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The Google Penguin Update

Rick Noel — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:34:06 +0000

The old adage that the good guys always come in last is often true in the world of Internet marketing where blackhat and greyhat practitioners (those who use techniques in efforts to game the search engine raking algorithms) often soar past the whitehats (try to play by the rules) in the search results.

Google Penguin Impact is Profound and Far Reaching

As of last April 24th, when Google rolled out the much anticipated and highly controversial Penguin update, which according to Google has levelled the playing field a bit in favour of the whitehat Internet marketers who take a long view, using techniques to gain links naturally, which roughly translated, means providing quality content of value that others which naturally link to. To story aof The Tortoise and the Hare shares a theme with Google’s recent Penguin update.

The What

Many Internet marketers, especially those on the front lines, will tell you that the latest Google Search update has many businesses scrambling to find their website in the search results they once dominated. While it came with ample notice, where somewhere between 750K and 1M site owners received unnatural link notices through Google Webmaster Tools, many sites were unable to react in time to save their rankings and were penalized. Many webmasters that have been burned by the wrath of Penguin have complained shouting fowl, with conspiracy theories abounding about how Google is trying to kill off organic search to drive PPC revenue, but that logic just doesn’t hold water and here’s why.

The Why

Theory: Google is motivated by relevant search results not for the sake or intent of killing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Organic Search, nor because they are natural search philanthropists, but because they want to drive more ad $.

Logic:

Google primarily revenue is paid search PPC ads
Google PPC search ad “inventory” is sized based on number of aggregate searches
Google will always include organic search results which for many users are more trusted than PPC ads
If Google discontinues organic results Google will lose market share to Bing, Blekko, DuckDuckGo, others
Google is motivated by ad revenue and maximizing PPC inventory, which is driven by it’s search volume
Google search volume is driven by maintaining market share in fixed (non-mobile) and mobile search
Relevancy is the single most important factor for search engines to maintain market share with the competition only a click away.
If a search engine can return more relevant results than Google, with the same breadth of knowledge, in a more efficient and better user experience, users will learn about it over time will adopt the better technology, especially since there is not a price premium. I for one have not yet found as extensive an index of the web with comparable performance
Search growth is driven today through mobile search, that is why Android/Motorola shipping with native Google search is so important)
Some say that Google is trying to kill SEO to drive PPC revenue with the implication that Google is cannibalizing its organic results to grow PPC, when in reality, wouldn’t the opposite happen?

Nothing New

Updates to the Google Search algorithm happen all the time with several hundred updates per year, with some estimates at over 500 last year alone, most designed to improve the relevancy of the search results and enhance user experience to enable Google to maintain their 2/3 majority of the Total US Search Market, which in 2011, was estimated to be worth $13.6 Billion in 2011 according to eMarketer.com.

The experts agree on some of the primary factors used by Google’s Penguin to penalize websites that were “over optimizing” in the recent Penguin update. These factors in Penguin include:

Lack of diversity in anchor text (high percentage of links with exact match anchor text which does not generally occur naturally in the work of Internet marketing),
Keyword stuffing in both internal and external links,
Spammy, ling, exact-match domains
Low-quality article marketing where techniques like article spinning are employed,
Blog comment spam often done using automated tools

As Internet marketers, and SEOs in particular, we have all seen these techniques propel our competition beyond us and our clients in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), often resulting in questions from clients about why not try these techniques that seem to be working for the competition. The answer: cheaters get caught. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, all cheaters get caught. It’s kind of like marriage. Sure, all married people encounter others they are attracted to, but for many, the thought of being unfaithful, no matter what your morals are, is not worth the risk and impact of getting caught.

All of these factors are associated with Internet marketing short-cuts that are designed to provide fast results in terms of driving traffic from natural/organic (unpaid) search results, while applying the least amount of cost to the site being promoted. The issue is that these techniques violate the Google Terms of Service and can lead to penalties up to and including being purged from the Google index altogether (divorce with a restraining order if we follow the marriage analogy). For sites that depend on Google for a substantial portion of their traffic, the implication is that these kinds of techniques are high risk and for most non-burn-and-churn business models, should be avoided.

The Long View

The answer for Internet marketers in it for the long term is that those crash and burn techniques can work well for a period of time, but given the constant advances that Google implements for the primary purpose of identifying sites that are trying to game the system at the expense of quality, relevancy and user experience, its best to play buy the rules, especially for branded domains. Sure, posts like this pre Penguin would be labeled as “naïve” and “goody two shoes,” but post Penguin rollout … well the smoke hasn’t even begun to clear yet. Yes, it is important to acknowledge that good sites will get hurt by this update and just like war, there are instances of collateral damage. It’s not fair. It just is.

If you think that you can game the Google in the long term, just think about this in terms of computing power of the system you are trying to game. A system that can index trillions of web pages and return detailed, specific search results in sub second response times that rival the power of IBMs might Watson of the infamous Final Jeopardy project. Here is a real world illustration. Within minutes of uploading a live video of Kansas Performing Dust in the Wind at a local, free outdoor concert, YouTube had identified the live performance as copyright protected material. How is that for computing power! That’s what I call pattern-matching on steroids and yes, you can bet that YouTube, owned by Google and the #2 search engine, share technology and human and technology resources with Google.

The Far Reaching Impact

Based on a recent study by SEOMoz.org, one of thought leaders in the SEO industry and a leading provider of SEO Tools and Knowlege, the most recent Penguin update has effected more search queries than any other Google Algorithm update in recent history (see figure below).

Impact of Google Penguin update relative to other recent search updates

We can see from the data collected by SEOMoz that the impacts of the penguin update effect far more searches/results/sites than did the last major update that received a lot of press, namely Panda, which was aimed at content that was thin and of questionable quality.

What is interesting is the unintended consequences that the Penguin update has had for Internet marketers on the other side of the world (literally). In fact, based on a recent article posted on Affiliate Temple, the Google Penguin Creates Mass Unemployment in India, where unfortunately for some Internet marketing practitioners in India, has caused a huge drop in demand for low cost linking building labor.

Going Forward.

Internet marketing is far from dead but the days of gaming the system just got harder and riskier. Internet marketers, and SEOs in particular, will do well to avoid the primary factors used by Google’s Penguin update. Always remember and know that Google is focused on relevancy in the organic search results. Relevancy drives search market share, which drives search volume, which in turn drives PPC inventory/ad revenue potential. Take away relevancy or worse yet, organic results and create immediate opportunities for Bing, Blekko, DuckDuckGo and others to come in and steal market share.

To date, my experience is that Google has the largest, most comprehensive content index in the world. Get down the long tail and try to find it on Bing, Blekko and DuckDuckGo. Sometimes, maybe. Guess it depends on the knowledge domain your are seeking.

10 Resources that can Help Businesses and their Internet Marketers and SEOs Respond to the Google Penguin Update

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The Google Penguin Update is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

Google Brand Activate Initiative Announced at Ad Age Digital

Rick Noel — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 04:59:30 +0000

Google’s Brian Zeug, Industry Director, and Sanaz Ahari, Senior Product Manager, discuss the Google Brand Activate Initiative, Google’s effort to measure impact and reach for brand marketers.

Listen to what they had to say in this brief YouTube video.

Making the Web Work for Brand Marketers

According to Google, the goal of Google Brand Activate Initiative is to enable brand advertisers to make more informed decisions with actionable brand metrics. The initiative offers capabilities to move beyond the more traditional metrics of impressions clicks, click-through rates and conversions.

In their official blog announcement, Google indicates that they are “partnering with the industry and supporting the IAB’s Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) coalition.” Google, as does the IAB, believes that this industry investment in brand measurement can substantially grow the online advertising opportunity for all industry participants by providing brands advertising online with some of the same metrics they have become accustomed to in other channels such as TV.

“One of the greatest things we can do as Google is help brand marketers understand the language of digital. In fact, the language of digital should really just be about marketing,” says Brian Zeug.

As part of this initiative, Google is introducing 3 products:

Active View
Active GRP
Active Survey Pilot

Active View

“What marketers want more than anything else is to see what they received for the money they invested. So it’s pretty simple and what we are going to give them in not only what they have had in the past, which is has my ad been served? So was the impression served, We are going to help them understand was the ad viewed,” says Brian Zeug.

“With Active View, we measure the percentage of the ad that was seen, as well as the duration that it was seen for. We believe the combination of these two attributes are critical for optimizing for view-ability by end users,” says Google’s Sanaz Ahari.

The Active View technology will be submitted for Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation that can count “viewed” impressions as a display ad that is at least 50% viewable on the screen for at least one second. Ths is based on IAB proposed standards, which may leave some wondering if one second is a meaningful view and the probable impact (or lack there of) for such a view.

According to Google’s announcement on the DoubleClick blog, the promise of Active View is to enable advertisers to pay only for impressions that were actually viewed.

Active GRP

“In order for us to extend brand marketing effectively from TV to online, it is important for us [Google] to have a metric that translates across the two mediums. Active GRP is that metric for online,” says Sanaz.

“We are filling gaps for the industry and we are working extremely fast and extremely hard to understand the relationships around who saw the ad, what did they think and what did they do, “said Brian.”

What we are even more excited about is connecting the dots across these three pillars and figuring out ultimately how to optimize within each one,” says Sanaz.

“So we are not stopping. This isn’t the first and only step. There are multiple steps here. So what we are really passionate about is fueling that insights engine. The work that we are doing to make you understand your consumer better,” says Brian.

Active GRP is based on the concept of GRP, or a gross rating point, which is central to traditional, non-digital media measurement. For example, when a national brand wants their TV campaign to reach 4 million men with three ads each, they use GRP to measure that. Google DoubleClick is introducing a new version of GRP for the web in its Active GRP capabilities. The Active GRP capability, according to Google has two key components:

Built-in: Active GRP is integrated into the ad serving technologies that Google DoubleClick interface that publishers and Internet marketers already use every day. According to Google, Active GRP will enable real-time decision making, allowing advertisers to make adjustments to their campaigns on the fly. Currently, Google is implementing a pilot program for DoubleClick for Advertisers clients as a first step, with plans to implement this feature into other Google products, providing brands the capability to be able to specify a range of audience GRP segments.
Robust methodology: Active GRP is calculated by a statistical model that combines aggregated panel data and anonymous user data (either inferred or user-provided), and will work in conjunction with Active View to measure viewed impressions. This approach address challenges of potential panel skewing and reliance on a single data source. Google states that its approach also has the advantage of never using personally identifiable information, not sharing user data with third parties, and enabling users, through Google’s Ads Preferences Manager, to opt-out. Like Active View, Google will be submitting their methodology for MRC accreditation.

While this sounds good on the surface, reactions in the blog sphere have been mixed, with many seeing the move as driven to benefit Google and their ability to attract more advertising budget away from traditional channels such as print and TV, while focusing more on increasing their sales than providing Google display advertisers with more actionable information in their online brand campaigns.

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Google Brand Activate Initiative Announced at Ad Age Digital is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

You’ve Reached the Maximum Number of People that Can be in Your Circles

Rick Noel — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 05:02:40 +0000

You’ve Reached the Maximum Number of People that Can be in Your Circles

How many of you have gotten this dreaded message from Google+? No doubt you other type A personalities, a Google+ hoarder or both. As you might already know, Google limits the amount of people/businesses that you can have in your circles to 5000. In my excitement and engagement on Google+, while enjoying the quality, niche user base and quality content on this new Google+ social platform, I had not really given any thought to hitting limits.

But then it came, this part Sunday morning at 1 am, the dreaded messages from Google+, in a red box at the top of the Google+ interface like the one at the top of this post, "You’ve reached the maximum number of people that can be in your circles at this time." What? For real!?? Argh!

I guess that I should not be surprised, since Facebook also limits the number of friends that you have to 5000, but for some reason, in the brave new Google+ world, I thought that things would be different in most regards. I guess drinking too much from the Google+ Cool Aid fountain has made me a little circle drunk.

What’s interesting is that it that your profile can be in many more than 5000 different Google+ user’s circles but you can only have 5000 Google+ profiles or pages across all your circles. Wow, I still can’t get over that. I wonder if the 5000 limitation is based on technology limitations or some kind of Google philosophy and/or guiding principle? In any event, for me at least, it takes some of the shine off this Google+ Internet marketing mousetrap and will require some clean up of my circles so that when somebody that I admire adds me to their circles, I can add them back if I so choose.

If you had not gotten this message too, there is a good chance that you would not have discovered this post as you may be seeking solutions or work-around to this limitation 5000 entities in your Circles limitation in Google+. What is strange is that my profile states that I have 4967 in my circles? That is what is stays on my profile page: In Rick’s circles (4966). But when I click on the circles icon and go to the circles page and click on your circles, it says 5000? Why the discrepancy?

What happened to the other 34 slots? Even when I remove some individuals from circles to free up a spot for someone I want to add in their place, still Google gives me the dreaded “You’ve reached the maximum number of people that can be in your circles at this time.” Am I in some kind of penalty box for my over-zealous circling, like some kind of underfed Internet marketing vulture?

After a Google Search for this message turned up nearly nothing (see SERPs below), I decided to blog about it as a means to connect with other like minded individuals in hopes that we might somehow find a solution to this 5000 people (and business page) limitation to Google+ circles. If you want to connect with me on facebook, I can be found at https://www.facebook.com/RickCNoel. On Facebook, I have space to spare

Leave a comment below if you have gotten the dreaded “You’ve reached the maximum number of people that can be in your circles at this time.” Let us know if you have found a work around or if you know of Google+ plans to relax this limitation. Wouldn’t that be a great way to attract the most engaging of Facebook users over to Google+?;-)

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You’ve Reached the Maximum Number of People that Can be in Your Circles is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

Pinterested?

Rick Noel — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:37:24 +0000

Pinterested?

Pin It

With over 9,202% year over year growth from Jan 2011 – 2012, something tells me it’s worth your time to learn a bit about Pinterest and determine whether or not it fits into your company’s integrated Internet marketing strategy.

Unprecedented Growth

Pinterest has set a record for being the fastest company in history to reach 10 million monthly unique visitors. See the figure below of Pinterest.com US Traffic Data Measured by Compete.com in Monthly Unique Visitors. The data shown below is from Jan 2011 – Jan 2012.

Pinterest.com US Traffic Data Measured in Monthly Uniques – Data from Jan 2011 – Jan 2012, provided by Compete.com

US Pinterest traffic has grown from119,767 monthly unique visitors per month to 11,140,641 from Jan 2011- Jan 2012 according to data from Compete.com. This represents an unprecedented year over year growth rate of 9,202%. In fact, from Dec 2011 through Jan 2012 alone, US Pinterest.com traffic grew from 7,208,409 to 11,140,641 unique monthly visitors, representing a 54.55% one month growth rate.

If you are an Internet marketer, this is no doubt not the first time you are hearing about Pinterest, and unless you have been on vacation for the last 6 months, how could you have not heard of it? If you are like me, your first thought is oh great, another Internet marketing mousetrap for me to learn and chew up my time. Many of these new Internet mousetraps, like Google+, seem to be too big to ignore. Besides, as human beings, none of us wants to feel like we are missing out on the next big thing. It’s a ground floor opportunity. Right?

Being far from an expert in Pinterest, the best that I can do here is point out some observations that make me believe that the interest level in Pinterest is warranted and more than just a flash in the pan.

Pinterest Benefits

Before investing the time in reading on to learn more about this phenomena called Pinterest, a fair question for any reader to ask is what’s in it for me? Here are some Pinterest benefits to consider:

High users engagement, in fact Pinterest is tied with Tumblr.com for the 2nd highest engagement of any website, just behind Facebook
Provides a popular channel for users to discover your image and video content, driving interested visitors directly to your website
Source of quality links to enhance rankings in the search engines, enabling increased search traffic. This indirect search traffic is incremental to the direct traffic cited in Pinterest benefit #2
Platform to showcase your brand through image and video
Large following not required to get value since Pinterest is an open website with a strong search capability and with users actively seeking interest-based content.
Brand legitimacy for large brands where the growing Pinterest user base will look for the brands that they traditional advocate for on other channels on Pinterest and those brands that they cannot find on Pinterest will speak volumes to the those advocates that are now Pinterest evangelists.

So now that you understand the potential benefits of Pinterest, what the heck is it?

Pinterst.com Homepage

Pinterest is an online pinboard application where users can “pin” up things they are interested in and organize them by categorized pinboards. Using these categorized pinboards, Pinterest lets you organize and share images and videos that you happen upon while browsing the Internet. Some popular uses of Pinterest and its pinboards include wedding planning, interior decorating, organizing and sharing favorite recipes (which dominate in the Pinterest.com homepage image above).

Users can you can browse others user’s pinboards and discover new things from other users who share common interests. When pinning an image or video, the pinner has the opportunity to add a link to an image or a link to any site you’d like.

Pinterest links are currently follow links (warning – geek alert), which suffice it to say, means that today, Google will follow and reward the website that is being link to which is why Pinterest can provide additional benefits to users who link to their own website beyond just the direct traffic, resulting in more traffic from Google searches (the secondary search effect).

The distribution and reach of your image and video content on Pinterest is through providing access for other Pinterest users to pin your content to their pinboards. This “repining” activity is what can broaden your reach as your content now shows up on their board and is more likely to be discovered. As users discover your content, some will follow you making it easy for them to stay connected with updates to your Pinboards and their contents

One of the aspects that make Pinterest unique relative to Facebook and LinkedIn, connections on Pinterest are interest-driven as opposed to by who a user knows. In other words, connections on Pinterest are driven by similar interests. The overwhelmingly graphical nature of Pinterest makes it irresistible to certain demographics (details below).

Pinterest Referral Traffic

According to traffic analysis from Shareaholic.com, based on referral traffic data aggregated from its 200,000 plus publishers which, collectively, reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.

Pinterest.com Share of Referral Traffic Based on Large Sample of over 200,000 Shareaholic.com publishers

Source: http://blog.shareaholic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/January-2012-Referal-Traffic.jpg

To keep this in perspective, Facebook, according to the Shareaholic.com data, provides 7 1/3x as much referral traffic as Pinterest, but sustained, accelerated growth by Pinterest, will lower this multiple over time.

Pinterest.com Demographics Data

The following information on Pinterest.com demographics was provided by DoubleClick Ad Planner by Google using data through January 31, 2012. Based on the Ad Planner Data, we see that the Pinterest.com audience is heavily skewed female with 21% male and 79% female, weighted nearly 4 to 1 female to male. From an age standpoint, 81% of Pinterest users are between the ages of 25-54, with 85% having at least some college education. Sixty-nine percent of Pinterest users have a household income of between $25k -$75K with 9% with household incomes of 6 figures or more.

Pinterest.com Demographic Data by DoubleClick Ad Planner by Google through Jan 31 2012

. For more information and for those interested in downloading the Pinterest.com Demographic Data by DoubleClick Ad Planner.

Exceptional User Engagement

Pinterest.com is an exceptionally “sticky” site and keeps it users engaged for long periods of time. In a recent study by comScore, it was determined that in November 2011, the average Pinterest.com visitor spent nearly an hour and a half on the site over the course of the month and more than 15 minutes per visit, ranking it third on consumer engagement. This is far greater than Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Google Plus, but less that than the 142 minutes for Tumblr and the 394 minutes of Facebook, the current poster child for user engagement.

Source: http://blog.comscore.com/2011/12/state_of_the_us_social_networking.html

The data shown here for the leading social networking sites focuses on visitation to the primary web pages for the selected sites via home and work computers, and excludes any activity from mobile phones & tablets, which for some of the social networks, will skew the numbers lower.

Nonetheless, the comScore study numbers used for directional can provide guidance and insights relative to audience engagement metrics, helping marketing executives prioritize the social media investments.

Next Steps:

Pinterest is a place for users to congregate, connect, collaborate and celebrate their fashion, taste and image in a user experience that doesn’t currently exist anywhere else. Therefore, for certain Internet marketers with digital assets that map nicely into the Pinterest taxonomy and who demographics link up with those on Pinterest.com, the logical next step is to sign-up for Pinterest at Pinterest.com

Pinterest membership is currently by invite only, just like the original LinkedIn model. You can request an invite from Pinterest or you can be invited by someone who is already part of Pinterest. When you receive your invite, you can register through Facebook Connect or connect through Twitter.

Feel free to contact eBiz ROI if you would like us to formerly send you a Pinterest invite.

Extra Credit

Though not required to build a following on Pinterest external to Pinterest, it is always beneficial to post a Follow Me on Pinterest badge on your website or blog to allow those who find your site and are Pinterest users, to connect with you easily. As you can see at the top of this post, we have added a Follow Me on Pinterest Badge in the upper right hand corner – only seemed fitting, feel free to use (http://pinterest.com/ebizroi). It is easy to create your Pinterest badge at http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

Use the Follow-Button widget to create the code applicable to your Pinterest Account. To create the code necessary , click the button of your choosing below to select the HTML code to embed. Then, copy and paste the code onto your site where you’d like it to appear.

Additional Pinterest Resources

Pinterest: Just what exactly is on it? BBC News Magazine
The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing by Pamela Vaughan of HubSpot
56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest by Beth Hayden – contributed by Mari Smith
Video: Add a Custom Facebook Pinterest Tab by Annie Infinite – contributed by Roz Fruchtman
Podcast: Add a Pin It With Pinterest Button On WordPress by Charly Leetham

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Pinterested? is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

Google Plus Business Page in 10 Easy Steps.

Rick Noel — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:39:11 +0000

Google Plus Business Page in 10 Easy Steps

1.) Create a personal profile on Google Plus.

2.) Seek out people that you want to connect with on Google Plus and add them to one or more of your circles

3.) Click on the home icon to go to your news stream. This is content that is dynamically populated by content that is shared by other Google Plus users you are connected to through your circles.

4.) Locate the Create a Google+ page button on the right side bar, under the Google+ Pages heading and click the Create a Google+ page link

5.) Pick a category on the Create a Googe+ page. Categories to choose from include:

a.) Local Place or Business, Product or Brand,
b.) Company Institution or Organization,
c.) Arts and Entertainment or Sports,
d.) Other. For our example, we will select Company Institution or Organization as that fits the example.

6.) Add your company info including:

a.)Page Name (use your business name),
b.)Website (optional, but If you link to your page from your website, it will help users discover it more easily),
c.)Category: Select a category from a predefined list (i.e. Consulting and Business Services is what we chose as Internet marketing services was not available)
d.)Audience Appropriateness with choices which determine who your page will be publicly visible to and its content is appropriate for :

i.) Any Google+ user,
ii.) Users 18 and older,
iii.) Users 21 and older,
iv.) Alcohol related,
v.) Opt-in (Optional): You can check the check box Yes, please keep me informed of future Pages releases and other relevant information to opt in (give permission) for Google to send you information about Google Plus Pages future releases, features, etc.
vi.) Terms of Service (Required): prior to creating your Google Plus Business Page, you must acknowledge and agree to the Google Plus Pages Terms of Service by checking the box to the left of the following text: “I agree to the Pages Terms and I am authorized to create this page.”

7.) Click the CREATE button

8.) Customize your Google+ Business page’s public profile and add more details to help people find your business on Google Plus by adding the following profile basics to get started:

a.) Add company tagline (Google recommends “the 10 words that describe your business best.”)
b.) Add a company logo which can be uploaded from your computer or device or sourced from your Google Plus personal profile.

Click CONTINUE

9.) Get the word out to tell everyone about your new page on Google+
(Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)

10.) Click the FINISH button when you are done sharing.

Now is when the real fun begins. Google has some great suggestions on how to promote your page.

a.) Start a conversation by posting content on your page. People want to hear from you! Start sharing photos, videos, links, and other interesting content publicly.
b.)
Connect your website (notice the shiny new eBiz ROI G+ badge!) Grow your audience by making it easy for people to find and recommend your page. Place the Google+ badge or a small code snippet on your site.

c.) Tell the world by using the link to your page provided by Google in the Google+ creation confirmation page. Distribute this link everywhere you communicate online, to encourage people to add your page to their circles so your posts will appear in their stream. https://plus.google.com/109873080991223388331

d.) Build You Circles. Once people add your page to their circles, you can add them back. Use your circles to get the right message to the right people.

e.) Other techniques Google+ Direct Connect, Hangouts and adding a +1 Button to your website.

I hope this brief Adding a Google+ Business Page tutorial was helpful to you. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact eBiz ROI to learn more about how your business can leverage Google+, Google Places and Google Search Plus Your World.

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Google Plus Business Page in 10 Easy Steps. is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

Achieving Marketing Goals by Looking Beyond Traditional CRO

Rick Noel — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:23:03 +0000

Internet marketing ROI realized through non-traditional Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Internet marketing goals can typically be tied back to conversions, otherwise known as desired actions that website visitors take that enable Internet marketers to realize a pre-defined business goal. Typical conversions evaluated by marketers include measuring when users:

Click through on links from search results
Subscribe to RSS and e-mail
Click through on links posted on social networks
Shares on social networks, blogs, websites
Purchase something and become customer (for ecommerce)
Sign-up for a free or paid trial
Download a white paper in exchange for providing information such as their email address
Maintain customer information service subscription.

For traditional CRO, we know for instance that there is a relationship between click through rates in the search results and things like position/rank in the search results, search results that contain rich snippets and having sitelinks where a search result will include indented links to multiple pages on a website (see sitelinks example below).

Saratoga Fit sitelinks example

Typically these kinds of conversions and their conversion rates are associated with a number of factors that can be tested during traditional CRO. Testing typically includes changing the anchor text (clickable part of a text link) in links, changing graphical elements composition and position, colors, position of call to action buttons and a myriad of other factors. For a good tutorial on traditional CRO, along with a number of example tests and their results, check out the following video (runtime: 9 minutes, 29 seconds). It is fun to see if you can guess the outcome of the tests prior to the results being shared.

Beyond tradition CRO, there are a number of other more subtle factors that can come into play when influencing conversions. A good litmus test for uncovering these factors, proposed by Rand Fiskin of SEOMoz.org, are in these two simple questions:

Does the product or service or thing that you want me to do meet my needs?
Do I trust and like the brand and/or people behind the brand?

In the following SEOMoz.org Whiteboard Friday video (runtime: 17 mins 24 seconds), Rand Fishkin explores The Hidden Factors in Accomplishing Your Online Marketing Goals.

Rand looks at factors beyond the ones examined in traditional CRO. Most, if not all, can be mapped back to how those factors support or detract from a positive response to one of the two fundamental questions. These factors include things like:

Page load time – Google penalty may be small compared to user perception and brand impact
Forcing user to view ads prior to consuming content (pre-roll videos) – inhibits shares
Pricing transparency – even if your prices are higher than competitors, studies have shown that conversion rates are positively impacted when pricing information is provided.
Trust factors like known brand domains versus generic direct match domains which could feel spammy
Brand perception in terms company, what it stands for and the people that represent it?
Contact information easily accessible including phone, email and physical address
Information about individuals and team members of the company
Relationship of content relative to the company, product or service offerings
Social proof which can be illustrated in a variety of ways including likes, shares by key industry influencers

So next time you are planning to perform CRO for an Internet marketing project, remember to think out of the box and ask yourself those 2 simple questions to uncover hidden factors that can greately impact yours or your client’s conversion rates and ultimately, the bottom line.

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Achieving Marketing Goals by Looking Beyond Traditional CRO is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

How Big is the Mobile Marketing Opportunity?

Rick Noel — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:46:50 +0000

The Mobile Marketing Opportunity is Huge

If the figures from the US are any indication, it’s big. Just like Internet advertising, eyeballs equal opportunities, and opportunities for mobile are immense.

In 2011, it was estimated that the global number of mobiles is around 5.6 billion handsets. The number of smartphones is minuscule by comparison, but has a massive up-side. Current estimates put smartphones at around 866 million worldwide. As a marketing opportunity both the SMS-enabled phones and the smartphones with robust browsers and app capabilities represents a huge opportunity for marketers looking to reach into their customers pockets (literally).

[source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mary_meeker_2011_web_20_summit_presentation.php]

Will mobile ad spend follow eyeballs?

At Web 2.0 Summit in 2011, Mary Meeker of KPCB showed an enlightening graph. Mobile media viewing times now EQUAL that of print. That means that a full 8% of the average American’s time is spent on mobile media consumption. Yet, only 0.5% of ad spend is in mobile, compared the 27% ad spend in print.

If the trend for spend follows where people are actually consuming media, then both Internet and mobile adds up to a pretty substantial opportunity that Meeker estimates at around $20 billion in the USA alone.

Google and mobile

Google has been pushing mobile through its mobile initiative howtogomo.com that is aimed at helping businesses, marketers and their agencies get into mobile marketing. Google even partnered with mobile website developers Mobify to ‘mobilize’ business in Mobile Alabama.

Why is Google doing this?

Mobile search volume increased by 4 times between 2010 and 2011 (source: Google howtogomo.com). You know it expects mobile search revenue to be a significant source of growth for the company.

Here are just a few of Google’s own stats that outline the size of the opportunities for mobile search marketing (source: Google http://www.howtogomo.com/):

4x growth in mobile search since 2010
95% of smartphone users have searched for local information
61% called the business after searching

Apps, ads and SMS

The marketing opportunities with the growth in smartphone ownership are staggering. While mobile advertising itself has grown since 2008, the exponential growth of the app market has taken everyone by surprise.

Mobile Content - The Exponential Growth of the App Market has Taken Everyone by Surprise

Added together, Meeker showed that mobile marketing across ads and apps has a 153% CAGR over the three years from 2008 to 2011, reaching around $12B globally by Q2 2011.

SMS is not discussed as much as the sexy apps and ads, but with almost all of the >5 billion handsets out there capable of receiving SMS messages, shrewd marketers are already finding a willing audience with mobile coupons, voucher codes and service messages leading the way.

When will the breakthrough happen?

It’s difficult to predict, but some estimates putt mobile ad spend outpacing outline somewhere around 2015. However, it could be ten years before that happens, and anyhow, as Razorfish points out, does it matter when the opportunities are so clearly available?

About the Author:

Pavel Webb is the affiliate manager at TextMagic, a bulk SMS gateway based in United Kingdom.

How Big is the Mobile Marketing Opportunity? is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

Social Sharing Strategy to Increase Content Marketing ROI

Rick Noel — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:32:36 +0000

Social Media Sharing Can Increase Content Markleting Reach and ROI

What a lovely discovery this afternoon in our +Rick Noel stream. A new learning opportunity that some of you may have already happened upon. Whiteboard+, a new SEO (Search Engine Optimization) informational video, the 5th video in Whiteboard+ series produced by SEOMoz.org, a world leader in SEO tools and thought leaders on SEO strategy.

The Whiteboard+ topic today is on developing and executing on a social sharing strategy. A link to the SEOMoz Whiteboard+ Social Sharing Video is provided for your SEO/Internet marketing learning enjoyment.

The social sharing strategy video runs 15 mins and 13 seconds, which, for those of us that suffer from Internet attention deficit disorder, is a lifetime. That said, Trust me when I tell you that this free video and its content is well worth every second invested in watching, will provide specific tools, techniques and tips and is more relevant than ever given some recent changes in Google’s Search algorithm, dubbed Google Search, Plus Your World.

This content is primarily targeted (and best suited) for Internet marketers, SEO agencies and Social Media marketing agencies, but can also be beneficial for any small business using or considering investing in Internet marketing tactics such as content marketing, search marketing including SEO and social media engagement.

In this Video, +Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.org explains social sharing strategies providing specific, helpful examples with social media sharing tools, tips and techniques used to maximize the reach of your content marketing efforts while providing key performance indicators such as CTRs (Click Through Rates) by content by channel.

Social Sharing Strategy - Video Summary

Rand talks about building a social sharing strategy for Google+, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites based on your audience and where they are most engaging for the particular type of content that you are sharing. You can track these if you have the discipline along with using a specific shortened link for each piece of content by channel. Two of the social sharing tools mentioned include two URL (web address) shorteners called out by name: bit.ly, goo.gl. In addition, Rand mentioned two tools that can be used to track and measure some social metrics including OpenSiteExploer.org, an SEOMoz.org developed tool which can measure social engagement and link attributes and ShareCount.com which can measure integrated social engagement activities across social platforms for a particular web page URL.

In the Social Sharing Strategy Video, Rand elaborates and then answers the following questions:

What is content is worthy of sharing?
How should I distribute accounts across social platforms (agency vs. business vs. individual)
Which items (content) should I share on which social platforms (test and see which works best)
How do I prioritize promotion of social media accounts (on website, blog and other promotional platforms)

For eBiz ROI, we use a strategy where content we create and curate (e.g. the Social Sharing Strategy Video above) lives on our blog and then is shared, typically simultaneously across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. As Rand points out in the video, this is often acceptable as the cross over between channels is minimal, especially with the nature of Twitter feeds where a few hours can be the life of when you share might get viewed. In addition, you will note at the top of this post there are buttons for Facebook like, Google+1, Twitter and LinkedIn to make sharing content easy. eBiz ROI also uses the AddThis widget which allows for additional sharing options including a myriad of social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit and many others, enabling viral sharing to increase content reach,

Rand also discusses some tools that can be used to evaluate audience and what social networks they are logged into while consuming content on your site. This requires the placement of some code on your site to be able to measure and track, but can provide useful insights when trying to prioritize your social media sharing and promotion strategies. There is a good post on Social Media Examiner that shows how to track Tweets, Facebook Likes and more with Google Analytics.

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Social Sharing Strategy to Increase Content Marketing ROI is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

SOPA Slippery Slope – Millions Say Nope

Rick Noel — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:04:22 +0000

UPDATE – SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress today – 20 Jan 2012 – see Press Release below

STOP SOPA PIPA Internet censorship - Don't let corporations control traffic flow

Often times things in Washington begin with great intentions (i.e. stop theft of US content) but end up with terrible unintended consequences (i.e. letting companies regulate what we can access online). Anyone that has worked in hi-tech, Internet marketing in particular, knows that legislation always lags technology as technology evolves much faster than bureaucracy.

Below is a video from PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo providing a good opposition viewpoint overview which is a viewpoint shared by most in the Internet industry, especially online marketers.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

It is probably not surprising that yesterday large companies like Wikipedia and Reddit went dark to demonstrate their opposition to SOPA/PIPA while others like Google protested by blacking out their infamous logo and provided a link to a petition managed by Google. To illustrate the amount of support Google organized by this seemingly small act, that according to Forbes, 4.5 Million People Signed Google’s Anti-SOPA Petition. I was one of them. Also, I’ve personally signed the petition at American Censorship, and if you agree with the SOPA/PIPA opposition point of view and want to take action to stand up and be counted, please consider this option also.

It is clear why the mainstream media does not cover the SOPA/PIPA legislation opposition views or even cover SOPA/PIPA legislation at all, especially given its potential to impact so many US Internet users. To their credit, PBS did do a piece yesterday on the PBS News Hour called For SOPA , Websites Threaten a Midnight Blackout

Watch A World Without Wikipedia: For SOPA, Websites Threaten a Midnight Blackout on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

and then an article on PBS.org Need to Know How SOPA Would Change the Internet. This is a good and like most other PBS reporting, unbiased an informative article.

Most outside of the Internet industry had probably not even heard of SOPA/PIPA yesterday until they pointed their Internet browsers to Google or Wikipedia or any one of the myriad of others sites in opposition to SOPA, then scratched their heads saying what’s this? It’s not their fault as SOPA/PIPA media coverage has been limited for a piece of legislation of this magnitude. The reason that mainstream media is not adequately covering this regulation and related news story is that its opposition is counter to their financial interests since many of these media companies are owned by the very entertainment conglomerates that are lobbying Washington for passage of SOPA/PIPA.

The good news for US Internet users who enjoy the Internet in its current unfettered form is that Google, Wikipedia and other participants in the online SOPA/PIPA Protests have a combined reach and recency that can overshadow the mainstream media in many/most cases, especially with changing media consumption patterns.

Some countries, where the government has successfully censored the state-run media, are now struggling to suppress the massive, immediate reach and distribution of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In fact, some are trying to limit their domestic Internet access to a state sponsored/censored/controlled “Intranets.”

For instance, Iran is reported to be building a country-wide network as sort of a faux Internet for Iranian Internet users, effectively censoring and controlling ALL domestic Internet usage, especially around elections. Maybe they are concerned about the impact on free Internet usage and social media on domestic politics which has been credited for the success of multiple revolutions and resulting regime changes in the region. Maybe the US politicians are concerned as well!

“Tests for a countrywide network aimed at substituting services run through the world wide web have been carried out by Iran’s ministry of information and communication technology, according to a newspaper report. The move has prompted fears among its online community that Iran intends to withdraw from the global internet.”

For more on this, see Iran Clamps Down on Internet Use. By the way, the reference to what is going on in Iran is by no means a comparison of SOPA, the issue becomes, where do you draw the line when skiing down a slippery slope.

While many Americans would scoff at such measures in the US, they need to pay attention and get involved in order for this legislation (or its successor attempts assuming SOPA/PIPA are DOA), pushed by the entertainment lobby to fail passage. Passage of these kinds of legislation would have highly negative, albeit unintended, impacts to our recovering economy, where much of the growth is being driven by and through the Internet.

Yes, piracy is a huge problem for the entertainment and software industries both in the US and abroad, but lets not legislate our nose off to spite our face!

UPDATE: 20 Jan 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT

Fight for the Future
Tiffiniy Cheng
Holmes Wilson
press@fightforthefuture.org
(614) 465-6371
(508) 474-5248
January 20, 2012

Fight for the Future, which ran the largest organizing sites for the recent SOPA protests (sopastrike.com and americancensorship.org), applauds the announcement that the Senate and House have postponed action on the proposed web censorship bills.

“We sent the MPAA back to the drawing board,” said Fight for the Future Co-founder Holmes Wilson, “But any law that lets the copyright lobby block our websites, censor our search results, or cut off our Paypal accounts–without even going through a judge–will be soundly defeated.”

“This was the largest online protest in history,” said Fight for the Future Co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng, “The MPAA was trying to quietly force this bill through Congress, but when internet users started paying attention, real democracy happened. This is a watershed moment in the fight against lobbyists’ influence on politics.”

“The MPAA could have proposed a law to address copyright infringement,” said Holmes Wilson, “Instead, they proposed giving rightsholders veto power over online innovation and free expression. At that point, it was just a matter of getting the public involved.”

A timeline of the SOPA protests: http://sopastrike.com/timeline
Statistics from the January 18 protest: http://sopastrike.com/numbers
Statistics from the November 16 protest: http://americancensorship.org/infographic2.html

Original Press Release at: http://fightforthefuture.org

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SOPA Slippery Slope – Millions Say Nope is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

How Internet search works

Rick Noel — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:57:10 +0000

Internet search is kind of like the Duey Decimal System of the Internet

Anybody that’s ever used he Internet is well acquainted with the concept of search engines. Search engines are to the Internet as the Dewey Decimal System is to any public library. Search engines provide us the free mechanism to find a virtual needle in a global haystack. While Internet users use search engines on a daily basis, they often take for granted the very critical task that they perform and the value that they add to our Internet experience. Whether it’s searching for information to perform a task, making a purchase from the convenience of our home or from our mobile phone on the go or just getting to a particular destination online, search engines get us there.

As an Internet marketer, search engine marketing is one of the most important tools we have at our disposal. In particular, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the discipline of ensuring client content shows up on the first page of search results for searches related to a business’s product or services or the problems they solve. This is sometimes referred to as driving natural search traffic to a website, which can have a great ROI (Return On Investment) as there is no incremental cost for each user that comes to your website via clicking on organic (non-paid) search results. Understanding how Internet search works will give us hints on how to perform SEO more effectively.

When you think about it for a moment, what search engines do and how fast they do it is really amazing. For instance, in sub-second response time, search engines search through their index of hundreds of billions or even trillions of web pages available on the Internet to find those few references that are most relevant to your particular search. That includes informational searches such as how to change a tire on automobile, transactional searches such as purchasing an electronic device over the Internet or navigational search, using a search to locate a particular company and branded website.

In the brief (3 min. and 15 second) YouTube video below, Matt Cutts, lead Engineer in charge of Google’s web search quality regarding spam, describes how search works in terms that most Internet marketers and users can understand. Obviously, the devil is always in the details and for those engineers with the time an inclination, much more hints can be found in the Google public patent filings.

Google is by far the most used search engine in the US with nearly 2/3 of the US search market share. Other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo! which is powered by Bing and others work in a manner similar to Google. Understanding how Google uses over 200 factors to determine relevancy and which factors are most important, will prepare an Internet marketer to think about how to create, edit and optimize web pages so that Google understands the content and can score its relevancy high relative to related search terms. The business goal is for Google, Yahoo!, Bing (insert your search engine of choice here) to return a reference to that page in the first page of the search results, which as many already know from experience, is often as far as many of us look before trying another search. That’s why being on the first page of the search results for phrases relative to our business is the holy grail from a search engine marketing standpoint, especially if when we don’t have to bid funds for the right for our link to show up there and pay for each incremental click and resulting visit to our webpage.

Hopefully this video has provided some insights into how search engines work and the role that they play in the Internet experience. If you found value in this post, please like eBiz ROI on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ebizroi(or click like button directly below) and Follow eBiz ROI on Twitter @eBizROI (or click the Twitter follow button directly below) to stay connected to the Terrific Time for Traffic series and other quality content for growing your business online while maximizing marketing ROI (Return on Investment).

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How Internet search works is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

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The Google Penguin Update

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10 Resources that can Help Businesses and their Internet Marketers and SEOs Respond to the Google Penguin Update

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Google Brand Activate Initiative Announced at Ad Age Digital

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Google Plus Business Page in 10 Easy Steps.

Google Plus Business Page in 10 Easy Steps

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Achieving Marketing Goals by Looking Beyond Traditional CRO

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How Big is the Mobile Marketing Opportunity?

Will mobile ad spend follow eyeballs?

Google and mobile

Why is Google doing this?

Apps, ads and SMS

When will the breakthrough happen?

About the Author:

Social Sharing Strategy to Increase Content Marketing ROI

Social Sharing Strategy - Video Summary

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SOPA Slippery Slope – Millions Say Nope

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How Internet search works

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