Tag Cloud - google

Adoption of QR codes picked up dramatically in 2011 as compared to 2010. As with all technology, there is always something new on the horizon, and Near Field Communication (NFC) is gathering steam.

At PubCon Las Vegas 2012, Benu Aggarwal caught up with Matt Cutts of the Google webspam team to get some insights into the top search opportunities for small businesses while wrapping up 2011 and heading into 2012.

Display ads lead the way in driving aided brand awareness and purchase intent. Display ads allow marketers and agencies to bring their ideas and brands to life through greater user interaction and response. Research shows that 96% of people notice rich media ads on millions of Google partner websites. In the last year, display ad impressions have grown by 66%.

Social media now has significant influence on search rankings. According to Google’s Panda update, websites that offer quality and relevant content will be ranked higher in search engine results. A key factor in determining content quality and relevance are social signals attached to the content; thereby, elevating social media’s impact on search rankings.

A new tool in Google Analytics shows you how your Organic, Paid and Social Media Channels all assist each other in generating revenue.

Before Panda, SEOs were using relevant keywords and building good content. They were making sites accessible to search engines, and focused on quality link building. But for sustainable SEO, this is not good enough. Now we need to ensure we pay attention to three key factors.

anking locally is much more critical with the evolvement of local listings across the web such as Google Places, Bing BBP, Yahoo local, and the various social media channels. Read more about how you can improve your local ranking.

Link building can have a strong and positive effect on search engine optimization efforts. As algorithms for the major search engines change, it’s important to stay on top of the best practices when it comes to link building. Doing things the right way can ensure your site is not penalized, and you receive the maximum benefit.

Google’s latest algorithm update known as the “panda” penalized a lot of low quality and shallow content sites. According to Matt Cutts, Google’s main focus is making content farms and low quality content sites less visible in search results. The good news for Milestone clients? Google is helping original content rank higher and Milestone Internet Marketing ensures the content on our sites is unique and original.

Social media is having a larger impact on organic SEO factors on a daily basis. Both Bing and Google have recently taken steps to increase the influence a user’s friends have on the search results she sees when browsing the web. Taking some simple steps can help to ensure that you stay relevant to the search engines.

Search Engines support micro formats in local and SEO search. Deploying micro formats can help in SEO and Local search results and rankings.

This session from SMX West 2011 covers all the new ad formats Google has recently launched: AdWords video ads, AdWords SiteLinks, local AdWords, product AdWords, comparison ads etc and explores how to take advantage of these new features.

Haven’t done mobile search ads yet? You’re missing out on a growing market! eMarketer predicts that mobile ad spend will surpass $6.5 billion in 2012. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that “mobile will be a larger business than the PC-Web,” likely a primary reason Google recently spent $750 million to acquire mobile advertising network AdMob. This SMX West session looks at mobile paid search opportunities and how search marketers can get ahead of this tsunami of opportunity.

Google dramatically expanded its collection of information about the real world with its introduction of Place Pages – a webpage for every place in the world – for businesses such as hotels, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities. If you haven’t yet claimed your place page you’re missing out on a fantastic opportunity for controlling your own destiny and gaining valuable search traffic on Google Maps.

Google’s Matt Cutts discusses how social media channels impact search engine rankings. While there was minimal impact only six months ago, much has changed, and Google’s algorithms have gotten more advanced to be able to judge the quality of the users sharing information in social environments.

Google introduces a new AdWords feature that will allow users to compile negative keywords at the account level to implement across similar campaigns.

Google Zeitgeist, a free online tool, provides insight into how the world searches, which helps advertisers find new keywords and ad ideas for clients around the world. The tool also provides information on different categories such as countries, cities, people, sports, maps…etc.

In response to a recent article published in the New York Times, Google has amended parts of its Google Places local search algorithm to take into account user experience and satisfaction.

Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, gave a keynote speech at PubCon 2010 about what Google has been up to for the last year, where it is going, and quick tips everyone should implement.

Maximize your internet real estate by including videos and a separate video sitemap to your website! Google announces their Google Site Map Generator tool. Now, via Google Webmaster tools, you can create a separate video sitemap file complete with title and description tags allowing yet another way for web crawlers to index your page. Their extension of the Sitemap protocol lets webmasters submit all video files and relevant metadata to Google in one file. What does this mean?! More Traffic!

With the introduction of Google’s “Universal Search” back in May of 2007, the ever increasing need to surface among a sea of a multifaceted search is approaching new advancements. With the blend of news, images, video, and local all under one roof it is increasingly important to include a comprehensive sitemap for your website—and that […]