How to Use Google Trends to Boost Your Business

Maintaining a successful online business requires a multitude of disciplines, not the least of which includes a watchful eye on the changes and trends in your industry. It’s now imperative that you understand the needs and interests of your demographic, and that you respond to large-scale shifts as quickly as possible.
Likewise, it’s just as important to spot trends that are just quick blips on the digital landscape. These are the waves you can ride out without adjusting your business strategy. The question is — how do you stay on top of what’s trending in your industry, and which trend do you need to respond to? There are many worthy tools that help you see the big picture, and one such gem is Google Trends.
Google Trends has been on the scene for about a year now, and it features data dating all the way back to 2004. It’s a free tool that displays historic search query information, updated hourly, which is sliced and diced in various ways to optimize full scale analytics. It’s most useful to small business owners who are about to embark on a new frontier, or who need to assess how their current offerings are faring in the world of search. With this tool, you can amass data about specific locations, age groups, niches, and related demographic info.
Google Trends gives you the power to study any search term and see how it measures up to other keywords, during specific time periods and/or in specified geographic regions. It’s important to note that you won’t learn how many individuals are searching for your selected keywords, but instead be able to gauge the popularity of a term over time. This is precisely the kind of invaluable insight that can help propel your business to new successful heights.

Types of Google Trends Data

In Google’s own words, Google Trends “analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.” Since the results are updated hourly, the data is about as current and relevant as it gets. Here are a few aspects of the data your business might be interested in analyzing:

1) Seasonal Results

If you run a business that sells sports equipment, there will be obvious sales spikes for certain sports items based on the time of year. Google Trends will show you exactly when baseball bats start trending more on a yearly basis, as an example, and can help you map out your marketing campaign strategies down to the day and hour.

2) Comparing Degree of Interest

Looking to see how different products compared to each other based on search volume and traffic? Google Trends will show you. You can slice this data based on location, keywords, or time of year. For example, if you run an online florist store and need to compare the interest level of roses versus carnations for a given time period, Google will chart the results side by side. Likewise, you can see if Louisiana is more interested in roses than Nebraska for the same time period. The side by side comparison options are hugely powerful.

3) Forecasting

Since studying trends should be a long term task, setting up forecast searches that you absorb on a regular basis is also a potential business booster. Watch and see how your targeted keywords fluctuate over time. Choose time chunks that range from weeks to months and years, and monitor predictable shifts. If you notice, for example, that for your flower company roses are less popular search terms in September, and Gerber daises are in fact more popular, you have insight on an excellent marketing shift.

4) Singular vs. Plural

Have you ever wondered if it matters whether your search terms are singular or plural, and which are more popular? Every letter of your keywords does indeed matter, so understanding exactly how your users are searching for these terms is critical. If your company sells exercise equipment, as an example, you’ll need to know if people generally search for “exercise bike” or “exercise bikes.” Google Trends will tell all.

5) What’s Hot

You can also eyeball the hottest searches from the past 24 hours, or look for searches that have had significant shifts in traffic. These insights are fabulous for media outlets and bloggers looking to report on hot and current topics.

Top Tips for Getting the Most out of Google Trends

The obvious top way Google Trends helps boost your business is through the accurate selection of keywords. Use the tool for extensive studies on which of your targeted keywords are actually used the most, and in what exact format. Trends will also suggest similar keywords and provide an analysis. It’s best, however, to use the information you find here in tandem with other keyword and analytics tools. Because this simply charts overall popularity, you don’t want to bank your entire keyword strategies only on Google Trends results, but you absolutely want to carefully consider everything you uncover.
Next, you need to analyze the quality of the search popularity, and not just assume high numbers means high interest. Oftentimes keywords trend in a negative fashion, due to scandals or current news topics. You obviously don’t want to associate your business with negative news stories, so be sure the spikes in popularity you are studying match up with the tone and spirit of your business. One of the best features of Google Trends is that it highlights which stories may have spiked the keyword trend for the given period you are plotting.
Use the tool to see how well your competitors are trending as well. Additionally, you can analyze the results to see which keywords they may be using with more success, and adapt your strategy accordingly. Likewise, look for search terms that directly relate to your industry; see which are currently popular, which have maintained popularity over time, and which are simply not used much at all. This allows you to monitor your specific brand, competitors, and overall industry.
Highlighting current trends in your marketing strategy is a great way to attract more traffic. For example, if you sell novelty items and have noticed the current moustache trend, you know for sure you want to include related keywords in your content and marketing materials.
Lastly, Google Trends is a great tool to help you spark content ideas. As mentioned above, if you’re looking for popular current search terms to shape a marketing campaign, or to write compelling content about, Trends is a goldmine. It’s the perfect place for social marketers to get ideas on what to talk about. Relevant and engaging content is the single greatest SEO tactic available, so use Trends to help you chart your next great piece of media.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/29/how-to-use-google-trends-to-boost-your-business/

Top 40 SEO Myths You Should Know About – Part 1

Myth #1: Only the First Rank Matters

Many ebooks and other resources that business owners use will place an important emphasis on the need to be at the top of search results, whether that be on Google Search, other engines, or even in places like social media. But surveys have shown that people quite often will look at other results and they will scroll down through the page. Being on top of a second page, for example, can be quite beneficial for traffic. Also, search ranking is only one part of the puzzle. Now Google places other results on the page like social recommendations and local results as well, which means there are many more avenues open to you, and being in first place is no longer as crucial as it once was.

Myth #2: You can do SEO Without Outside Help

Doing SEO simply means that you follow a set of techniques and procedures to improve the chance that web users will go to your site. It is true that anybody can learn these techniques, and, if you are a web site owner and you want to do your own SEO, then you can spend the time to learn and apply those techniques. But SEO can be complex and touches many areas such as marketing online, coding, technical aspects and PR skills. Most business owners simply do not have everything required to do a great job at SEO, and that is why so many agencies exist that offer help. An IT worker or online marketer is often not enough if you want truly good results.

Myth #3: META Tags are Very Important

It used to be that every page on your site needed Meta tags in order to rank well. Those are small pieces of code that would give Google a list of keywords and a description. The search engine would use those to find out what your web site was about. Now however, those do not affect your ranking at all. Both Google and Bing stopped caring about META tags awhile back. However, Meta tags are not useless. For example, the description tag is the text that often appears next to the link that shows up in the search results, so it still serves a useful function.

Myth #4: Keyword-Rich Domain Names are Ranked Higher

Back in the dotcom days, it used to be that the URL you used was very important. Google placed a lot of importance on the domain name, and if you could get a name that had your keyword in it, you would gain a big advantage over other sites. This is why a lot of companies in the late 90′s bought domain names for a lot of money. But now, the indexing process only looks at the actual content of your pages, and not the domain name. The domain name is still important, because people still get to see it, but it will not give you a higher rank.

Myth #5: You have to Submit Your Site to Google or Other Search Engines

All search engines used to have URL submission forms where you could send your site to Google and others. In fact, they still do, but that process is unnecessary. The crawlers that these engines use now are sophisticated enough that any new site will be found in a matter of days, if not hours. The only time you would have to worry about submitting your site is if for some reason it was not indexed automatically after a couple of days.

Myth #6: Submitting a Sitemap will Boost Your Rankings

Google offers a webmaster interface and from there, you can submit a sitemap, which is a XML file containing links to every page on your site. Some site owners take the time to submit such a file every time they make a change, but that is not necessary. Submitting a sitemap does not change your rankings. All it does is add pages which may not have been indexed already. If your site is typical and has links to all your pages, then it is not needed.

Myth #7: SEO has Nothing to do with Social Media

Before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, SEO was the one and only technique to get traffic in an organic way. But now, social media is everywhere, and the line is quickly blurring between the two. While some marketers still consider SEO and social media to be different beasts, the truth is that they are very closely linked. For example, Google now places their own social network, Google Plus, into its search results. If you can get enough influential people to talk about your product and link to your site, then their recommendations will show up in any Google search result that their friends do. This clearly affects SEO. On the flip side, Facebook has also entered search, by recently introducing their Open Graph engine, which searches based on friends and interests. So the two spheres are closely linked, and they are becoming closer all the time.

Myth #8: Google does not read CSS Files

The Google bot used to be fairly primitive and only saw text, which is why many people concentrated on the text part of their web site. But now that engine is very sophisticated and reads JavaScript, CSS, and more. The crawler can definitely see whether your site’s presentation is appealing to users or not. For example, if someone searches on a mobile device and you have no mobile layout on your site, you may be missing out.

Myth #9: You Need to Update Your Home Page All the Time

Some people think that by updating their home page content all the time they will rank higher, or by not updating it their ranking will drop. In most cases that is not the case, because if you have a sales page that offers a product, then there would be no reason to update that page unless something about the product changes, and Google expects that.

Myth #10: The H1 Header has Greater Value than the Rest of Your Text

The structure of your page is seen by Google and other engines, but you have to realize that many sites are structured very differently. As such, no one specific tag has more value than another. An H1 tag is simply a header that corresponds to a CSS entry in order for the user to see your page a certain way. It does not make Google rank your page any differently if you use H2 tags instead, or if your keywords are mostly in the text and not in a specific CSS tag.

Myth #11: Linking to Other Highly Ranked Sites Helps Your Ranking

Some sites try to link to many other high authority sites in order to help their rankings, but that does not help at all. Google uses PageRank to decide how your site will rank, and that algorithm is based on how useful your site is to others, and as such it will only look at how many other people link to you. Whether you link back to them is of no importance. Otherwise, any site could rise to the top simply by linking to millions of sites, which is simply not the case.

Myth #12: Using Automated SEO Methods is Always Spam

Many people use automated SEO methods that do not fall into the spam area. Many companies have very big sites and they use automated scripts to do a lot of the grunt work of SEO. Whether or not a method is spammy is based on what the result is, not on how automated it is.

Myth #13: PageRank is the Only Factor that Matters

The algorithm that Google uses to rank sites is PageRank, which determines how useful a site is to others. But according to Google, search result rankings are also affected by hundreds of other inputs. Some of these inputs are easy to see, like having your site being recommended by others on Google Plus. This proves that not only PageRank matters. The company is staying tight-lipped on how many inputs there are and how important each is, but it is clear that there is more going on than just PageRank. With that said however, it is still widely believed that PageRank is the most important factor, and a PR10 page is always better than a PR3 page.

Myth #14: The Title Tag is Hidden from Search Engines

Most of what Google sees on your site is the text that is visible to users, such as what appears on the screen and is rendered in a web browser. As such, it would be easy to think that the title is not picked up. However, your title is very important for SEO, because it is the text that appears on the link people will click on. Not only is Google using it to help your ranking, but people will also see it when they go to click on your site.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/24/top-40-seo-myths-you-should-know-about-part-1/

Learn Three Basic Google Analytics Features for Ultimate Tracking Success

There are three Google Analytics features all webmasters should be using, according to expert Krista Seiden.
Becoming comfortable with event tracking, advanced segments and shortcuts is key to successfully using Google Analytics, said Seiden who is the product marketing manager at Google Enterprise.

Event Tracking

Site owners want to know about actions on their pages — that is where event tracking comes in, Seiden said. Event tracking, for instance, can tell the website owner if a visitor clicked on a particular button, completed a form or watched a video.
“Because event tracking in Google Analytics is a blank slate in terms of setup and use, there is no one right answer for how to set it up and use,” she said.
The first step is to investigate the event hierarchy: What are the categories, actions, and labels and how is data arranged into these three layers?
Although the best way to organize an event tagging hierarchy can vary from site to site, Seiden recommended using the following sequence:
• Category: location of event (Homepage, About Us page, Resources page, etc.)
• Action: action the user took (Video, Whitepaper download, Start Trial, etc.)
• Label: specifics about action (Video name, Whitepaper name, detail of linked clicked if there are multiple with same action (ex. Learn more— product A, learn more — product B, etc.)

Advanced Segments

“Advanced segments are a great way to filter data to be more specific to the question you are trying to ask,” Seiden said. “For example, you can create a segment for a region (North America = U.S. + Canada), or you can create a segment for a set of pages (meaning visit applies to homepage and/or about us page).”
Seiden has created a Google doc with step-by-step instructions and links to some pre-built regional segments that can be seen below. To see it in full, click here.

5 Reasons Your SEO is Failing

If you listen closely, you can almost hear the lamented cries of business owners across the globe every day as they watch their search engine rankings crash and burn. Too often those who are the most sincere and determined do not see their efforts come to fruition, and this usually transpires in a fit of confusion. If you are one of the many perplexed and frustrated online entrepreneurs trying to understand why your SEO efforts keep falling flat, read on and take an honest look at which of your decisions cause Google to send you to the back of the line.
1) A Website That Can’t Convert
Before you dive into link sharing, keywords and various other external tactics, it’s crucial that you first examine what’s not working with your own website. All the clever SEO tricks in the world won’t move your revenues if your site fails to convert visitors. So before you throw all your efforts into rankings and traffic, first ensure your website is ready to welcome the masses. If your current conversion rate is lackluster, targeted marketing efforts will only expose this all the more. Make sure navigation is intuitive, your homepage is compelling and informative, there are no content dead ends or other bad user experiences, and that your ecommerce experience is fluid and flawless.

This may seem like common sense, but it’s staggering how many business owners don’t realize their problems start at home. If you have a website worth shouting about, only then is it time to call in the marketing hounds.
2) Doing Everything Yourself
It’s tempting to take on SEO (and just about every other role) yourself when you’re stepping into an entrepreneurial position, but think twice if you want professional results. You likely know already that the world of SEO is complex and extremely dynamic. Staying on top of trends and your own site’s current rankings is a huge undertaking. Those who do SEO halfway get results to match, so as soon as it is possible, hire a consultant or staff member that spends at least half their day focused on your SEO and social marketing efforts. You’ve got many other aspects of your business to manage.
3) Using Outdated Strategies
Another sure-fire way to decrease your rankings is to follow archaic strategies. According to a recent report from RivalIQ, over 50% of companies still use meta keyword tags, even though Google has not used them in their algorithms for years. Not only is this a waste of time, but it also publicly reveals your keyword strategies to your competitors. This is further evidence that you shouldn’t own SEO responsibilities yourself, unless you are aces at staying on top of trends.
4) You’re Not Playing Nice with Others
Many business owners are hesitant to link to other sites for fear they are sending traffic to their competitors. While it is essential to choose your link share partners wisely, building content in a silo will not get search engines to notice you. Google and company like businesses that clearly play well with others, so targeted links to and from your site are essential to great SEO. Likewise, as we recently emphasized in a separate article on link sharing, if you’re linking to any site that has shady partners of any kind (spammers, link builders with no content, etc.) you, too, will be punished. So play nice, but choose your partners wisely.
5) Guessing at Your Keywords
Most site owners work hard at predicting which keywords their customers will most likely use to find their site. While a little guesswork is necessary pre-launch, it is far more important to watch and see how traffic finds you once you’re live. Failure to optimize your content and keyword strategy based upon these real-world results will definitely cripple your ranking efforts. Most SEO tools have a “search in reverse” function – make this your best friend once your site is live.
Even better, integrate your tool with your analytics source (like Google Analytics), so you can see how well your site is optimized for the keywords that are driving traffic. Don’t assume you know the best keywords for your content. It’s a game of psychology, ultimately, and your users will tell you how they are attempting to find your content. The key is to listen, and respond accordingly.
Achieving envy-worthy search engine rankings requires the perfect marriage of a great website, stellar content and savvy marketing tactics. Failure to excel in any of these areas will not produce top tier results. Typically, business people who are most frustrated about their lackluster search rankings are focusing too much on one area, and are not embracing the need for balance. Google’s ultimate goal with all their algorithms and best practices is to give their users the best possible experience when they search for anything on the web. So your first step is to make sure your site does just that.
Once you have the confidence that what you have created is top-shelf, then (and only then) is it time to get the attention you deserve. Results-oriented SEO is not about magic tricks and pixie dust – it’s about stellar content and smart, honest marketing and connecting. Without this balance, Google will continue to look right past you.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/19/5-reasons-your-seo-is-failing/

Photography and Social Media — a Successful Partnership

Photos and social media are ideal mates and are great for use in online marketing campaigns,
Photos share well on social media and you can put your logo on them as a watermark to increase exposure for your website.
If you go to an event that fits in with your business take your camera and be on the lookout for photo opportunities to use in your campaign.
Here are my tips:

• Having a good camera and flash helps, but that is far from the end of it. Having a good camera helps you to capture the imagine, even in low-light settings. Having a big camera makes people take you seriously (I know….).
• Having a good lens can make a good camera take great pictures.  If you are just starting, you may consider a lens that offers some amount of zoom and as large of an aperture as you can afford.  Prime lenses (one’s with no zoom) are typically a bit sharper, but not quite as versatile as a zoom lenses.  Once you’ve warmed to your camera, you will probably start thinking about expanding your lens collection.
• A large part of taking good photos is about your attitude. You do not want to get in the way, but you need to have the confidence to ask to take people’s photos, and do so confidently so they are put at ease and are good subjects.
• Framing the right shot so you make your subjects look good in the photo also matters. Make sure you get just the right amount of room around them and check what is in the background.
• Use Photoshop. Changing the levels and colors in the photos after you have shot them can make OK photos look stunning.
• Photos of beautiful people get a lot of attention and a lot of likes on Facebook. So try and find some attractive people at the event.
• Posting your event photos on Facebook during or just after the event is far better then posting days or weeks later.
• Take a photo of the event organizer and tag him or her, so people will find your photos. If you make the organizer look good, he or she will invite you to future events.
• Group photos work well because if one person is tagged, their friends can find it.
• If you make someone look great, they will promote your photos for you.

Shooting professional-level photography is easier and less expensive than it was in the past. Cameras now have more features at a lower price.  Even high-end consumer models can take professional looking photos.  Now is a great time to become a photographer, whether it’s just a hobby, or something you want to do promote your business.
resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/16/photography-and-social-media-a-successful-partnership/

Top SEO Plugins for WordPress Sites

If you run one of the 70 million websites built with WordPress, you are likely concerned about SEO, and overwhelmed by your options. These days, there is no shortage of plugins built to assist with SEO and social sharing, but it’s hard to find the gems in a sea of widget madness. Read on for advice on which are truly helpful in boosting your search engine efforts!

WordPress SEO Basics
Before you start installing a plethora of plugins, you’ll want to tackle a few basic SEO tasks on your WordPress site. These are must-haves for Google-friendly sites, and are a great place to start your strategy.

1) Map Out Your Site’s Structure

All you need to create an easy to follow site flowchart is a great MindMap tool. Mind42 makes an excellent one, and it’s totally free too. The tool will help you create a site guide that compartmentalizes navigation sections and lets you see a snapshot of the entire flow.

2) Setup Your Permanent URL Structure

First, set your preferred permalinks format in the WordPress settings; you’ll have several options to choose from, but none are completely SEO friendly. To rectify this, download the WP No Category Plugin, which will then remove the <word>/category sections of your URLs. This makes them clean, concise, and keyword rich.

3) Specify Which Folders Can and Cannot Be Crawled

Chances are there will be sections of your site that you would rather not allow search engines access to. To manage this process, create a Robots.txt file in the top-level directory of your site. For full instructions on how to add one to your site, visit the ‘Robots.txt how-to guide’ (http://www.robotstxt.org/ robotstxt.html). Once created, you can specify any folders that search engines will thereby ignore, and keep others from spying on this private content as well. It’s also a great solution for hiding duplicate content. Don’t forget that users can still access the pages through the direct URL.

4) Create a Sitemap
Many of the tools listed below will help you quickly generate a sitemap. When this is complete, don’t forget to submit it to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools as a request to start crawling your content.

The Best WordPress SEO Plugins

1) SEO Ultimate

This puppy is a meta data powerhouse, with access to controls for descriptions and keywords, Google Webmaster Verification, and integration with Google Analytics. If you have a lot of pages with separate titles, Ultimate will help you manage all this data with ease.

2) Local Search SEO Contact Page

Perfect for those just beginning their quest for great SEO, Local Search allows you to add all business information to your site’s contact page, and will also include an embedded Google map, which links to your Google+ Local account.

3) WordPress by Yoast

Yoast helps determine what your current SEO score is, and in tandem, lets you monitor the areas that require some improvement. Yoast will let you know if your keywords are missing from title and H1 tags, and looks at your content and metadata too. This tool is rumored to be the most-used WordPress SEO plugin, and for good reason. It assists in setting up XML sitemaps, helps you map out all title and description templates, and truly enables you to stay on top of all the SEO must-do’s. If you only have one SEO plugin, this should be it. It’s regularly updated too, which is a big bonus.

Top SEO-Friendly Image and Content Tools

1) SEO Friendly Images

This plugin does exactly what you’d expect – ensures all your images have alt attributes, title tags and all other relevant search engine data. There’s also a premium version that unlocks a myriad SEO features, like XML sitemap generators and custom settings.

2) SEO Content Control

If you’ve got a lot of content on your site, you need this tool to help you identify the weakest links. Options for SEO Content Control include viewing a list of all pages/posts that have lackluster (too short) text, missing meta data, and missing keywords.

Must-Have Analytics Plugins

1) SEO Rank Reporter

Rank Reporter is an awesome tool that allows you to monitor your Google ranking through your WordPress dashboard, and it’s updated every three days. This plugin will help you assess if and when more SEO improvements are needed. When your ranking slips, you can use the other tools to identify why this may have occurred, and then set out to address each one.

2) Google Analyticator

If you’re a fan of Google Analytics, download this plugin now and integrate the data directly into your WordPress dashboard. You’ll be able to view your top performing pages, referrers, and keywords, among many other invaluable metrics.

Top-Notch Social Plugins

1) Sociable
Sociable is a superior sharing plugin that is jam-packed with customization options. It features an excellent default setup,with the options to use all your own personal icons and images. It’s super easy to connect to most WordPress themes, and makes your social sites immediately accessible to your users.

2) Social Media Tabs

This one is a unique plugin that allows you to add a social media widget to your site in a tabbed format, showing data from your major social sites. It currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, and RSS.
You are now armed with a gaggle of excellent, functional and easy-to-use WordPress SEO tools. Go forth and enjoy your increased rankings!
Resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/15/top-seo-plugins-for-wordpress-sites/

What’s the Chance a Startup Business will Fail?

Startup Business situation for internet marketing field.

Video SEO Has Landed: Google Trends Tracks YouTube

Google Trends, the stellar tool that reveals hot topic keyword searches to crafty SEO experts, has officially launched a game changer: users can now track any and all searches on YouTube. Why is this so significant?
YouTube has arguably been the second largest search engine for many years now, behind mighty Google but often way ahead of Yahoo and Bing. Now that YouTube has announced their support from Google Trends, marketers and curious netizens can now learn all they ever wanted to know about YouTube’s user searches. This gives experts a new bird’s eye view into the search habits of users on the mega-site, which to video content creators and marketers is a godsend.

How to Use the New Feature

If you haven’t yet used Google Trends, you’re missing out. It’s one of Google’s most intuitive and useful tools. To access the new YouTube data, launch the site, plot a search and find the “limit to” option on the left hand side. Select “YouTube” and feast on the results. You can choose to examine trends across all of Google and YouTube, or narrow your research strictly to YouTube only. You can also segment by region or category.
SEO professionals use Google Trends regularly to help chart the ideal keywords for their target businesses. They can test to see how prevalent currently used search terms are, and see up-to-the-minute results for other potential searches as well, to guarantee their content is well-matched with the exact things users are after. Trends is a fantastic way to get a legitimate feel for what people are searching for, and to determine how best to optimize your own sites for top Google rankings. Now that video data is included, Trends has become a must-have tool for any and all content publishers.

Consequences of the Merger

Before YouTube searches were tracked by Google Trends, video publishers relied on educated guesses and limited research to help decide how to position their content. With the new content marriage, watch for YouTube creators to quickly ascertain how best to name their videos in order to reach the maximum number of avid watchers. Overall, this is good news for users, as it will encourage publishers to be a lot more polished and professional in naming and describing their content.
Now, publishers can actually search to see what people are looking for in relation to videos and create content focused around what’s hot. In the world of YouTube, most trends that reach maximum popularity do so through a serious of spikes, then begin to taper off. Close examination of recent data will help to reveal if current trends are still at their peak, or are starting to dissipate. These metrics will take a tremendous amount of guesswork out of the video marketing process.

Highlights of the YouTube Data

Google added YouTube trends that go as far back as 2008, so SEO folks can get a great grasp on the old and the new. Having access to historical performance trends makes the data even more useful, for obvious reasons.
Early trend results prove that assumptions about what’s hot and what’s not are anything but obvious. For example, given a list of cats, dogs and goats, which would you assume is currently seeing the most traction? If you guessed cats, the obvious internet darlings, you would be sadly incorrect. Goats are currently the cat’s meow – just look at this chart for proof (and visit this screaming goat video to see what started the madness to begin with.)
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/11/video-seo-has-landed-google-trends-tracks-youtube/

Savvy Social Marketing Tactics to Improve SEO

Every online marketing department, no matter how large or small, is now implementing various strategies for SEO and social marketing. The really smart ones, however, don’t ever forgot how integrated the two really are. Social marketing campaigns are all about the creative sharing of content, and great content can mean great SEO. By employing many of the current SEO trends in every social marketing campaign you create, you better your chances to make both efforts a smashing success.
So what aspects of SEO should be considered when executing smart and effective social marketing strategies? There are many savvy tactics, but at the heart of every one sits a personal strategy to connect with and truly engage your audience. Below are some invaluable and current methods to make your brand memorable to both your customers and search engines.

SEO – The Numbers Don’t Lie

A recent study presented by SearchEngineWatch shows just how critical it is that your business land on the first page of results for your keywords. The good news: if you’re smart about your tactics, you don’t have to pay for top placement. 85% of clicks land on organic links, as opposed to paid features, which means the majority of users gravitate to sites that used brains, not dollars, to get their attention. The more alarming news: 53% of those clicks hit the first organic listing. This means if you’re not on the first page, and darn near the top, you will likely be overlooked.

Make SEO a Multi-Pronged Approach

Most of us already incorporate SEO best practices into our website marketing strategies. But by making SEO a top-of-mind consideration in every marketing effort, you up your chances at a high ranking. Your business website, local directories, blogs, and social media profiles should all work hard to carry out your SEO goals. The more consistent they are in word choice, tone, style and engagement, the better.
Why? For starters, it’s a numbers game. The more quality content you have on the web that consistently and accurately reflects your brand, the better. Social media can arguably generate a vast majority of your content, so be consistent with your keywords in all your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn shares, and you’re well on your way.

Social Marketing and SEO – Create a Perfect Marriage

The first step in weaving SEO tactics into you social media is to ensure all your profiles are complete to the last detail. Create a vanity URL that best expresses your brand (and remember, with sites like Facebook, you only have one chance to lock this in – choose wisely.) Try and make all your URLs as consistent as possible too. Then, make sure the About sections and related areas have content that is readable, accurate, and full of your targeted keywords and style. If the social media partner allows it, don’t forget to backlink to your business’s site as well.
There is often a tendency for businesses to overlook these details, placing generic sentences that indicate there’s an assumption no one will ever read it. Here’s a tip: Even if few users ever will read this text (which may or may not be the case), search engines will. Make every opportunity to share information and content about your business matter.
Likewise, never leave the geographic details on social media sites blank either, especially if you service a physical area or group of areas. Customers will likely be searching for you in a given area, and these stats placed on various social sites make you that much easier to find.

If It’s Not Engaging, It’s Not Social

You already know you need quality, shareable content on your social media pages. The difference between something that earns a handful of Likes, however, and content that actually engages your customers means everything in online marketing. Your social content should not just aim to gain a few eyeballs, but to encourage viewers to keep coming back. Engagement, therefore, is far more valuable than just content that people read, “Like”, and leave. One-off Likes don’t create enviable conversion rates – engagement does. Engagement means asking questions your customers actually want to discuss, offering discounts or deals that they act on immediately, or supplying viral videos that incite users to watch and share, among others. Each of these social events also helps your SEO. The more people engage and share your content, the more search engines view that content as valuable. Much of great SEO is about establishing consistent authority, and social media is an obvious opportunity if you work to authentically engage the masses.
Of course, creating regular engagement with your brand requires you to regularly engage with your customer. It is absolutely imperative that you not only post content on a consistent basis, ideally similar times each day/week, but that you respond to your social fans in as close to real-time as is conceivable for your business. If someone actually takes the time to comment or ask something on a social page of yours, a speedy response is integral to keeping that customer engaged. And again, if people are reading, sharing and engaging with your content, search engines are noticing.

Consistency is Key

One core strategy to consider regarding the integration of your SEO and social campaigns revolves around tone and voice. If possible, it’s a very good idea to let one person become the voice and face for your brand, so that users can engage with an actual person, rather than a generic logo/ideal. People trust people more than they trust companies. It’s also easier for one person to stay mindful of keywords, content consistency, and release schedules than it is for a disjointed team.
Look at Google – they have no shortage of employees, but it’s Matt Cutts that often speaks front and center for the mega-business with regards to SEO. Although he gets plenty of slack, he does an outstanding job of maintaining a friendly and approachable image.
If you do have an online ambassador, make sure he or she not only understands your business inside and out, and can create a friendly and likeable persona, but that he/she can also handle the onslaught of negative commentary that is often unavoidable in a public space. As we all know, the internet can be a very cruel place, so your representative should stay positive in the face of some friendly (and not so friendly) feedback.

The Big Picture

Every piece of content and every last reply, tweet and post you create, should all share a common goal and message from your brand. How you engage with your audience is and always will be up to you – you know your customers best. Good marketing strategies consider every nuance of the customer, and now, those executions must bear in mind successful SEO strategies as well. The good news is, they are not mutually exclusive. People love quality, consistency and credibility, and so do search engines. By carefully monitoring the success of all your social campaigns in terms of traffic, audience engagement, and SEO rankings, you can create a multi-pronged strategy that improves each critical aspect. It’s the true definition of a win-win.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/05/savvy-social-marketing-tactics-to-improve-seo/

Optimizing Your Website for SEO in 2013

Google algorithms have always been something of a mystery, but for many webmasters they have become a nightmare. Over the last year, keyword searches have become erratic, understanding how to improve page rank is more confusing than ever and the search engine giant is penalizing online businesses for all sorts of ungamely reasons.
Two recent surveys conducted independently of each other have shed some light on how Google algorithms measure the performance of a website and rank it accordingly. For the most part, the results told us many things we already know, but also revealed a shift in factors that produce the best results.
The first study conducted by BusinessBolts.com analyzed 100 randomly selected keywords and assessed them against the top five websites that appeared in Google for each search. A second survey conducted by Dr. Peter J Meyers took 10,000 B2B keywords and split them across 20 categories. Although the search results were predictably erratic, significant patterns were found in respect of keywords, word count, title tags, back links and local searches.

Title Tags, Keywords and Word Count

It seemed at one point that Google was ignoring title tags and some SEO specialists still discredit the need for updating your meta-fields. The latest surveys suggest your choice of keywords in your title tags is one of the most important aspects of your website architecture. Given these tags are used by search engines to index your site, increase visibility and encourage web users to click it stands to reason that they are needed.
The overall use of keywords on the other hand is not as important as it used to be. At one time search engines invested substantial trust in keywords and specified they should be placed in strategic positions on a webpage so the page could be correctly classified. The latest tests revealed that the significance of keywords has been reduced to the main heading and one or two of the sub-headings depending on the length of your content.
Speaking of content, Google seem to favor a word count of around 900 words. This figure fits into standard copy writing philosophy that long copy proves to be more successful than short copy. Therefore your Homepage, services and product pages will fair better with both search engines and prospects if they are longer.

Backlinks

Link building is perhaps the most troublesome SEO tactic at present. We know that inbound links carry a lot of weight with Google and the results published in the respective surveys confirm this – the problem is, knowing which inbound links will be accepted as legitimate.
Search engine algorithms do not allow inbound links that manipulate the page results and have limited link building exercises to genuine referrals from third party web owners, social media users or contributing to reputable industry magazines. There is a question mark over whether links embedded into articles from third party blogs will continue to hold any sway moving into 2013. For the time being, it’s probably best to forget that idea.
What was significant, although not entirely unexpected, was the importance of likes, shares and +1′s on various social media networks. It is apparent that Google discounts any links posted in the linked account of the business owner’s account, but does weigh up the number of people sharing the link or clicking the “Like” in Facebook.
Another aspect that is given preference in Google search is locality. We have known for some time now that local searches are given priority in search engine listings when a specific area is typed in as part of the search term, but it is surprising how many web owners have not updated their contact details or included their locality on the Homepage to take advantage of this.

Author Rank

It didn’t surface in the latest round of search tests, but you can add rel=author to the list of SEO tactics you should be employing in 2013. Author rank was launched last June and is expected to give websites with a recognized author a better page rank than sites that do not have a verified author.
In his book, “The New Digital Age,” Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt writes: “…information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification… The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”
The Author Rank is a strategy Google hopes to develop to ensure the content of a website has the quality they intend to deliver to the end user. Rather than trusting backlinks that can be easily manipulated, the search engine giant will rely on websites that use writers with a rank authority. Websites that are set up with a ranking author are clearly identified in search engine results by a photograph of the writer next to the search result.
It may take Google a while to collect enough data on authors before they can determine the level of ranking authority they have, but the earlier you set your site up with Author Rank status, the better position you will hold once the rel=author stats kick-in. Matt Cutts, chief spokesman for Google, says: “…over time, as we start to learn more about who the high quality authors are, you could imagine that starting to affect rankings.”

Setting Up Author Rank

To set up Author Rank you will need a Google+ Account. In the About section of your profile, there is a space titled “Contributor to” which needs to be updated with the URL of your website or any other site you have contributed content for. You then need to send your profile code – which looks like this – to the owner of the website you contribute to and ask him to paste it in the relevant plug-in of their content management system.
It may be the case that Google algorithms change continuously over the next couple of years until the search engine giant figures out the strategies to achieve its ultimate objective – delivering quality content to its ends users. Google is not out to penalize small businesses and promote large corporations like many people believe, but they do expect online business owners to maintain their websites and prove they can deliver the quality end-users want.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/04/optimizing-your-website-for-seo-in-2013/

Do You Really Understand How To Make the Most Of Social Media?

Much has been written about how to use social media to get the most out of it for your business, yet it seems many people still do not understand what social media is all about.
There are many definitions of what social media is — my favorites include: SEO Zodiac’s description, which says “social media is simply people having conversations online” and Health Social’s take on it: “social media is the meeting place between people and technology.”
In other words, social media is not a one-way street, where you talk at your audience.  Rather, it is a way for you to communicate with them, to help them and to listen to them.
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube are the most popular websites on the Internet because they allow people to connect on a very personal level, whether it be through posts, pictures or videos.
With so many people working from home, we have become somewhat isolated and crave the human interaction we’ve lost.  As much as the Internet and Smartphones make connecting to others easier, these tools have also made us hide behind our monitors.
If you take nothing else from this article, the main point you need to remember is, if you want to succeed through social media, you need to touch people’s hearts.  Find out what is important to them, what problems they are facing, what makes them laugh, what upsets them.  Then interact with them in a way that makes it easy for them to relate to you.  Don’t talk at them. Don’t try to sell them anything. Have a conversation with them — be interested in their problems and guide them to solutions.
I recently had the privilege of being part of a social media campaign run by the Australian Capital Territory Tourism, called ‘The Human Brochure.’  It is a brilliant strategy put together by one of Sydney’s great creative agencies, The Works.
The concept was to show both Australians and the rest of the world what Canberra (Australia’s capital city) is all about through the eyes of people who visit it.  ACT Tourism hosted 500 people from all walks of life for a weekend of fun and discovery on two different occasions.  There were four different streams to accommodate every type of traveller: Adventure, family fun, food and wine and arts and culture.
As we visited each venue, whether it was Questacon Science Museum, the Australian War Memorial or local restaurants, we got to share our adventures by posting photos, comments and videos on our social networks.  Family members, friends, colleagues, business partners and acquaintances then also saw all the exciting places there are in Canberra through our experiences.  And, since trust is such a big part of what social media is about, the added bonus to ACT Tourism was that we reached people on a very personal level and often with a humorous twist.
The human brochure is a social media campaign on a grand scale and not possible for every business to execute.  However, there are many other ways you can use the concept of human interaction, which demonstrate how the little things are really the big things.
One of the “big” stories circulating around while we were travelling through Canberra was that of a little girl who was part of the family fun group.  The child had left her bunny behind at one of the stops and couldn’t remember where.  So the search for bunny began … the bus drivers were alerted, as was the hotel staff.  To her parents’ relief the bunny was found in the hotel, so all ended well.  As a bonus the hotel staff member had left a cupcake for the bunny to enjoy until the little girl returned.
People talked and wrote about it and you can imagine what a great credibility booster this was for the hotel involved.  The simple gesture of leaving a cupcake for a bunny who meant so much to a little girl, cost the hotel $1, but will remain with those of us who have children for a very long time.
You can find out more about The Human Brochure here.

On a smaller scale, I saw a local ice creamery use social media to boost their sales.  The Chill Bar partnered up with Schibello coffee and Sydney Football club and organized an afternoon, during which members of the soccer club would serve ice cream and coffee to those who stopped by.
As a bonus, if you took a photo holding the coffee and posted it on Facebook, you got a chance to play a friendly game with the popular football players.
Needless to say lots of parents gladly brought their budding soccer players to meet their heroes, get their autograph, enjoy great coffee and gelato and, as a bonus, play a game with Sydney’s great soccer players.
Both the Human Brochure and Chill Bar demonstrated their understanding of what social media is about — taking what is important to people, making it fun and encouraging them to share it.  Not once did I hear a sales pitch — both campaigns were geared toward people enjoying what they were doing and giving them opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/03/do-you-really-understand-how-to-make-the-most-of-social-media/