In November 2011, Google launched Google+, a social networking platform, with the hope of rivalling Facebook.

Apparently, Google claims that other social networks do not do enough for their users, so they felt the need to create their own version. According to Google’s official blog:

“Today the connection between people increasingly happens online. Yet the subtlety
and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools.

In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix
it.”

The original plan of Google+ was to dismantle Facebook from it’s number one spot, but a year later this hasn’t happened. However, just because it isn’t number one, doesn’t mean you or your business should forget about Google+ altogether. The social platform has some essential features that could be very useful if used properly.

Circles

The idea of “Circles” is to make sharing online a lot more like sharing in real life, where you can share different things with different people. For example, you may want to share something with co-workers that you don’t want to share with your friends outside of work-well you can do that. By putting your Google+ contacts into “Circles” such as “Co-Workers” and “Friends” you can keep your conversations separate. Google+ makes this easy as well, you simply have to drag a contact into the Circle you’d like them to be in, and they will only receive the information you’d like them too.

Hangouts

Google+’s “Hangouts” feature is all about hanging out with your different Circles in a virtual environment. The Hangouts feature lets you choose specific contacts/friends or entire Circles to invite for face-to-face chats. The feature also lets anyone in the Hangout  invite anyone they like. Although it is very similar to video calling, the difference is that you can include more than one person. According to Google’s demo, “Until teleportation arrives, it’s the next best thing.”

Huddle

The idea behind the “Huddle” feature is that you are able to change all of your exchanges on Google+ into one big group chat (or huddle), in order to save yourself time. For example, instead of having a number of different text conversations with a bunch of your friends, you can include all of them at once. Although this may not sound very different from other forms of instant messaging, it will be very helpful in Google+’s mobile version.

Sparks

You can tell the “Sparks” feature on Google+ the kind of things that you are interested in, and you will then be sent said things, that you can watch, read and share. For example, you could type in “Music” into the search box and a number of different results will appear. If something “sparks” your interest, you can click the “Add Interest” button to add Music to your important subjects list. This feature means that you will consistently have appealing content to look at. Google+ also allows you to delete interests from your list if you decide you no longer want them.

Google+ has also taken their privacy policy very seriously. In Google+ you will be able to alter your visibility settings in order to display only your name and photo to people who are not in your network. Much like Facebook, you will be able to assign different levels of privacy and visibility to different aspects of your profile. You can also choose if your profile can be indexed by search engines, and you have the option to block other Google+ users. In terms of the Circles, Google+ will keep the names disclosed, although contacts that are in your Circles may be able to see some of the other contacts information. You also have the option to delete your Google+ account altogether if you decide you don’t like it.

Another feature of Google+ is the ability to back up data. Although most computer users do make sure their data/pictures are backed up at home, Google+ recognizes that not everyone uses a Cloud based system. You are able to use Google Takeout (a data management tool) to download data from your Google+ account to your home computer, which includes photos, your profile, contacts and your Google+ stream.

Now that you have read about some of the key features of Google+ do you think you will give it a try as an individual or for your business?

Different ways to remove images from Google Image Search

1) Delete picture from hosted site

Definitely the best way to have an image removed and not show up any longer is by having the picture deleted from the page where it is hosted. How do you know which website it is hosted on? Simple: when you hover with your mouse over an image on Google Image Search, it will expand the image and show you additional information. The green text that appears is the website where the picture is hosted, see example below:

Go to the website displayed in green and see if you can contact the owner/webmaster. Ask that person to remove the image from their website.

2) Using robots.txt file

If you own the picture you want to have removed, you can use the robots.txt file to prevent Google from accessing and indexing a specific folder or picture. The following robots.txt configuration is saying to all search engine spiders to NOT crawl and index the /images folder of a website. Be careful: in below example you block access to the entire images folder. If you want to block just a specific image, then list the file name location instead.

User-agent: *

Disallow: /images/

3) Using the Google Webpage Removal Request Tool

To expedite the removal process, it’s also possible to request Google to remove a page or image.

4) Contact Google to have illegal content removed

If you believe someone is infringing copyright or some other form of illegal content, you can contact Google to let them know.

Google has created a comprehensive video outlining how to remove an image:

Conclusion

There are various ways to have an image removed from Google Image Search. Remember to be patient as Google has to process the request, crawl websites and so it might not happen overnight. But using the above described methods is how you remove an image from Google Image Search.

1971: The first email was sent. And as circumstances had it, the two computer were sitting right beside each other.

1978: BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) exchanged data over phone lines with other users.

1978: The first copies of early web browsers are distributed through Usenet, an early online bulletin board, which was also where Flame Wars and Trolling originated.

1994: One of the web’s first social networking sites, Geocities, is founded in 1994. The concept was for users to create their own websites, categorized by one of 6 ‘cities’ known for certain characteristics (Hollywood, Wallstreet, etc). Geocities is now only available in Japan.

1995: TheGlobe.com provided users with the freedom to personalize their online experiences by publishing their own content and interacting with others with similar interests. TheGlobe.com posted a record IPO that fell from $850 million to barely $4 million in less than three years.

1997: AOL instant messenger is launched- instantly creating a buzz about instant messaging.

1997: SixDegrees.com launches, allowing profile creation and listing friends.

2000: Fueled for years by the growing internet, which included early social networking sites, the .com bubble bursts, sending the stock markets crashing, and web entrepreneurs back to the start.

2002: Friendster is launched, commencing the online connection of real-world friends. Its user-base grew to 3 million users in the first three months- about 1 in every 126 people using the internet at this time.

2003: MySpace is launched, being created first of as a Frindster clone. MySpace was created by an internet marketing firm, and the first version was hastily coded in 10 days.

In the following years, many other social networking sites continued to launch. Including, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, Classmates.com, Jaiku, Netlog, and many more.

2004: Facebook is launched by Mark Zuckerberg! It was originally a way of connecting U.S. college students. First launched at Harvard college, more than half of the 19,500 students signed up within the first month. Since then, as we all know, it has a turned into a world-wide phenomenon.

2006: Twitter is launched. The first tweet was “just setting up my twttr”.

At the close of the 2010 Japan vs. Denmark World Cup soccer game, Twitter users published 3,283 tweets per second!

2008: Facebook overtakes MySpace as the leading social networking site, in monthly unique visitors. Both sides are vastly more popular than the original, Friendster.

Facebook continues to be the leading social networking site in the world. But every day new social media trends and platforms are emerging- you never know what could happen next. That is why it is so important to stay up-to-date with social media and how it can affect you and your business.

• High rankings: being the authority that you are, you add expert content to your website which really helps improve rankings in the search engines
• More, diversified traffic: you will have a network of people interested in you, following you, commenting on your content, and thus providing you with traffic and inbound links from a variety of sources like social media, search engines, direct traffic etc.
• Charge higher fees: people expect excellence to come at a higher price. As an authority, you can and should use this to your advantage.

How to become an autority in your niche

All sounds really good so far, right? But how do you actually become this authority? Well, lets just be honest: it doesn’t happen overnight and there are no quick short-cuts to get there. Becoming an authority is a long-term goal that requires continuous commitment.

However, you should not see this as a burden. In fact, if you like your job, your business, then you’re probably good at it. Being enthusiastic and positive about what you do will be reflected in what you publish: your website, status updates and tweets, news letters etc. This will make it easier to establish yourself as an authority because it comes more naturally to you.

And once you’re underway to becoming an authority you should  start noticing the benefits of it in terms of:

• more clients
• higher fees
• stronger reputation
• more recognition in the commnity

To make this post more interesting I’ve included a video that I recently found. The folks at Bing have created below video that provides you with good tips to get on the right path to becoming a true authority and reaping the benefits. Enjoy!

1. The Merging of Real Life and Social Media

In 2012 expect to see social media truly integrated with “real life”. For example, a little while ago Coca Cola created an amusement park where people could swipe their RFID (Radio-frequency Identification) wristbands at certain kiosks around the park. When they swiped the wristbands their Facebook accounts were automatically updated with what they were doing and where they were doing it. Another example is when Domino’s Pizza posted an unfiltered billboard of feedback in Times Square, New York. This integration brought together real opinions from real people, taken from a digital source, but displayed  to the real world. In the future look for experiences where social media and real life mix; will our social media identities soon become an exact representation of who we really are and what we are doing?

2. The Influence Clique

There seems to be a current race on to reward individuals and companies who have the most social influence. After going live in December 2008, Klout has established itself as the platform of authority on digital and social influence. With Klout scores (out of 100) they are attempting to turn this influence into business value (currently Justin Bieber is the only celebrity who has gained a perfect Klout score). However, it’s not just celebrities who have digital influence, anyone who is online has some, and companies are trying to discover how this can be turned into a benefit. Look for tools and methods that experts will begin to use to keep track of social influence online, and measure the outcomes.

3. The Rise of the Game

Many social media platforms and applications in browsers and smartphones are beginning to implement gaming qualities. There are many examples of this such as different levels, badges, leaderboards, and rewards for participation. Foursquare is a perfect example of this idea, where individuals “check-in” at different places and can compete for the title of mayor. The rise of these game-like qualities in these platforms creates a sense of competition for our valued time and attention. Experts are even predicting that “gamification” will soon spread to areas other than consumer goods. For example, your next promotion could be linked to your position on your company’s digital leaderboard.

4. It’s Time to Share

Although this is not necessarily a new trend, predictions are that sharing online will make a huge impact in 2012. It is really the sharing of ideas, opinions, media, and status updates that make social media such an authoritative force in the first place. Researchers have seen that sharing options (such as those on Facebook) have led to more page views and better rankings in search results. For example, Sears now allows a user to “share” a product or review with their social media networks directly from the Sears website. This can also be seen on many other sites that have Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. action buttons strategically placed around their page. This also allows users to update in real-time and relay what they are doing in their “real” lives.

5. Social Media Sitcom

For many people, watching TV is already a social act; texting your friend about what just happened on your favourite show, or discussing with co-workers the next day about the season finale. If you are on Twitter during prime-time television hours, the feeds are full of comments and updates, and companies have taken note. If you watch “The X Factor” for example, you can now vote via Twitter. During the show they also offer a social promotion, which encourages their viewers to log on and mention what they are watching. Get Glue, a new social media innovation, allows users to “check-in” to TV, movies and music, boasting free stickers and discounts. Experts are predicting that any show that is socially integrated will see a rise in their ratings.

It will be very interesting to see what our socially-integrated world will become this year. What do you think are some of the other big trends to watch for?

Web analytics programs can usually show you tons of interesting and valuable information. Today, I want to present you with a relatively new, but very insightful feature in Google Analytics: Multi-Channel Funnel Reports.

What are Multi-Channel Funnel Reports?

These reports aim to show you what has happened before a user performs an action you deem valuable (i.e. a conversion). This is very important because more often than not, users will need more than 1 interaction with your brand/company/website/ad to feel convinced and secure that what you offer is what they want.

These interactions could be a combination of different sources, like seeing a tweet on Twitter, clicking an ad on Google Search, or watching one of your product videos on YouTube. These actions are all part of the orientation and research process that a user goes through before actually buying a product or service. Multi-Channel Funnel Reports go beyond the last click and show you how your marketing channels work together to create sales and conversions.

There are 5 useful reports. The following video explains how this feature works:

So to recap: use Multi-Channel Funnel reports to:

• See all of your digital marketing channels in 1 place
• Better understand the value of your marketing efforts
• See the complete picture of the steps your customers are taking before purchasing or converting
• Improve your marketing efforts  based on channel performance
• Make the right digital marketing budgeting decisions

We hope this post has helped you how to gain more insights into what your customers are doing before converting and how you can optimize your marketing channels. Good luck!

First of all, if you move your site, your domain name (i.e. www.example.com) doesn’t change. It’s the IP address associated with the domain name that changes.

Let’s look at an example to see how the internet works. When you type in a domain name in your browser, the DNS (domain name server) receives the request and checks the associated IP address (of your current host). This returns the content of the page which the users will then see in his or her browser.

When you change host (maybe because you didn’t like the deal you got, or they have poor service) your domain name doesn’t change. Only the IP address associated with it will be different. After you’ve uploaded your website’s content onto the new server with the new IP address, you want all users to come to the new location.

Matt Cutts from Google explains the key points of moving your site very well in the video below. Enjoy!

Need more info? Got urgent questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us!

The purpose of this is to help every business out there play big on YouTube. That is very convenient and powerful. You don’t need to be a big brand in order to join the game. All you need is a video recorder to create an interesting video (content is King, as you know by now!).

YouTube has a global audience of 800 million monthly visitors, so that’s huge. And even though you probably won’t reach all those people with your video (ads) – if you’ve created unique, interesting content that people want to see and share, then you have the potential to get lots of traffic to your website and promote your business.

Below are some of the key points of AdWords for Video:

• Find the right audience for your business: promote your video by keyword to appear in YouTube search results, or you can choose to show your ad against content your customers are most interested in – such as cars or fashion. Connect with your audience on YouTube and the Google Display Network, which includes millions of other websites. AdWords for video will link to your YouTube account so you can easily start a video campaign with your existing videos.

• Measure the effectiveness of your spend: YouTube found that video ads drive a 20 percent increase in traffic to your website and a 5 percent increase in searches for your business (Google Campaign Insights, 2011). With AdWords for video you are able to find out how viewers are engaging with your brand during and after they watch your ad. You can see how many viewers watched your entire video, visited your website, stayed on your channel to watch another video, or subscribed to your channel, after viewing your ad.

• You only pay for engaged views: With TrueView video ads you only pay when viewers choose to view your ad so you aren’t charged any money when viewers skip your ad if they aren’t interested or have already seen your video. This means your ad budget is focused on viewers interested in your video. By displaying a call-to-action overlay on your video you can talk about a sale or specific offer to your viewers, share more information about your company, or drive qualified traffic to your website.

Want to know more about this? Go to: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2012/04/helping-every-business-play-big-on.html

TIP 1: Create Authentic, Non-Keyword-stuffed Title Tags

The title tag is the most important on-page element that search engines look at. Yes, you could, well actually – should put your keywords in there, preferably more towards the beginning. More weight and value is being give to the first few words of the title tag. However, make sure you don’t fill it entirely with keywords, and don’t use the same keywords like 3 or 4 times. Don’t exceed about 80 characters or your title will not fully display in search engines. Use keywords, but keep it readable and attractive for humans, above all.

TIP 2: Remove Manipulative Internal Links

In many cases, people will use every possibility they have to put a link on a keyword to a page on their site. They do this in side bars, inside the body text, etc. Hopefullly, you know that the first anchor text link counts and only one on the page is going to pass that value. So, linking to pages within your website all the time and in every possibility is not helpful for SEO and makes your website look articificial and spammy.

TIP 3: Don’t Fill Footers With Useless Links

It’s 2012. Not 2002. Keyword filled footers might have worked once upon a time, but it’s not a good strategy nowadays. Google has devalued footer links and so, putting many exact match anchor text links in your footer (often grey text on light grey background so it’s hard to read) doesn’t really help. Use the footer in a more effective way, that offers a better user experience (because THAT’s what really matters to Google). For example, you can put your social media icons/plugin there, your contact info, useful company history links etc. Just don’t do it just to get as many links as possible on your site. This will definitely look to Google as over-optimization.

TIP 4: Avoid Text Blocks Just Built For Search Engines

There are a lot of websites on the Internet that still seem to think that putting keywords in a text block, multiple times, that don’t match the content of the text, will help them rank. Might you’ve experienced this yourself. You land on a page, read some text and then there are these exact anchor text keywords in there, that just don’t seem to fit in the context. If you read the article out loud it will probably not make sense. Then you know it’s just written for the search engines – to get the keywords the author wants to rank for in the text. This is a dangerous approach and really should be avoided. Rewrite and make it more natural. Only insert those keywords if it makes sense. Don’t use the same keywords all the time either. Mix it up. Use synonyms, branded terms, singulars, plurals etc.

TIP 5: Remove/Avoid Backlinks From Bad Sources

With the recent de-indexing of many private, low-quality blog networks by Google, you want to make sure you stay away from the bad linking strategies (also known as “black hat” SEO). If you read or hear about software or websites that can “automate” tasks for you, and “deliver thousands of high-quality, unique links to your website” and that kind of nonsense – well, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. I think this is especially true in the SEO world. There are no short cuts to high-quality link building: it takes a lot of time and effort to do well.

TIP 6: Do Not Create (Near) Duplicate Content & Pages

Another tactic that is likely to be considered over-optimization is having like 3 pages for nearly the same topic. For example: used cars Seattle, used autos Seattle, pre-owned cars Seattle. There is hardly any difference between them. These 3 example topics could easily be targeted in 1 page with a title like: Used and Pre-owned Cars/Autos in Seattle. I hope you get the point. You should think mostly about experience. Is it convenient for users to have 3 pages that are nearly identical? Probably not.

Conclusion

Be sure to review your website and put the above tips into practice. This will help you avoid the upcoming over-optimization penalty from Google. For more info, check out below video from SEOmoz, which this article is based on:

It’s easier to explain with an example. Consider these 3 exact and phrase match keywords in AdWords.

[waterproof sunblock]     “bollard cover”     [single serving coffee maker]

Now take a look at these 2 rows of search queries that people type in:

1. waterproof sunblock     buy bollard cover     single serving coffee maker

2. waterpoof sunblock      buy bollard covers    single serve coffee maker

Currently, only the search queries in the upper row (1) are considered a good match and allowed to trigger an ad that can appear in the results pages. The close variants in the bottom row (2) are not considered a match by AdWords, even though the user intent is almost exactly the same.

According to Google, this will change soon. Probably in mid-May, phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. It is believed these changes will be beneficial to both users and advertisers.

Google focuses on the user intent

People are not perfect spellers or typists. Apparently, at least 7% of search queries contain a misspelling, and the longer the query, the higher the rate of misspellings.

Even with perfect spelling, 2 people who search for the same thing will often use slightly different variations, for example “kid scooters” and “kid’s scooter” or “bamboo floor” and “bamboo flooring.”

Google’s organic search systems are able to detect and compensate for misspellings and close variants.  Users are happier when they get search results that reflect their intent and help them achieve their desired action, even if it’s not a precise match for what they’ve typed. And so, Google is extending this behaviour to the AdWords advertising system.

Benefits & Control

Before Google rolls out any new change or feature, you can be sure it’s extensively tested. According to their tests,  the new matching behavior increased AdWords search clicks by 3%, with comparable costs per click’s. However, keep in mind that results can differ by advertiser and industry.

The good thing about this change is that you no longer need to add all types of variations of a keyword to cover all keywords that people may search for. The new matching behaviour will get your more relevant impressions for a smaller number of keywords. This should provide better results and save you time creating and maintaining PPC accounts.

For more info on this new change see: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-matching-behavior-for-phrase-and.html