How to Use Google+ for successful Online Marketing

Here are six tips for using Google+ that you will not see elsewhere.

1 – Use Google+ hangouts to communicate with your customers and potential business partners.

This is a very under-utilized tip because it does take a lot of time and effort on your part – to pull in what is potentially a very small amount of customers. But what most business managers and their staff fail to realize is that it is actually a very effective way of gaining not only loyal customers, but would loyal supporters. What very few people realize is that even if a whole evening session only results in gaining five customers – that they are not just customers. They are loyal supporters who will most likely spread the word of your business to hundreds, if not thousands, of other users. If the customer is on a social media platform and is an active contributor into the Internet community then the benefit is a little like gaining customers who have megaphones attached to their face. The indirect and viral repercussions of gaining customers via Google+ hangouts may be quite profitable just so long as the customers do not have a bad user experience.

2 – Use Google+ to get to know your audience so that you can create the presence of have your audience come to you.

Market research and targeting is quite expensive, especially if you have to do it for extended periods of time. However, with Google+ you are able to connect and converse with your target consumer and have them give you advice on what they want, and what they do not want. You can use this information to create a Google+ presence that attracts your target audience, so that you need do less actual marketing in the long term.

3 – Use photographs more.

Google+ is pretty goes with hosting photographs; however, you will find that people on Google+ use photographs a lot less than people on other websites such as Facebook. Facebook has become a loaded with hundreds of photographs of various people in various situations. There are even some Facebook users who upload on a weekly basis simply because they want to show the rest of the world where they’ve been and what they have been up to. Google+ is not bad in this direction, but very few businesses upload a lot of pictures on a regular basis. You should capitalize on this and upload pictures on a regular basis of things that are of interest to you and your potential audience.

4 – Promote your Google+ profile outside of Google+

This may seem silly because if you are going to use part of your marketing budget then you should really invest money in promoting your own site. However, if you siphon off a little bit of your marketing budget and put it into marketing your Google+ profile outside of Google+, you may find that it has distinct long-term repercussions. By promoting your Google+ profile, you are sowing the seeds of potential followers in the future, and the seeds of potential loyal followers that are likely to turn into loyal customers.

5 – Do not post often unless you have severely interesting content to add.

The effects of keeping your profile up to date are not nearly as powerful as the effects of keeping your website up to date. If you are going to add information that is not viciously interesting or vital to your user life or products then do not add it to your Google+ profile. Add it to your website if you must. If a new user reads, your social media sites for the first time and sees that you post the occasional interesting thing inter-spiced with many boring things, then they will not follow you. You must ensure that you only add interesting and relevant information on to your Google+ profile. Even if this means you do not post as often as other advisors would tell you to. The effect of keeping your social media updated is not as relevant as if you are keeping your website updated.

6 – Have video chats

You are able to install live video streams on your Google+ profile then do, and have up to 10 people join you. This is a very new and interactive method of communicating with customers, and therefore you will find it is viciously under utilized by most Google+ businesses. Therefore you must break the mold and use this technique.

Source: http://dailyseotip.com/6-unique-tips-for-using-google-for-marketing/2847/

HOW TO: Create a Group Tumblr Blog

Tumblr blogs are known for being easy to use and simple to set up. But the blogging platform lives up to its reputation only as far as standard accounts go.

Want to set up a company blog that contributors can post to from multiple accounts? Want to use a password-protected Tumblr internally? Get ready for some help-section browsing.
Because Tumblr wants everybody’s “primary blog” to represent them, it does not allow users to create group blogs or password-protected accounts. In order to do so, you’ll need to create an additional blog under your account and then invite other members to join it. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial to get you started:

1. Create an Additional Blog

Next to the title of your blog in the right panel of the Tumblr dashboard, there’s an arrow that opens a drop down menu. In that menu there’s an option to create a new blog. Click it.

2. Name Your Blog & Set a Password

    After you click the “create new blog” tab, you’ll be asked to enter a title and domain name for your new blog. You also have the option to protect the blog with a password. If you decide to do so, only people who enter the password will be able to view your new blog.

3. Invite Members

In the dashboard of your new blog, select “members” from the menu on the right panel. You can invite members to post on the blog via email or by copying and pasting an invite link. Invited members will be able to add content to the new blog, but they won’t be able to change settings unless you promote them to be blog admins.

Important Questions

• Can I add other contributors to my primary blog? Unfortunately, there’s no way to simply add other users to a blog that you have already started as your primary blog. There’s also no way to change which blog is your primary blog or transfer that content to another blog. Which means that if you want co-bloggers, you’ll need to either share the login information for your primary blog or create an additional group blog from scratch, as outlined above. Keep in mind that you need a primary Tumblr before you can start a group one.
• Can my group blog follow or like other Tumblr blogs? Only primary blogs can follow and like other blogs. Since group blogs can’t be primary blogs, they cannot follow or like other people’s content.
• Can other people follow or like my group blog? Yes.
• Can I password protect my primary blog? Only additional blogs can be password protected.
• Is there another platform that makes it easier to create a group blog? Depending on your needs and who you ask, Posterous, WordPress and Blogger are all excellent alternative platforms for collaborative blogs.

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/05/01/group-tumblr/

Using Facebook to get Traffic

As compared to other social networking sites Facebook is the leading one today, because it is the second popular website in the world. You may want to know what the first one is, of course it is Google as it has many services. So you may think why Facebook, Google is the best and should go using Google Plus. Yes you may use Google Plus but as Google Plus has don’t yet have the number of monthly users compared to Facebook, so for now Facebook is the best social networking site. And as the title says today you will be learning how to get the maximum traffic from Facebook.




1) Make friends to get traffic!


You may be wondering how you can get traffic if you add friends to your Facebook profile. This is a common question. But this effects your blog traffic, and increases. How does traffic increase if you add more friends. Making friends doesn’t make your traffic grow. Making blogger friends grows your blogs traffic. For example if you share a link on your wall or timeline, only people will go to the link if the link is useful to them. Increasing friends by sending friends requests to the people having more mutual friends will not do. Make friends who are interested in your blog, or let them make you their friend by providing a profile badge on your blog. I recommend you to use RSS graffiti app to post all your blog posts directly to your Facebook wall or timeline.


2) Join groups to get traffic!


This is something similar to the first one. Joining groups will make a good and healthy traffic to your blog. But which group to join is the matter. Here I not at all mean that join any group you like and post you links in it, because people have different interests and according to their interests they create and join groups. For example if you join a group like “Friendship Quotes” and post your link with tutorials that are not related to friendship of course you will be removed from that group. So join wisely and post wisely to get wise traffic. If you own a blog on pets then join a group related to pets and post your link or there are some groups for all bloggers like - Bloggerz created by Stylify Your Blog where you can post the links of your posts.






3) Make a Fan Page to get traffic!


Creating a fan page in Facebook is one of the very best ways to get good traffic. This runs on a simple trick the more fans you have the more traffic you get. How to get more fans to your page, well this is a question that was once answered on this blog on a post “GOING VIRAL FOR FREE: YOU LIKE HITS” this is the best way to get fans and getting good amount of fans makes quite good traffic. Now you may ask I have a fan page and fans, but no traffic from Facebook. Yes, having a fan page and more fans won’t get you traffic. As written in the above points you need to post links to get traffic, but this point is more powerful than the above ones. Posting links every time is a very boring work and even I don’t like to do that. So what to do. Best way is to use RSS Graffiti; this is an app on Facebook that posts all your post links to your fan page’s wall or timeline directly.


So you are ready to get the maximum from Facebook. Well everything isn’t easy but is possible. Maintain a good blog, keep posting. Your main aim is Blogging if you go on blogging, traffic will be a fan of yours.

Source: http://www.stylifyyourblog.com/2012/03/using-facebook-to-get-traffic.html

How to Use Facebook and Twitter Without the Internet

As Hurricane Sandy makes its way up the Eastern Seaboard, many are without electricity. Without power you could lose your access to Internet via Wi-Fi and, potentially, access to mobile networks. If that happens, how can you still post on Facebook and Twitter to let your friends and family know that everything is fine? Or ask for help?

You can use good-old text messages.

To tweet, first you need to enable your mobile phone on Twitter.com, so do it now while you can. Go to your Twitter homepage, then to “Settings” and then “Mobile.” Insert your cellphone number under “Activate Twitter text messaging,” and then you’ll have to text “GO” to the number 40404.

Once you’ve done that, you should receive a text message telling you that your phone is now activated. You should also see new settings on the webpage that allow you to enable or disable text notifications.

Now, to tweet, just write a text and send it to 40404.

To find out more about how to use other Twitter functionalities without an Internet connection, check Twitter’sofficial guide.

SEE ALSO: Google Launches Crisis Map for Hurricane Sandy

If you’re more of a Facebook fan, worry not. You can update your status via SMS as well and the social network also gives you the ability to subscribe to your friends’ updates and even use Facebook chat. Again, to access these functionalities, you first need to link your mobile phone to your Facebook account.

Log into Facebook.com and go to your “Account Settings,” which you can find under the arrow next to your name on the top bar. Then go to “Mobile,” introduce your number and click on “Activate Text Messaging.” You’ll have to select your country and your carrier. Once you’ve done that, follow the instructions on the screen and text the letter “F” to the number 32665.

Finally, you will receive a confirmation number on your phone. Insert that number on the page. You should then receive a text message that will confirm that your phone is activated.

Now, to update your status, you simply have to write it in a text and send it to 32665.

Source : http://mashable.com/2012/10/29/facebook-twitter-sms/

Which is more important: content or links?

Search Engine Crawl Process

processing a query, skip this description. I adapted the following overview from Chris Sherman and Gary Price’s wonderful description of How Search Engines Work in Chapter 2 of The Invisible Web (CyberAge Books, 2001).

Google runs on a distributed network of thousands of low-cost computers and can therefore carry out fast parallel processing. Parallel processing is a method of computation in which many calculations can be performed simultaneously, significantly speeding up data processing. Google has three distinct parts:

• Googlebot, a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.
• The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.
• The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.

Let’s take a closer look at each part.

1. Googlebot, Google’s Web Crawler

Googlebot is Google’s web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It’s easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn’t traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, then handing it off to Google’s indexer.

Googlebot consists of many computers requesting and fetching pages much more quickly than you can with your web browser. In fact, Googlebot can request thousands of different pages simultaneously. To avoid overwhelming web servers, or crowding out requests from human users, Googlebot deliberately makes requests of each individual web server more slowly than it’s capable of doing.

Googlebot finds pages in two ways: through an add URL form, www.google.com/addurl.html, and through finding links by crawling the web.

Unfortunately, spammers figured out how to create automated bots that bombarded the add URL form with millions of URLs pointing to commercial propaganda. Google rejects those URLs submitted through its Add URL form that it suspects are trying to deceive users by employing tactics such as including hidden text or links on a page, stuffing a page with irrelevant words, cloaking (aka bait and switch), using sneaky redirects, creating doorways, domains, or sub-domains with substantially similar content, sending automated queries to Google, and linking to bad neighbors. So now the Add URL form also has a test: it displays some squiggly letters designed to fool automated “letter-guessers”; it asks you to enter the letters you see — something like an eye-chart test to stop spambots.

When Googlebot fetches a page, it culls all the links appearing on the page and adds them to a queue for subsequent crawling. Googlebot tends to encounter little spam because most web authors link only to what they believe are high-quality pages. By harvesting links from every page it encounters, Googlebot can quickly build a list of links that can cover broad reaches of the web. This technique, known as deep crawling, also allows Googlebot to probe deep within individual sites. Because of their massive scale, deep crawls can reach almost every page in the web. Because the web is vast, this can take some time, so some pages may be crawled only once a month.

Although its function is simple, Googlebot must be programmed to handle several challenges. First, since Googlebot sends out simultaneous requests for thousands of pages, the queue of “visit soon” URLs must be constantly examined and compared with URLs already in Google’s index. Duplicates in the queue must be eliminated to prevent Googlebot from fetching the same page again. Googlebot must determine how often to revisit a page. On the one hand, it’s a waste of resources to re-index an unchanged page. On the other hand, Google wants to re-index changed pages to deliver up-to-date results.

To keep the index current, Google continuously recrawls popular frequently changing web pages at a rate roughly proportional to how often the pages change. Such crawls keep an index current and are known as fresh crawls. Newspaper pages are downloaded daily, pages with stock quotes are downloaded much more frequently. Of course, fresh crawls return fewer pages than the deep crawl. The combination of the two types of crawls allows Google to both make efficient use of its resources and keep its index reasonably current.

2. Google’s Indexer

Googlebot gives the indexer the full text of the pages it finds. These pages are stored in Google’s index database. This index is sorted alphabetically by search term, with each index entry storing a list of documents in which the term appears and the location within the text where it occurs. This data structure allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms.

To improve search performance, Google ignores (doesn’t index) common words called stop words (such as the, is, on, or, of, how, why, as well as certain single digits and single letters). Stop words are so common that they do little to narrow a search, and therefore they can safely be discarded. The indexer also ignores some punctuation and multiple spaces, as well as converting all letters to lowercase, to improve Google’s performance.

3. Google’s Query Processor

The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box), the “engine” that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.

PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank.

Google considers over a hundred factors in computing a PageRank and determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the proximity of the search terms to one another on the page. A patent application discusses other factors that Google considers when ranking a page. Visit SEOmoz.org’s report for an interpretation of the concepts and the practical applications contained in Google’s patent application.

Google also applies machine-learning techniques to improve its performance automatically by learning relationships and associations within the stored data. For example, the spelling-correcting system uses such techniques to figure out likely alternative spellings. Google closely guards the formulas it uses to calculate relevance; they’re tweaked to improve quality and performance, and to outwit the latest devious techniques used by spammers.

Indexing the full text of the web allows Google to go beyond simply matching single search terms. Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Since Google indexes HTML code in addition to the text on the page, users can restrict searches on the basis of where query words appear, e.g., in the title, in the URL, in the body, and in links to the page, options offered by Google’s Advanced Search Form and Using Search Operators (Advanced Operators).

Let’s see how Google processes a query.

Copyright © 2003 Google Inc. Used with permission.

For more information on how Google works, take a look at the following articles.

• Google’s page on Google’s Technology, www.google.com/technology/.
• How does Google collect and rank results?, www.google.com/newsletter/librarian/librarian_2005_12/article1.html.
• Google’s PageRank Algorithm and How it Works, www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
• Google’s PageRank Explained and How to Make the Most of It, www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

10 SEO Techniques All Startups Should Be Using

If you’re a startup entrepreneur, chances are good that search engine optimization (SEO) is the last thing on your mind. After all, why should you worry about things like keyword phrases and backlinks when there are a hundred other items on your “to do” list, all clamoring for your attention?

Unfortunately, this mindset is extremely shortsighted. It doesn’t matter how innovative your products or services are. If people can’t find you online, you’re going to have a seriously tough time sustaining the momentum you need to propel a growing business to success.

So instead of dismissing the tremendous potential involved with SEO, consider implementing any or all of the following techniques into your startup’s marketing plan:

Technique #1 – Identify Target Keywords

In my opinion, a startup’s #1 marketing goal should be to identify at least a handful of potential SEO keywords to target within the natural search results and then optimize the site accordingly. This list should include keyword phrases that your potential customers are actually entering into the engines (as determined by search volume figures found in keyword research tools) and that aren’t too competitive to rank for your site (based on the presence of established websites in Google’s Top 10 results).

Once identified, these keywords should be integrated into your site in key areas, including your page titles, your heading tags, and your body content. Don’t force it through excessive inclusions, but do take advantage of the SEO value these positions hold to inform the search engines about the subject of your web content.

Technique #2 – Implement Branding Efforts

However, while it’s important to identify and target SEO keywords for use in your startup marketing plan, it’s also vital that you begin the branding process as early as possible in your company’s tenure. There’s no arguing with the fact that Google loves brands. Considering that the search engine must rely on quantifiable metrics (rather than subjective assessments) in order to evaluate website quality for display in the natural search results, branded elements remain one reliable bellwether that can be used to indicate viewer valuation.

To get started capturing these benefits for your startup’s website, decide on a set logo, color scheme, tagline, and promotional phrasing as early as possible, and use these elements consistently across your web presence.  Consider working with a graphic designer or marketing consultant if you don’t feel capable of coming up with a cohesive brand on your own.

Technique #3 – Focus on Content Creation

Running a company blog on which you post product updates, industry news reactions, or other personal interest pieces is a vital part of SEO for two reasons.

First, publishing content to your site regularly increases the number of different keywords present on your site. By improving keyword exposure, you may find yourself earning free SEO traffic via natural search phrases you never even targeted on your site!

Second, filling your site with valuable content is a great way to build up the relationships you share with your prospects and customers. Because bounce rate and time on site are both believed to be playing roles in search ranking algorithms, the quality of these relationships could actually improve how well you rank in the SERPs.

Technique #4 – Commit to Social Networking

Truth be told, for many startup entrepreneurs, participating on popular social networking sites can seem like yet another chore to be added to the “to do” list. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap!

Both Google and Bing have acknowledged that social signals, including link shares and brand mentions on some social network status updates, are currently playing a role in natural SERPs rankings, which means that maintaining a presence on these sites is vitally important for your startup’s SEO. If at all possible, make it a priority to invest at least 10-20 minutes each day posting to social networking sites and interacting with the people who follow your company’s profiles on these sites.

Technique #5 – Connect with Social Networking Power Users

While you’re spending time on popular social media sites, it’s also a good idea to take the time to connect with the power users on these platforms. Not only is the relative authority of these social networking participants taken into account when weighting the social signals Google and the other search engines detect for your brand, a single link share from one of these “influencers” could result in a significant influx of traffic and customers to your website.

To do this effectively, identify the people you’d like to connect with based on their numbers of followers and their general authority within your industry, and then let your relationships with them build up naturally. Sharing their content or offering to help them in some way will go a long way towards ensuring the success of your eventual share request.

Technique #6 – Install Google Analytics

Another foundation to web success that all startups should consider is the ability to measure and test different metrics. For example, if you’ve recently added a new sign-up form to your startup’s website, you’ll want to be sure it’s as effective as possible, and you can’t know that if you aren’t measuring the results you achieve through A/B or multivariate split testing.

To gather the data needed to do this effectively, you’ll want to install a program like Google Analytics. It’s free and easy to use, and it provides an incredible wealth of information that can be used to improve your website’s conversion rates.

Technique #7 – Set up Google Analytics Goals

Speaking of conversion rates, once you’ve got Google Analytics installed, you’ll want to take the time to establish website goals and set up the necessary event tracking features to determine how well your website is performing. Because Google Analytics goals allow you to identify whether or not website visitors are engaging with your site the way you envisioned, they’re a vital part of making your site as effective as possible.

For complete details on how to use Google Analytics’s built-in features to start generating this data, take a look at any of the following articles:

• About Google Analytics Goals
• Setting up Google Analytics Goals
• Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide

Technique #8 – Invest in Link Building Campaigns

While optimizing your website for your chosen SEO and branded keyword phrases is important, it’s only half of the optimization battle. The second primary SEO aim you’ll want to pay attention to is link building, as in the process of getting other websites to point links to your content.

The number, quality, and relevance of the links pointing at your website are all used as quality signals in the search engine ranking algorithms. Because your site’s link profile is estimated to account for as much as 50-80% of your overall “SEO Score,” you’ll find that it’s well worth your while to invest in link building campaigns as soon as your startup’s website is online.

The easiest way to carry out a link building campaign is to take a look at where your competitors are getting their backlinks by using tools like Majestic SEO or the Open Site Explorer. Although you won’t want to copy their link profiles link-for-link, you can use the data generated by these programs to identify potential linking sources and uncover missed link opportunities that could allow you to outrank your opponents in the SERPs.

Technique #9 – Try Guest Posting

One link building technique that deserves special mention here is guest posting. As a guest author, you connect with other websites in your industry to provide guest blog posts in exchange for a link back to your site. When done well (that is, by partnering with top influencers within your industry), you will receive a high-quality, highly-relevant backlink and you also stand to receive additional traffic due to the transfer of perceived “recommendation” of your content by the referring site’s author.

With just a few good guest post spots, it’s possible to substantially increase both your rankings in the natural search results and the amount of traffic flowing to your website.

Technique #10 – Launch Press Releases

Finally, one link building technique that’s especially effective for startup entrepreneurs is the use of press releases. Whenever your company has something newsworthy to report, write up a provocative press release and send it out through a distribution service like PRWeb. As you might expect by now, promoting your site in this way has the potential to both increase traffic and backlinks through the sites that eventually carry your release.

If you’re part of a current or former startup, have you made use of any of these techniques?  Share your thoughts and recommendations for other new business owners in the comments section below!

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-seo-techniques-all-startups-should-be-using/45827/