How to Setup Google+ Brand Page for Your WordPress Site

November 9, 2011 By Tony

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

November 6, 2011 By Tony

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.

How Social Networks Affect Your Website’s SEO

November 4, 2011 By Tony

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.

Google Plus is Open for Everyone – No Invitation Required

September 23, 2011 By Tony

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.

Google Plus For Business Pages

September 22, 2011 By Tony

With the new launch of Google Plus, many businesses are eager to continue their social network media expansion by creating business pages. However, creating these business pages must wait. There will soon be a large opening for Google Plus for Business Pages, unfortunately that opening is not yet.

The announcement of Google+ Brand Pages or sometimes named Google+ for Business Pages was announced on November 7th, 2011.

We found a cool tutorial on how to setup your Google+ Business Page.

In terms of Google Plus business profile pages, Google Plus asks that businesses hold off for now. For now, Google Plus lacks the hangout features for websites, brands and businesses and if any businesses create profiles they will be removed. The policy team is actively working to shut down non-user profiles for now until Google Plus is ready to accommodate businesses.

Google Plus is a new social network which has opened a large wave of new invitations, making it more open to contacts and friends. For businesses, Google Plus Business is still being designed to match all of your needs, but is getting closer each day. For businesses which have created Google Plus accounts, the features are currently aimed at consumers, but will soon meet all of your business needs. Google Plus has taken dramatic form over the last week, with great companies getting involved. The product still lacks all of the sensibility and usefulness that is necessary to create a complete business-consumer relationship. Businesses and individuals interact in different manners which is why there are still initial bumps along the business-oriented path for Google Plus.

Google Plus for Business will reinvent the social media and business connection bringing rich organic Google search to social media pages for businesses.

Businesses are currently encouraged to wait before they begin on Google Plus. The features that Google Plus will offer businesses in the future will meet the new dynamics between users, but until then, business users run the risk of having their Google Plus pages shut down until the tests for businesses is complete. Until then, tests are being conducted with businesses who apply. Even those businesses who do not wish to be considered as part of the testing group can benefit from receiving the first updates for the availability of the Google Plus for business pages. In the meantime you are still able to conduct business matters through the use of Google Plus pages. You are able to have your employees set up individual pages through Google Plus so that every member of your company can better communicate during the work day with one another. Businesses are able to find each other through Hangouts or send stream updates which are work-related to those employees and co-workers which are on a need-to-know basis.

Google Plus is meant to challenge aspects of the continually-redeveloped Facebook network but in doing so much continue to work on meeting the challenges and demands of small and large businesses. While still young and developing, Google Plus is adapting to the social networking needs of companies little by little.

On Facebook, the things you post are then visible to all of your friends, unless you specifically place certain people on a limited list and then alter your privacy settings to not allow those people to ever see your status or updates. Most of the time, the posts you put are not meant for everyone to see. You might only want a select few people to take notice of them, but not your entire friend list. With Google Plus you can organize friends into as many “circles” as you want, creating different groups. You can create circles for your friends, work colleagues, associates, and friends. You can select which circle you want to see your updates. You are then able to see the posts within your circle all at once instead of visiting the profiles of each person to view their updates.

As updates continue and business pages become a reality, having familiarized yourself with the features of an individual profile will make establishing a business profile much faster and more lucrative.