Search Engine Optimization and Duplicate Content
Avoid duplicate content on your website at all costs or risk being heavily penalized by search engines like Google, or even blacklisted and completely removed from the search engine’s index. This means don’t copy content from another website and put it on your own and try to avoid putting the exact same content on multiple pages on your website.
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Google Fonts Gives Web Designers Variety
For years, designers have complained of only being allowed to use Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, or Courier as marketers and web developers forced the usage of web-friendly fonts for usability and search engine optimization. The idea of these four fonts being known as the web-friendly fonts is quickly becoming extinct.
Google Adsense In Your City: A Learning Experience
Last month, I traveled to Las Vegas to attend the Google Adsense In Your City. Since launching Vancouver Trails in 2007, the Google Adsense ads being run on the website have been the primary way of generating revenue from that site and this event offered a good opportunity to catch up on what I was doing right and what needed improving.
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Search Google Using an Image
Google Images now offers a feature where you can search the Internet for similar images. To do try an Image search:
- Go to: http://images.google.com/
- Find a photo on your computer in your Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac).
- Drag that photo to the browser and drop it into the Search Field on the Google Images page.
- Wait for the photo to upload and voila!
Here’s a screenshot of the Google Image page that shows the sample Starry Night image being dragged to the search field:
How can I use this?
This is more than just a cool feature as there are several business applications this can be used for.
- Copyright: If you have photos on a website you run or on Flickr, try search with one of those photos and see if any other websites are using your photo that maybe did not ask for permission. You might be surprised!
- Designing with Stock Photos: If you simply do not have photos for your website and need to buy stock photos from a service like iStock, try searching the web with that stock photo to see what other companies are using that same photo. Discovering that a competitor is using the same photo is like wearing the same outfit to a party as your friend.
- Partnerships / Linking: Sometimes websites put a logo of your company on their site but don’t provide a link to your website. Try searching with your logo and see what comes up. This may present some opportunities to follow up for link building.
It’s widely known that one of the methods Google’s algorithm ranks sites on is unique content. Will this content start to include images? Or maybe it does already.
Google+ Launches Business Pages
The Google+ social network has finally launched their Business Pages where companies can now create their own profiles, similar to Facebook pages. While still in its infancy, Google+ Pages allows a company to include a brief description of themselves, their website, photos, contact info, gain followers, and send status updates to those followers.
While this just seems like a splash-in-the-pan compared to all the features Facebook Pages offered, businesses should setup a Google+ Page because more features will be rolled out in the next year and these pages will become part of Google’s search algorithm. In other words, there will be a positive SEO value to setting up a page and doing so sooner may keep your business ahead of the competition.
One thing to keep in mind is that Google+ Pages can only have one administrator at this time, so make sure the right person sets up the account for your company.
Here’s an introductory video from Google:
Google+ Shows Promise but Where’s the Support for Businesses?
Google rolled out it’s social networking equivalent to Facebook, called Google+, this summer and the initial features look promising. Google+ organizes your Friends into Circles, or custom named groups that you can add your contacts to. Many Facebook users have become Friends with family members, work colleagues, old high school buddies, etc. and find it challenging to update their statuses with personal opinions or photos knowing that they might risk one of their co-workers seeing private messages. Google+’s Circles enables you to organize each of your contacts into a different category and choose which updates and content those people see.
Google+ has done a great job of implementing a system that is easy to use and navigate. Even though the system has nowhere near the number of features that Facebook has, it’s a great start and it seems that updating certain things is easier to find compared to having to dig through menus in Facebook.
Now What?
After experimenting with Google+, the common reaction has been “Now what?”.
The big piece of the puzzle missing from Google+ is the ability for users to setup Pages for their Businesses, Organizations, Bands, Political Groups, etc. and for users to be able to follow those pages that they are interested in. Businesses have been itching to include their brands on Google+ but Google has been slow to respond.
In early July, Google announced that business accounts would be coming soon but then followed up with a message several days later asking businesses to stop making new accounts. This past week, several of the most popular companies who were able to setup Google+ Pages were removed without warning, including Mashable and Sesame Street.
Google should have probably waited in rolling out Google+ until the capabilities to add businesses to the system was ready. We have become so accustom to services on the Internet being accessible immediately and on demand that we don’t have the patience to wait for, what seems like a basic system, to be implemented. Google should have recognized this.
Still, Google will have all of these tools for businesses shortly and will continue to integrate their services with Google+, such as Maps, Places, and Calendars. Most importantly, the features on Google+ will tie back into search results since, after all, Google is all about “Search”!
Responding to Negative Online Feedback
Here are some tips for dealing with negative online feedback:
The Best Offense is a Good Defense
Encouraging customer comments on industry specific sites and in common web directories, such as Google Places, should be part of your online marketing strategy. Staying on the offence by doing a bit of work on this each month and getting positive feedback can save you a lot of hassle in the long run when you do get a negative feedback.
In addition, Google displays its comments in their search results and there is no doubt that positive and negative feedback on your company factors into search engine optimization. With this in mind, include online comments and feedback as part of your online strategy before somebody leaves you a negative response and you find yourself behind the 8-ball.
Tags: google, google comments, negative feedback, Social Media, user feedback
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