Archive for category Search Engine Optimisation
Google’s Boost to ‘Local’ Business | Google Boost
Posted by James in Hints and Tips, Important Notice, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation on May 26, 2011
Search giant Google is raising the bar again with their semi-automated adwords campaign system ‘Boost’ scheduled to be launched very soon in the UK.
It launched in the US about a month and half ago, and early reports are encouraging – with a few caveats!
I can give you the positives almost immediately:
Location-based marketing
One of the key areas in all marketing is ‘Place’ and Google Boost addresses this in spades. If you want to deal with a local company, then ‘voila’ the little pin dropping on familiar territory should comfort you enormously. The new ad layout is simple and the whole thing is designed to persuade you to shop local.
Real Reviews
The warts and all review system is actually very good for your business!
The star review system encourages real people to leave their reviews. Nobody quite believes the gloss and glitter laid out on a website, so the social proof of external reviews laid out in an overall star rating gives you the real deal. Sure your problems might be highlighted, but every company has issues at some time and the averaging system will sort out the reviews fairly. to bad reviews is good then those little yellow stars become a Gold Star min.
Phone Number
Having your phone number displayed in Ads might just get you the calls you need without actually laying out any money – the ad displays and if the customer calls instead of clicking the Pay Per Click Ad, then that’s a bonus for you. Time will tell how well this works, but it’s a step forward from the traditional AdWord format.
Easy to set up and runs automatically.
If you have waded through setting up and managing Adwords then you will appreciate this; but do it wrong from the get go and it could cost you a lot of money.
The negatives? We are monitoring the US experience closely and will update you as soon as we have some definitive feedback.
If you would like to know more about Google Boost and how it could help your business, give us a call on 0191 5197278 or email us on info@theimagesgroup.co.uk with Boost in the subject line and we will get back to you with our guide to effective use of Boost in your local campaigns.
How to Use Twitter for Link Building and Social Signals | Twitter Tips
Posted by James in Hints and Tips, Linking, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing on May 17, 2011
Dev Basu , Powered by Search – May 17, 2011
According to preliminary data from the upcoming 2011 Search Ranking Factors study from SEOmoz, (1) the number of tweets associated with a particular URL and (2) the authority of the Twitter user generating these tweets were amongst the most important social media based ranking factors.
The following are broad metrics that the search engines use to understand the Twitter authority and trust of a given profile:
Overall Authority of Twitter Ranking Signals
- Diversity of Twitter profiles tweeting a particular URL
- Quantity of followers, friends, and overall tweets
- Tweet Engagement, the number of re-tweets, and hashtag responses
- Topical Relevance of Tweets. Do they contain topically related keywords?
- Timing of Tweets, as applicable to real time search, for example, “the royal wedding.”
- Page Level Authority, traditional page authority for a particular URL, PageRank, and inbound link popularity.
Now that you have an idea of the factors search engines may take into account when evaluating Twitter links versus links from other sources on the web, it’s time to give you actionable tips on using these to your advantage.
1. Link to your Twitter profile
Link to your Twitter profile from your website, blog, and by using social media sharing buttons. While Twitter has a high overall domain authority, your own Twitter profile requires inbound links in the same fashion as your website does to build up authority and trust.
2. Set up different Twitter accounts if you have different business units
Different Twitter accounts are used when your company’s employees use their own personal accounts to re-tweet tweets from a company account. Likewise, if you have different business units, there are opportunities for cross promotion via re-tweeting. This is also a great way to seed overall engagement of your tweet.
3. Use a friendly URL shortener
Twitter’s 140 character limit often means that you can’t paste full URLs back to your website. Using a friendly URL shortener such as Bit.ly, Trunk.ly, or Goo.gl passes link juice from a tweet back to your website.
4. Use Klout.com to figure out who you are influenced by
Klout is a service which analyses your influencers and who you influence. Keeping in mind that Twitter Authority is one of the metrics associated with higher search rankings from social signals, it’s important to engage with users who have a higher overall Klout than your profile.
5. Update accounts using RSS feeds of your content
RSS feeds provide an automated way of telling web services when you have new content. You can create an RSS feed of all the digital assets you have including YouTube videos, white papers, blog posts, press releases and more, and then syndicate these to Twitter.
Learn more about these tips visually from my Slideshare presentation from SMX Toronto 2011.
Dev Basu is the owner of Powered by Search, a Toronto SEO Company and Internet Marketing agency specializing in SEO, Local Search, Paid Search, and Social Media solutions for SMB’s and SME’s and national enterprise clients. Follow Dev on Twitter for more Local SEO tips and tricks.
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