Along with many sites that were impacted by the latest Google trick, ISEdb page rank has dropped to 4. We held PR 7 for over a year and a half and then it was dropped to 6 in the last Google update many months ago.
Last night, I realized the green bar had shrunk and went down to 4. I must say that I panicked for a while and thought Google was targeting ISEdb. I went out to search other sites and noticed some of the main and most popular sites have dropped as well.
I was actually waiting for this to happen since the news about Google going after web sites that sell text ads. Danny Sullivan wrote few weeks ago about this in his post "Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google"
Now, the question is, do we sell page rank? I don't know, ask Google that question since they own the green bar.
We do sell text link and that is how ISEdb is funded and editors are paid. Our text links are displayed and marked clearly on the site.
We have also hired a third party ad agency to manage some of the ads. Outsourcing is part of the business these days, right?
We don't use "no follow" attributes in any link that is displayed on ISEdb.COM whether it was paid for or not as some have suggested to avoid this. We never bothered to take that extra step to see which link we should add those attributes to.
Our goal has always been to concentrate on our business and the content of the site and the rest will follow.
The main thing is we didn't see any drop in traffic and the number of subscribers continue to increase.
If you bought ads on our site for the sole purpose of page rank then you didn't do your homework. The market rate for a site with PR 6 or 7 is more than $100 per page. Our rates start at $100/month and your ad is displayed on all pages which by the way is a violation to passing PR.
Our goal was to give our advertisers the most exposure and we will continue to do that whether we have a page rank of 1 or 10.
My daughter recently turned 15 and now that school is out it
means it's time for her to get a job. Unfortunately, despite my threats of
cutting off her allowance, she has not taken job hunting seriously. Weeks ago I
started talking with her about getting out there so she can possibly have a job
lined up and start work by the time school gets out. But, unfortunately, she
never made that a priority. Until she realized that she has no money to pay
for text messaging!
I've never seen her so motivated in my life! She's starting
to take the whole getting a job thing seriously. This week she spent some time
calling places to find out who will hire someone under 16. She found three
places, the skating rink, the water park, and the child care at the gym.
My wife picked up the applications and helped her answering
the questions. It's all so new to her. She got them turned in and went for her
first interview at the skating rink, which, I'm told, went fantastically. She's
got another interview scheduled for next week at the gym. Before I know it, my
little girl will be texting her friends once again. Even better she'll be
learning about real-life responsibilities, and what it takes to
"survive" in the real world. All it took was a little motivation.
Put
feeling into your words
Motivation is a funny thing. You can try to encourage people
by telling them the benefits of this, that or the other, but sometimes it's
just not enough. You've got to make them "feel" it. If you craft your
message right, you can do just that using words only. This is true whether
you're dealing with a child, spouse or a customer over the Internet.
Fast food restaurants use words (and pictures) to make you
feel hungry. Non-profits raise money by making you feel sad and/or that you can
make a difference. Employers motivate by making their employees feel valuable.
Is this all just lip service? It shouldn't be. Feelings only last so long as
the actions behind them support it.
In advertising and marketing you can illicit feeling in your
words and pictures. You can stir feelings of pain, anger, relief, desire,
attraction, want, hope, satisfaction, love, etc., etc., etc.. And if you really
want to close the sale, you have to make people feel like what you are selling
is going to meet their wants or needs.
When you're words convey feeling, then you are motivating
them to take the action you desire. Essentially you're helping them make the
decision because they'll know they'll feel good about the result. This helps
them feel confident and comfortable that they are doing the right thing.
You can talk to your customers and try to explain why they
need what you sell. Or you can use words to motivate them by making them feel
the emotion that will make them want to buy. The difference is, by merely
talking to them you are leaving the decision up to them. When you motivate your
visitors by using feelings, you've actually done them a favor. You've helped
them solve a need. Now they are just not your customer, they are your friend.
As for my daughter, I obviously didn't motivate her enough
with my words. But cause and effect is a wonderful motivator as well!
According to a fascinating release
from search marketer Dan Thies, Google has been aware over a year now
(that he knows of) of a method to destroy a website's ranking. The
method is called proxy hacking.
What is a Web Proxy?
First,
it is important to understand that in their simplest form proxies are
servers that act as a relay for Internet requests. Web proxies are
often used to allow people to surf the net anonymously by forwarding
their requests for content and then delivering the content to the
users. This is similar to sending mail to a person through the post
office except that in this case there is no return address or any
identifying information. For a more detailed explanation here is Wikipedia's definition.
Here is essentially how this Google hack works:
- All is well; your website is www.xyzname.com and it is currently listed in the top 10 in Google for 'xyz'.
- A
hacker comes along and decides that your listing for 'xyz' needs to be
removed (perhaps for competitive reasons or out of spite). So the
hacker gets Google to spider your website through a proxy. The address
that Google would be given to index might look like this:
www.proxysrus.au/proxy/www.xyzname.com/
- When
Google indexes this new URL it looks legitimate and Google's filters
will soon recognize that the content being indexed is exactly the same
as www.xyzname.com. As a result, in the cases that have arisen so far
www.xyzname.com loses its ranking and the freshly indexed proxy URL has
effectively eradicated the competition.
So how is this hack technically accomplished?
Well
I am with Dan Thies on this one, I have no interest at all in sharing
the specifics because the last thing I want to do is enable more evil
in the world. In addition, since I have never seen such a thing done I
can only postulate how it would be accomplished. That said, I think it
is reasonable to share the problems that would need to be surmounted to
make such a thing work:
- When the proxy URL is requested the
server would have to provide the search engines with zero suspicion
that a proxy was delivering the information. This includes URL syntax,
URL length, server header information and latency.
- The proxy URL would have to appear authoritative.
- The proxy would need to be able to thwart the proxy hacking prevention measures that Dan has laid out within his informative article.
At this time it appears the only proxies that are having some success
are the ones that strip all browsing information so that the 'hack
proof' sites cannot tell whether the traffic is legitimate or not. If
they can't tell then they will not know to block Google from spidering
their site through the wrong URL. Again even that attack has been
rebuffed by Dan and his team by enabling noindex and nofollow tags on
his client's sites UNLESS a verified search engine is visiting.
The above info is really only a snippet of the whole story that Dan told. I highly recommend reading his article and considering some of the preventative measures he outlines if you think you are a victim of this technique.
"Wouldn't that just be a Time Warner-AOL redux?" Said breakingviews.com.
"NBC and Yahoo are both focused on building audiences and selling ads to them. AOL was a telecom service masquerading as a dot-com. Moreover, the arrival of Internet video heralds a sea change for the media landscape that Yahoo and NBC would be better off confronting as a team."
"It would also make industrial sense. The winners of Web-television convergence will be those firms that carry the best content and attract the most traffic. NBC, which today kicks off its upfront presentations to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, certainly has the former. But its Web sites don't command giant audiences.
Yahoo, on the other hand, is the traffic king. Its sites received 1.3 trillion page views in the past year, according to Web information firm Alexa. But its attempts to create proprietary content, following the recruitment of some Hollywood players a few years ago, have flopped. The two firms' respective strengths and weaknesses are complementary. Imagine, for example, how CNBC content could be used by Yahoo Finance, the leading financial portal."
The article also suggests that Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Liberty Media could be possible suitors.
Steve Ballmer Microsoft CEO said the company will try to fill holes in its business or enter new markets mostly via small deals, but he also said larger deals are "conceivable,".
"We have not, by default, opted for acquisitions as part of our strategy ... but we don't count them out either," he said. "In general, though (we focus on) smaller deals, we are open to large acquisitions.
News reports last Friday that Microsoft has once again approached Yahoo for a potential merger. Ballmer declined to comment whether he was interested in acquisitions in the $40 billion to $50 billion.
"I don't think you should expect that most of our growth should come from buying large companies and taking costs out," Ballmer said, adding that such cost-reduction strategies are useful in slow-growing, more mature industries, but not software.
Google has launched "Lat Long Blog", a blog focusing on Google Earth, Maps, Local and APIs.
"Things are changing so fast we thought a blog focused on this topic would be the best way to communicate with you, both about our products and about the overall development of geo on the web." John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps said.
Yahoo! have decided to close down its Auction sites in Yahoo! US and Canada.
Auction sites in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan will not be impacted.
The US and Canada Auctions sites will close June 16, 2007 but the account management area will remain open until October 29, 2007.
Local.com today has launched Local Verified, a new advertising program that offers businesses preferred placement in Local.com search results, Search Engine Journal reported.
"Using Local Verified, businesses can secure top placement in Local.com’s local business search results in specific categories and regions. Unlike pay-per-click advertising, Local Verfied is launching with an annual subscription flat rate which is initially being offered at $249 per year."
Google added more integration with Google Calendar. You can download all events in your portfolio such as earnings calls, analyst meetings, and any other material event on your company and portfolio pages to your Google Calendar.
Here is a list of all other features they've added:
- Historical prices: View and download historical end-of-day prices for any U.S. or Canadian company
- Portfolios: You can now download the latest portfolio performance and transaction details from your portfolio
- News feeds: Stay on top of the news using your feed client such as
Google Reader, Bloglines, or as part of your iGoogle
You can read more about it at the Official Google Blog.
NBC Universal is taking sides with Viacom Inc. over a piracy lawsuit filed against Google Inc.'s YouTube site.
The case involves a separate party, Los Angeles News Service operator Robert Tur, who sued YouTube in July for allowing its users to appropriate his famous footage of trucker Reginald Denny being beaten during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
In a filing submitted late on Friday to the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California, NBC Universal and Viacom submitted a friend of the court brief opposing YouTube's bid to dismiss the copyright infringement suit brought by Tur.
"Many of NBCU's most valuable copyrighted works have been copied, performed, and disseminated without authorization by YouTube and other similarly operated Websites. NBCU has a strong interest in preserving the strength and viability of all of its legal rights and remedies in response to such conduct." Reuters
by Jennifer Cario
(If you are new to Pinterest and don't already have an account, make sure to read part one in this series.)
Now that you've gotten youself up and running with a Pinterest account, it's time to put it to use to start collecting ideas, links and pictures. Remember, Pinterest is a powerful online filing system that gives you visual access to the things you might wish to use down the road. Back in part one we talked about setting up some topical boards to sort the "pins" you find. Today we're going to talk about how to find those pins.
Browsing Your Friends' Pins and Repinning
The absolute easiest way to find pins (and the way most people get started) is by looking though the feed produced for you by your friends' activity and "repinning" their pins. A repin is the Pinterest equivalent of a Twitter retweet or a Facebook share. When you log in to Pinterest, your friends' activity feed is the first thing that pops up.
You can scroll through these listings to see if anything strikes your fancy. If it does, you have one of two options.
The first is to hover your mouse over it and wait for the Repin, Like and Comment options to pop up. Clicking the like button will add your vote to the mix right there on the page. Clicking the comment button will add a comment window to the bottom of the listing and clicking the Repin button will pop up a screen designed to let you pin the item to your own boards. It's important to note you can also check the Facebook and Twitter boxes in this window to automatically share your pin there as well.
 You can select the category you wish to pin it to from the drop down menu or create a new one right there in the menu. You can also choose to pin it with the existing description, or write your own. Once you've hit submit, the pin will be added to your category and will show up in the streams of users who follow you.
Your other option when you see a pin you are interested in is to click on the image itself. This will take you to the actual pin listing page, which looks like this:
 Apart from getting a larger picture and a full description plus comments on this page, you also get some interesting information to help you dig deeper with your Pinning habits. At the bottom of the listing, you'll notice three key areas. "Pinned onto the board," "Originally Pinned by," and "Pinned from."
 The first one tells you what board the person who pinned it placed it in. The thinking here is that if you like this pin, you may like the other pins they've collected on that topic. It will also give you some thumbnail snapshots of other pins from that board to check out. Below that, you'll find a link to the person who originally found the post and added it to Pinterest. Again, chances are high you may want to consider following this person as well, since you like the content they added. Finally, the "pinned from" section will give you a full page showing the other pins that have been added from that site.
 This can be an excellent way to find a new site to visit and even more ideas to pin.
Finding Pins by Topic
One of my favorite ways to use Pinterest is to browse the pins being added by all members to specific categories. If you look at the top of the page when you are logged in to Pinterest, you'll notice a link that reads "Everything."
Click on this link and you'll get a drop down menu that allows you to select a category. Select your category and you'll be taken to a real time feed of the most recent pins added to that category. (There are also links to view the latest video pins, the most popular pins and a breakdown of product pins by price.)
 This is one of the things that makes Pinterest such an addictive time killer and that keeps people on the site for so long. In fact, the average time on site for a Pinterest user in the month of November last year was 88 minutes. Making it the third most "sticky" social media site behind Facebook (394 minutes) and Tumblr (141.7 minutes), according to Billboard.
Finding Pins by SearchingThe absolute most useful thing about Pinterest, in my opinion, is the search feature. Take a gander at the top left side of the Pinterest home page and you'll spot the search box.  Type in almost anything you can think of and you'll be treated a vast array of ideas gathered and archived by millions of Pinterest users. It's one of they key features I use when I need a specific answer or idea. Trying to figure out how to create an indoor herb garden for my kitchen? I ask Pinterest:  Looking for some color palette ideas for a new web site design or for a home decorating project? Yep, you can ask Pinterest.  But it's not just about using the content that is already on the site. Pinning Content Using the "Pin It" ButtonAnother common way to pin items to your board is to make use of the "Pin it" social sharing buttons that have started to pop up on web sites across the web. For the most part, this button is still rare, showing up mostly on wedding, recipe and craft related sites, but as more and more Internet users discover the benefits of visual bookmarking, it's beginning to spread. When you visit a blog post or product page, just look for the red "Pin it" icon that often shows up along side the +1, Like and Tweet buttons at the top or bottom of a post.  Clicking the button will launch a pop up window much like the Pin it option within the Pinterest site. Use the drop down menu to select your category, edit the description to something of your choosing and decide whether or not to share to Facebook and Twitter before hitting "Pin it" and sending the image to your board. Pinterest will take care of linking the image to the proper page.  Pinning Content Using the "Pin It" BookmarkletSince so few sites have added Pin it buttons to the mix, most Pinterest users rely on the Pinterest Bookmarklet. To install it, go to the Pinterest Goodies page click on the Pin it button and drag it to your tool bar. This will create a handy little bookmark on your tool bar that you can simply click on any time you are on a page you'd like to pin.  The nice thing about using the bookmarklet is that it gives you a choice of what image to use for your pin. (The other options select the picture automatically.) Clicking the bookmarklet while on the blog post shown above will take you to a page like this:  Simply browse through the images from the page and click the one you'd like to feature. This will launch a pop-up window like the one seen before, allowing you to select a category, add a description and publish it to other social networks.  Coming up in Part ThreeOk, so maybe you are sold on the idea of using Pinterest as an image based bookmark solution, but you're asking what it does in terms of marketing. In other words, can you use it to drive traffic to your site? The answer is a definite yes, but hinges on the concept that most traffic campaigns do...high quality original content. We'll talk more about this coming up in part three.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
by Jennifer Cario
Pinterest is a virtual pin board that allows you to collect images and links to things you like on the web. If you've ever seen someone pull out a scrapbook filled with recipe clippings or a binder full of wedding or home remodel ideas, you've got the general idea. The difference with Pinterest is the fact that it all takes place online in an environment where you can share your collection with your friends and vice versa. To put it in the simplest of terms, Pinterest is an image based version of bookmarks.
Pinterest is Growing Rapidly
A few months ago, I would have forgiven you if you hadn't heard of Pinterest. It was like a sneaky, lovable cat. The kind that curls up in your lap and gives you the warm fuzzies while you pet it, but that remains quietly invisible to anyone not already in the know. The past month or so though, it's all begun to change. Pinterest has finally reached it's tipping point and the masses are starting to pour into the site to explore what it has to offer. If you are a marketer, a blogger, or a business owner, it's time to invest some effort into learning whether or not Pinterest needs to be part of your marketing strategy.
I first heard Pinterest mentioned last summer by a friend who is a professional photographer. She mentioned it as a great place to stash your collection of ideas and inspiration. It sounded intriguing, but not enough so to actually visit the site. (Since I was sort of busy with an out of state move and planning a wedding of my own.) I found my way back to the site last fall while hunting for some Christmas ideas online. Every other crafting site I ran across had a "Pin it" button showing up s part of the blog post. Within ten minutes of finally visiting the site, I was hooked.
Since then, I've been a daily Pinterest addict. It's my new time killer when I'm waiting in line or killing a few minutes of boredom. It's my source (and storage) for inspiration on food, my home, and a huge portion of the things I do in my every day life.
Intrigued yet? You should be.
Let me give you a tour.
When you head over to Pinterest, you're going to see a bunch of random picture with commentary and some numbered tallies underneath them.
 There's no rhyme or reason to it because when you first log in, you're just going to see the current most popular posts. At this point, if you click on an image, you're going to get a notice to sign up for an account.
When you fill out the request for an invite, don't fret. Most folks seem to get their invite within 12-48 hours these days. You'll be up and running in no time. Of course if you have a friend using the service already, they can send you an invite which you'll receive almost immediately.
Once you get your invite, click the link in the email to get started. It will take you to this page.
 You'll have the choice to link your account to either Twitter or Facebook. It's a personal preference that doesn't hold a LOT of weight because Pinterest will only share your pins via those networks if you ask it to. For the purpose of this article, we'll go with Facebook. Clicking on it will take you to your Facebook sign-in page.
Once you're signed in, you'll need to approve the app to work in Facebook.
To note, if you haven't already upgraded to Facebook Timeline, you'll need to do it to get Pinterest synched up. Consider whether you want to leave things set to display to all your friends or if you want narrow the friend group, then click through to move along. From there, it's onto finally setting up your Pinterest account.
Once you've finished this step, Pinterest will try to get you started with some people to follow.
My suggestion? Refrain from picking categories you like unless you want Pinterest to fill up your boards with people you don't know. For the sake of this article, I set up an account for my husband and it set him up with a dozen people to follow. I had to then go unfollow them all. It will also look to see which of your Facebook friends are on Pinterest and will follow them as well, so plan to edit people out accordingly.
Your next step in the process is to create some boards. Boards are Pinterest's version of visual filing cabinets. They are usually topical and give you a chance to categorize your pins for easy access. Take a minute to set one or two up, but realize you can add more at any time.
Once you've set up your starter categories, you're ready to get going. At this point, you'll be able to view your Pinterest stream. In this case, that stream looks like this:
Of course chances are high you'll see a lot of things you aren't interested in. Just because you're friends with someone on Facebook doesn't mean you're interested in every little thing they want to save in their scrapbooks. There are two different ways to work around this. The first is to delete people totally. To do this, click on the username that shows up under the photo. This will take you to their Pinterest page where you can find the greyed out "unfollow" button under their avatar. Click this button and you'll remove them from your stream.
Now, let's say you've got someone in your stream that you want to follow, but who posts WAY more content than you are interested in, or things you simply don't care about. Say, for instance you have a friend who has great taste in food, but also has a love for polymer clay and crafting that is flooding your stream. Find one of their posts, click the username and go to their page the same way you did when you planned to unfollow someone. Click the unfollow button again. At this point, each of the "boards" (categories) the Pinterest user has created will have a follow button associated with them. Scan through their list and follow any of the boards you think you might be interested in. This will segment their feed and serve up only a portion for you. (One of Pinterest's strongest features, in my opinion.)
Once you've done this, you'll find your feed has cleared out a bit and feature more post you are interested in.
Now that you've gotten everything set up, you can begin using Pinterest. There are three primary ways to do this. You can browse the overall database of pins you can browse your individual feed or you can go looking for new things to add to Pinterest.
We'll explore those options coming up in part two of this series on Pinterest.
Want to learn even more about Pinterest and how to use it to market your business or drive traffic to your web site? Join Jennifer Cario for a FREE Market Motive workshop on Pinterest next Thursday, February 9th at 12:30pm EST. Registration is required.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
by Mike Fleming
Cutting through all the clutter of data, which metrics are your critical few? You probably have at most three critical few metrics that define your existence...If
you can't take action with anything, then perhaps you are using the
wrong metric for your business...the simple process of identifying a
metric as your key performance indicator
and creating a graph of it rarely helps you find insights...before you
diagnose how to improve a metric, you have to identify all the
influencing variables...analyzing the variables will help you identify where the true opportunities for improvement are...it forces you to dig in a methodical manner and let the data, not opinions, drive action...
-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0
We've talked about what makes a good metric
to look at for your business. But, you have to be careful here. There
is soooo much data wrapped up in what seems at times like an endless
amount of possible metrics. If you are not careful, you will catch
yourself wasting your time lost at sea with no idea how to get back home
where you belong. By "home" I mean those critical metrics that will measure what needs to change at this specific point in time for your online efforts to improve.
So, before you dive in and drown in data, the first and maybe most
important thing you can do is determine where to focus your attention.
By doing this first, you create a map that will guide you to the right
places to dive for those golden insights you so desperately need to make your next decisions for action.
This
is what you want, right? Don't get me wrong, it's great to take a few
moments and bask in the glory of your achievements or sulk in the pain
of your failures. Both can be tremendous motivators. But the bulk of
your time looking at all the pretty charts, graphs, numbers and arrows
should be to find out what to do next. What should you do more of?
Less of? Who should get a raise and who should get fired? Remember,
these decisions shouldn't be faith-based initiatives.
Don't let your opinion get in the way. They should be backed by solid
data that tells a story that leads you to conclusions that show you
actions that give you results.
But, remember the data you're looking at should be that which will tell you if what you were shooting for with your previous actions was accomplished or not.
This is how you and everyone else working with your site should be
judged. If what you were shooting for was to sell 20% more stuff than
last year, who cares if visitors went up by 40% if it didn't result in
20% more sales! There's a problem. And who cares if visitors didn't go
up at all if sales went up by 20%! Someone deserves some love. Sure,
the two will most likely be intimately tied together, but why worry
about what doesn't directly matter. Focus on what matters and figure out what you can do to make it better.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
by Stoney deGeyter
In the world of business, marketing and advertising is everything. Marketing is at least as important as the products or services you sell. Without marketing, you have no one to demonstrate the superiority of what you offer!
There is a reason people build businesses in cities surrounded by people, rather than in a desert surrounded by cactus! You need people to market to, and you need customers coming in your door. The success of your business relies on how well you market your product or service first, and second by how well you deliver it. Very few businesses survive on word of mouth alone. But what many small business owners fail to realize is that while marketing is everything, everything you do is marketing!
Everything you do, as a small business, has an impact on your marketing message and ability to get that message out to your customer base. How/whether you answer your phones, how you reply to email messages, what you say on Twitter/Facebook, the presentation of your website, and your ability to produce satisfied customers all play a role in your ongoing marketing efforts.
How are you perceived?My company helps business owners build and execute their web marketing strategies. But all too often, many are missing even the most fundamental marketing and common-sense business development components. We can help them online, but lacking the offline aspects, we are simply attempting to fill a bucket that has holes in it.
Perception matters. If your potential customer's perception of you, true or not, is less than they expect, you're going to have trouble selling them. Would you trust a mechanic with a poorly tuned vehicle? A lawyer who drives a Yaris? A contractor with a run-down office? A landscaper with an overgrown lawn?
You might, but I guarantee you'd think twice before you do. None of these things demonstrate how well any of these business owners do their job, but the perception is, if they can't take care of themselves, how can you trust them to take care of you?
When performing link building for our clients, they are often picky about where we get links from. So are we, but they often want to get links only from high-caliber sites, when their site is somewhere below that. In link building, people will generally only link to site's of equal or higher caliber than themselves. If you want a link from a high-caliber site, you have to be one. Otherwise, take what you can get from those below you!
The little things matter the mostBusinesses purchase online marketing because they want to increase sales. But if the SEO is doing its job but sales don't follow, there may be something else at play. Lack of business success doesn't always fall on the marketer's shoulders. In fact, such woes may directly be caused by how the business is being run.
The SEO's job doesn't include running your business. There are a lot of things that fall outside the SEO's area that can make or break your business success, and even your search engine rankings!
As an SEO, we routinely try to help our clients in areas that fall far outside the SEO box. We'll provide feedback on design, programming and presentation, just to name a few. We want our customers to succeed, and sometimes that means we have to help in areas that we were not necessarily hired for.
Everything matters, and when it comes to business success, everything should be on the table for a discussion on how to improve your ROI. If your SEO thinks your design isn't great, it may be worth discussing in greater detail, even if you love it. There might be a reason they hate it that goes beyond personal preference. If your SEO provides a recommendation on how something looks or appears on the website, it many worth noting, even if you can't change it right away.
Little things can create big perceptions. Especially when it comes to usability issues. It's not just website design, it's also communication, problem resolution, response times and a whole lot more.
A picture on your website may be worth a thousand words, but perception is worth 1001. You are what you're perceived to be. That's true whether you believe it or not.
Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
by Dave Cosper
 A business owner recently asked me how to go about building positive reviews in a way that would "optimize" their Google Maps listing. This is about as provocative a topic as it gets in the Local Search community, I know, but it's also an unavoidable subject worth addressing. Search marketers ponder the same "How To" question, if for nothing else to try and understand every aspect of local search ranking factors and translate this to practical advice for SMB's.
Google Places has become an essential tool in increasing popularity of a business on the Web to attract local consumers. It is a huge opportunity for local businesses to get exposure, but ranking in Google Places does not happen automatically - and building reviews takes time (any effort to improve ranking should be measured in months not weeks).
For every local search, Google does its best to display relevant businesses, favoring those its algorithm determines to be prominent (well-established) and well-liked in the area.
If Google made a habit of recommending local businesses that offered poor products and service, how long do you think people would continue using Google Maps? So Google has more confidence in "recommending" a local business if it has mostly positive reviews and ratings.
Google Places reviews have four primary signals that affect local search ranking:
- Volume of reviews/ratings
- Velocity of reviews/ratings
- Sentiment of reviews/ratings
- Keywords in reviews
Volume The quantity of reviews needed to improve rankings depends on the business type and the number of reviews relative to local competitors. It's important to identify how many reviews competing listings have acquired and use this as the relative benchmark.
Velocity Amassing lots of reviews is great, but acquiring them all in bulk or too quickly is not - this will set off red flags. Steadily building quality reviews is ideal.
Sentiment While most review building strategies focus on soliciting reviews from happy customers, a natural distribution of mostly positive and even some negative reviews is best. There are a number of signals Google relies on, and crawling review content and extracting sentiment analysis is one of them.
Keywords The quality of the written review is also important. While keywords in the review have been shown to help a listing rank, it's important that the description not appear spammy. Keyword stuffing in reviews is NOT good. But, the appearance of multiple reviews with consistent use of the right keywords, used sparingly, typically has a very positive impact on rankings for those particular keywords - especially long-tail keyword phrases.
Some examples:
Not good: General dentist Dr. Williams in Chicago, IL provides general dentistry and general dental care procedures, such as: Chicago general dentistry for children, general dentistry in Chicago for adults, and Chicago general dentist for seniors.
Good: Chalk up another great appointment with Dr. Williams in Chicago. He really cares about your teeth and takes the time to explain all procedures to make you feel comfortable. The entire staff is very friendly and prices are reasonable. Beyond general dentistry he also offers cosmetic dentistry like dental implants and natural looking filings. I highly recommend Dr. Williams!
To sum up Google's review policy: No fake reviews, no keyword-stuffed reviews, and no direct incentives for reviews. And apparently, according to Mike Blumenthal's blog, representatives of Google claim on-site review stations are permissible and even encouraged.
Additionally, other factors of influence include quantity, velocity and sentiment of reviews stemming from relevant third-party sites: IYPs, vertical/niche directories, and data aggregators, Facebook page likes, social media mentions on sites like Twitter, Foursquare check-ins, and Google+ shares. The entire local-social-mobile ecosystem is becoming increasingly more connected and continuing to play a bigger role in ranking.
Google's assessment of reviews also relies on the relative prominence of the person (account) posting the mention. A person with a history of quality reviews, on Hotpot for example, carries more weight.
The Anatomy of Stellar "Optimized" Reviews:
After five or more reviews, an average star rating with the total number of reviews appears on the search results page along with the listing:
It's common to see a boost in both ranking and conversion once five reviews are achieved and the average star rating has been activated - as long as the reviews are good!
Optimally, the person writing the review places the best descriptive text at the very beginning of the review as a concise summary statement. The summary can then be expanded upon in the rest of the review. Google routinely places select keywords from the review in bold.
Below is an example of how bold keyword phrases appear in the published review:
Google also offers review guidelines to share tips on how to write constructive reviews. Some of these tips include how to make the reviews informative and insightful, using real stories and not stuff that didn't actually happen, being nice even with negative reviews by making them constructive and not disrespectful, and finally writing them using proper grammar - avoiding excessive capitalization or punctuation.
Spammy Reviews Can do More Damage than Good:
What happens if business owners write their own (fake) reviews? The business can end up in Google purgatory!
Google employs a number of measures to prevent fake reviews including checking to see if reviews are being left by an email address tied to the business's domain or stemming from the same or similar IP address. If Google is suspicious of fake reviews or sees too many reviews all happening over a very short period of time, the listing could wind up suspended and perhaps even permanently blacklisted if the tactics are blatant enough.
Bottom line is, if you own a business you need to commit to an effective and long-term strategy in building online reviews. Instead of direct incentives, focus on encouraging happy customers at, or shortly after, the point of sale. From a local search marketing standpoint, this topic cannot be ignored. After all, Google Maps is, at its core, a recommendation engine.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
What do you do if your pet enterprise fails? If you're a brave (or perhaps foolhardy) entrepreneur, you build something even more ambitious. Such is the case with Nick Oba. When his contributor-driven online magazine failed back in 2010, he came up with a bigger idea: take on Facebook, but make the members into shareholders. And thus Zurker was born.As far as I know, no one has ever set up an online social network as effectively a co-op before, and as you'd expect, Zurker's set-up isn't quite that simple. As Zurker's About page explains, Every Zurker user becomes a co-owner (future shareholder) of Zurker. As Zurker hasn't had an IPO or anything of that nature yet, users earn vShares. A vShare is a stake in Zurker; it's the unit of equity the company is allotting to members during the alpha and beta testing phases. They aren't actually stock. vShares can be thought of as agreements between the owners of a startup about the size of thei...
When trying to rank well on Google, you want to get as many factors working for you as possible. If you can use a few effective techniques your competitors overlook, so much the better. Keep reading for some ideas.I saw these ideas in an article by Neil Patel that appeared on Search Engine Journal. He goes into great detail explaining why you should use these techniques and what you can gain from them. If anything I tell you here piques your curiosity, I suggest you check out that piece. We'll start with a ranking factor that's near and dear to every writer's heart: authorship markup. Google has been supporting authorship markup since the middle of last year. Even today, not everyone uses it, though you'll find it on most of the major publishing websites. If you run a site with authored content, you'll...
You run a local business, and you claimed your Google Local listing so searchers would see your website. That's a start, but with Bing and Yahoo together holding more than a quarter of the search market in the US, you're still leaving money on the table. Fortunately, you can easily get onto Bing Local by following a few simple steps.As Chris Silver Smith explains at Search Engine Land, Microsoft's Bing Business Portal features a beta interface through which you handle your business details. It replaces the Bing Local Listing Center. If you want some information about the service before adding your business, you can read the FAQ. To star using the interface, you'll need to find your listing. Bing Business Portal will ask you to enter your business name (required), address, city, state, and zip code, and then press the search button to see if Bing already has information about your business. If you enter only your busine...
In this article Im going to lay out a method so devastatingly effective for getting top search rankings really fast that its simplicity might surprise you.Now, to be fair, I have talked about pieces of this in my last article. In fact, I've been harping on two aspects of this: the use of Google+ (which I'm going to shorten to just G+ from here on out) and becoming an authority in your market. The problem with the whole authority thing is that it can take time. What I want to do with this article is help you get some good rankings quickly. Actually, what I want to do with this article is help you to absolutely crush it on Google. The thing is, the new Panda update, followed by the Search+ changes, have made it so that anyone doing any kind of ...
What do a great cook and a great blogger have in common? A lot more than you might think. So grab a quick snack and keep reading for an explanation you can really sink your teeth into.Inspiration strikes in strange ways; in this case, I reached the end of Neil Patel's excellent article covering 13 questions you should ask yourself while writing a blog post. In his discussion of the last question, he compared a blog post to a restaurant meal. Will your reader complain about your blog post because you've served them skimpy fare? Are you feeding people content so they are full when they leave your site...or are they hungry, looking for more? Patel asked. If they are still hungry, your readers probably won't come back. So if your readers are devouring your blog content, th...
The architects of the most powerful search engine in the world have included some really handy algorithms in their service, which allow searchers to quickly locate particular and specific types of information...
While a lot of folks are talking about which SEO trends to look for in 2011, I thought it would be helpful to share my top SEO goals for 2011 instead. I think most of us already know we should continue to focus on mobile, social media marketing and local search engine optimization in 2011.
Today, we discuss how to create stronger websites and rank higher with fewer links using your own website as a pivotal dynamo for on page SEO. There is a distinct correlation between seed keywords, site structure and rankings. For those who omit these critical connections are inadvertently creating more work than reward for their long-term SEO efforts.
A "myth" is a traditional story, idea, or explanation which is widely accepted, but actually untrue or unproven. Misconceptions can also be described as modern-day myths. When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the myths and misconceptions are abundant. We will try to dispel some of the more common Search Engine Optimization myths here...
Making sure visitors can reach your pages, hear your message and see the connected visual cues to take action means integrating SEO, design and conversion cues simultaneously. Creating visually appealing website that ranks as good as it looks is vital for your websites' success.
|
|
