@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Search Engines

Why use Google AdWords? – Part 1- [Internship]

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Google logo
Ever search something on Google and wonder what makes the first search result better than the next? With a little help from AdWords it can help you achieve a higher rank in the search results. AdWords bid on keywords that will help trigger their sponsored ads. How much they bid is one of the things that determines their position on the page of search results. The more their ads are clicked, the less they have to pay for each click.
Google AdWords is Google’s pay per click (PPC) advertising platform. This tool is used to direct traffic to your website. Every time your ad is clicked in the PPC option, the advertiser pays the website owner on the terms that the agreed on. The budget can determine how often ads can appear on Google. PPC’s content usually takes form in advertisements such as sponsored links or ads. They appear either above your search results or along the side.
There are many beneficial factors when taking using the AdWords tool. When someone clicks on your ad, this will take them to your website where they can learn more about your business and make a purchase.  Advertising on Google can direct more traffic to your website as you are using the most widely used search engine in the world.
When you first come across Google AdWords, you’ll want to narrow down your audience and attempt to target just your customers. Google AdWords allows you to narrow down your audience by choosing from hundreds of languages, and specific cities and regions. For example, if you own a furniture store in New York City, you don’t want your ads to be seen in Colorado. Set your campaign ads to be read in English throughout the New York City area. Making your ads visible within a ten miles radius of the city or using the zip code targeting can’t hurt either.
After you targeted your audience, you then want to create your ad that will appeal to them. You want your ad to stick out like a sore thumb. In a world full of furniture stores, you want someone to click on your website instead of your competitors. In order for the searcher to click your ad, you want to be able to provide them with the one they think provides the most beneficial information or drives the highest value. In order to make an ad the most effective for your website, you want to choose keywords that are relevant. Choose keywords that relate the most to your site, service or offer. For example, if you are a business that sells furniture, your keywords might include couch, futon, or recliner. You’ll also find it useful to create long tail keywords, like NYC furniture store, or park slope furniture store. The long tail keywords use more terms to narrow your target and often have less competition.
There are a couple of types of keywords, one being negative keywords. A negative keyword is a phrase or word that prevents ads from appearing when a searcher types it in. For example, if your business sells furniture, but doesn’t sell bed frames, you would add the negative keyword but put a hyphen before it like so –bed frames. This eliminates your ads from appearing on irrelevant searches. Another type of keywords include exact match. You want to use exact match when you are using keywords that are exactly what a customer would be looking for when searching on Google. Exact match means that the ad shows for searches only when the search query is exactly the same as your keyword. When using exact match, chose your keyword and put it in square brackets. When someone is looking to buy a love seat, and you own a furniture company, you may want to use [love seat] as an exact match.
After you created your ad, you want to set a pricing. Set your daily budget and cost per click up. You can spend to as much or as little as you want. The average cost per click with Google AdWords is around $3.50 per click but in some cases skyrockets to $20. A useful feature on AdWords lets you change your budget at any time. When you are finally all done with setting up your ad, you want to launch the campaign.
Signing up for Google AdWords can be a good move for your business. It can direct traffic straight to your website which can mean more purchases. Google AdWords generates more visitors, followers, and customers. When you have an effective ad on Google’s search results page, your website will see a whole new world. The tool is one of the best advertising options when you want to track ROI and be able to reduce or grow on the fly. While there is still a lot of other options, using the PPC campaigns in Google AdWords can be a great source for new business.
Coming In Part 2 – Google AdWords, Advanced Options, CPM, Newsletter, Calls, DisplayNetwork
Sources:

The content in this article is part of Digital Ethos’s Digital Media Education in the Higher Education Internship Program, the content was created by @KaylaMarzo, a Student at Suffolk County Community college, intern at Digital Ethos.

How Exact Match Domains Have Weathered the Penguin Storm

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Exact match domains have always had the added advantage of direct-type in traffic, giving them certain immunity to algorithm updates. Once an EMD is linked to a website, the webmaster’s behavior has more to do with rankings. Penguin sought out sites with too many exact match anchor text links, but the outcome had more to do with who can get away with it and to what extent. For EMDs, exact anchor text makes up part of the natural link profile.
Brand based anchor text is natural, i.e. www.brandname.com, brandname.com and brand name. When your brand is your exact match domain name, your website is not going to set off those same red flags for your exact match keywords. But, what you’ve done with your link profile beyond that is what does come in to play with Penguin. Is the rest of your link profile diversified with partial anchor text, long tail, and a nice mix of click here, visit this site and straight http: links? That’s most likely what sets apart the ones who were impacted by Penguin and those that were not.

Tier 2 pages

What have the exact match sites done with their tier 2 pages? Chances are, most have targeted different keywords for those pages and not focused on as many brand anchor text links. Natural links to tier 2 pages often contain the title tag. Take a look at your back link profile and look how others linked to those pages. That’s a good indicator of what natural linking to those pages looks like.

Meta Data

Another issue any site could run in to is over-optimized title tags. So, if you repeated your keywords in your title tag in a spammy way, i.e. red shoes, cheap red shoes, not only does that page come across as spammy because of the title tag existing on it, but if a user linked to your site with the title tag, that appears spammy, too.
Keep in mind, if you keep on playing with your title tags, you set off a spam alert. If your title tag is webmaster tools compliant, don’t tweak it. Spammers will often watch if their title tag adjustments results in higher or lower rankings and if they drop, they will go back and revert the changes. This is when you get in to trouble. Your server records the file date every time you make a change and Google uses that data to make an evaluation.
Many exact match domains do continue to rank well in Google post Penguin, but no site is immune to future updates. Moving forward, don’t assume that because your website was not affected that it won’t be. We’ll always be left guessing what the next problematic issue will be.
 
Source:

Theresa Happe works with Buy Domains, a leading source of domains for sale, including available and exact match domains.

How to Avoid the Google Sandbox in a New Blog

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If you run a web site, which you want to be visible on the search engines, you should know about the Google sandbox and how to avoid it. The search engine giant, Google, implements measures to keep violators at bay.
What happens if you committed errors using Google’s applications and services? Well, if you incurred violations, Google may remove your web site from its search engine result pages. This is called deindexing. To find out if your web site is not indexed, visit Google and key in your web site domain in this pattern:site:yoururl.com
What Is Google Sandbox?

If you can see your web site moving from the first pages to the 10thpage or more of the SERPs, then, you are not yet deindexed. But

c/o seo-jerusalem.com

this is a possible sandbox effect. The sandbox is a place where web sites, especially the new ones, are placed until they have proven their worth in ranking. Sometimes, your web site is thrown into a sandbox if for an instance, your web site ranks for a certain keyword today, and gone from the ranking tomorrow.
What Causes Google Sandbox?

The sandbox happens if you have done something that agitates Google in matters such as SEO and backlinking. Common instances where inviting a sandbox is imminent are when you create myriads of backlinks to your web site in a very short time or create backlinks within poor quality content.
In a way, sandboxing a web site is a punishment done by Google by putting your web site down below the ranking where there is no traffic. But being in a sandbox is not permanent. It can last from a few days to a few months.
How to Avoid Google Sandbox?

Having diverse backlinks is important. If you use hundreds of backlinks by employing ScrapeBox or XRunner, then being sandboxed is very likely. New web sites are more vulnerable to being thrown in a sandbox than older web sites especially iftheir SEOis not well diversified.
For example, if you are running a new web site on diet, and have created two thousand backlinks in its first week of launching into the media buzz, you must ensure that those backlinks are from various sources like comments, articles, blog posts, forums, news releases, to mention a few. For Google, those backlinks could have been generated naturally.
How Should You Plan Your Backlinks?

One sure way to avert Google sandbox is to diversify your backlinks by creating them gradually over time. Rather than rushing in to create many backlinks in a short time, concentrate on creating several backlinks from different sources. While Bing and Yahoo give more value to quantity, Google is giving more weigh to quality of pagerank that each created backlink has.
So, the next time you begin with your SEO campaign for your weight loss web site, ensure that your backlinks are well diversified to avoid the penalty of being sandboxed.
Author:
Richie Richardson is passionate about SEO and SM. He occasionally writes on topics related to weight loss, Bistro MD diet and other diet programs like Medifast and Nutrisystem. Click here to know more about him and his blog. You can also follow him on Twitter @zarrylyms.

Google Places for Your Service Industry

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An innovative business known as PlumberSEO.net has found a way to use Google Places for service industry networking. While they specialize in working with HVAC contractors and Plumbers, PlumberSEO helps those in their industry take their businesses to the next level with effective online marketing with social media, SEO, map optimization and many other internet marketing tools.

Find a Plumber and More

It used to be that when you were looking for a plumber, electrician, roofer, or any other type of service contractor, you picked up the yellow pages and almost always went with the one that had the most impressive ad, the most credentials, and the most well-known company brand name. In today’s world, very few people still use this traditional method of printed resources, instead, they head to the web to look for the best options for service contractors in their area. One of the ways in which Google has made this search easier for consumers is by adding Google Places.

Check out this quick video to get familiar with Google Places if you require a bit more in-depth understanding.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpZan96KHOM]

Now when people look for service contractors in their area, they commonly head to Bing, Yahoo, Google, or other favored search engines as well as to social media sites where they may ask friends or family if they can suggest a contractor in the area.

A recent survey of 2,000 consumers revealed the 86% of the surveyed use the internet to find local business, 74% of those cited search engines as where they go when seeking a local retail or service industry contractor.

Local businesses that are not showing up on page one of search engines are missing major opportunities to grow their business as most people tend to decide their choice in contractors from page one of search engine results.

How to Manage Google Places

Google Places isn’t without its own flaws. However, most of these are user related and may just require a bit more of an in-depth understanding of how Google Places works. If you have had any issues you may want to check out this video for some helpful tips if you find you need help troubleshooting.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/GooglePlaces]

In addition, be sure to check out how to Optimizing Your Google Places Page to get the best results for your business.

[polldaddy poll=6238017]

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

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Google Started Changing the Way Search Results are Shown

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Every time Google changes the algorithms of its search engine, it sends shivers down the spines of many who rely on that calculation to get a better placement on the search engine’s result page (SERP). That is why Google is very careful and secretive when a change like that is coming. But Amit Singhal, the top Google Search executive, confirmed recently they are working on something big.

What they are trying to do, he said, is for the search to work more like we humans understand the world.  By cross referencing millions of entities that Google has been collecting in the past few years, the new search engine algorithms will attempt to understand the context of the query and give direct answers instead of sending you to a website to find out by yourself.

For example: If you ask what the deepest 10 lakes in the US are? Today, you are getting results based on the keywords and a list of websites talking about lakes, but not the exact answer to your question. In the future the first thing that will appear is a direct answer to your query. You can see it already happening with the “best guess” results. Type in “who is the chancellor of Germany” and see what you get.

Another example: If you ask information about a place, Lake Eerie for instance. Today you get all the websites that have anything to do with the lake. In the future, first you will get all the information Google has collected about the lake: depth, location, altitude, average temp and so on.

Google and Metaweb Tech

A little more than a year ago Google purchased a start-up company called Metaweb Technologies. The company had an index of 12 million entities; movies, books, companies and celebrities. (For the sake of comparison, Wikipedia has 3.5 million English entries.) Amit Singhal said that since this acquisition they have expended the index to 200 million by developing “extraction algorithms” that can organize data in a semantic way from around the web.

What would it do to the listings on the first page if a large amount of information will appear first? A person who was briefed on Google’s change says it may impact directly the results of 10%-20% of the queries. There are billions of queries performed each day.

Google hopes that with the new search results, people will spend more time on their page and see more relevant ads, but it is still unclear how it would impact the ads which appear beside the search results. People familiar with the project say the changes will appear in the next few months. Amit Singhal says it will be rolled out slowly and will be a year-long process.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

Sources:

Google Started Changing the Way Search Results are Shown

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Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Every time Google changes the algorithms of its search engine, it sends shivers down the spines of many who rely on that calculation to get a better placement on the search engine’s result page (SERP).

That is why Google is very careful and secretive when a change like that is coming. But Amit Singhal, the top Google Search executive, confirmed recently they are working on something big.

What they are trying to do, Amit said, is for the search to work more like we humans understand the world.  By cross referencing millions of entities that Google has been collecting in the past few years, the new search engine algorithms will attempt to understand the context of the query and give direct answers instead of sending you to a website to find out by yourself.

For example: If you ask what the deepest 10 lakes in the US are? Today, you are getting results based on the keywords and a list of websites talking about lakes, but not the exact answer to your question. In the future the first thing that will appear is a direct answer to your query. You can see it already happening with the “best guess” results. Type in “who is the chancellor of Germany” and see what you get.

Another example: If you ask information about a place, Lake Eerie for instance. Today you get all the websites that have anything to do with the lake. In the future, first you will get all the information Google has collected about the lake: depth, location, altitude, average temp and so on.

Image representing Metaweb Technologies as dep...
Image via CrunchBase

A little more than a year ago Google purchased a start-up company called Metaweb Technologies. The company had an index of 12 million entities; movies, books, companies and celebrities. (For the sake of comparison, Wikipedia has 3.5 million English entries.) Amit Singhal said that since this acquisition they have expended the index to 200 million by developing “extraction algorithms” that can organize data in a semantic way from around the web.

What would it do to the listings on the first page if a large amount of information will appear first? A person who was briefed on Google’s change says it may impact directly the results of 10%-20% of the queries. There are billions of queries performed each day.

Google hopes that with the new search results, people will spend more time on their page and see more relevant ads, but it is still unclear how it would impact the ads which appear beside the search results.

People familiar with the project say the changes will appear in the next few months. Amit Singhal says it will be rolled out slowly and will be a year-long process.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

Sources:

Digital Marketing: Why Your Businesses Phone Number is Crucial to Success (Part 1)

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“Name, Address and Phone Number, oh if you have a website or social media page you can add that two, but we don’t care” the Internet!

Phone Numbers are Crucial to Success!!! They are more important than domains!

It used to be you used a fancy 800 number to look impressive or to develop branding, take 1-800-FLOWERS for example. 1-800 Flowers was a great branding campaign that generated massive brand recognition for a referral service.

Google really brought the attention back to local when it launched Google places. Google used both the local phone number and the address to enhance its search results to bring business back to local merchants and while it sent SEO professionals scrambling, local business owners were thirsty to learn more.

The PhoneWhy Phone Numbers are Crucial!

Take any listing service or data set and you’ll find three consistent elements to how it organizes its data, first is the name, second the phone number and third is the address. Website domains and social media are nowhere to be found now, nor will they in the future. In fact, when Patch Media launched its local directory for Merchants and Business Owners the AOL local sensation had one problem, no address no listing… Google places needed that three digit identifier to decide if the address matched phone number, and Yelp listed businesses by name, phone numbers and address.

Branding Trend: It’s All Local!

In a time when people are being frugal with their money, they’re a lot quicker to call a local number then an 800 number. The fact is people actually avoid 800 numbers because they prefer to have someone local and hesitate at the thought that the number will be routed to India. Local is the big Brand in the United States right now, take a look in both Traditional and Digital Media and you’re bound to see the word Local at just about every other turn.

Phone Numbers: How Do I Get Them, Use them, Keep them?

There are a few tricks that can help local business owners stretch their influence and presence. Take MagicJack, a nifty little device that sells for $20 and provides phone service for $20 a year! After Google Places launched black hat SEO professionals started buying these as fast as they could. You see they take the MajicJack, register the phone number and then connect a local name to the local number and give it a local address through something like a UPS Store.

i.e. The Actual business is a plumber in Parkland, Florida with a 954 area code number. The blackhat SEO Pro would buy (5) five MagicJacks with local phone numbers, then open a UPS Box in towns around Parkland that the plumber served. Five Splash Pages later, that plumber looked local in English: Google Nexus S - Samsung Android Phonesix locations but really only existed in one.

If you’re a digital or virtual business, then the issue is the same. The phone number is crucial to looking local and you may be in NYC, but with the right number you now appear to be in LA, Moscow, Paris, Chicago, Miami etc. If your using a service like Regus and their Virtual Office, you can set the Magic Jack or Vanity number to forward to that location until you have an office or employee to forward it to later.

Port a number! Always Port a number, I inherited a phone number 4 years ago and I still get calls for children’s clothing from some company that had it before I did. If I sold children’s clothes I be rolling in free leads.

KEEP YOUR NUMBER!!!! The Android and Mr. Number Effect

Want to know what’s really pissing off telemarketers and collection agencies?

Android and Mr. Number! Android phones from version 1.5 have had a feature that allows people to save a contact and set the contact to forward directly to voicemail. Mr. Number is an application on all devices that blocks suspected spam (set by community feedback), unknown numbers and numbers you blacklist! So before you give up your number and get a new one, better think twice. If you do get a new number check it against the Mr. Number database, if its listed as a spam, credit collection or telemarketer get rid of it!

(Part 2 – Using Phone Numbers to Track Marketing Success)

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What’s the key to a successful digital media strategy?

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Websites, especially for Search Engine Optimization should defiantly be doing this. A successful Social Media campaign has this as a crucial characteristic. This one defining element or practice is an absolute must for anyone who wants clients and customers whorepeat business and develop long-term relationships. In fact you probably find this to be as true for personal relationships as you would for any aspect of a business before and during the digital age.

Be Genuine!

Websites that develop a structure that take user experience and align it with their purpose find higher conversions. Don’t build a site for a plumber that looks like iTunes. Let that sites experience be what mirrors the genuine experience that is that service or product.

SEO success is defined by the genuine nature of the sites target and content. Search Engines are in the business of helping people find what they are looking for, build the content and keyword targeting around your clients, services and or product.

Social Media is all about the culture that your organization has, what’s your social media personality? Social Media isn’t about hard sales, its about relationships, find ways to develop social media strategies that support who or what you really are beyond what you sell or do.

Jump on Match.com, eHarmony, or have a friend set you up on a blind date, it’s just like business. You’ll get someone new in front of you, but if you want to get beyond the first introduction you better be who you are, pretending to be what your not will scare away your valuable long term relationships and leave you with a short sighted one night stand. Remember, 20% of your customers may provide you with 80% of your business, but if you find a way to build long-term relationships that develop from your genuine culture and services you’ll find value in every interaction.

If you want “world of mouth” opportunities, find a brand perception that matches you or your organization. Don’t try to control it, facilitate it by being genuine.

Sources:

Google Music Goes Live in the Cloud

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Google has dipped into musical endeavors with the launch of Google Music in mid-November. Originally, the service launched back in May in a beta version. Launched as a suite of music services, it is quite obvious that this is Google’s attempt to take on Amazon and iTunes in cloud and other music storage space.

Introducing Google Music

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=NI8rQEHoE24]

Although it is rumored that Google has been attempting to secure partnerships with four major record labels, currently, Google Music simply allows users to store their purchases and upload other files to their music cloud.

Advantages and Issues

Google Music has seems to have its own pros and cons.

  • There are two different sites. The Google Music site is the library and player. However, you must purchase the music on the Android Market.
  • Google Music will automatically back up most music files including iTunes. As you do the intitial set up, Google Music will prompt you to upload any previous music files you have. iTunes, Windows Media Player libraries, or any other folder you designate.
  • Many Android devices now have full support for Google Music, some have not even mentioned creating it yet. Since one of Google Music’s main selling point is its ability to replace iTunes services, this could pose quite a problem for many Android users.
  • Although there is no official app for the iPhone, users can enjoy Google Music services on iOS devices. A pleasing surprise is that even their site is formatted properly to be easily viewable and easy to navigate on iPhone view screens.
  • Without a doubt, there is loads of free music. However, you will need to share your credit card info with Google just to get the free tunes.
  • You can share only the songs you have purchased to Google Plus.

Regardless of your choice in digital music stores, now may be a good time to get in on what Google Music and their shop has to offer you.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSnr0VLbUJ8&feature=relmfu]

Sources:

Google Webmaster Tools Offers Custom Search Engine Creation

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Google logo
Google logo ™

Webmaster tools. The focus of the update is to provide marketers with the option to run their own trials of custom search engines.

The custom search engines created by Google’s Webmaster Tools can be used on business domains and their subdomains making search queries for any content on the business’s site easier to locate. Users can search over one or more sites, tweak the look and feel of the business’s site, and even earn money with it using Adsense for Search.

Creating your Custom Search Engine

You do not have to be a coding expert to create your own custom search engine. To create your own search engine with Google’s Webmaster Tools simply click on the Custom Search link under the Google Labs section. Webmaster tools will then create a default custom search engine that will search only your chosen site. Set up your configuration options or grab the code snippet, as is, to add to your new CSE site.

Users can then continue on to a full custom search engine dashboard to apply settings that are more advanced. Once your CSE is up and running, you can click the Custom Search link inside of Google Labs to manage the settings without leaving Google Webmaster tools.

Benefits to Your Business

For those business that use content marketing, the utilization of Google-powered search engines on their home page can be as important as any other efforts that go into expanding their sites reach. Users who frequent your site will be able to easily find topics or archives articles and information that is relevant to current topics, or even if they just want to find and share older stories with their own networks.

Content marketing is a highly useful instrument in the toolbox of internet marketers. Brafton News reports that up to 82% of businesses are currently using content marketing as part of their internet marketing campaigns.

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