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How to Setup Google+ Brand Page for Your WordPress Site

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We wanted to take some time to show you How to Setup Google+ Brand Page for Your WordPress Site.  Since we have many WordPress sites, doing a setup of Google+ Business Pages for your WordPress site is something we wanted to show you now.  Getting your WordPress site out on Google+ Pages, can be important.

On November 7th, 2011 Google+ announced Google+ Pages for Brands and Businesses are finally online.  As it looks, there are thousands of branded pages popping up on Google+ with many brands and businesses setting up their Google Plus Pages. Currently, Google+ does not offer the ability to have “vanity urls” so you will have to just hold off on that for now.  Here is our Google+ Url: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/112859378018893254813/ so make sure you add us to your circles.

Google+ for Business Marketing, wanted to take the time to give you a step by step tutorial on how to setup your Google Plus Brand Page for your WordPress Site.

How to Setup Google+ Brand Page for Your WordPress Site:

Step 1 (Getting Started):

  • To get started, you will need to be logged into your Google Account. If you don’t have one, get one here.
  • Go to Google+ Business. You’ll find a nice multimedia nifty video that you can watch with some info.

 

Step 2 (Pick a Category):

Select a category that best fits your page, business or company. The categories are as follows:

  • Local Business or Place (storefronts, stores, restaurants, places,or services)
  • Product or Brand (electronics, brand names, or individual products)
  • Company, Institution, or Organization (companies, institutions, organizations, non-profit organizations)
  • Arts, Entertainments or Sports (films, TV, music, books, sports, shows)
  • Other (if your business doesn’t fit into another category, use this category)

 

Step 3: Add Your Information

  • Entering your business or brand name and website.
  • Select an additional category that best suits your business.
  • The sub-categories will change if you choose a different main category.
  • Select who can view your Google+ profile. The default is any Google user, or you can restrict this to 18 and older or 21 and older.

 

Step 4. Add your Tag Line and your Photo

  • Add photo (this could be your company logo)
  • Tagline: Summarize your business in 10 words or less

 

Step 5: Get the Word Out

  • Great Step here! Google offers you the ability to tell your personal Google+ circles about your new business page.

 

Finished Google+ Business Page(Example):

  • Here’s your Google+ Branded Business Page!

 

Extra Steps: Edit your Profile

  • To further customization, you can edit your profile

 

Extra Steps: Completed Page with a Customized Banner Image Ribbon

 

Optimize Your SEO for Local Businesses

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Local Search is really taking off these days, especially with the inception of Google Plus.  Right now Google Plus is good for personal pages, but Google + for Business is right around the corner and will be a huge “plus” for local search.

In order to optimize your localization SEO for your business, you need to utilize keyword research. Your on-site optimization is based upon keyword research. Google Analytics is the industry standard for analyzing web keywords.  The use of the keyword filter should help you to target the local used keywords for your small business.  Keyword research is one of the most important SEO components for any business. It is this research which determines who is able to find your website and who is not and by what keyword are being searched for.  If you neglect to incorporate important keywords then you lose targeted traffic. The less traffic you have the lower the opportunities for sales conversion.

When you use keyword research tools you will get national search volume information. However, in order to determine keywords for a local small business you do not need national level rankings. What you need is to help your company appeal to the local levels. This can be done with Google Places.

Use of Google Places:
Google places is referred to as virtual real estate for businesses that are listed in the top keyword searched spots. Small businesses can submit their site to Google Places, a virtual directory, for free. This is particularly useful for small businesses which are new or on a tight budget. Small business owners cannot afford to overlook the importance of using Google Places. The purpose of the directory is to connect local smart phone and internet users to local businesses near their area. With a smart phone, users can take advantage of the Google apps to find locations near them at any time. This is not only beneficial for the customer but for the local businesses. In order to take advantage of this, businesses must place their complete listing on Google Places, and enjoy the benefits reaped from it in terms of increased customers and profit.

The rise of the iPhone and Google Android smart phones, using Google Places has become one of the most popular means of marketing a small business. Out of all the daily online activity conducted via smart phones, nearly seventy five percent of it relates to local content on Google (comsore.com). Now, more than ever, small businesses should use the services provided with Google Places to increase their local customer base and draw attention to their company. Google Places is a viable tool for local marketing because it includes all of the same features that social customers need. There are demographics based upon geo-location, as well as reviews, recommendations, connected sharing, and mobile based marketing. Customers using social networks can even make recommendations to others on their network, which increases your small business. Whether you are a dry cleaners, dentist, or café, using Google Places means that people in your area and nearby can find your company instantly, review the pertinent information about the company, and then get directions to your doorstep.

As a free web marketing service, Google Places offers businesses an opportunity to describe their services and their products, including their hours of operation, their email address, phone number, address, and website. Small businesses can include photos and videos as well as customer views to enhance the Places page. When customers conduct localized search queries, Google Places pages appear at the top based upon category and location. They are generally accompanied by a red push pin which indicates the location of your business. From there users can click directly to the business website, read reviews, or read the Places page.

There are new tools offered to small businesses thanks to improvements on Google Places. Google places offers local maps which highlight the most popular places on the left hand side, which—if your business makes it to the top seven—is a very useful tool. It also puts local places listings above organic listings which help to increase your size and visibility. The listings with Google Places are more social than with organic listings because it leaps into the space for reviews and recommendations. It also ties directly to Google Maps and all of the related mobile applications for Google Maps which are used by potential customers.

I suggest digesting this infographic created by Mike Blumenthal.

Click to Enlarge

 

 

How Social Networks Affect Your Website’s SEO

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Social networks, such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter have become one the most relevant aspects of building a respectable SEO (search engine optimization), good page rank or a social media promotion campaign.  Social media just isn’t simply another tool which connects clients to businesses. It’s a great tool to connect businesses to client as well.  Facebook Fan Pages for businesses is a great powerful tool that harnesses the power of Facebook’s members.  Google+ for Businesses is also on it’s way. Even though Google+ hasn’t announced that business pages or business profiles are allowed, many are trying to jump on the bad wagon of the power of Google in promoting their businesses with Google+.  There isn’t one social media platform that carries the utmost authority in terms of matching businesses with success. Facebook does a good job, but the question is how will Google Plus for Businesses handle it’s strength in allowing businesses to promote themselves online?  There are over 750 million users on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Google and Bing have recognized the power that these sites hold by linking your page rank directly with the authority your business has on these pages.  Google has announced that +1’s will be counted towards SEO, so this is big.

How will Google Plus for Businesses handle it’s strength in allowing businesses to promote themselves online?

Twitter is a crucial aspect of any successful business. In terms of reputation management, Twitter is one of the best tools businesses have. Using the @ and # symbol, businesses can directly contact customers to show that they care. In order to directly emulate link building, your company needs a good quality of Twitter followers, a large number of followers, and a large number of retweets and mentions.

In terms of the quantity of your followers, the more you have the better you can build your links. The number of followers you have will directly affect where your company ranks. Therefore, the more followers you have linking your sources as well as your articles, the higher your page rank will become. In terms of the quality of your followers, you want to ensure that you have high quality followers, not just followers for the sake of followers. It is important to have high authority authors following your business, mentioning your business, and linking to your site in order to positively affect your rank.

The number of retweets and mentions will directly affect how many times your company is linked. This will draw more traffic to your site and provide your original link with more authority. Being an authority does not means that you must be an authority on every topic. Posting relevant Tweets is one of the best ways to increase your ranking. You want to ensure that you are not limited to a single topic, but that your content remains relevant.

Facebook has become a tool imperative to the success of your SEO strategy. Everything mentioned pertaining to Twitter should also be applied to Facebook. The quality and quantity of your fans and friends is very important. You can also connect your Twitter account with your Facebook profile to increase the visibility and accessibility of your site and company. Along that note one of the best ways to build your rank is to utilize internal linking. Facebook offers users entire profiles which means you can link your twitter account, your website, your blog posts, your author bio, etc… you can literally link everything relevant to your Facebook to keep your friends and followers updated. Whenever possible it is good to offer incentives to people for friending your company page or linking your articles to their page or Twitter. Be sure to turn to friends, family, and coworkers first to help increase your personal networks and spread your page. The more people who see your page, the more traffic you can get toward your articles and your SEO rank.

 

Buying Backlinks Can Produce Positive AND Negative Results

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Backlinks are links from one site that point back to your website. They can be posted in forum discussions or an affiliate website. Typically when you buy Backlinks the link to your website is posted on a related website in exchange for their link being posted on your website. This is a form of affiliate marketing which can generate better SEO results for your company. When you buy Backlinks you can produce negative and positive results easily. Buying Backlinks can increase the number of backlinks to your site which than increases your search engine rank, but if you are not careful, it can result in your site being removed completely from search engines instead of being increased.  Links on Google Plus will also help your site immensely!

Understanding how buying backlinks can produce positive and negative results is an imperative part of your SEO success.

Google and Yahoo both rank your website in terms of the quantity and quality of the backlinks which direct to your website. The quality of the backlinks is determined by how relevant the other sites are to your site and where the link is placed as on the page. When you buy backlinks it is important that you avoid buying in mass because this might not contain sites relevant to your company.

Understanding how buying backlinks can produce positive and negative results is an imperative part of your SEO success. Good backlinks are links which include anchor text. This means that the text can be seen in the hyperlink. This uses relevant keywords in order to increase your rank among the search engines. Other good backlinks include links to and from websites which already have authority. This means sites which already have trust of search engines such as authority websites like Amazon.com. Having backlinks from here can greatly increase your rank among search engines. Another form of good backlinks is when you link one useful website to another. For this, the sites should be relevant to one another. When you have forum signature linking, it means a discussion forum placed outbound links to relevant websites such as yours. This is a great example of good backlinks.

Bad backlinks present themselves in one of two forms. The first form is follow. This means it takes you somewhere. No-follow means it leads you no where. No-follow backlinks will considerably harm your search engine rankings. It is imperative that your links always lead somewhere. Other forms of bad backlinks include link spamming. This occurs when you add as many links as you whether or not they are relevant to your website. Sybill linking takes place when you establish a handful of websites under different domain names and then you link all of those together to try and trick search engines into giving you a higher rank. Using linking software to create many link connections and speed up your SEO process is another form of bad backlinks. These do not create links relevant to your site which then results in the links being marked as spam. If you use bad backlinks your site might get removed from search engines which will damage your business. If you do use backlinks it is important that you seek out good backlinks as a part of your complete SEO strategy.

Google Plus is Open for Everyone – No Invitation Required

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While some people have been seemingly hesitant to get involved with Google Plus because they did not receive an invitation yet, it is not necessary to wait. Google Plus is free and open to everyone now. Any individual who wants to create a profile is able. You do not have to wait to receive an invitation from someone else. As soon as you get started you can start sending invitations to friends, families, and work colleagues, letting them know that starting a profile with Google Plus is free, fun, fast, and easy.

You do not need to wait for an invitation to Google Plus. You can start a free profile today. All you need to do is register. With the announcement of Google Plus people everywhere are beginning to notice the advantages associated with hanging out on the web without the privacy concerns of Facebook. With Google Plus you can create circles, select which circles see your posted thoughts, and no longer have to worry about your boss reading about your facebook status and calling you into his office the next day. When you create groups of friends via Google Plus you can broadcast thoughts to a preferred circle. This means that you no longer face the same privacy risks. Instead you can select which circles see what information. Privacy is given the highest level of care and support with Google Plus. In order to take advantage of Google Plus features you can start with creating your circles.

Once you sign up for Google Plus you should begin to create your circles and organize your contacts. Once you have a new person you can drag their photo into the circles you create. There is no limit to the number of new circles you can create. You can even place a single contact in multiple circles. There are four buttons on the right near the logo, and the one furthest to the right is meant for the creation of circles. When you select it you can then see all of your contacts in the panel—all contacts, not only Gmail contacts—and you can place them into the circle you create.

When you invite people to Google Plus you must add them to your circle. You can click on the circles icon and then add a person using their email address. You pre-determine under which circle said person will fall and then send them an invitation message once you click on their icon. Of course it is important to know how to get rid of someone from your circles, whether you are moving them to another circle or removing them all together. In either case you simple select the circle in which the person is currently, highlight their icon, click on them, and drag them out of the circle.

If you want to make your stream on Google Plus appear in italics or bold fonts you can apply these changes, unlike other updates. You can bold your text by putting a star as the prefix and the suffix for the text. If you want to make it in italics you can use an underscore as the prefix and suffix. To cross out text on your steam you can place a hyphen as the prefix and the suffix.

Upon uploading a photo to Google Plus you will be asked to create an album. When you create your album you will then be prompted to select which circles can see the album and which cannot. You can select enhanced privacy features for your photos unlike Facebook which has a default setting to all of your friends. You can literally drag and drop photos from your desktop which are then automatically uploaded like in Gmail.

3MultiMedia – Tony Eden

A digital agency on a mission to help small and medium businesses with their online presence. I work from my California Office to take your ideas and turn them into a digital online design for you.
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