Google Buzz Layer Now on Google Maps for DesktopAs if having the Google Buzz layer on Google Maps for Mobile is not enough, Google has just made it also available on your computer. This means that you can practically use all the features of Google Buzz for mobile that includes posting live updates of your whereabouts and your views about a particular place, in the comforts of your home or workplace, using your computer. To try activate Google Buzz layer, visit Google Maps on your web browser and simply select Buzz from the “More” options menu. Once checked, you can now start exploring Buzz updates from people nearby or even from other people worldwide. You just need to change the current location of Google Maps and you can see those little icons that will pull out the available buzz on different lcoations. You can even find public profile of those who posted the buzz, timestamp to comment on the post or the place to see it in Maps. That way you’d know whether the buzz is auto-posted by bots or by real people. While Google Buzz layer on Maps for desktop is a pretty cool feature, it has one limitation though – you can only view the buzz but not post your own buzz. To do this, you have to use Google Buzz for mobile via the web app, Google Maps for mobile or the Android phone widget. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Google Buzz Layer Now on Google Maps for Desktop        Winner of the Search &; Social Spring Summit Grand PrizeWith the conference being a little over a week away, we are stoked about the 80 degree weather that we foresee for the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit. While listening to Todd Malicoat from Market Motive speak, you might even get a chance to see Loren Baker jumping for joy as he sees dolphins swimming by our conference hall.On April 15, 2010, we closed our VIP Contest and have finally gotten a winner. Congratulations to David Alecock for winning the Grand Prize to the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit! David has won a complimentary pass to attend the conference, complimentary airfare, a free hotel stay at the Doubletree Guest Suites and $500 in cold hard cash!  David will be able to leave with business connections in affiliate marketing, social media marketing, online reputation management, paid search and search engine optimization. He will learn outsourcing secrets on how to grow his business and spend the rest of his life on the beach. For the speaker lineup and the schedule of the two-day event, please go here. Also remember to book your stay at the Doubletree Guest Suites for a special rate of $109/night valid until Friday, April 23, 2010. The 2010 Search & Social Awards will be coming soon. We will let you know when you can vote for your favorite blog and hear the winners announced at the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Winner of the Search & Social Spring Summit Grand Prize     
Surprise! Facebook Rolls out News Features at F8 Event! New Social Plugins
Open Graph Protocols This has been a tricky subject to grasp for me, but here it goes. Websites will now have semantic markup, and Facebook will now be able to reads tags from external websites, to see, categorize and understand what kind of things you’re liking. There are 30 partner sites that are going to be involved with this, so you’ll have no shortage of websites to play on. It’s going to be fluid, so if you have something liked in your profile from the CNN website, you can hover over the link and it will give you information. Inside Facebook gave the example of “like”ing Toby Gerhardt on the ESPN website and being able to receive updates strictly about him in your Facebook activity stream. He will also show up in your profile, and when you hover over him it will probably say “ESPN” etc. It’s all integrated. Instead of just connecting links to static pages, they want to connect people, interests and encourage social-ness in the web. This is what I’ve gathered from reading about open graph protocols, but until it’s actually physically usable, there could be more involved that I’m not understanding right away. “We think connections between people and things they care about will define internet experiences. Our goal is to accelerate.”Graph API Every object in Facebook is going to have a unique ID. Developers can then download this object from graph.facebook.com/userid. To see your friends for instance, you can go to /yourusername/friends/.You will no longer need SDK and tons and tons of documentation. Breathe a sigh of relief, developers! Because it’s in real-time, you can also use web hooks that will allow you to ping whenever users update their walls as well as register call backs. So… in closing Sites like Microsoft Docs, Pandora etc will be using all of these features. Once they are fully done and I get my hands in to it, I will probably be able to write a better article. Until then, this was just a glimpse of what was said today at the conference :) Also, from an SEO perspective… when things are getting moved into real-time search and sites are now connected in these ways… are “likes” going to be something that will be incorporated in SEO and social media marketing in the near future? Since the industry is always moving and changing, should this be something we should be aware of now, and possibly looking to implement? Sorry- crazy brain thinking ahead to the future. I’ll slow my roll here just a little. Part of me thinks this is amazing, and part of me thinks that it’s scary. I absolutely love the innovation, but there’s always the concern for privacy and what it means when we’re so used to getting information tailored to our liking. If you think about it this way, once the algorithms start picking up your interests, and start influencing your web results and whatever else it will eventually come to, it’s almost as if you’re living in a sheltered world. You’re going to get so used to having information given to you, that you may be blind to whatever other information out there that doesn’t fit into your “likes”. What do you guys think? Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Surprise! Facebook Rolls out News Features at F8 Event!      Jessica Bowman, Mike Gray & Greg Boser Added to Search & Social Summit LineupSearch & Social has secured three new premier speakers to be covering SEO tactics and in-house SEO strategies at the Search & Social Spring Summit 2010 in Tampa, FL on May 3rd and 4th.Search & Social Spring Summit is one of the most cost effective conferences in the search & social media marketing space with a ticket cost of only $525 for the two day event. Only 26 seats are left for the event, so if you are planing on attending, REGISTER NOW. Search & Social Spring Summit Speakers include :
Complete Schedule for Search & Social Spring SummitWe have two main goals with our events. First, to be the best value in Internet Marketing conferences and events. Second, to provide the best education and networking mix available in an Internet Marketing conference. Together, you will confidently walk away with valuable information and resources. Business Networking EventsAlong with the content driven sessions at Search & Social Spring Summit, which are perfect for the beginning online marketer to the advanced SEO, Search & Social Spring Summit hosts day long networking events & group workshops for the limited 120 seat conference so you will leave with business connections in affiliate marketing, social media marketing, online reputation management, paid search and search engine optimization. In summary, the connections you make at Search & Social Spring Summit will forge long term trusted business relationships and friendships.Networking events include :
Location & VenueThe Search & Social Spring Summit 2010 will be held at the Doubletree Guest Suites in Tampa, FL on May 3-4, 2010. Special conference rates are just $109 per night for the suites, which include a kitchenette area, living & meeting area and separate bedroom.  The waterfront Doubletree Guest Suites in Tampa Include :
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Jessica Bowman, Mike Gray & Greg Boser Added to Search & Social Summit Lineup      Optimizing Your AdWords CampaignsPay per click advertising is a form of marketing with major benefits. It differs from other methods of marketing in its ability to allow advertisers and marketers to measure and analyze the results of their techniques, to refine and optimize them to increase ROI beyond almost anything possible in the offline marketing world. Google AdWords is currently the prominent pay per click resource available today. Learning some of the ways to optimize your AdWords campaigns can cut costs while keeping conversions up in several ways.Here are four ways to refine your AdWords campaign to see where money spent is producing the best return and to adjust settings to maximize return on investment. 1. The Segment option. This is one of the newest additions to AdWords. The Segment option is available within your Campaigns, Ad Groups and Keywords tabs. Within each, the options are different, but allow for viewing of your results in specific ways of measurement. This can include breaking into specific units of time, such as weeks or days of the week.  By viewing your data this way you can discover what weeks are most active for a seasonal market, as well as information such as which days of the week are most prone to getting better conversion rates. By knowing this data, you can reduce costs where your conversions are more expensive, increase bids where you are seeing better conversion rates, and in all these ways increase ROI.  2. A-B Split Testing for ads. This can be one of the most effective means of increasing CTR for your ad groups. Have two or three ads active for each ad group. After a number of clicks (ideally at least 20 clicks on each ad), choose the better performing ad. Replace the more poorly performing ad with a different ad copy. Repeat the whole operation to find which advertisement will produce the best CTR or the best conversion rate.  Doing this can often improve your CTR by a factor of 2 or more, and a higher CTR improves Quality Score as well as increasing lead generation. To get an accurate reading for proper A-B split testing, make sure your campaign setting for Ad Delivery->Rotation is set to “Rotate: Show ads more evenly”. 3. Remarketing with the Audiences tab. This is an element of AdWords that works only for the Content Network. When the Audiences tab is enabled, you can create remarketing lists to target specific visitors to your site. By placing code on specific pages within your site, a cookie is put on all users who visit these pages.  Then when they visit other sites with similar targeted themes, a very relevant ad is shown to these users to give them motivation to return to your site to make a purchase or opt-in. This works by reaching out to visitors who had visited your site previously and displayed some kind of interest in that market. Often this remarketing approach can increase conversions by contacting people who have an established interest in your products and reconnecting with them. 4. Changing advertising frequency/rate settings. Advertising can be adjusted in AdWords to not just advertise for certain days and hours of each day, but the amount for CPC can be adjusted to raise or lower bidding rates for certain days and hours. The setting is within each Campaign settings area, under Advanced settings->Schedule and choosing Ad Scheduling, the selecting “Bid Adjustment” inside the scheduling option.  After doing research for performance for specific days within your campaign you can make changes to cut costs and increase ROI nicely. For example, after viewing that you are getting little or no conversions on certain days of the week, you can pause these days with this setting. In the same way, any days that have better conversion rates can have an increased bid amount to maximize CTR for those days. This can all help improve business results for your AdWords campaign.  By knowing about and using these different options within AdWords you can greatly improve your pay per click results. AdWords optimization is a definite way to increase ROI and open additional opportunities to expand your marketing methods. Properly using these techniques can cut costs, increase profits, and help you make the most out of this powerful tool. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Optimizing Your AdWords Campaigns      2 Great Wordpress Plugins to Find Your Blog Most Powerful PagesLearning which of your published content did particularly well based on some parameters is a great way to become a more successful blogger. This way you can see which of your posts are well received in social media, which of them get linked more and which of them spur a more active discussion.This week I am sharing the two best Wordpress plugins that will offer you a huge variety of parameters to evaluate your posts: Blog Link & Traffic Analysis Plugin for WordPress This plugin digs into your blog posts and offers several variables to find the most powerful of them:
  Popularity Contest for Wordpress This plugin provides a wealth of information on how well your posts are doing. 1. The summarized popularity data: The first thing you’ll see is the table containing the following data:
 3. Most viewed pages and categories:
The plugin also offers a handy sidebar widget that allows to list your blog most popular posts by plenty of parameters including overall popularity, archive views, comments, etc:  
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. 2 Great Wordpress Plugins to Find Your Blog Most Powerful Pages      Facebook: What, Why, Who, How?I've noticed more and more Facebook Fan Pages popping up and it's great. Fan Pages are a great way to connect with people, build your credibility and ultimately generate leads and grow your business.The problem is most people are making one BIG mistake when it comes to their pages. More on that in a minute. First let me give you an overview on what I'm going to talk about today….
What Are Facebook Fan Pages?Facebook allows you to create a Fan or Business Page where you can post information, participate in discussion and share photos, videos and news.Unlike groups in Facebook, Fan pages are visible to unregistered people and are indexed by the engines – which is another opportunity for you to come up in the engines. The number of Fans you can have is unlimited (whereas the Friend limit is 5,000).Fan Pages are generally better for long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers. You can send "updates" to fans whenever you want. It's a nice way of building a database of interested users. Send messages about new products, updated website, etc. When someone joins a Fan Page, it's published in their News feed for all of their Friends to read (unless they have turned this off). This helps spread the word about your Fan Page. A Fan or Business Page is designed to promote a business. It can be used to share simple information like your business hours, contact information and product/service offerings. It can also be used as a marketing tool. If you design a fun and graphically appealing Fan Page that is designed to capture leads and promote your business well, it can be a good tool for generating new leads. In Facebook's own words: "Start the Conversation. When your fans interact with your Facebook Page, stories linking to your Page can go to their friends via News Feed. As these friends interact with your Page, News Feed keeps driving word-of-mouth to a wider circle of friends." Why Are Facebook Fan Pages Important?The stats speak for themselves:
Who Can Build A Fan PageAnyone can set up a Fan page, but to get the most out of it with the added features, you need to know HTML and work with graphics and you need to attach it to a personal profile (you can't use the FBML App unless the page is attached to a personal profile page).Who Should Build A Fan PageAnyone looking to create more exposure and generate more leads for their business should build a Fan Page.You don't have to play games or make friends and waste time idly chatting with people. Look at your page as a source of publishing good information and generating a base of followers. The key takeaways are that you have to know your audience, you have to engage and compel them first and foremost or they'll leave. Once you've done that, you have to provide quality content regularly and encourage discussion and engagement. There are thousands of brands on Facebook in addition to the thousands of small – medium sized entities that have no brand awareness – you need to stand out from that crowd! The "Big Mistake" So Many People Are MakingSo what is the big mistake I keep referring to? Ready, drum roll please…Everyone is creating pages that look like everyone else. They are using the default tabs and not adding anything compelling and interesting to the page. I am a huge fan of Sex and The City and much to my disappointment; I am going to use their Fan Page as an example of what not to do! Let me start by saying that with over 1 million Fans you might think I'm crazy for talking about what they are doing wrong, but that is the precise reason I chose their Page to focus on. Needless to say Sex and The City has a huge following – they are doing radio and TV ads, they have major word of mouth and a massive built-in Fan base after 6 years on HBO and a hit first movie. Most small to medium-sized businesses don't have the same exposure and can't expect to get the same results without effort. All Sex and The City had to do was post their trailer for the new movie and voila, instant success. The rest of us need to work for our exposure and fans. The first step is creating a great page that is eye catching and compelling. The next step is populating it with great content (take a tip from SATC, posting their trailer on their Fan Page first was a really compelling reason for people to check it out. So post something people will really want to see and make it available on Facebook FIRST). Let's talk about how to make the page more compelling…. By default Facebook comes with "tabs" for Info, Notes, Photos, Events, Links, Discussion, Video and the Wall for the page. Those are all great tabs and you should use them – but you need to take it a step further and create custom tabs. FBML is an app that allows you to use graphics and HTML to create beautiful pages that are compelling and designed to capture leads. Take a look at the Sex and The City 2 Page. You land on the Wall and there are no custom tabs. Now taking a look at my page, you'll notice you land on a custom tab that has marketing text and a place for me to capture leads. The page is also enhanced with graphics. The info I chose to place there is helpful to my visitors. I tell them how they can get up-to-date SEO info and how to get a proposal. I offer them a free book (Optimization Step By Step) and I show them how they can follow me on Twitter for more news and updates. They can then go to the Wall, where they can read tips, advice and links that I have posted. You need to take your page a step further and create compelling "landing pages" to further draw people in. Otherwise your page just looks like another page and doesn't do as much for you as it could. How To Build A Good Facebook Fan PageSimple Steps To Get You Started:(Please also check out Facebook's instructions)
 Once you select the type of page you want and name it, then you get to the fun stuff! You get to complete the Info tab, upload your Page's profile photo and start some discussions on the Discussion tab. Don't forget to use Notes to import your Blog and then add the FBML app so you can create your custom pages. I can't cover every step in one post but definitely let me know if you want these steps covered and I'll write more posts covering each of these steps in-depth. Now onto what will ultimately determine the success of your page…. What Makes A Good Page:
 Some Final Thoughts:While Fan Pages are a great tool and taking advantage of FBML gives you a fairly robust page, their layout still needs some work (did you hear that Facebook?!).You can't control the order of the tabs and having too many tabs causes them to drop into the little drop down menu and less advanced users won't see them. So while you definitely want whatever tabs you will actually use, make sure you remove the tabs you aren't going to use so it isn't cluttered. You can have multiple custom FBML tabs but again remember that if you have too many people likely won't see it all. I think a few (1-3) really focused and really good custom FBML tabs get the job done best. Once you've got a killer Fan Page, the next step is promoting it. I really need to get to work on that myself. I'm so busy helping clients and coming up with ideas to improve my page, I forget to promote it. So make sure you don't follow in my footsteps. If you are going to create a page, PROMOTE IT!! Looks like another Blog post for me in the future. I should get to work on building my Fan Base and document the process to teach you! Stay tuned! Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Facebook: What, Why, Who, How?      Antitrust Group Wants to Break Up GoogleThis could possible be the worst anti-trust action hauled against Google to date. The Santa Monica Group which recently received a grant to investigate Google’s privacy practice is about to ask the Justice Department to impose an antitrust lawsuit against Google, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. The Group is even calling for the possible break up of Google if proven guilty of antitrust violation.The said group is about to announced its investigation through a press conference called – “The Antitrust Case Against Google.” “We, as an organization, have concluded that there’s enough evidence on the table to warrant this, to go beyond the reactive steps that the regulatory agencies have followed up until now,” said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog.The press conference will surely be a well attended event with some of the confirmed attendees include Gary Reback, a former Silicon Valley lawyer which spearheaded the antitrust case against Microsoft. Reback is also actively running after the Google Book Deal. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Antitrust Group Wants to Break Up Google      Google Increases Government Lobbying by 57%, with $1.4 M in Q1In Q1 2010, Google spent $1.4 million in lobbying money with the federal government bodies, which was an increase of 57% over $880,000 from Q1 2009. With the company having interests far beyond search, I’m expecting this lobbying spend to climb even more over the course of the year, as Google is getting more involved in FCC rulings, government programs and assistance in pressure on other governments with its global business growth… especially in China.Here’s a rundown of some of the spending from the Associated Press :
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Google Increases Government Lobbying by 57%, with $1.4 M in Q1      Google Acquires Startup AgniluxHot on the heels of the buzz created by Gizmodo’s “discovery” of the iPhone 4G prototype is the report that Google just acquired the startup – Agnilux. Agnilux happens to be composed of former chip developers who left P.A. Semis when it was acquired by Apple. Other than that information, nothing else is known about Agnilux. The startup remains to be a mysterious small company.Agnilux was also reported to have had previous talks with other companies aside from Google, including Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments. As to what Agnilux is currently on to, New York Times reported that the startup is currently building a server. If this server is the reason why Google acquired Agnilux or for some other reason, only Agnilux and Google know for sure. What is confirmed for now, through a Google spokesman is the fact that indeed Google acquired the company. So, any guesses on what Google is going to do with Agnilux? Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal. Google Acquires Startup Agnilux      |
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Optimizing Your AdWords Campaigns
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