ZK's Web Marketing Blog » Search Engine Marketing

The Trust Quotient in Link Building – Tips on Building a Trustworthy Link

DivyaRawat — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:12:13 +0000

The typical bricks and mortar businesses thrive on reputation or goodwill. The hard work that goes in building the reputation of a company/brand has inspired many a stories and budding entrepreneurs.

It is the stuff that history is made of. Think Apple and you know you have the best of technology. Think Mercedes and you imagine burning the tracks in a sports car!

These brands and many more are trustworthy, in the sense that they have paid attention to the minutest detail and have hardly slipped on their promises.

They have built on a repertoire of trust! They know the worth of a trust the customer has on their abilities to deliver. That’s their goodwill over the years.

Online businesses are no exception to the rule. They also thrive on the trust factor; a trust that surpasses the physical presence of the company. Trust in online businesses becomes even more relevant than in traditional brick and mortar businesses. So, it becomes imperative for a business to rank high on the Search Engine Pages (SERPs).

What is trust, then?

Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN put a premium on the links that a website provides. For these search engines the trust factor depends upon the accuracy and reliability of the information provided by the websites, in order for it to rank on its top pages. In fact Google puts a lot of emphasis on the Page Rank of a website.

But again how do they measure trust as the search engines have algorithms to work with?

There is no measurable criterion. They follow certain set of guidelines to list the trustworthiness of a site. These could include factors like:

Link/s to another trustworthy/established/popular sites
Status of the site as an authority and outside links to it
The growth pattern in link ageing and link popularity
Whether it qualifies as a niche topical authority
Link Ageing – how old is the linking history

The list may include other factors like its history in ranking, link building, content etc for evaluation as a trust worthy site.

At the same time, a new concept that has taken root is about “TrustRank”. This comes in to play most of the time (which is always!) when the search engines employ editors to monitor and control spam in a site’s content.

Therefore, while building links and make the most of the listings on the SERPs, certain guidelines might prove useful:

Do:

Acquire a natural pattern to your link building
Link to quality and topical authority sites within the niche
Acquire best links asap as link ageing is a factor taken into consideration
Use two to three links at the max.

Don’t:

Link to sites that have dubious link patterns (read spamming)
Use irrelevant content i.e. do not write just anything to acquire links
Use keywords that are not searched well and just for the sake because they show greater results

You can add your own list to these, as and when you start link building.

Remember, link building is as good as relationship building – the base of which is trust. Keep your promises and you will never fall short of trust!

Image Credit:Rudy Miculescu

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

The Trust Quotient in Link Building – Tips on Building a Trustworthy Link

Get Started with Keyword Research in Three Simple Steps

Yang — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:25:39 +0000

In the field of search marketing, key word research is one of the most valuable return activities that are used by search engine optimization professionals to get to know what are the actual popular words people enter into the search engines.

By conducting keywords research, you not only learn which terms or phrases to target with SEO for a better ranking in the delivered search results, but also you know more about your customers overall.

Not just for the purpose of ranking, knowing how to do key words research will also help you to better respond to the changing market demands, content that web users are already frequently searched and so on… which is not an overstatement of its usefulness.

So let’s get started by following the 3 steps:

1. Generate Ideas
- Brainstorm: ask yourself what are the keywords that may relevant to your website and generate a list for your keywords. This includes technical terms or branded keywords that people might use to discover your website.

- Reviewing your competitors’ website so that you know what what other business are targeting and profiting from.

- Use Google keywords tool. This is a quite useful tool as it gives key words search volumes and PPC (pay per click) competition.

Another beauty of this is that you can export the results to Excel! Just check adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2. Gather data
We can use the following tool to assist you in gathering data and looking at your data metrics from different perspectives.

- Volumes (Google Keyword Tool): By looking at the volumes you can see if there are already enough people actually searching for the particular product or service you are trying to sell.

If not, it’s might worth re-evaluating the target market you are aiming to enter. There is not a strict number for the definition of ‘enough volume’; but I would suggest to go after the words with at least 1,000 exact match searches per month.

- Competition: Use Google Keyword Tool or SEOmoz to test how competitive your keywords are. There are types of keywords that are too competitive to go after. Those keywords are dominated by big names with considerable advertising expense that you may not have.

You can check the back link profile of the top 5 ranking websites in Google for the words you are considering. If the websites listed at the top of the search engine results page with a high domain authority with thousands of unique linking domains; then this definitely alerts you to think twice about your key words.

The recommended strategy is to go after the longtail search phrases first or consider a less competitive market.

3. Make decisions
With all the data on hand, now you can filter you data, use your experience and focus on what you want to target.

The following key words research tools really are handy and practical. I would recommend to use them for your keywords research.

- Google Adwords Keyword Tool It’s the most accurate tool in my opinion.
- OpenSiteExplorer.org: This is a back-link analysis tool that helps you identify how many inbound links your competitor’s website has so that you know how many links need to develop to compete with top domains in your market.
- SEMRush: It looks at the organic and paid search keywords of your competition so that you will have an idea of what the lucrative keywords are in your target market.
- Excel Spreadsheet: Of course this old tool is too classic not to mention.

Image Credit: Cristain P Cardenas

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Get Started with Keyword Research in Three Simple Steps

Using Paid Directories to Increase Authority on Google

Usha — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:30:53 +0000

Admit it or not, running a successful business online requires promotion. SEO and link building form a very important piece of this puzzle. Virtually all SEOs make a plunge into this world – and web directories play a major role in link building.

For the most part, it’s an easy process – not expensive or time consuming. Using the right directories can have a meaningful impact on the search engine ranking of your website.

The practice of getting links from online web directories is nothing new. However today things are quite different from what they were in the past. We are now aware that links from non-discriminate directories can only inflate the link count, pollute your link profile and hurt the SEO.

The lower cesspools of the Internet are still flooded with low-quality free directories; but the evolution of high-quality paid directories has changed the scenario. By paying a one-time or recurring fee for listing, you can now expect to obtain in-depth benefits. These directories can take your website up the search results on search engines when combined with effective onsite optimization.

Wondering what Google thinks about these directories? Generally Google doesn’t have a fascination for paid directories, but directories with human editors are a different story altogether. I was recently reading about Google’s “Trust Rank” for these directories. Those with the highest trust rank are said to make an impact.

That shows how important it is to choose the best from among the thousands of web directories. There are only a few link-worthy paid directories with authority that rule the roost. But finding them is as difficult as searching for a needle in a haystack.

In order to make it easier for you to distinguish between the directories with the capacity to actually send traffic to your website and those that don’t, we have listed here the top directories that offer paid links:

Yahoo! Directory: What began as a collection of Jerry Yang and David Filo’s favorite web pages soon became a searchable directory with top rankings. It is maintained and added to manually by editors who check each and every page sent to them. They include only the best! But this PR 9 directory only accepts non-commercial sites. If there is one-thing that can be said in defense of the high cost of $299/year it charges, it is that listings in Yahoo are a guaranteed hit-booster.

Business.com: As the name suggests, this one is a business directory that operates as a pay per click search engine. It has evolved into a vendor directory last year. While it is one of the top paid directories online; at $299/year, is also one of the most expensive. But for those looking for quality and success in their ventures, there is no contention that this stands tall.

Directory Well: This human-edited directory is proactive and straightforward with taxonomies of manually compiled websites. Dirwell.com is a cost-effective directory that outperforms many others in the industry by offering promotions, appropriate categorization, unique and well-researched content that comes with strict editorial integrity.

They don’t list everyone that pays, and listings are accepted only from highest quality websites. I like this directory as it is one of the few that allows deep links, helping you get those deep pages ranked. They have stringent guidelines and even check each listing periodically for quality. All this, with the aim of helping webmasters fulfill all their SEO needs and reach their goals.

Best of the Web: BOTW is a quality directory that has retained its top position over the years. It categorizes websites both regionally and topically; and websites can be submitted for an expedited review.

The directory has also launched an Online Degree Directory for students and professionals offering information on online degrees and programs from various universities in the US. There is also a separate directory only for blogs. It is worth submitting to this directory, for getting links from an authority domain.

Aviva: A solid directory that offers good quality and reasonable prices. Apart from that, it also offers a huge resource list to help webmasters get quality links for their sites. The beauty of Aviva is their tutorials on Adobe Photoshop and website design. Deep links are allowed to inner web pages.

JoeAnt: A promising human edited directory that offers good value. Their editors rank all sites listed in different categories. These rankings are between 1 and 3, and the sites that rank 1 are listed at the very top. You don’t have to pay every year like many other directories.

V7n: Another quality directory that accepts a one-time payment for review and does deep linking. It is one of the most popular and powerful directories that also offers great SEO advice and resources in the form of tutorials and scripts. You are sure to enjoy their interactive forum and blog.

Gimpsy: Just one glance at their home page and you know it’s different from all other directories. Their categorization model is unique. Unlike other directories’ categories, the home page lists Verbs like “play,” “buy,” “design” etc. They are highly selective and accept only sites that provide online activity. Once accepted through their paid option, their site is promoted to a top position for the first 90 days.

Health Web Directory: One of the top directories in the health segment, it has one of the best directory structures to ensure that your links are indexed faster by Google. They have a large category section that covers a wide gamut of health related services. Featured links are available at a one time investment of $5.

Go Guides: They return your money if your site is not listed. They offer a variety of categories and the best part is the site is not too crowded, giving you good visibility once listed.

Paid editorial directories raise the bar by charging a fee for inclusion, as well as being selective about who they accept. If you have an established website, such links are worth their weight in gold, as they add authority to your domain and pass “link juice” to your site. But I’d like to remind you that you will still have to do on-page SEO.

In conclusion, I think a paid web directory is a great SEO technique to get back links. When looking for paid directory links, it helps to drill down to find the most relevant directory. If your website is not of high quality, chances are the website link is rejected. But if you know what you’re doing and offer quality, these directories offer unique opportunities to expand your reach and future-proof your link profile.

Image Credit: Ztephen

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Using Paid Directories to Increase Authority on Google

Four Revealing Questions to Ask an SEO Consultant

TravisSmith — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:24:21 +0000

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a hot topic and a confusing one since there are many misconceptions and preconceived notions. In my recent article, I discussed in greater detail the so-called secrets of SEO. In short, SEO is the process of sculpting your website’s pages so they have more topical relevance and topical authority to the search engines so you will outrank your competitors.

If you want to invest in SEO, there can be a significant payout. However, it is easy to get taken because there is so much confusion around the topic. Additionally, while some service providers have good intentions they may not have enough experience or understanding, especially in more competitive markets.

While you don’t have to really understand how SEO works to hire a consultant, it does make sense to be knowledgeable enough to hire a really good one. It’s easy to be fooled by tech-speak and make the assumption that tech-speak equates competency.

Here are four questions to help you find a consultant that has integrity and knows what they’re doing.

1. How do I know which keywords to target in my SEO campaign?

Bad answer: We recommend targeting as many keywords as possible and their synonyms and misspellings.

Good answer: First, it’s important to note that not all traffic is good traffic from a conversion rate perspective. It’s better to have a lower volume of highly qualified traffic than it is to have high volumes of low quality traffic that won’t convert. Given this we use Google’s keyword tool and your site’s historical analytics to identify keywords with the highest search volume and greatest propensity to convert.

If commercial intent for a keyword is questionable, it can be easily tested in a pay-per-click campaign before investing in a long haul SEO campaign for a word that only produces tire kickers.

2. Can’t I just put my keywords into meta tags and get ranked higher?

Bad answer: Yes, we will load all your keywords, even misspelled variants, into the keywords tag field.

Good answer: It’s a common myth that optimizing your site exclusively involves putting targeted keywords on your pages. This is what’s referred to as “on-page optimization”. You might have read before that all you have to do for good rankings is load (or stuff) all your keywords, even misspelled variants, into the keywords tag field. While on-page factors matter, the majority of SEO factors have to do with external links to your site.

Stuffing the page’s copy and the meta tags is a waste of time and could result in a ranking penalty. Title tags are the most important factor on a page and should include your most important keywords. Body copy should include your target keywords and variations of them sprinkled naturally throughout. It’s also a good idea to include them in meta descriptions, image alt tags and headline tags.

3. How much of an increase in traffic can I expect from your SEO work?

Bad answer: When we achieve a #1 ranking for your site you will capture nearly 100% of the traffic available for keywords you’re targeting.

Good answer: We can predict an approximate increase in traffic based on specific rankings being achieved. However, there are no guarantees and precise prediction is impossible. We use Google’s keyword tool to estimate the amount of traffic available for targeted keywords and then based on a #1 ranking we can assume future traffic. An AOL study done years ago and recently confirmed showed that a #5 spot receives as little as 5% of the traffic available via search, while #1 receives as much as 35%. With Google’s new blended search results, predicting traffic share is even more difficult as recent eye-tracking studies show. There are many factors in addition to your search results position that influence ‘the click’.

4. I heard that Google algorithms are constantly changing? How do you keep up with the changes?

Bad answer: They change all the time and we know someone at Google that gives us inside tips.

Good answer: It is true that the algorithms change often; however, most changes go unnoticed. In our experience if you follow Google guidelines, adhere to SEO best practices as accepted by most industry professionals and don’t participate in producing low quality duplicate content and/or spam links, then algorithm updates typically aren’t a major threat to your site or your rankings.

Occasionally, Google makes a noticeable update that has a widespread effect and it becomes a hot topic, like the Panda update in 2011. We keep up with these changes in multiple ways. We read a lot of industry blogs and daily news regarding search and we also attend conferences dedicated to the SEO profession. Additionally, we have tests that we run internally to validate our methodologies.

Image Credits: Rajiv Patel

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Four Revealing Questions to Ask an SEO Consultant

Google Page Rank (PR) Update November 2011

ZK — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:47:33 +0000

Google is rolling a Page Rank update ( or a PR update) – The Google PR November 20011 update, this one is being rolled out less than three month after Google did one very recently in August 2011. The one prior to that was in June 2011.

Google seems to be rolling Page Rank updates every three months and if you want to increase your page rank in the next update you need to start work on back links for your blog today.

I was happy to see the Google Toolbar show a PR 4 for this blog with this update. It’s been a roller coaster ride for most blogs and website since the recent Panda update. A lot of sites have seen a dip in traffic due to an algorithm change with the Panda algorithm update. While Page Rank may have lost its importance in recent times, its certainly not dead.

I believe that Page Rank is a very strong metric for any website, the higher the page rank better the authority and impact of your website on Google search results. If you have recently launched a blog or are new to the term “Page Rank” I suggest you read more on this subject and try to get to a Page Rank for your website in the next update.

Did you see a PR update for your website ? If you haven’t maybe you should wait for a day as the roll out can take up to 24 hours to show the results.

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Google Page Rank (PR) Update November 2011

Easy to Use SEO Software – SheerSEO

ZK — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:51:42 +0000

As a blogger and a passionate search engine marketer I am constantly looking for ways to ensure that my blog has strong authority on Google. Having strong authority on Google is one of the top goals for every website of mine. I ensure that majority of my traffic and new users come from Google so that I don’t have to spend any money on promoting my blog or website. Google promotes it for me by ranking it high on searches.

But its not been easy going for bloggers and webmasters since the Panda update, most websites that ranked high have seen a major slide in search traffic. You need to constantly keep updated with not only the changes that Google makes to its alogrithm but also about new tools in the market. Having the right SEO tool will help you establish a strong authority on Google.

One such tool that you need to check is SheerSEO

What is SheerSEO ?

If you are trying to establish your website on search, SheerSEO is a web based software tool that will help you do that. The software shows you how to track your website changes on search engines, it will show you where your site ranks each time there is a change in the Google algorithm. By carefully tracking and keeping a close watch on changes in your site ranking you can improve your search ranking for a given keyword and stay ahead of your competitors.

Below are some awesome features of SheerSEO

1) Current rankings and search positions:
- You can create a FREE SEO report for your site on SheerSEO by entering the URL of your site. The smart SEO software pulls out a list of suggested terms that are relevant as per your site. You can also type a list of your own keyword terms to check their ranking. The search terms are monitored based on your default localization. You can also change the search terms to monitor it from a different location.

This feature shows you the search terms as the present position of the same along with the last date of change.

2) Tracking Data over time:
- The keywords that you select can also been seen at a historical level, the dashboard automatically graphs out a chart that shows you the history of your keywords based on the date range that you have chosen.

3) Number of Backlinks:
- A nice to have feature in any SEO software, this one will show you the number of backlinks that your site has, this is updated on a monthly basis. You can see the increase in the backlinks each month if you are doing a dedicated backlinking activity for your website.

4) Social Bookmarking:
- This is a cool feature that will show you how many stories or posts have been bookmarked on Digg and Delicious. Presently there are only the above two that can be monitored. It would be nice to have some of the other top social bookmarking sites integrated in this feature.

5) Indexed pages:
- This feature shows the number of pages that have been index by search engines, you can see the different pages that have been index for your website on Google, Yahoo and Bing

6) Facebook and Twitter activities:
- Industry SEO experts say, that your presence on social networks like facebook and twitter will influence your search rankings. SheerSEO tracks your sites activity on Facebook and Twitter. The dashboard has a dedicated section on Facebook and Twitter where you can see posts that have been liked, shared and commented on facebook along with the URLs. Tweets and Retweets for your site can be seen along with a weekly or monthly trends for your sites twitter activity.

Pricing
SheerSEO pricing is very affordable, although there are nine pricing options, the limits are upfront and very clear. Even if you have just started to blog or are cash strapped you can start off with a trial version that will give you access to monitor a single domain and 40 keywords.

The trial version is FREE for 2 months and $7 a month when you renew.

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Easy to Use SEO Software – SheerSEO

What Role Does the Client Play in SEO and Online Marketing ?

Alek Jones — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:06:30 +0000

For many SEO and online marketing campaigns, a major stumbling block is when clients have unrealistic expectations regarding the outcome of their campaigns. Most SEO experts are responsible for helping the client understand all areas of the campaign to manage their expectations even before the real work begins.

While many clients may be surprised to hear this, SEO clients also have responsibilities that they need to meet in order to help their SEO company to get things done effectively and consistently. Together, the client and SEO expert can work to create outstanding results.

Managing Client Expectations for Online Marketing

The following points should be presented to clients to ensure that they do not expect unrealistic goals for online marketing campaigns:

SEO agencies are not able to guarantee top rankings – however they can project to realistic results that can be achieved. Often, these results will not meet client expectations, especially when the client is in a highly competitive industry with high keyword competition.
SEO is not a quick fix or ‘get instant traffic’ approach. Instead, it is a long-term investment needing on-going work by the client and SEO expert.
SEO is largely a behind the scenes service, with no tangible results. Often, it focuses on coding in websites, linking and other ‘invisible’ things. Clients should be open to feedback and advice to explain progress.

The Client’s Responsibility

For clients, there are certain responsibilities that should be kept in mind when outsourcing online marketing or SEO campaigns to a professional company. These include the following:

1. Keyword Research and Selection

Keywords that are researched and selected form the basis of your entire SEO and online marketing campaigns. Clients may often try to force their SEO company into using generic industry keywords that will not get the results they want. While client input is important, SEO experts know their job better than anyone else – this is what they are paid to do.

2. Implementing recommended changes

Clients will often need changes to be done the website structure, which will be requested by the SEO expert. Often, these have to be implemented by the client themselves. Taking a long time to do this will only harm your campaigns, taking longer to reach those much-needed results.

3. Content Creation and Addition

Many clients do not fully understand how important content is on a website. Aside from text to code ratio, well-written, unique content needs to be added to the website often to assist rankings. Often, your SEO agency will have copywriters on board to assist with content, but clients still need to do their bit by updating the company blog or news section.

4. Micromanaging your SEO

Trying to second guess your SEO agency’s advice is never a good move. Asking questions is great, but trying to understand every detail of the campaign will decrease your productivity and also hamper your campaign’s success. Let your SEO experts focus on their job so that they can get on with things.

5. Social Media Management

Clients who did not request a complete social marketing campaign can’t assume that their SEO company will handle all aspects of their social presence. This is a full time job, needing consistent energy and time. While your SEO company can get you set up, you will need to consider a specific social marketing plan in order to have your social presence managed online.

Working together, both the client and the online marketing agency will be able to communicate and strive for the best results. This is why it is important to choose carefully when hiring an SEO agency to ensure that they are the right agency for the job.

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What Role Does the Client Play in SEO and Online Marketing ?

4 SEO Tips Certified By Google for Better Search Indexing of Your Blog

Anup Kayastha — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:43:53 +0000

Search Engine Optimization is the key to success for every website or blog especially the “Organic SEO” which is preferred when one is building his own link network. Search Engine spider’s crawls or indexes a webpage or a website according to its content maturity and how efficiently it has been optimized for good content display and better indexing.

Google certifies following given below SEO tips for better search indexing.

Tip 1: Genuine fresh content

Every web publisher is strictly advised to never ever copy a single word phrase from any website. Search engine algorithms have been designed in such a way that they discard the website featuring the plagiarized content. Copying anyone’s copyrighted content is strictly prohibited by Google or any search engine.

Content Backed up by Good Keywords:- Search spiders index a content by indexing its keywords so a good content is that which contains suitable keywords according to the content posted. Keywords are the main search query items so every publisher must do a good research in backing up his content with some niche keywords.

Tip 2: Keyword Density

It is the most crucial factor from SEO’s point of view. Flooding your content with more number of keywords than required lets it being reflected as spam content by search engines. So to be on a safe side, do obey Google’s policy of maintaining an optimum keyword density of around 3%-7% for 350 word content.

Point to be considered very much is that every search engine has different algorithms for their search bots so when you are optimizing your website for Google, stick to this keyword density otherwise exceeding it will result in penalizing you content form Google.

Tip 3: User friendly navigation and design

There are various types of contents which are not indexed by any search engine spider’s like flash content, images and videos unless they are specially optimized by applying different SEO techniques other than required for text contents. Google bot lay emphasis on the efficient navigation in the site as from search spiders point of view as well as users. Publisher must have a clean and light background look for their websites.

Using of more JavaScript dependent menu navigation bars makes it difficult for search spiders to index the links among them; so on safe side HTML menu navigation bars must be preferred.

Tip 4: Niche neighborhood Backlinks

An important factor in deciding a website’s page rank by Google is the number of good neighborhood backlinks a website have. Publishers should always pay great concern regarding this fact to let their site indexed better. Remember having backlink from any website will not help only high page ranked websites by Google which in legitimate way drives traffic can help a website in building its link network.

To always stand at the very first page of Google’s search result, you need to follow up the above given SEO tips. Organic SEO helps in building a website’s rank in search results with some efforts put by the publisher but there is also a paid SEO which requires publisher’s to pay up for a better search position in results. So it’s always the publisher who practices these techniques and he builds his website by implying any method of his choice.

This is a guest post by Anup Kayastha, you can check out the guidelines to guest post here.

Image Credit: SEM Geek

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4 SEO Tips Certified By Google for Better Search Indexing of Your Blog

Google Plus One and the Future of Your Online Business

carbonated — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 18:10:42 +0000

If you spend a lot of time online and hanging out on techie websites like this one then you can’t fail to have noticed that Google has just launched its own brand new button for sharing, called Google +1. That’s why everywhere you look from websites to paid advertisements to their search results, you’ll soon be seeing the +1 sign. But what does it actually do?

Essentially +1 will be a button that functions in the same way as a ‘Thumbs Up’, ‘StumbledUpon’, Digg or a Facebook like – it will be another tool for sharing with everyone that you approve of, like or recommend the site that you have just been reading or browsing and you feel that other people should have a look at that site too. Or, in the more complicated way that Daniel Dulitz, the product manager of Google put it,

“Google +1 is an annotation system which reinforces the interactions between organic and paid results, web pages, and your Google contacts.”

The process is simple – once you have given a plus one rating to a site there is then a counter that tells everyone else how many different people have given the plus one rating too. This counter will then act as a gauge to tell how popular that piece of content or that site is and how often it has been shared.

When it comes to your own website, there is no harm in having the full range of sharing buttons on display and the advantages of having the Google version are clear. In the very brief time that Google Plus One has been around (since March) the figures show that Google’s version, Plus One has already outpaced the Twitter share button in terms of the number of times used and is being taken up and implemented at almost double the rate of Twitter’s version. 4.5% of websites already have Google Plus

One which is more than the combined total of Twitter Instant Follow and Twitter Share. And with Google being as important as it is in terms of SEO and the effectiveness of your site you would not and should not, ignore Google +1. Facebook still has the most popular social add-ons and plugins of all, with their ‘like box’ and like button’ plugins, but you would not bet against Google overtaking them.

What effect then does all this have on your site SEO? So far Google have remained tight lipped on the subject but it does not take a genius to work out that it will soon play a big part. Google has always been keen on mining the social network data for their algorithm calculations and have not had access to the Twitter or Facebook figures – three guesses which social media they will use to calculate social popularity and importance?

The lesson, then is that business sites, whether they are selling books or offering a phone number search service, blogging about travelling or discussing organic skin care – no matter what the website does, if it wants to keep on going upwards, it is probably going to need Google +1.

This is a guest post by Alex, you can check out the guidelines to guest post here.

Image Credit: Seriftuts

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Google Plus One and the Future of Your Online Business

Top 5 Ways Google Can Help a Blogger – Other than Searching

misheal — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:45:33 +0000

Google is the undisputed ruler of the internet. What started off as a simple search engine has now developed into a gigantic octopus, spreading its tentacles in many different directions. Google has helped people coming from all walks of life in one way or another, same goes for bloggers.

The big G has a lot in the offing for bloggers. It offers a number of services that can help a blogger’s in many different ways, from content development to traffic generation.

Let’s take a look at the top five Google products that can be of great helps for bloggers.

1). Google Search

No matter how successful or unsuccessful its other products are, Google will always be known as the search engine that ruled the search market for years (and the tenure is not over yet).

Google Search holds the answer to almost everything, but here, I am not going to talk about the “searching made easy” by Google, instead I am highlighting the invaluable traffic and unique visitors sent to your blog from Google search, only if you can manage to rank for the right keywords, which is, easier said than done, but still Google deserves accolades for winning the trust of searchers, and making it worthwhile for bloggers to try and rank on one single platform.

2). Google Alerts

Want to keep a tab on the latest events and developments in the industry you are blogging on? Use Google Alerts! It’s critical for bloggers to stay updated and aware of the latest happenings in their sphere. For this purpose, there’s nothing better than the Google Alerts, a simple service that provides updates and new stories on the topic of your interest, right into your mail box.

All you have to do is enter the keyword you would like to monitor and the desired frequency, and you will never miss a noteworthy news, thanks to powerful Google crawlers who rarely miss anything on web. Google Alert is particularly helpful for bloggers covering topics like to technology, gadgets, mobile phones, real estate, or even SEO.

3). Google Reader

Google Reader is not some .pdf or ebook reader like Adobe Reader, It’s actually an aggregate service that lets you read the newly added articles, stories, and blog posts on your favorite websites, without having to visit each and every website you like to keep an eye on. All you need to do is, subscribe to these websites and let Google Reader do the rest.

It’s like an RSS feed that presents the latest information from hundreds of blogs at one place, and you can quickly scan through the titles and decide, which story is worth reading. Apart from the stories, it also provides more than enough inspiration and ideas to write on, which makes it a Godsend for those who find it difficult to come up with different titles on regular basis.

4). Google Plus

Finally! A social networking platform from Google that delivered, the network has already garnered 20 million users, which is no mean feat. This new social network provides you an excellent platform for networking, which is a must for bloggers for many reasons.

To start with, it lets you get into the circle of bloggers covering similar topics. The best thing about blogosphere is that there’s no professional jealousy or rivalry going on between bloggers, so this networking will benefit you in many ways.

For example, you can keep track of fellow bloggers and get the inspiration to write more, and write better . By occasionally writing guest posts for these blogs, you can get free yet very effective publicity for your blog, and last but not the least, you might even get some back links when some of your fellow blogger refers to your post in their article.

5). Google Keyword Tool

Google Keyword is a very powerful tool that is used primarily in PPC (and SEO) campaigns. For bloggers, it helps you identify keywords or key phrases, which are most searched, along with an idea of the competition. The numbers might not be accurate, still it gives you an idea of the topics people are looking for, and the topics that you need to write on.

So, there you are, five ways Google can help bloggers achieve the success, recognition, and inspiration they’re looking for. Please chip in with your ideas on how bloggers can make the most of other Google products not discussed in this article.

This is a guest post by Misheal, you can check out the guidelines to guest post here.

Image Credit: Will Lion

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

Top 5 Ways Google Can Help a Blogger – Other than Searching