Net66: Google Launch New “Google My Business” App To Get Businesses Online

google-my-business
Google have long been trying to promote businesses by way of Google Maps and now Google+ Pages but now they’ve gone one step further and released an app that controls all aspects of your “Google Business”.

Your “Google Business” is a way of controlling every aspect of your websites presence on Google. The fact that they’ve now condensed this functionality into an app shows how serious Google are in trying to help small businesses online.

With this new app, available for both Android and iOS you can now:

> Edit your business listings’ description, opening hours and more.
> Create and publish posts on Google+
> View the managers who have access to your page.
> Update profile & cover photos as well as uploading pictures.
> Check analytics and local insights for the page.
> Update and change business accounts and pages.

Download the App and see what it’s like.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google’s Knowledge Graph Now Comes with Step-by-Step Instructions

Google’s Knowledge Graph has been the subject of countless updates and advancements. This latest one though is set to help out a lot of people.

The knowledge graph is there to help you solve your queries in an instant. For example, if you were to search for “What is my IP”, Google’s knowledge graph would understand that you’re after the IP address of your computer. As well as producing a list of websites where you can find out your IP, it lists your IP for you too.

Try it out.

It has started going one step further though. Rather than answering you with one word/item answers, Google are now providing you with a step by step instruction of how to carry out certain tasks. Take a look below at some we’ve found:

How to make french onion soup

How to Reset an iPhone

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Snapchat Functionality Favourite Isn’t a Snap or a Chat.

Almost everyone has heard of Snapchat. It first came to prominence as people used it to send pictures to their friends that would show for a few seconds and disappear.

It gained a lot of bad press after a while as people who were sending particularly private pictures thought they were meant to be temporary and deleted, but were actually stored. This led to a lot of embarrassing pictures getting leaked online and Snapchat’s name was mud.

Since then it has redeemed itself with a much more secure system and actually making the snaps temporary.

With more and more people using this app, its most popular feature has stopped being snaps and moved into longer lasting and feature filled “Stories” part of the app.

A story is different to the rest of the app as it is a group of pictures that you can upload and share for up to 24 hours with all of your friends on Snapchat. As well as people who follow you.

And now Snapchat have released a video promoting the feature. Take a look at it below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Local SEO For Your Business

If you own a business which offers services/products across a certain area, then Local SEO is a MUST! Why should I do local SEO you might ask

Here’s why:

• 30% of Google search queries per month have local intent. This is roughly more than 12 billion searches a month which are local.

This stat alone should be enough to convince you that your local business needs specific area targeted SEO.

What is the difference between local SEO and organic SEO?

This is one of the most common questions I get asked and the best way I can explain it is to show you.

The Google search results page is divided into 3 sections:

Paid Ads (CPC)

paid ads

Organic Listings

organic listings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Local Listings

local listings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the results for the different approaches to how we do SEO. Statistics also show that conversion rate is dramatically increased if you are listed on the map listing.

That Sounds Great… How do I get listed on the maps?

Local SEO is not entirely different to organic SEO, you still have to make sure your onsite optimisation is perfect and you have high quality authoritative links pointing to your sites. You just need to add a few extra processes…

You must have a Google+ page for your business or as it has recently been renamed “Google My Business”.

Here you will create your map listing with all the relevant details and you will need to verify it with Google, but there are 3 things you should fill out as accurately as possible.

Name

Address

Phone Number

This abbreviates as N.A.P and we will use these to build local citations or N.A.P listings as many local SEOs like to pronounce it.

Local Citations are basically sites like Yell.com, Scoot.co.uk and Yelp.co.uk. Sites where you can list your business details and where your customers can leave reviews! (Reviews are crucial for performing well on the maps and increase your conversion rate).

It is extremely important that these local citations remain consistent with your map listing.

This is just the start of a local SEO campaign and these are becoming increasingly popular due to the increased search volume of local queries.

For more information or whether you would like to try out local SEO for your business then contact us on 0161 820 5471.

Blog Post by Jordan Whitehead

Net66: Twitter Has Launched Support for Animated Gifs

Animated gifs have come a long way since their annoyingly sparkly presence on Myspace. Seriously, every profile you went on had either flames or a sparkling horse/wand/unicorn. It’s one of the reasons Facebook have refused to support Gifs on their website.

But the gifs we’re more likely to see won’t be little emoticons next to our name (hopefully). They’ll be a bit richer than that. Take a look at the gif Twitter Support uploaded to announce the development.

I’m thinking that this move by Twitter is a move to make their website more Vine like. Although Twitter do own Vine and it is a very popular website, Vine is for Videos, not Gifs.

The users they’ll be trying to attract will be from Tumblr. Tumblr is well known for people posting and discussing various gifs. In fact, Mashable recently featured the best blogs that offer up Gifs on the platform.

What do you think of Twitter’s new move?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Facebook Launches New Snapchat Competitor With a Twist

Everyone has heard of SnapChat. It’s the fun app that lets you send temporary images to your friends and others. In fact, it go so popular that it was subject to a $3bn takeover bid from Facebook.

Snapchat politely declined.

With this snub, Facebook decided to release their own app with similar functions. I say similar and not the same because they’ve introduced some different features. Here are the main points from the release:

Screen Shot 2014-06-18 at 17.25.52> You can “Sling” your image or video to one friend or multiple friends at once.
> Your friends have to “Sling” something back to you before they can see yours.
> If they don’t want to send anything back, they can simply swipe your “Sling” away.

In an app clearly designed to improve connections between users, Slingshot’s blog post of the day said that every user already feels closer.

Do you think this has the potential to be better? Or have Facebook made it worse by adding the “have to sling back” action?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Celebrates The Life and Times of Paul The Octopus

Paul The Octopus is a creature of lore when it comes to the world cup. At the 2010 World Cup, Paul the Octopus correctly predicted the result of all 7 of Germany’s World Cup Games.

Sadly Paul passed away in 2010, presumably from all the excitement. Take a look at Google’s homage to Paul below:

Paul The Octopus

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Googles Updates Reconsideration Request with “Note From Your Reviewer” [Image]

Reconsideration requests have long been a chagrin of SEOs who have had to submit them. You can spend hours, days or weeks (depending on how badly the site was penalised) trying to find out why and then going through the tedious process of link removing (if it’s Penguin) or a content audit (if it’s Panda). You could also be left banging your head against a brick wall if you’ve no idea why you’ve been penalised and Google’s reconsideration requests aren’t likely to help you.

… Until now.

In the past you received a notice that your site was in violation of the Webmaster Guidelines. Not much help at all. They then decided to help more with the identification and removal of bad links.

Then Google decided to help out a bit more by pointing out some example links that were causing a penalty.

Now, however, Google have allowed for a text box where the actual person, a real human being, can evaluate your site and then offer personalised advice on how you can recover from the penalties your site is under.

You can read what they have to say in the “A note from your reviewer” box that comes with the new responses. Take a look at the screenshot below to see how useful these new reconsiderations will be:

google-reconsideration-request-rejection-note-1402921143

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Doodles Keepy Uppying with the World Cup

Google often releases Doodles and with the world cup arriving yesterday it didn’t disappoint. Not only did it release one for the start of the World Cup, but it’s released a new one today and an even newer one with the kick off of Mexico Vs Cameroon. Take a look at them below:

Screen Shot 2014-06-13 at 17.12.50Screen Shot 2014-06-13 at 17.11.43

Screen Shot 2014-06-13 at 17.12.58

Are you celebrating the world cup?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Launches New Payday Loan Algorithm

spammy queries
Ever since the rise of Payday loan companies, there has been a war raged on Google to get to the top for the phrase “payday loans”. The reason? Payday loans are short term loans and as such, have an unusually high APR. Basically, a HUGE interest rate.

As there is a huge interest rate, there is a chance for huge profit. Hence the amount of companies trying to get onto the first page for this phrase. This orgy or competition has gone on unchecked in the Black Hat world of SEO as more and more people are seeking a “quick buck” on Payday Loans as people try to get there and try to get there quickly.

As with all things SEO, the faster you do something, the more likely you are to get penalised. So much so that Google have had to release an new specific algorithm to tackle this.

Indeed, they’re already on their 3rd version of the algorithm. Last week Google updated it to identify and penalise spammy websites. This new version of the algorithm is to detect and combat very spammy queries that aren’t just related to the Payday Loans industry.

For example, queries such as Payday Loans, Casinos, Viagra, Porn. Basically, anything to do with the spammy emails you’ll find in your junk folder of your emails.

Have you noticed any changes on these search terms?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Could Disclose When Search Results Have Been Removed Due To “Right To Be Forgotten”

This is an issue that has been in the news this week. Google now have a “Right To Be Forgotten” form you can fill in if your name or business is being associated with old and detrimental search results.

For example if your company was sued for defamation and these results started showing up, once you’ve won the case (because you wouldn’t defame anyone or anything) your website/company/name could still be associated with that case.

What makes it worse is Google Autocomplete. For example, If you start typing in “company name”, Google could suggest “Company name gets sued”, “Company name defamation case”. Not the best for your business if you’ve successfully won your case and your name doesn’t deserve to be associated with those searches.

To combat these results you can fill out a “Right to Forget” form and Google could remove results associated with these bad results if they deem it’s in the public’s interest.

If they do indeed honour your request and remove those results, they could still mark that they’ve removed results from the SERPs. News of this comes from The Guardian that says they understand that this will be the case.

What do you think?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Google warns searchers of Faulty Mobile Redirects

Google has warned website owners to be more careful when serving mobile searchers. In fact, Google is so serious about its mobile customers that it is showing them which websites are showing less than optimal mobile websites.

On the Webmaster Central blog, Google told webmasters that it will be setting up special messages to alert mobile searchers if a website of interest has a “faulty redirect” in place that sends them to the websites homepage.

A lot of websites have less than optimal mobile builds, and such redirects are used as a stop gap measure to avoid a not found or 404 page. Many website owners do not know if their websites are properly optimised for mobile.

According to Google:

We’d like to spare users the frustration of landing on irrelevant pages and help webmasters fix the faulty redirects. Starting today in our English search results in the US, whenever we detect that smartphone users are redirected to a homepage instead of the the page they asked for, we may note it below the result. If you still wish to proceed to the page, you can click “Try anyway.”

As is apparent, the warning is quite conspicuous within the mobile search results, and may likely discourage users from clicking.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel for webmasters. Google will warn website owners of such faulty redirects within the Crawl Errors section of Google Webmaster Tools.

If you are unsure if your website is optimised for mobile, get in touch with Net66!

Content Sharing to Increase Traffic

The ultimate aim of a business website is to increase business and generate revenue, but in order to do this you need to drive traffic to your site. People aren’t automatically going to know it is there; there is no ‘stumbling across’ a website or happening to notice it as you might a print ad or display.

You need to actively promote the site, but putting it on your sales collateral, putting it in any other advertising such as print, and carrying out PPC paid ads to encourage people to click through to your site. You also need to carry out SEO to ensure that your site is listed on the SERPs so that people searching for a business such as yours can find you.

A relatively new way to promote websites is through sharing content, otherwise known as content marketing. Content marketing is a new buzz word in digital marketing, and is often explored at conferences. It is the process of sharing content you’ve written with impartial sites, that either mentions you and your company and/or link back to your site.

content sharing

It may seem like the only content worth sharing is that that is promoting your business or service and products. However, whilst you want it to relate to your industry and leverage a positive message towards your services and products, any content that you share can help to increase traffic.

In fact, the more objective it is, and the more that you make it appealing and readable, the more likely it is to increase traffic to your site.

Here is how content sharing can increase traffic to your site:

• The link leading back to your site could positively impact your search engine ranking, giving you a higher position on search engine listings, and a more visible web presence, making people more likely to see you and more likely to visit your site.

• If the article mentions your product or service and gives a positive impression of your business, product or service, they might click on the link to find out more.

• Even if there isn’t a link the fact that you and/or your business are mentioned on a good quality site establishes you as an expert in your field. People will get a great impression of you and be more likely to look for your business if and/or when they are looking for your product or service.

• It establishes a need for your product or service if written and leveraged right. Maybe you have a product or service that people hadn’t realised was available until now, and it just so happens to meet a need that they have exactly. Your content could create a light bulb moment for them and push them to the point of investing in what you do or sell.

Content sharing to increase traffic only works if people see and like your work, so make sure that it is well written and posted in the right place in order to give the best impression possible.

Blog Post written by Jordan Whitehead

Twitter launches Small Business Guide

At Net66, we take small business marketing very seriously. Small businesses make up the vast majority of businesses in the world, and the online arena provides them significant opportunities to compete in their own particular niche. Such marketing activities can include search engine optimisation, and social media marketing. Sometimes, one can contribute to the other.

We have now learnt that Twitter has created a special guide for small business marketing. The guide is actually built as a quite informative interactive infographic. This means you can interact with the graphical options on display, and it will respond accordingly. The guide is built so that you can learn at your own pace, depending on your level of experience with micro-blogging or social media marketing.

Sections include “I don’t get Twitter”, “I get Twitter but need to create a strategy”, and “I know Twitter basics but want to take my marketing to the next level”.

Each section is designed to boost your level of knowledge about Twitter marketing at your own pace and expertise. For example, the first level includes such information as what a hashtag is, what a retweet is, and so on. The second level tells you such things as how to build a content calendar, and using tweeting templates to create better tweets. Finally, the most advanced level tells you how to buy and use Twitter ads, and how to measure your performance.

 

Net66 SEO: How Much Wood Would a Matt Cutts Cut if a Matt Cutts Could Cut Wood?

There are all manner of pressing, valuable and insightful questions that are put to Matt Cutts each week for his Webmaster Video Tutorials.

For some reason he’s opted against good advice this week and chosen one of the more ridiculous questions that are put to him.

Credit where credit is due he still makes a seminal dip into the SEO advice with “we aim to cut all the spam wood so the quality wood can be displayed” but that’s as far as it gets. See the video below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Negative SEO, What is it and how you can recover from it.

What is negative SEO? Negative SEO refers to the practice of maliciously harming other websites in order to reduce their rankings in the search engines. Some unscrupulous SEOs can indulge in black hat tactics to reduce the reputation of a competitors website.

These can include gaining illicit access to a website to modify on-site content in order to create the impression of a poor quality or black hat website. This can also include creating low quality or spammy links to your website. Another tactic can involve creating duplicate copies of your website, in order to get you targeted for duplicate content.

Duplicate content is frowned upon by the search engines, so your site can be confused as being a copy whereas the actual copies can be seen to be originals.

Bad links are a frequent cause of negative SEO.

How can you tell if you’ve been hit by negative SEO? Well, apart from noticing that your keyword rankings have fallen, you can take a look at your link profile. Use a tool such as Majestic SEO or OpenSiteExplorer to analyse your backlink profile. This will detail most or all of the links pointing in to your business website. You can then analyse the quality of each site or domain linking in.

Sifting through thousands of links can be difficult and tiring for most business owners. Fortunately, Net66 can effectively analyse your backlink profile to determine whether or not you’ve been a victim of Negative SEO.

We can then take appropriate remedial actions to get your website back up in the rankings.

Net66: Google Celebrates European Parliament with Google Doodle

Google has a long history of changing their logo on commemorative days. There have been so many that you’ve probably missed a lot of them. Thankfully you can catch up with them all on Google’s official Google Doodle Website.

As there are always different countries celebrating different events, you can see what is being and what has been celebrated around the world.

In England however, as today is the day people are casting their votes for who gets at seat in Europe, Google has doodled a new logo. See it below:

Google Doodle European Elections

 

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Why SEO Is Incomplete Without Pinterest

When the major social media platform Pinterest added a new search feature helping users find their favourite pins faster, it became quite evident search engine optimisation is likely to get a tremendous boost as well.

A massive 30 billion pins were posted across an equally impressive 750 million Pinterest boards by April 2014 easily demonstrating tremendous potential for businesses to use the feature to their advantage. It turns out to be an exercise in using search terms in sync with the latest search feature offered by the platform.

pinterest

Social media is turning out to be a very important medium for brands to make their presence felt online. Changes introduced by different platforms become important components of marketing strategy. It is widely known Pinterest uses media content to broadcast information with the help of infographics and other visual aids.

People have low attention spans and tend to lose interest if searches take too long. By making it easier for people to find their favourite infographics faster, Pinterest actually helps businesses adopt similar techniques to reach people in need of their products.

Categorising Products For Better SEO Results

People look for specific topics but often use a limited number of search terms during organic searches. Pinterest now adopts relevant filters to help users get precise search results much faster. For example, a broad search term like “recipe” is likely to yield a great number of infographics. People may be interested in specific categories like “vegan,” “vegetarian,” “paleo,” or “gluten free.”

Filters are now introduced using these categories to help people get targeted information.
Users hardly have the time to read through a lengthy article. They find it easier to browse through an infographic to get valuable information about specific products.

A massive 75% traffic rate is established by Pinterest through mobile phone marketing alone making it quite obvious people on the move prefer media content as well. The new search feature is likely to be improved upon adding custom categories and other guided features in time.

Improved SEO With Optimized Boards

Boards within Pinterest can be easily optimised for improved SEO results. How the process is to be fine-tuned may be a matter of discussion, but it must be noted the social media platform sets up a specific number of boards for users. Selected preferences are likely to determine how Pinterest categorises individual pins. Users can now use keyword-specific content with focus on spreading them across proper categories to further simplify search functions.

Pinterest not long ago also introduced promoted pins, a bit like PPC. Depending on your budget you can advertise sponsored pins, which as you may guess gets tons of traffic but will come at a hefty price.

Take the example of users in Manchester looking for information on trending topics. Search terms can be used to introduce products in the first 5 boards appearing above the fold. A fantastic first impression is created with users finding exactly what they were looking for. A product related to the search term is now synchronised to yield more traffic.

Probability of users having great visual experiences translating into potential buyers is much higher. Better interaction with superior search functionality make positive SEO results in Manchester achievable in lesser time and by just keeping in touch with a feature that works seamlessly with a website’s on-page optimization.

Take a look at these cool SEO tricks for Pinterest:

Posted by Jordan Whitehead