Google+: Where’s The Usage?

Posted by admin on May 15th, 2012

Google has been trying hard (really, really hard) to make it in the social media game, but internet users, according to a recent study from RJMetrics, just aren’t interested. Could it be that Google+, its latest endeavor, is a Facebook clone with the activity of modern-day Friendster? Or, are the search engine’s indirectly in-your-face tactics, such as Search plus Your World, too much of a turnoff?

Although RJMetrics does not delve into the whys behind Google+’s lack of usage, its report indicates users, from a public standpoint, simply are not engaged. Google+ may have passed the 100 million user mark (this figure could be inflated, as users of other Google properties, such as Gmail, are forced into creating Google+ accounts), but posting, sharing, and +1-ing do not have the same frequency as similar features on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Internet users, in fact, spend more minutes on Myspace than on Google+, according to a February 2012 comScore report.

So, by examining a random sample of 40,000 users, what did RJMetrics find?

• A public post on Google+ receives less than one +1, reply, or re-share. Specifically, a post receives 0.77 +1s, 0.54 replies, and 0.17 re-shares.
• 30 percent of users who make one public post do not make a second one.
• Users, on average, make a post every 12 days.
• Over time, the time between public posts increases and does not improve with newer users.

To Google+’s credit, users will make a public post at least once. Typically, RJMetrics determined, users on most social media networks have a 90-percent chance of posting again; Google+, however, does not meet this mark. More specifically, users wait 15 days between their first and second posts, and 10 days between their fifth and sixth posts.

As RJMetrics points out, private sharing and posting are not taking into account, and taking this factor, if it were measurable, could skew results of incorporated into overall frequency figures. Nevertheless, when Google+’s public usage is compared to that of Twitter, Pinterest, and other growing channels, it falls drastically behind and shows that the No. 1 search engine has a long way to go before becoming an influential social media force and integral part of an offsite branding strategy.

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

Google Analytics Introduces Social Reports Feature

Posted by admin on May 15th, 2012

Although announced back in late March, Google Analytics’ Social reports feature is now starting to receive attention. Social media’s ROI is still relatively amorphous, with traffic programs indicating the amount of visitors coming through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, a blog, or similar property to the brand’s website but not assigning an actual value for social media-driven sales or listing greater information about landing pages or content shared. Measuring social media’s ROI has been an overall industry goal and topic since late 2010, and now Google Analytics’ Social report offers features in order to measure the value and influence of Facebook, Twitter, and similar properties.

Google Analytics’ blog explains this new feature monitors on and offsite activity and offers a clearer, more defined picture of social media usage. Although websites of all types can use such a tool, the post’s wording indicates Social reports is specifically designed for ecommerce stores wanting to measure sales directly from social media features. Group Product Manager Phil Mui writes:

The new reports bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about – allowing you to better measure the full value of the social channel for your business.

Although Analytics previously showed the amount of traffic coming from social networking websites, Social reports go into far more detail, providing, according to Google, better understanding of on and offsite activity, offering a greater view of social media’s influence, and assisting with making current and future social media marketing decisions.

With the right connection, Google Analytics’ Social report overview can indicate the sales amounts from social media, including immediate and returning sources. These figures are indicated by “Last Interaction Social Conversion” and “Assisted Social Conversion,” respectively. Conversions can additionally be divided up by social media channel.

But not every website implementing a social media strategy falls under ecommerce, and even service- and information-related ones want to see the effectiveness of their plan. Aside from conversion figures, Social reports offers a greater breakdown of traffic, including the amount of visitors coming to the site from Facebook, Twitter, and other channels and the landing pages. Particularly helpful for informational sites is the Social Plugin report and Activities Stream feature, which lists what is being shared and where these pages or articles are being viewed.

Analytics’ Social report presents the value of social media from multiple angles: how it directly and indirectly translates to sales, how platforms are used as traffic tools, and how content is being shared through it. As one defined step toward better ROI, Social reports can assist with viewing existing strategies and making adjustments, just as Analytics is presently used for seeing the effects of and making SEO decisions.

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

Bing Traffic Moves Up and Shifts to Social

Posted by admin on May 15th, 2012

If search engines were a family, Google would be the large older brother to little siblings Bing and Yahoo. However, one thing that Bing has always had is a close relationship with Facebook and let’s face it – Google and Facebook don’t exactly get along (Bing’s owner Microsoft owns stock in Facebook). In fact, Bing has always integrated social search results from Facebook as part of its search results. On the other hand, Google’s push towards social – Search plus Your World – has been met with mostly negative criticism, with critics saying it nullifies the concept of natural search, punishing users who do not use Google+.

Although Google has the majority of search engine traffic, a report today shows some huge growth for Bing, up 11% from April of last year. This, paired with Google’s slight drop of -5%, has moved Bing-powered search from 26.9% of all search traffic to 30% of all search traffic. On Bing’s actual website, its traffic remains in third place (after Google and Yahoo), despite a 16% growth overall.

Only days before this report, Bing quietly released new social implementation that is being met with positive response, quite the opposite of Search plus Your World. The new search page keeps the search results mostly separate from social, pushing results from Facebook to a right-hand sidebar. As Mashable puts it:

“For now, the sidebar only works with Facebook, but even with just that one network, the level of integration is quite intense. To see the new pane at work, you have to sign into Facebook and install the Bing App in Facebook. With that done, your social pane will be filled with recent Bing activity that’s also been shared on Facebook. When you enter a search query in the Bing interface on the left, the pane will also display a list of Facebook friends, and topic experts who might be able to assist with your query.”

In the next few months, Microsoft plans on adding Twitter results and other socially gathered information to this area. Do you think the combination of social results mixed with higher traffic will work in Bing’s favor?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

Building Your Facebook Fan Base

Posted by admin on May 7th, 2012
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Since its launch in 2004, it seems like Facebook has been a constant source of news. If you’ve seen The Social Network, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Although a good portion of the film was fictionalized, the sections about Facebook’s growth and subsequent legal problems are mostly spot-on. Now, almost a full eight years later, Facebook is readying a massive IPO to unleash on the stock market. This offering is going to value Facebook in the $7 billion to $10 billion region (according to estimates) and will undoubtedly expand the attention heaped onto the social network.

What does this mean for you and your business? There are a number of guesses, but one thing is for sure – your potential reach has never been this large. The public valuation has forced Facebook to release a lot of previously undisclosed information including two stats that will help your business greatly – 901 million users with 125 billion ‘friendships.’ Using this knowledge, you can expand your reach beyond your already connected consumer base.

Here are a few ways to expand your Facebook audience:

Facebook Contests and Promotions – With new features like Offers and the ability to create your own applications, you can bring the deals directly to your company’s client base without breaking a sweat. Build in a share function and you’ll be able to target your fan’s friends and beyond, pushing a contest or offer campaign into the viral sphere.

Facebook PPC Ads – Although Google’s AdWords is still a major force in PPC, Facebook has a number of benefits that Google can’t offer, including campaigns with virtually no click fraud. Work with a social media firm to really push your brand message effectively and successfully.

Interact and Engage – Keep your posts updated on a regular basis with fresh content. Doing so will keep your fan base interested and engaged. Once this connection is established, make sure to stay engaged with the conversation, responding to both positive and negative feedback. This dialogue with fans has the potential to bring in new customers while providing you with valuable information about your fan base.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

Webspam Update Targets Linking Strategies, Enforces Old Recommendations

Posted by admin on April 30th, 2012

As the latest Google algorithm change, the Webspam update (also called Penguin or Panda 3.5) is more of the same. A strategy geared toward eradicating poorly-written content from the search engines and pushing webmasters to find-tune their SEO strategies, Webspam diverges from the series of Panda rollouts in that link quality is given more emphasis, rather than content alone.

That’s not to say content is fully out of the picture. In addressing this update with a blog post, Matt Cutts summarized his intentions:

We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. […]We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites.

Like with any Google update, Cutts’ statement is simply a generalization without clear direction, but he goes into greater detail with black hat versus white hat practices. For SEO companies and webmasters looking to avoid the perils of the significant algorithm change, Webspam, Cutts explains, zeros in on websites still using shortcuts: links for ranking pages higher than they deserved to be, keyword stuffing, and link schemes. Essentially, Cutts wants all webmasters to review and abide by quality guidelines.

In an analysis of Webspam’s ramifications, however, spam tactics may not always as easily evident. As paragraphs of keywords and irrelevant links are practices that died out years ago and, in the present, are reserved only for the most antiquated black hat schemes, discovering why a site may have lost rank may not be a straightforward process. Only about 3.1 percent of all search queries should experience any negative effect, Cutts claims, and a minor factor buried deep in a site’s design, such as spun content or links not related to said content, may be the cause.

Unlike Panda, originally geared toward poorly-written or nonsensical content farm pieces but then becoming a ubiquitous measure for judging all internet copywriting, Webspam places greater consideration on link quality. While Cutts’ jarring example of irrelevant links added to poorly-worded spun content hits all the obvious points, he is essentially telling all webmasters and SEO professionals to rethink linking strategies and avoid the following link schemes:

• Links added to unfairly change PageRank, including buying or selling such properties
• Links to spammers or link farms
• A greater amount of reciprocal or exchanged links

From here, though, Cutts ties links in with content, explaining that good quality writing gets a web page seen and makes others link to you.

On the other hand, Cutts’ mindset is naïve, and any SEO professional knows that relying solely on content, no matter how well-written it is, is not a surefire strategy for search engine success. On the same note, well-written content does not engender consistent one-way linking. Rather, links and content work together, and when both are high-quality, a website has a greater chance of increased visibility. Taking shortcuts with spun content and exchanging links with everyone in sight is a clear sign a website does not have a thorough, well thought out optimization strategy. The Webspam update shows now that, if one or more of these aspects is pushed far back within a website, Google will notice and penalize accordingly.

As a white-hat search engine optimization company, Keyword Performance adjusts its strategies with the latest Google updates. Black hat practices are never employed in a campaign. Instead, high-quality, always-original content combined with carefully planned, relevant linking for competitive keyword terms is the core of our approach.

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

BREAKING NEWS: Facebook to Buy Instagram for $1 Billion

Posted by admin on April 9th, 2012

Well, that’s a huge surprise. According to a post from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the social media site has purchased hugely popular photo-sharing app Instagram for a reported $1 billion in Facebook stock and cash. Posting on his Timeline, Zuckerberg spoke about the acquisition of Instagram and its 8-person development team:

“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

The most striking part of his announcement is not only the lack of rumors about such a deal, but how Facebook intends to keep Instagram functioning independently from Facebook:

“We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.”

This announcement comes right on the heels of the app’s Android release. Previously, Instagram was only available to iPhone users.

What do you think about this development? Is Facebook making a major play to boost its IPO?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

Is Facebook Venturing Into Search?

Posted by admin on April 9th, 2012

If Google can roll out a social media platform, can Facebook become equal competition as a search engine? Around the time Facebook announced its plans to raise $5 billion for an IPO, an image in Mark Zuckerberg’s profile subtly indicated the social networking website may do more with search. Anonymous sources quoted in a Business Week piece provided more details.

Although official plans have not been announced, the two quoted engineers mentioned to Business Week that Lars Rasmussen, a former Google engineer who created Google Wave, is leading a team to improve search features for better organization and results.

Facebook’s plans to expand its search features are currently all speculation, and until Zuckerberg or one of the company’s engineers comes out with details, we can only postulate the possibilities. So, what changes could Facebook introduce?

Facebook already has a solid relationship with Bing. The Microsoft search engine incorporates Facebook Likes and updates into results, and if the social networking site were to have a truly reciprocal relationship with Bing, it may opt for a similar algorithm for better organization of onsite Likes, status updates, and pictures. But, more importantly, where will Facebook be drawing its results from – solely from onsite content or from outside sources? If the latter, which websites could Facebook users see in results, and would “Likes” be a determining factor? Could sites that are not Liked in some way show up in Facebook search results?

Facebook received 336 million search queries in February, but this amount trails far behind Google’s 17,628 million from the same time period. If Facebook is to transform into a true search competitor, getting more traffic and retooling its algorithm aren’t the only changes necessary. As research company Canalys points out, Facebook must overcome branding. While saying “Google it” clearly does not pertain to a Google+ status update, “Facebook it” is tied heavily to posting such information and not to conducting an internet search. If Facebook is to truly carry out such a feat, its efforts may likely result in a sub-Bing search engine, traffic-wise, that is based on and complements the social networking experience.

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

Google Planning Significant Algorithm Overhaul

Posted by admin on April 9th, 2012

Google’s most drastic changes have either been major successes (the Panda update) or big busts (Search plus Your World and pretty much everything social media-related). So the news that the search engine giant’s planning to significantly retool its algorithm could end up being one of the best things Google’s ever done for users or a major annoyance in the same vein as Search plus Your World.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this algorithm update is poised as the largest revision in the company’s history. Facts and direct answers, as these changes are implemented, will be pushed to the top. But, while this approach seems fairly similar to the recently-visible DuckDuckGo, Google is still holding onto its keyword-based algorithm but incorporating “semantic search.”

What, exactly, is “semantic search”? Rather than just taking keywords and their density into account, the meaning plays a greater factor in ranking. The end product should be better-quality, relevant results incorporating the searched term and related words. Along the same lines, answers to input questions will be drawn from Google’s database; if results aren’t available, however, the search engine will crawl other websites to not only identify keywords but also to find relevant topic references.

While such an approach, indeed, may be helpful to the user’s experience, Google essentially seems to be replicating Bing’s “Decision Engine” model for producing relevant search results. On one hand, Bing’s innovation may soon become standard to search, and Google’s appropriation could be a significant indicator of such a direction. On the other, such changes go hand-in-hand with the Panda updates for better-quality search results. Once implementation is complete, all first-page results, theoretically, will cover fully-relevant websites with well-written content.

This “next generation of search” is expected to roll out over the next few years, with changes even surfacing in the upcoming months, according to the Wall Street Journal. How much of an impact could these revisions make in search results? As SEO professionals, we’ll simply have to wait, see, and adjust accordingly.

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

Is DuckDuckGo a Viable Google Competitor?

Posted by admin on April 9th, 2012

Recently, Google has been in the news not just for its major algorithm overhaul, including the last Panda update, but also for antitrust investigation. Controlling 60 percent of the search market, Google is far above its closest competitors, but even if Yahoo and Bing bring in less traffic, could anyone else make users turn away?

DuckDuckGo, a search engine introduced in 2008, could be a possibility, although its traffic still doesn’t reach Bing and Yahoo limits. Nevertheless, this search engine created by Gabriel Weinberg has been in the news more frequently these days as an alternative to Google. Built on open source code, DuckDuckGo, most notably, does not track its users and collect their data. When Google changed its privacy policy at the end of January, DuckDuckGo, likely as a result, experienced record amounts of traffic — or close to 1 million search queries per day.

What differentiates DuckDuckGo from its higher-trafficked competitors? First off, the algorithm is not solely keyword-based but instead, as Weinberg mentioned in an interview with Time, incorporates results from crowd-sourced websites for relevancy. More importantly – and perhaps this is the factor suddenly drawing more users over to DuckDuckGo – the search engine does not share IP addresses, only employs cookies when necessary, and does not collect personal data from users to influence and customize search results. As a result, DuckDuckGo is considered one of the safest search engines, privacy-wise, to use.

However, Weinberg initially didn’t intend to create DuckDuckGo for privacy; rather, he wanted a search engine that filtered out “SEO spam.” Speaking with Time, Weinberg mentioned he first launched the search engine in a beta stage to Hacker News and Reddit users, and almost immediately received questions regarding its privacy. In response, Weinberg questioned Google’s approach. He told Time:

“I thought it was kind of creepy that search engines would have all of that data when someone had not opted in to share it. There was also this history of search engines being subpoenaed for records of people’s personal search histories. I didn’t really like the idea of being subpoenaed. I figured it would only be a matter of time, so I really wanted to get that out of my hands. That’s why I decided to stop storing IP addresses.”

Not monitoring personal data means no targeted advertising and no saved search histories, but DuckDuckGo makes its money through contextual advertising.

So, in terms of a user experience, is DuckDuckGo a step up from Google? That all depends upon what a user wants. On a basic level, the search engine’s results are one continuous page, but, in a test for term “tarps,” many of the first page websites on Google are in the top 10 results on DuckDuckGo. Although these optimized retail websites are visible, DuckDuckGo still includes a bar on top with links for informational searches. But, because the search experience is similar to one for Google, the increased privacy may end up drawing DuckDuckGo a greater pool of regular users.

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »

Facebook PPC Ads Successful for Businesses

Posted by admin on April 9th, 2012

If you own a business and haven’t staked your claim in the social media universe, you should absolutely do so. Whether or not you think your specific services or products will play well with consumers on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or any other hot social network, it doesn’t hurt to have that representation. Keep in mind that a worldwide audience of 850 million people is available on Facebook – an audience that spends more than 7 hours a month on average perusing their news feeds.

Although you can be successful on social media by using organic methods to promote your Facebook business page (i.e. linking from your website, adding URL to promotional material, etc.), one of the best ways to gain traffic and fans is by advertising on Facebook. Two things are important to note about Facebook PPC advertising – there is no click fraud  and you don’t need a Facebook page.

Here at Keyword Performance, we offer Facebook PPC advertising to our clients and have a proven track record of results in referrals and fan base growth. For instance, we ran a month-long campaign for a national company that boosted its fan base by 700%. Now, hundreds of people see posts from this company every time the page status is updated. Not only does this get people to the product catalog, but it also builds up brand reputation in a huge transparent way.

Facebook PPC advertising isn’t just for large companies though. In fact, small businesses can sometimes capitalize in big ways. Keyword Performance can hypertarget a campaign based on your needs as a business. One such campaign has been seen over 350,000 times in just under two weeks. These types of results are typical when working with Keyword Performance’s social media services team.

Visit us on Facebook page, our website or just give us a call at 1.877.242.2224 to start running Facebook advertising with us. You’ll be happy you did!

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Read More »
« Older Entries
Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More
RSS FeedSubscribe to Our RSS feed!
Search Engine Optimization Specialists ConnecticutBecome a Fan
Follow Us on Twitter!Follow Us on Twitter!