@BasilPuglisi

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

SEO Search Engine Optimization

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.

Surviving the Google Penguin Update

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Penguin Rescue_020
Penguin  (Photo credit: iliveisl)

Google’s April 24th update – codenamed Penguin – seems to have had some seriously adverse impact on many sites. Google has said time and time again, that SEO can be very constructive and positive. They have pointed out that effective SEO can make a website more accessible and crawlable. Basic SEO includes techniques such as easy keyword research conducted to help ensure that you are embedding the best and most attractive words for your industry, product or services.

Since good search engine optimization can equal good marketing, being creative and using a variety of ways to make your website’s content compelling is also key. This can also be beneficial on your social media networks, great content will be shared, and that is always a plus. Those who use suggested white hat, or organic, techniques as opposed to black hat, or more nefarious methods, do not usually experience some of the devastating problems that are common with big algorithm changes such as the one with Penguin and the previous Panda change.

Penguin Eats Webspam

Sites that pursue black hat techniques, or Webspam, may use shortcuts that can help to raise their page rankings quicker than the organic white hat methods. Anything from link farming to keyword stuffing can help to temporarily boost rankings, but then Google always seems to find a way to punish those who do. It is simply not worth it any longer to spend time looking for loopholes when organic methods continue to stand up to even the strongest test in Google’s content updates.

Penguin specifically focused on penalizing sites that utilized:

When Penguin was rolled out it was referred to as the ‘webspam algorithm update’ for this reason. It intentionally targeted those sites using black hat tricks to bump themselves above those using good wholesome white hat organic marketing methods.

Be sure to also check out the search engine spam penalties page for more information that could be helpful in helping you to remove issues from your site that Google’s new update is now frowning upon.

Google says that they want people to focus on white hat SEO methods such as creating compelling websites and creative content, or even no search engine optimization at all, before considering using any black hat methods. Although some of the webspam techniques they have been eliminating in recent algo changes are more than ten years old, Google has warned repeatedly about practicing bad SEO methods and admit that they are continually improving on ways to make sure their next releases find the other black hat needles in the haystack that is the internet and swiftly penalize them too.

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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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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Understand the Basics of SEO: Why Geo and Subject Domain Names Rock!

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Search Engines are in the business of helping a user find the content they are looking for! If you keep this in mind you’ll start off with a great relationship with the Search Engines and the Visitors to your site.

Websites have three main areas you’ll want to really pay attention to:

  1. Structure
  2. Content
  3. References

[slideshare id=7181167&doc=seo101-110307150053-phpapp01]

As a website owner you’ll want this to be how you operate your lead generation through the search engines. Unless you’re an adult site, gambling or daily deal, people will not generally respond to a website about Plumbing when they were searching for Pizza.

Time and Money are important, you’ll get alot further if you concentrate your resources were they should be and where they will produce the highest rate of conversion. If you’re going to chase down multiple areas and categories do it in a way that provides unique, useful and provides a genuine experience for the user.

SEO Tip: Geo & Subject Domains > Brand Domains

An example of how this has been done is through domain masking and forwarding. Take the Domain PapaJohns.com, now that’s a great domain because people looking for “papa john’s” will find exactly what they are looking for, but will they still find it if they put in “MyTown Pizza” like “Brooklyn Pizza”, “Chicago Pizza”?

Here is an example of how we use forwarding on Digital Brand Marketing Education, the publically promoted domain is dbmei.com and that makes sense because it is short and simple. It makes for easy emails and sharing in social media without having to shorten the domain. However When you land on the site, you notice the actual domain changes to digitalbrandmarketing.com

Search Engines give a lot of value to domains, after all if you’re naming the site that, then those words must be relevant. In our case we want people looking for “Digital, Brand and/or Marketing”  to find our publication and those keywords fit perfectly with our content.

If you own Jerry’s Seafood.com, and your restaurant is in the town or geographic location of East Hampton, you might want to think about masking or forwarding the domain to easthamptonseafood.com or easthamptonseafoodrestaurant.com.

This is just one tip to help with your sites SEO, obviously you want the title tags, content, etc to all also fit this search term.

 

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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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SMX East: Search Engine Expo, First Impressions

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DBMEi was granted Press Access to the SMX East taking place in NYC this week. While we will follow up with a summary of the event, we wanted to share some first impressions.

If you have not been here yet, make time! With one day left on September 15, 2011 at the Jacob Javits Center we hope this post find you in time to get into the event and see some great vendors and try to access an event.

The event is very well organized and the speakers are prepared to share data and facts! This has been one of the biggest critiquesfacing many conferences, most have speakers that participate seem to be self or company promoting with little if any actionable information to share. One of the other concerns, often expressed by people like us here at DBMEi, “where is your data, your sources” because sometimes we wonder if they are just pulling this stuff from the sky…. “where is the credibility”. The SMX East has had an impressive impact quick and early.

As you can see in the photos I have attached the speakers are sharing their actual trade practices, unlike many others events the SMX seems to have set a standard where the goal is to make sure each presenter has something tangible and actionable. The presentations are supported by a ton of quantitative data that the presenters are using to show, not tell the attendees what they are doing and why.

So far the SMX East has been an event worth attending, I have been very excited to see speakers talking about the process by which they take action and sharing the quantitative data to support their processes and theories.

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Tumblr VS WordPress

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According to statistic reports, as of January 2011, the 4 year old site Tumblr.com has 20,873,182 users. For the same period WordPress.com, the older site (by 4 years), announced they have 20,787,904 websites powered by wordPress.com

This is the first time anybody overtook WordPress.com, and it became kind of big news among the blogosphere. To set the record straight, it is important to note that WoldPress.com numbers do not include the open sourced blog platform WoldPress.org, where people have websites they host themselves. The comparison is between the two hosting blog platforms only.

Still, it is clear that many individuals have been signing with Tumblr more than they have been signing with WordPress.com. Which one is better? Well, that depends on why you want a site or a blog and what you want to include in it.

What do they have in common?

  • Both are free.
  • Each site has free themes which can be easily installed.
  • Both can be customized.
  • Both can be updated from any computer or device that has internet connection.
  • Both allow you to name your page the way you choose.
  • Both are well known and popular, with good reputation.
  • Both have export capabilities. If you want to move your site, you can.
  • Both allow importing content from other content management systems.

Tumblr

Ease of use –

  • No installation or configuration of the program on your computer is needed.
  • User friendly dashboard
  • Easy upload of multimedia files
  • Custom designs (which do require payment) are cheaper on Tumblr than on WordPress
  • Easy to update from a mobile device
  • Has a built in community functions that allows following like-minded bloggers, reblogging what they wrote and “liking” it, which makes Tumblr a more community oriented site.

Functionality –

  • The server cannot be controlled by the user; it has to be hosted by the site. However, you can use a unique url that does not include .tumblr at the end.
  • The user has complete control over the content and can move his site or blog to another platform.

Design and customization

  • Has one basic layout and it must be applied to every page on the site. They now added page support to make the navigation between pages much easier.
  • Supports only 3rd party calendars and contacts, but it requires knowledge in coding.

Social Integration –

  • Built in. You can post and link to twitter automatically. You can also connect it to your Facebook page.

WordPress

Ease of use –

  • Downloading their program is necessary, but it offers many more options and settings.
  • The design and functionality of the page is more cumbersome and requires some learning.
  • Allows multiple pages, download of plug-ins, widgets and sidebars.

Functionality –

  • With WordPress.com the user has to use their server.  WordPress.org supports sites hosted by another server.
  • The site can be easily expanded to replace the current site.
  • People who have not designed the site but have administrative rights can post on the site without much effort.

Design and customization –

  • Many page layout options.
  • Ability to use different layouts for different pages.
  • Allows including native calendars and contact forms.

Social integration –

  • Can be done with the help of plug-ins.
  • WordPress.com has publisize allowing for sharing with Facebook Pages, Twitter, Yahoo, etc..

The ongoing consensus among experts is that Tumblr is more user friendly, fun and easy to blog. Its design is slick and simple, modern and big. It is geared more toward pictures and media than WordPress.

Both can be customized but WordPress is more extensive and flexible. If you don’t need an extensive e commerce site with forms, listings, heavy content and advertising, Tumblr is simpler.

But the biggest difference is in the ease of social integration on Tumblr that is built in, while it has to be added to WordPress.com with different plug-ins. Tumblr functions as a cross between a website and a Facebook profile, while WordPress is more dry and functional.

Some companies in entertainment, news and fashion have blogs through Tumblr. The Washington Post Innovations, Newsweek, The Huffington Post and Rolling Stones are some examples. Musicians and photographer seem to flock to Tumblr as well.

WordPress.com hosts sites of top brands like CNN, National football league and TED.

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Google AdWords: Call Metrics & Click to Call

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Since Dec. 2010, Google has allowed placement of phone numbers in AdWords text body.  Their rational was that most people seeing the ad know they are one click away from the advertiser’s site, where they can find all the information without bothering anyone. They thought people would be unlikely to call instead of clicking the mouse.

Others thought that displaying a local phone number, especially if it is  for location based services such as a dentist, have their own benefits.

Google realized they might be losing money, if people do call instead of clicking on the ad, so they’ve added Call Extensions. Those are types of ad extensions that allow advertisers to include additional information about their businesses and specials in their text ads. Call extensions works differently whether or not you’ve enabled Call Metrics.

Call metrics allows advertisers to track phone calls that come from the ad. This is done by generating a specific phone number for this specific ad. With the popularity of mobile gadgets there’s a growing benefit for advertisers to receive calls from mobile users. In this platform, calls generated, duration of the call and the area codes of the callers are noted so advertisers will have information about the location of the calls. The Call Metrics is free to use, but by setting it up the advertiser started paying for the calls as they did for the clicks.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIJ36uUxJBw]

There are metrics available to see how effective it is and how many people call instead of clicking. If you did enable Call Metrics, Google assigned a custom phone number to the ad and displays it on both desktop and mobile devices. Vanity numbers (which include letters and numbers) are also allowed.

But In July 2011, Google announced click-to-call enhancement in AdWords ads which will affect charges for the ad. All non-clickable numbers in the ads will be converted to a click-to-call numbers, and they will start to incur extra charges when the number is clicked.

If you didn’t enable Call Metrics, your phone number will appear as a clickable phone number for users of smartphones using Google search, voice search, Google mobile apps or Google maps.

If you are using Call Metrics, and you have a phone number in your ad text, only the newly clickable phone number in you ad text will show. That is done to reduce confusion for users not knowing which number to click.

If you would like your Call Extension number to display, you need to delete your phone number from your ad. You will receive an additional line of ad text. The phone number will still be displayed without the need to take up text space.

If you didn’t use Call Extension and you have a phone number in your ad, it will convert to click-to-call automatically. You don’t have to edit your ad to make the phone number clickable. But, if you want to maximize your ad space, you should consider using Call Extension  to free up more space. You will be charged for the calls either way.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88VTa0GfBiE]

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Digital Brand Experience: Google shares it’s thoughts on Brand

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Digital Brand Marketing is about taking traditional concepts and rethinking how those practices can be streamlined and transformed into digital practices. I have repeatedly published on how so many businesses have taken the extreme approach to digital and social marketing. This has resulted in lost opportunities and negative impact on their brand.  

If you do not claim your brand, someone else will!

Social Media is but a tool or advancement in what people have done throughout all time, if your product is wonderful people talk, if your product is terrible people talk. The big change is how they talk, and how many people they can reach.

In traditional marketing it was found that November, December, July and August are the big word of mouth months. These are the times of year that people congregated the most for Holidays and/or Vacations. This is when word of mouth could really be capitalized on. Did you see what I bought, where we went, the quality of work the installer did, the product I would never buy again.

As Erik Qualman pointed out, “word of mouth”  is now “world of mouth”. Social Media is about having the ability to interact at any given moment and beyond the limitations of physical presence. Social Media thoughts, comments, reviews, posts, blogs, etc are almost all sustainable. The comment does not go away like a traditional conversation, the review, thought or post continues on to reach others, shared and searchable forever!

This has created three major issues in modern marketing.

  1. The Company is not participating or facilitating their “brand”. Others are welcome to lay claim to it and control the information about it.
  2. The Company rushed to execute and participate and did not consider the “brand” experience. How they facilitate and deliver a consistent experience across the different digital medias was lost. The worst continue to rush along making half measures to recover sections or parts of campaigns and services instead of rethinking the “brand” experience.
  3. The Company has not learned how to use free resources to respond to the market. By not participating in Social Media the company cannot address issues and opportunities in real time. Surveys, Customer Complaint numbers are traditional, websites are 1.0, social media is engaging and seeking out the customers in their space. If you don’t seize information for your benefit, perhaps your competitor will!

An Anonymous Case Study for point 2:

A company decides that they wish to use twitter, they know its popular for news and marketing. The company creates accounts for 800 locations. The first mistake is made when they leave a default image in the service. A few months later they start to fill the profile image with the company logo. As a young marketing assistant learns about the personal interaction that twitter thrives from, the company starts to take “brand” accounts @GeoCompany and tie the individual name and a personal photo to the profile image. At this point the @GeoCompany John Doe has a picture of just a head shot with news updating from the company site. The profile area talks about the company and links to the company’s local site.

At each stage the half measure reviews have cost the company brand awareness. Something as simple as taking the time to think out the strategy would have saved the company’s social image as their claim to be social has struggled from day one. To date this company still has personal photos without proper branding on them. If the company takes the time to rethink the brand experience, they might decide to use something like this. @MorichesNews John Doe, with a Picture of John Doe accompanied by the Moriches News Logo in the corner or part of the frame, perhaps the background of the headshot. Provide a profile statement that looked like “John Doe is a reporter for Moriches News, a local source for issues and events. MorichesNews.com. An additional option, they could go one step further and develop a brand background to upload to the twitter accounts so that each twitter account looks consistent.

If you avoid your digital brand, or don’t invest quality time into the digital brand then you’re hindering your success. If you’re not listening to digital media you will not be able to learn about product opportunities in real time.

Here are two important videos from Google that talk about brand.

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q71uXKEBXrw&feature=player_embedded]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJuAvrHd3DU]

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