out to be full staff after paying their dues. In the same vain, starting out blogging in a new industry requires you in a way to pay your dues in order to be picked up.

Networking

Depending on the type of blog you are building choose some social media sites you would like to promote some (not all) of your blog posts to. If you do not have the time, I would suggest you hire a Social Media Marketing consultant to guide and help you with marketing on Social media sites as it is quite a time consuming exercise. Here are a list of sites you should consider:

• Join MyBlogLog
• Add your blog to your LinkedIn profile (if you have one),
• Create a Facebook or LinkedIn group
• Start a Twitter account and communicate with personalities in your industry
• Submit your site to social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg, Reddit & Stumbleupon.

For any of the above to work, you have to dedicate some time an effort towards adding value to the platforms you choose. When you join the above networks, do not just submit and leave their sites as this never works. You would actually need to contribute to each of the virtual social communities, build relationships and leverage your relationships to help your site or blog – which to me is pure social media networking and marketing.

Bear in mind that social networks can generate enormous amounts of traffic to your blog and in many cases kick start readership and followership at its early stages. Your social media efforts would most often not generate direct business but would help increase the profile and search engine visibility of your blog.

Search Engine Optimisation  (SEO)

SEO is probably the most overrated buzzword on the web at the moment – it is yet crucial to the survival of several businesses in today’s world. Some businesses would not survive yet alone exist without Google rankings. It is important not only to build a following from humans but also one from all major search engines (especially the almighty Google).

Depending on what blog platform you would be using, it is essential that the following steps are taken for basic level search engine optimisation. Also download the the Google SEO Starter Guide (PDF):

Embark on some keyword research using Google Insights to determine ‘what the world actually searches for’ – one of my clients started off her blog optimising for a totally unpopular keyword.

• Ensure that every page and post on your blog has unique value on the following HTML tags: TITLE, META DESCRIPTION & KEYWORDS & H1-6 tags
• If your blogging software permits, ensure you utilise search engine readable URLs
• Set up an XML sitemap
• Interlink between articles
• Tag images with proper descriptions
• Update your blog regularly with fresh content
• List your blog on blog directories (most of which are free but might require a reciprocal link)

Once you ensure all of the above actions have been taken; my golden rule for SEO on your blog is unique quality content. After posting an article, always ask yourself if the article quality was good enough to get picked up by other bloggers, websites or even the press in a bid to link back to you. Do not remanufacture the news – at the information age we currently are in, news gets syndicated across hundreds and thousands of sites. Rather put a spin on the news – be controversial; you can write guides or HOWTOs; don’t be afraid to give you expertise in your area of knowledge in form a guides. They at the end add value and would ensure people link back to you, which raises the profile of your blog and forms the real online marketing of your blog.

Further reading

• 25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog
• How to Promote Your Offline Business using LinkedIn

Marketing Your Business Blog is a post from: Fuzz One Media

The effects of web marketing would be largely dependent on the web marketing channels you utilise as well as type of business and sector your company belongs to.

The following categories have been created to give an idea of topics we would be covering:

• Increasing Search Engine Rankings
• Advertising on Search Engines (Pay Per Click)
• Email Marketing
• Lead Generation
• Business Blogging
• Social Media
• Media Buying
• Guerilla Marketing (Back to the Basics)

Web Marketing 101 is a post from: Fuzz One Media