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Social Ecosystem

There are still many in the search engine optimization industry that are fighting the concept that Google (and Bing) is taking social signals into account at a high level when determining search rankings.

These people fall into three categories:

  1. Those who haven’t had the ability or desire to test it. If you test it thoroughly, it becomes extremely clear that it’s real.
  2. Those who do not have the ability to generate and promote high quality, shareable content as part of their SEO strategy. If you can’t do it, you might as well pretend like it doesn’t exist.
  3. Those who have read the blog posts of either of the previous two and took the opinions as truth.

The reality is that, based upon extensive testing that we’ve been running (not to mention some of the things that Google has said over the last couple of years), social signals have a significant impact on the overall SEO of websites.

There’s another thing to consider, though, as pointed out by Search Engine Watch last month. Google is paying attention to social signals through Google Analytics. Some might say that it’s a natural addition to the service since people consider social media to be an important part of their overall marketing, but that’s simply not how Google works. If they add something to Analytics, it’s because they consider it to be important. There’s no need for them to track it if they aren’t considering it in some algorithm, and the most likely algorithm that social signals could effect is their search ranking algorithm.

When Google says something with their actions, it behooves those in SEO to listen. Are you listening?

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Why Reputation Management Matters: Your Legacy

“The opinions in this blog are mine alone and not the opinions of who I work for”

If that isn’t clear please click here.

Recently I spoke at an “event” in Portland, Oregon. The room was not at capacity, however those that attended were very engaged. One of my co-workers welcomed the small workshop attendees and dived into best practices for website optimization, SEO and SEM. His down to earth approach, humor and Subject Matter Expertise shone brightly that morning in the Washington room at The Red Lion. Using common sense approaches he brought what some would consider a very high level discussion to level that was easily digestible.


After lunch I took the stage. As there were a couple executives from my place of employment there I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous. I said “amen” and dove into Reputation Management. There was great discussion from the crowd of best practices, things that worked and what to be careful not to do and who they would recommend their peers stay away from. I was then asked if I really thought if Reputation Management mattered at the end of the day. I took a different approach then I normally do this is what my response was…

One of the most influential speakers, authors and someone who changed my life, Gary Vaynerchuk has said legacy is more valuable than currency. Right now I don’t want you to think about money. Don’t think about selling a car, don’t think about servicing another truck. Think about your children and grandchildren. Think about what they will discover about you online. For the most part, what is put online will be there in some form forever. Think about what they will learn about who you were and the organization you worked for. Taking money out of the equation, what do you want your legacy to be?



I am happy to say this made some people in the room think about what their Reputation meant. What do you want to be known for?

Safe travels.


To see what makes a good review click here

To see the 2 most critical items in reputation management click here


Oh and pardon my errors…I stink at typing:)

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AuthorRank

Google Authorship has been around for a while. It has helped many bloggers and journalists stand out by having their images appear directly in search results next to the articles they publish. It highlights the number of people that have them in their Google+ circles and gives a link to other writings by the author. This is nothing new.

Google AuthorRank has been given much speculation for about a year now. The idea is simple – Google will give higher rankings to those who have demonstrated expertise in a particular field. If someone is prolific at writing about a subject and their writing is well received by the community, the content itself and the domain on which the content appears can be ranked higher than competitors. Nobody knows exactly what criteria Google will consider when determining AuthorRank, but much of the speculation makes too much sense to be completely off.

They want quality. They want content that can be shared. They want resources and value. They believe that there are people who tend to be more influential about one topic or another because they have demonstrated a proficiency at writing about the topic and their content gets the type of activity that one would expect from something of importance. Here are some of the speculations about what may influence AuthorRank:

  • Shares, particularly on Google+, but also on Twitter, Facebook, and possibly others such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Tumblr
  • Comments – is anyone reacting to the content?
  • Google+ circle authority. It should be noted that I said “authority” and not “count” as I’m sure Google will look at quality of followers over quantity
  • Authority level of the sources will still have an affect but not in the traditional PageRank way they once did (seen this first hand already)

What does all of this mean for businesses? For larger companies, it’s easy. Get better at blogging. Do more than just promote your products and services. Be informative. Bring value. Hire top-notch journalists rather than marketing copywriters and press release agencies to fill your website will strong content in an engaging format.

For localized businesses, it’s a little more challenging. The rise of outsourced social media tells us that there is already a clear shortage of time when it comes to search and social. Content marketing is the future present and it centers around a word that has been used too many times already in this post, value. It continues to be used because it cannot be stated enough. You have to bring value through quality content if you want to advance well beyond the competition. The good news – very few at the local level will participate. The bad news – it isn’t easy. It isn’t cheap. This isn’t the type of content that you can pay $5 for on an offshore content spinning service and expect to get results. The content has to ring true. The author has to get out there and become an expert, a trust adviser on the topics you need them to dominate. The path isn’t an easy one, but take note: if you do it successfully, you increase your ability to rank well on Google and be amazing on social media by leaps and bounds.

This isn’t a quick tip. It’s not a trick. Bring value to the table and do it the right way and you’ll be rewarded by Google. Why? Because that’s exactly what they want you to do.

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Google Plus Page

Google has stuck with its story that the various components of Google+ and the +1 button don’t have an effect on search rankings. They have to. Once they admit that it does (as countless studies and tests have indicated), the flood of spam and blackhat SEO techniques will grow larger than it already has. This is important to understand for anyone doing research on the topic. Google isn’t trying to deceive people for the sake of being deceptive. They’re trying to protect the sanctity of what will become their greatest advantage in the ongoing search engine wars. They will not sit back and do what Yahoo did a decade ago, relying on mass adoption to carry them through. Just because Google is on top today doesn’t mean that they have no fears for the future.

Thus, Google+.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at the three primary components of Google+ and the various +1 buttons (they look the same but they have different uses) that have an effect on your search rankings.

 

The Google+ Business Page

There’s a good chance that if you’ve been following the advice of internet marketing experts out there for the past couple of years, that you have a Google+ business profile. If you don’t, get one now.

The page serves two purposes from a search perspective. If you’re posting content from your website onto your page, it counts as a +1 for that particular piece of content. +1s are weighted differently and the ones from your page have more weight than spammers but less weight than most users, but it’s still a good thing to have. It doesn’t hurt, so why not?

The other component is a relative scale. Your page itself has +1s, demonstrated in the image above in the bottom right by “+346″. There have been a couple of studies that have looked at this and shown that it’s the most important aspect of overall search rankings that Google+ affects. I disagree based upon my own research, but it definitely has an affect. By being a “relative scale”, it isn’t a matter of gathering hundreds, even thousands of these. It’s a matter of having higher quality ones relative to your competitors for search rankings. As with everything in this article (and pretty much in search and social altogether), quality trumps quantity. You only see the number. Google sees the quality of the accounts within the number.

Domain Content +1s

The rise of content marketing from a search perspective has been most positively affected by the +1 buttons on your site. Inbound links are still extremely important, but they have remained at a steady value ever since the Penguin update. The +1s accumulated on content within a domain have risen in overall power.

This is why true content marketing on your website is so important from a search perspective. We can no longer rely on strong HTML content and organic links to rank higher than competitors. Sure, they work, but the real differentiator that so few are willing to explore is the fact that social signals to a piece of content affect the overall rankings of a domain. If a piece of content is strong enough to get some viral love on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook, the rankings of many keywords are affected.

 

Individual Content +1s

This is a two-headed beast. Google has not seen the +1 abundance of data that they had hoped when they first started putting the +1 button everywhere. They’ve gone through many changes over the last year, including changing the way that the search results interact depending on browser and device. Now, you can “share” pages from results into Google+, but it’s unlikely that this is being done very often.

What Google IS seeing is an increase in the number of shares directly from content. It isn’t just a rise from the clicks on the page itself, but also an increase in the +1s happening on the Google+ network within users’ feeds. This is translating into very strong improvements in overall search rankings and traffic for those who are able to get activity on Google+ with their content. The catch-22 is that many businesses are finding it much easier to get +1s to “fun” content. This helps with the second component above, but if we’re not able to get +1s to the “money” content, we’re missing a large part of the strategy.

To achieve this, websites have to start being built with “fun” and “money” on the same pages. It’s a challenge – the entertainment or educational value of content often makes it hard to use as a conversion piece, but that’s the golden ticket at the end of the day. If you can turn your fun content into something that also has the ability to generate leads and sales, you’re definitely a mile ahead of your competitors.

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Why am I seeing so many dealers with business listings UNCLAIMED? Reminds me of the old days, circa 1998 and URL’s for the company name we're not claimed. Didn't that suck when you found out the URL was taken by someone or some company much less deserving of that URL. Same with your listing.

I’ve seen what happens to your face when you find out your competitor has claimed your listing. Signing up for a listing is one thing but much more important is CLAIMING your listing. For some this may seem like a no brainer, however based on how many dealers we support for reputation management, I’m shocked at how many have major review listings for their dealer name unclaimed.

Business listings should play a role in your marketing plan because who wants to waste time with promotions that don’t benefit your bottom line. Business directories are a great form of targeted advertising.

Google has some great suggestions you can do to Optimize your listing and lift your Google score to help users find your dealership. The third recommendation is my favorite…..

Include images and videos to help your listing stand out.

Can online directory listings increase my web traffic?

Knowing how many cars and R.O’s are coming from your preferred dealership listings is a reality many are tracking, in terms of where they rank and traffic. I’m really impressed with BDC directors that are aware that Yelp makes it pretty stinking ridiculous in terms of NOT allowing us to know which keyword was used before your vehicle prospect clicks to your Yelp listing, but I digress.

Listing your company and company URL on online review sites and directories not only helps your ROI, but can also help your website appear higher in search results for certain terms. The more quality web pages that you can get your site listed or mentioned in, the more authoritative Google will begin to think your website is. When Google chooses where your webpage will appear in search results, Page Rank (the authority of the webpage) is one of the factors that can significantly increase your chances or being ranked first, or at least on the first page, for a particular search term or phrase.

What does my dealership need to do now?

Claim your unclaimed listings!

It may take some time to find the right mix of directories to advertise your business in. Implement some sort of analytics or tracking system to see which directories are giving you the best return, either in click throughs to your site, in direct revenue, or in call volume. This could include using special tracking campaign links for online directories, or a unique phone numbers or URLs for print ads. Over time, cut the zero- or low-performing directories and re-invest in new ones until you find a good mix of print and online directories that perform well for your dealership.

Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that listing your company in directories isn’t just a one-time project. It needs to be maintained and your strategies adjusted based on what your competitors are doing, and based on your changing business goals. However, studies are proving the maintaining business directory listings as part of your marketing plan can be a profitable business strategy for your dealership.

I highly recommend ChatMeter and Yext if you need help with managing, optimizing, and monitoring your online listings.

Jerry Hart
President
eReputationBUILDER
888-810-0441

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Using Google+ as a Lite Business Blogging Platform



Facebook has the market cornered on true social networking. Twitter is the news source. YouTube owns videos. Google+, the network that's growing huge but still having challenges communicating its identity, has one major advantage over all of the other social networks: size of posts.

It's possible to format and utilize Google+ as a lite blogging platform. This is not necessarily a good replacement for those who already have a valid and active business blog, but those who are getting started or who never been able to generate real traction to their blog can take advantage of some of the things that Google+ does well.

Here are some of the advantages:

* Formatting - While it's not nearly the type of formatting that is available on true blogging platforms like Wordpress or Tumblr there's enough formatting options on Google+ to make it work. Again, this is only good as a lite version.

* Length - The constraints present on other social networks are looser on Google+. Sure, you can use hacks to plug in a blog on Facebook and there are tools available to fake a blog through Twitter, but posting directly to the feed is only possible from a length perspective on Google+.

* Instant Rankings - While I haven't tested beyond my own accounts, I know that Google+ posts tend to rank extremely quickly and very high for good keywords, particularly for those who follow me. Even unauthenticated web searches present Google+ posts.

* Tie-In to Google Local - The local components of Google through search and directed from other locations are generating more and more traffic. Reviews, maps, information - all of these give people reasons to visit a Google account for a business. Once there, people are often unable to find anything interesting on the pages because of how infrequently most post to their Google+ page accounts. By making it a lite blog, this can change.

The disadvantages are numerous, of course. Links, images, videos - pick one. Unfortunately, you cannot mix and match different media types. You also can't put them in-line the way you can on real blogging platforms. Unless you are one of the lucky ones with a vanity URL, it's not easy to get people to your G+ page without using a custom short link.

At this point, anything that can get businesses communicating more robustly with their customers and potential customers is a good thing. It's not that I would prefer that people use Google+ for blogging over Wordpress, Blogger, or any of the true blogging platforms, but if it's convenient enough to make businesses act, then it's worth describing in a blog post.

I guess that's what I just did.

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With Google Local, formerly known as Google Places decision makers are scrambling to understand how ORM algorithms will drastically affect SEO rankings and high Google scores. Google says Google Local is “a simple way to discover and share local information.” Sounds like business listing are becoming more social.

In other words Google Local helps people like me who could very well turn the urge to buy a car— “Hey, I want to test drive a car today” —into an afternoon outing: “Perfect, there’s a Cadillac dealer with great reviews just two blocks from here. Let’s go.” It’s integrated into Search, Maps and mobile and available as a new tab in Google+—creating one simple experience across Google.

The new system is definitely much broader than the previous star system, given its larger scale. 17 out of 30 doesn’t sound incredibly great but if you look at the scale, 16-20 represents “good to very good”. 0- 30 is pretty wide range to cover the four individual ratings Google goes by:

3 Excellent
2 Very Good
1 Good
0 Poor to Fair

Google takes the average, and multiplies it by ten to come up with averaged scores featuring Zagat scores and recommendations from people you trust in Google+.

Algorithms are incorporated into all kinds of review sites where your brand is being talked about and Google is measuring a combination of indicators across all published reviews to determine your Score and overall ranking.

Survey results released a few months ago indicate that many of the top ranking factors are directly related to reviews, your top keywords in reviews, including Google measuring what kind of feedback or responses you’re providing to the consumer feedback on review sites.

Here is how a few of them ranked, according to that (out of the top 90):

7. Quantity of Native Google Places Reviews (w/text) (REVIEWS)
18. Product/Service Keywords in Reviews (REVIEWS)
24. Quantity of Third-Party Traditional Reviews (REVIEWS)
26. Location Keywords in Reviews (REVIEWS)
31. Velocity of Native Google Places Reviews (REVIEWS)
34. Quantity of Reviews by Authority Reviewers (e.g.Yelp Elite, Multiple Places Reviewers, etc) (REVIEWS)
46. High Numerical Ratings by Authority Reviewers (e.g.Yelp Elite, Multiple Places Reviewers, etc) (REVIEWS)
49. Overall Velocity of Reviews (Native + Third-Party) (REVIEWS)
50. Quantity of Third-Party Unstructured Reviews (REVIEWS)
52. Quantity of Native Google Places Ratings (no text) (REVIEWS)
53. High Numerical Ratings of Place by Google Users (e.g. 4-5) (REVIEWS)
62. Velocity of Third-Party Reviews (REVIEWS)
69. High Numerical Third-Party Ratings (e.g. 4-5) (REVIEWS)
74. Positive Sentiment in Reviews (REVIEWS)

According to Google, reputation management means interacting, responding to, learning from, and implementing ideas and improvements based on customer feedback. The good news is that feedback is everywhere. I’d take that as a hint from Google that a higher Google score is achieved with a multi pronged approach.

Responding to reviews, creating conversation with customers, understanding the underlying issues, and devising possible solutions.

The importance of a high ranking Google score will be directly related to two different potential benefits:

  1. SEO Influence. The exact algorithm for reviews is not completely clear, but Google says the correlation between a higher number of reviews and higher relevance (sometimes ranking) on search engines is apparent in any search query yielding a local result, not to mention fresh content being crawled by robots.

 

Therefore, it would make sense to incorporate reputation building avenues (follow up emails, etc) for customers

to share their experience, which can help increase the dealerships online reviews and become a more credible source for both customers and search engines.

2.  Conversion & Purchasing Influence. The second benefit is the relationship between top level results and the likelihood of a user clicking on your dealer name. If your dealership continuously encourages customers to leave reviews (not from the dealerships I.P) and the reviews received are showing your business in a good light, then it is likely that you will rank higher on review results. See the logical equation below for Google
Total reviews + Quality of Reviews = Better Google Ranking (simple version as there are other factors involved)

Better Google Ranking + Management Responses = Higher Trust (good reviews) and therefore Higher Revenue (good reviews at the top of the result page)

Regardless of the ranking of the list above, it does stop and make you think about all the potential factors that could go into your local ranking, and many are certainly worth paying attention to.

Jerry Hart
President
eReputationBUILDER

Schedule a Free Demo
Ask a Question: jerry(at)erepbuilder(dot)com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jerryhart67

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While at work I received a text message from a buddy of mine with the new Google Maps App URL. I immediately downloaded the app and began to play around with it.  Currently my cell phone service is Verizon and I have been using VZ Navigator. At only $2.99 a month, it is a great deal for anyone who does not have a navigation system or a vehicle with navigation installed. Google Maps App, being FREE, does the exact same thing so I used that for my ride home from work to test it out. I noticed a few glitches, but with anything new those kind of things are going to happen. The next day I was off and wanted to check out some furniture stores. I typed in the Google Maps app “furniture store” and immediately several local stores came up.

But here is the “GAME CHANGER”…

During my search, it gave me each stores Google Places ranting!! Wow!! I didn’t do any homework before I left the house, and now I didn’t have too! I had all the information during my drive. I was able to see which store had 2 stars and which store had 5 stars. I was able to see who to avoid at each store while in my car, while on my phone driving to the location!

My mind immediately turned to my business, the car business. How many customers are driving to your dealership using this app and notice a terrible review? How many of those same people punch in your competitors store who have a higher ranting through Google and head over there? It is going to happen more times then not.

The majority of buyers in today’s market are Gen X and Gen Y. I, myself am Gen Y. I, myself bypassed a store because of a negative review during my drive to that same exact store.

Google Maps App is going to change the game. It is going to cause customers to detour from their original route and head directly towards a safe place to shop. I did… And I consider myself no different then any other shopper out there.

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Don't Let Your Google+ Page Die on the Vine

I vividly remember a conversation I had with Wikimotive's Tim Martell back in 2008. Even four and a half years later, the conversation has remained in my mind. We were discussing the rise of social media. We both agreed that Facebook would be the big thing, but he told me something that surprised me.

"I actually get more traffic from my MySpace page than Facebook," he said.

We knew it wouldn't last, but it was hard to let go completely. His team maintained the strongest MySpace page in automotive for a long time until the social network stopped really being a social network. He then started focusing on the world of Facebook and the rest is history.

Today, Google+ is a "player" in the automotive social media field, but very few are sure how to use it properly. Some would say that at this stage it's a ghost town and isn't a valid part of the social media strategy. My argument to the contrary is similar to my argument against abandoning Twitter: it just doesn't take a lot of time to keep it ready.

Even if you don't believe it will materialize into anything, get these words stuck in your head: "Just in case."

There are reports of it helping from an organic search ranking perspective. These reports are confirmed, then unconfirmed, then refuted, then reconfirmed. Google has said that it is important. Then they've said it doesn't have an affect. What people often don't realize is that they're masterful at spin, particularly when it comes to their search algorithm.

In mid-2010 they vehemently denied that social signals had any effect on search rankings before stating for the record later the same year that they definitely had an effect on search rankings and had been having an effect for nearly two years. It's no coincidence that they made the latter statement six months before launching Google+.

With Google Local having a direct impact on business and being tied in with Google+, you can't afford to think that it will fail. Assume it won't. Assume it will be a thing. Here are three things to do to make sure it doesn't die on the vine.

  1. Post on it Like Facebook - Whatever you're posting to Facebook, post it to Google+ as well. It's an extra step that takes about 2 minutes if you're slow and requires nothing more than copying and pasting.
  2. Use Hootsuite - This shouldn't be your only method of posting as everything comes across as links (even images) but it's a good way to keep the page scheduled and going strong.
  3. Manage Your Page Weekly - Posting is quick. Managing takes a little more time. You don't have to do it daily like you do with Facebook, but once a week check out your new followers, follow the appropriate ones back, and go through your feed (logged in as your page) giving +1s to good content. Total time: 10 minutes.

Nobody worth their salary has a ton of time to waste in the automotive industry, but it's important to keep this high-potential network from dying on the vine.

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The Value Of Video Testimonials

The value of video testimonials is a strategy that every automotive dealership needs to have in place as a part of their social media online presence. Photo's are very important too however, the impact that your video will have on the consumer is much stronger with video.

With the average dealership selling 100 units a month imagine the impact that the dealership would have if a strategy was in place to get either a photo or a video of every sold customer, customers in service, customers in the bodyshop and customers in the parts department just to name a few.  We know that most stores nationwide are not taking advantage of this opportunity to dominate the market with these videos which is great for the stores that do to steal market share from stores that are sleep at the wheel.

Now what is awesome about these videos is that one can take these videos and spread them like wildfire all over the Internet. There are multiple video sites that the dealership can use to upload these videos to and then use different titles for each site to dominate other dealerships.  For instance, imagine if a consumer did a search on Google and typed Ford Mustang Manhattan, KS and your video shows up as the first result on the first page of natural Google for your dealership which is by the way over 50 miles away.  The consumer that would have went to the local dealership has now clicked on your video which takes them to your social media site with links to your inventory and video testimonials of happy customers.  Now who do you think that consumer is going to call?

It's great that most dealers are asleep at the wheel and still operate under the premise of if we build a dealership they will come.  What this does is gives a competitive advantage to the dealership that understands this strategy and crushes the competition online.

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SEO is Dead... for those who can't keep up

Every few months, marketers around the blogosphere start the next batch of chants that search engine optimization is dying or dead. It's like clockwork; Google makes a change, their pages rank poorly, they declare that the party's over. I think I've written about the topic at least once a year since 2008.

 

The chants are starting again and I'm here to tell you that, as usual, they are premature. I'm not so naive as to make a statement like "SEO will never die," but the thought that the death is here is silly. It's not dead. It has changed. It changes frequently - perhaps more frequently in recent months - but it's not dead yet. In fact, those who are doing the right things are finding that their rankings are actually improving.

 

Why They Always Pronounce it Dead

Since the dawn of SEO, there have been tricks that work for a short period of time. We've always taken the stance that anything that smells like a "trick" will not last and should be dismissed. This concept has helped us to stay on top of our searches and the keywords of our clients.

 

For example, 2007 saw a major increase in the effectiveness of social news and social bookmarking links. It was almost too easy - if you submitted a piece of content to Digg, it would rank for easy keywords within a few hours and for tougher keywords in a few days. Smart marketers refused to play this game knowing that Google would catch on and instead learned to use sites like Digg and Reddit to drive real SEO juice by posting powerful content and exposing it to the social news world. This still applies today for many sites, though they are fading quickly from relevance (except Reddit, which is growing).

 

Any time one of these tricks stops working, the SEOpocalypse is declared.

 

The most recent change that has everyone up in arms is the devaluing of automated links. Footer links, sidebar links, link farms - Google and Bing both have found ways to not only discredit these links but to make them harmful when done too much. SEO is dead... for those who couldn't keep up with these changes.

 

Why SEO isn't Dead

Thankfully, smart marketers did not participate in the automated link-building programs. Personally, I'm shocked it took as long as it did for Google and Bing to figure it out. There was a time in late 2011 that I was starting to doubt my choice of not having our SEO team get in on the link-automation trend. I was getting questioned by some within the company because the path we chose, one of unique content and contextual link generation, was much more expensive to operate than the automated ways.

 

The corner was finally turned with the Penguin update and subsequent tweaks and my choices were vindicated.

 

Today, content is no longer a tool for SEO. It is an overarching concept that includes SEO as part of its mandate. In other words, the tool is now the goal and the goals of SEO, reputation, branding, and social media marketing all revolve around quality content.

 

When you're out there reading about the marketing trends of 2013, take note of those who are pulling away from social media or SEO and those who are pushing forward. This is easy for me to say since it's the direction that my company is heading, but it happens to be the truth. Quality content that people can enjoy, proper link-building and social signal practices that revolve around this content, and social media marketing that doesn't rely on funny cat pictures - these are the real trends that will drive proper marketing in 2013.

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For the past several years, content has been a component of search engine and social media marketing that fell far below the tricks and techniques that helped achieve business goals. It was possible to be successful with limited or low-quality content. In fact, there are those who were able to succeed with no content at all, fooling the search engines and social media sites with methods that proved to be more fruitful than actually creating content that the audience wanted.

 

Those days are finally behind us. It has been a long time coming, but now that search engines, social media sites, and people themselves have seen through the tricks, it's a whole new world in marketing. Today, content rests at the top of the marketing funnel with search engine optimization and social media marketing reduced to components of an overall content marketing strategy. Here's what it all means:

Why Content is Finally King

Despite the proclamations of many marketers over the years, content has not been "king" until very recently. It was always useful, but great content without supporting inbound links would not rank and great content without strong social media promotions would not go viral. Things have changed.

 

Amazing content that is useful, entertaining, or both now has a better opportunity to be seen through both search and social. Google is finding the content more easily, making it possible for it to be found without having to artificially inflate the inbound link count. Today, link-building is still an extremely important component of a proper search strategy, but it must center around quality content rather than boost up poor content.

 

Good links are still powerful and high-quality content can help to generate these links. With a little seeding, the links can come in more easily than in the past when most of the links that marketers created were bulk rather than quality.

 

From a social perspective, there's still a distinct need for some promotions. Unlike Google, Facebook and the other social media sites will not actively find your content. However, by getting it a little promotional exposure by sharing it and focusing on it from the website homepage or landing pages, the content can be found. From there, it's a matter of allowing the content to be easily shared.

 

Rising social sites like Pinterest and Tumblr are ideal for seeding the promotions of content. It can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ as well, of course, but the tighter communities on Pinterest and Tumblr actually create an easier path to take content viral on social media than the larger sites. There's a need for a strong account or two to promote them, but it's not as involved as building power accounts on Facebook or Twitter. One can be exceptional at Tumblr and Pinterest very quickly.

 

Content is at the top of the marketing food chain. It's the spark that generates search marketing links and social signals. It's also the source of social media sharing. Rather than use content for SEO or social media marketing, smart marketers will switch it up and use the content as the central point through which search and social marketing can flow.

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YouTube keeps adding cool stuff out of nowhere and not announcing the changes. I get this odd feeling that the YouTube staff gets very excited about releasing a new feature and taking bets on how long it takes before someone notices. Within the last 24 hours, YouTube has just added a feature called "InVideo Programming" under the Settings tab. Clicking on it gives creators two options. You can now "brand" all of your videos by uploading an icon that represents you, and you can also "feature" a video on all of your other videos, giving creators the chance to push a video across their entire catalog.

InVideo Programming: How It Works

Here's what you do:

Go to your Video Manager and click Settings.
Underneath Channel Settings, click InVideo Programming.
When you click that, you see this:

 

InVideo Programming – Feature Channel:
Feature Your Channel allows you to upload an image, whether your channel's avatar or a custom image, and you can place it in the top/bottom, left/right of the picture. You can keep the branding throughout the duration of the video, or you can customize the length that it lasts:

So this gives you the chance to "brand" your channel much like a TV network does with their logo at the bottom of the screen. Branding like this is a good way to give viewers context: if they are specifically looking for your videos, a logo like this ensures that what they are seeing is yours, and if you happen to have a lot of entertaining/informative videos that keep coming up during a viewer's stay on the site, seeing the brand over and over gives your channel great recognition while people browse YouTube.
Here's the latest ReelSEO Creator's Tip, with our icon showing up during the last 15 seconds (top right):

 

InVideo Programming – Featured Video


The other feature is Feature A Video. With annotations, you can direct people through links to videos, and you have to go to each individual one to create them. With this feature, you can push a video of your liking across every single video you have in your catalog. It places a thumbnail of the featured video into the corner of every video so that no matter which one a viewer is watching, it's there, ready to be clicked. You get to push a video that you think either represents your best, or you can push one you don't think got the attention it deserved. Now, it's way more dynamic than having a little text link show up. Hopefully, they'll make this more customizable in the future so that you can feature a number of different videos across different areas of your catalog. But for now, this is a nifty feature.

Source: YouTube Quietly Launches InVideo Programming: Apply In-Player Branding Across All Your Videos, Instantly http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-invideo-programming/#ixzz28s1pkETZ
©2012 ReelSEO

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http://www.internetsales20group.com 

Man Bites Dog? A Way to Fight the Deleted Google Reviews Dilemma

No different than numerous dealers, a client of mine, 25-year dealer Mohammad Ahmed―president of Northend Motors in Canton, Mass., in the Boston area―had numerbous positive reviews, all collected legitimately through very satisfied customers, stripped from his Google Places listing. Before this action, his dealership rated a score of 28 out of 30, which by Google standards is defined as “Extraordinary to Perfection.”

 

Removing his 145 legitimate positive reviews is one thing, but Google chose to leave six negativereviews and three negative scores without reviews―he has collected one positive review since. His dealership score has fallen to a 5, which is defined as “Poor to Fair” by Google.

 

According to articles posted by industry experts online, 70 percent of customers are using online reviews as part of their consideration as to where to buy. The results of Google’s actions have had a devastating effect on Northend Motors, even though they have hundreds of other reviews posted on CitySearch, Dealer Rater, InsiderPages and Yahoo.

 

Mohammad is not alone! Many other dealers all over the country have noticed the same thing.

 

How can you possibly fight a company like Google―which is so big and all-encompassing―where you have no real customer service contact and their own sales and engineering sides do not even communicate on their changed algorithm issues? E-mails sure aren’t going to do any good.

 

My brainstorm today was for Mohammad to do what so many consumers seem to do when they have a problem with their car … contact the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office. It may have worked. If you, too, have had a problem, I suggest you take similar action immediately!

The following is directly from Mohammad: 

I called FTC, (877) 382-4357, and also used FTC.gov and IC3.gov (Internet company complaints). I have not filed a complaint in writing yet because the person I spoke to on the phone took the complaint over the phone. My complaint number is 39764404. After I explained in five minutes what Google had done throughout the country to good businesses, she was very receptive and (she) also said this doesn't help the consumer because they are only seeing the bad reviews. ‘They should see both, only then a consumer can make an educated decision.’ She recommended that we should have every business that we know and dealership that we know file a complaint and that will speed up this process because this is unfair to business and to consumers.”

Mohammad also reached out to his attorney general. He was less successful there since Massachusetts only takes complaints from individuals—not businesses. However, they thanked him and gave him a feeling that even though they don’t take complaints from businesses, if they received enough calls they would take their own action. Each state has its own position, so don’t rely solely on Massachusetts’ stance.

If you are a dealer or dealership employee, this is where you come in. Have you checked your Google reviews? If you haven’t, you should. Nearly every client I have has found their positive reviews have disappeared. A prominent dealer and client of mine in central Kansas had hundreds of reviews and ascore of 29 disappear, leaving but four negative reviews that averaged five-and-half-months old. They now have nine reviews (five new) and no score. Any doubt how that impacts a business?

I am not an attorney, but my opinion is what Google has done reeks of a deceptive trade practice (treble damages), and I think it could well cross the line of libel.

If you have the same problem, I urge you to call the FTC using the number Mohammad provided. He said you are welcome to reference his case number. I would also recommend you contact your state attorney general’s office.

Very few dealers, no matter their size, can have an immediate impact with a company the size of Google. The federal and state governments can. Google just paid a $22 million fine recently (I know, a drop in the bucket for them), and they will have to answer to the FTC.

It is their business, and they can cause changes like this at will, unless it materially misrepresents what your customers previously posted. Removing your positive reviews and leaving negative ones does just that. You may never get your positive reviews back, but just as the woman at the FTC said, leaving the old negative reviews just isn’t right. Hopefully, they will relent and repost the positive reviews; but if not, with enough of a voice against them, I would think they will quickly remove the old reviews as well.

Thanks for your ears today. Good selling, and for once, maybe the FTC can be viewed as a friend of the dealership as opposed to the bad guys. Go do your part!

Best regards,

GG

Greg Goebel, CEO

Auto Dealer Monthly, LLC

Source - http://www.autodealerpeople.com/profiles/blogs/man-bites-dog-a-way-to-fight-the-deleted-google-reviews-dilemma

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My previous blog post, Google's New Car Lead Program: The Basics, I discussed Google Cars, which is Google's New Car Lead program that they will be rolling out in the coming months. It's currently in Beta testing. Once again, Google has made a huge splash with the inclusion of LiveChat, powered by ActiveEngage, into Adwords. 

Here's how it works:

As we all know, each time we enter something into Google (Chevrolet, Toyota, VW, etc..), at the top of the search results, there is the adwords sponsored result. With this new addition of LiveChat engagement, you'll see the words LIVE CHAT next to the URL. Once you click on that, a dialog box will pop up (See below)

As you can see above, it's all very neat and clean, easy to navigate. Once you enter your name & Start Chat, you'll be in a chat with a representative from that brand and prompted to enter your Zip Code, so the consumer will be able to find the dealership in their city/town. 

Have you been following Google's steady migration into the automotive world? As I mentioned before, they announced a New Car Lead program last month, and now this inclusion of LiveChat into Adwords. What do you think of Google's dive into the Automotive sales world? What are the benefits that you see? 

*Original Photo from Brian Pasch

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Total Indexed Count

Google says that this count is accurate (unlike the site: search operator) and is post-canonicalization. In other words, if your site includes a lot of duplicate URLs (due to things like tracking parameters) and the pages include the canonical attribute or Google has otherwise identified and clustered those duplicate URLs, this count only includes that canonical version and not the duplicates. You can also get this data by submitting XML Sitemaps but you’ll only see complete indexing numbers if your Sitemaps are comprehensive.

Google also charts this data over time for the past year.

Edited to add: Google has told me that the data may have a lag time of a couple of weeks, which makes it more useful for trends than for real-time action. Also, if you look at domain.com, you’ll see stats for all subdomains, and if you look at www.domain.com, you’ll see stats for only the www subdomain (of course this means that if you don’t use www for your site as with searchengineland.com, there’s no easy way to see this data with subdomain information excluded.)

Advanced Status: How This Data Is Useful and Actionable

The Advanced option provides additional details:

Google Index Status Advanced

Great, right? More data is always good! Well, maybe. The key is what you take away from the data and how you can use it. To make sense of this data, the best approach is to exclude the Ever Crawled number and look at it separately (more on that in a moment). So, you’re left with:

  • total indexed
  • not selected
  • blocked by robots

The sum of these three numbers tells you the number of URLs Google is currently considering. In the example above, Google is looking at 252,252 URLs. 22,482 of those are blocked by robots.txt, which is fairly straightforward. This mostly matches the number of URLs reported as blocked under Blocked URLs (22,346). Unfortunately, it’s become difficult to look at the list of what those URLs are. The blocked URLs report is no longer available in the UI, although it is available through the API. That leaves 229,770 URLs. Which means 74% of the URLs weren’t selected for the index. Why not? Is this bad? The trouble with looking at these numbers without context is that it’s difficult to tell.

Let’s say we’re looking at a site with 50,000 indexable pages. Has Google crawled only 31,480 unique pages and indexed all of them? (In this case, all of the not selected would be non-canonical URL variations with tracking codes and the like.) Or has Google crawled all 50,000 (plus non-canonical variations) but has decided only 31,480 of the 50,000 were valuable enough to index? Or maybe only 10,000 of those URLs indexed are unique, and due to problems with canonicalization, a lot of duplicates are indexed as well.

This problem is difficult to solve without a lot of other data points to provide context. Google told me that:

“A URL can be not selected for indexing for many reasons including:

  • It redirects to another page
  • It has a rel=”canonical” to another page
  • Our algorithms have detected that its contents are substantially similar to another URL and picked the other URL to represent the content.”

If the not selected count is solely showing the number of non-canonical URLs, then we can generally extrapolate that for our example, Google has seen 31,480 unique pages from our 50,000-page site and has crawled a lot of non-canonical versions of those pages as well. If the not selected count also includes pages that Google has decided aren’t valuable enough to index (because they are blank, boilerplate only, or spammy), then things are less clear. (Edited to add: Google has further clarified that “not selected” includes any URLs flagged as non-canonical (and the third bullet above  could include blank, boilerplate, or duplicate pages), with meta robots noindex tags, and that redirect and is not based on page quality.)

If 74% of Google’s crawl is of non-canonical URLs that aren’t indexed and redirects, is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it’s worth taking a look your URL structure. Non-canonical URLs are unavoidable: tracking parameters, sort orders, and the like. But can you make the crawl more efficient so that Google can get to all 50,000 of those unique URLs? Google’s Maile Ohye has some good tips for ecommerce sites on her blog. Make sure you’re making full use of Google’s parameter handling features to indicate which parameters shouldn’t be crawled at all. For very large sites, crawl efficiency can make a substantial difference in long tail traffic. More pages crawled = more pages indexed = more search traffic.

Ever Crawled

What about the ever crawled number? This data points should be looked at separately from the rest as it’s an aggregate number from all time. In our example, 1.5 million URLs have been crawled. But Google is currently considering only 252,252 URLs. What’s up with the other 1.2 million? This number includes things like 404s, but tor this same site, Google is reporting only 5,000 of those, so that doesn’t account for everything. Since this count is “ever” rather than “current”, things like 404s have surely piled up over time. Edited to add: Google has clarified that all numbers are for HTML files only, and not for filetypes like images, CSS files or JavaScript files.

In any case, I think this number is much more difficult to gain actionable insight from. If the ever crawled number is substantially smaller than the size of your site, then this number is very useful indeed as some problem definitely exists that you should dive into. But for the sites I’ve looked at so far, the ever crawled number is substantially higher than the site size.

Site size can be difficult to pin down, but for those of you who have good sense of that, are you finding that most of your pages are indexed?

Source - http://searchengineland.com/google-reveals-index-secrets-charts-indexing-of-your-site-over-time-128559

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http://www.dealersyenrgy.com 

Everyone Knows that Dealer Synergy's Chief Trainer is LA Williams and LA, is blind. S, when I saw this article my first thought was how this could benefit him AND our Dealer Community. You see, what has been amazing is that LA does such a tremendous job that a lot of our dealership network have actually went out and recruited BLIND employees! Yes, thats right we have dealerships that have Blind or Visually Impaired Automotive Internet Sales, BDC, Call Center staff members.  

Here is the article I saw and wanted to share with you all - 

Android App Makes Smartphones Accessible for the Blind 

When someone buys their first smartphone, the first question is usually, what apps should I get? Apps are part of what make our phones so valuable to us, from getting directions to finding a place nearby to eat, to keeping track of various items when we travel.

And now, thanks to a man who is visually-impaired himself, there’s an Android app that will turn a regular smartphone into a powerful tool for the blind.

Roger Wilson-Hinds, director and co-founder of Screenreader, built the app, called Georgie, specifically to help blind users navigate day-to-day obstacles like catching a bus, reading printed text and knowing exactly where they are at all times.

“It’s the first smartphone that’s been designed for blind people by blind people,” he said. And he should know, he just recently sent his very first text message.

Users can buy an Android smartphone pre-loaded with the Georgie software from Sight and Sound Technology, which provides hardware and software solutions for the blind. If they already own an Android phone, they can buy the app from the Google Play store and install it themselves.

SEE ALSO: Blind Man Goes Behind the Wheel of Google’s Driverless Car

Georgie uses fingers and gestures to let users navigate the software, just like you do normally. However, with Georgie, you hold your finger down, wait for a beep and hear the function you’re touching read out loud, whether it’s to make a call, send a text, or determine your location. Georgie makes extensive use of voice control software.

“Georgie is a suite of applications designed to cater for every single part of a visually-impaired person’s life,” says Glenn Tookey, CEO of Sight and Sound Technology, which distributes the software.

Users can purchase and download additional apps that provide more functions. The lifestyle app pack, for instance, offers newspapers that read aloud, and an online blog that lets you post using voice control. The Travel app has a feature that flags nearby points of interest as well as a sort of bus monitor that will verbally let you know when the next bus is due.

Wilson-Hinds, who named the software after his blind wife’s first seeing-eye dog, says Georgie will “totally change the lives of blind and partially-sighted people all over the world.”

The world, soon, as Georgie is branching out beyond the UK. US Android users can find the link in the Google Play store here. Sight and Sound Technology is currently working with distributors to offer Georgie pre-installed on handsets in the US.

Here’s a video so you can see for yourself how Georgie works:

What are other ways technology is allowing people with disabilities to gain more independence? Is Georgie something you would buy for someone you know?

Source - http://mashable.com/2012/07/17/android-app-for-blind-smartphone-users/

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