Deepweb

on Google+

Google has released Pages for Google +

Google+’s Pages are similar to Facebook Pages and allow Brands such as companies, organisations, local businesses, celebrities and other entities to create a presence on Google+

Previously there had been a lot of criticism of Google for not allowing these from the start of Google+. To the point that the “Real Names” policy caused the deletion of some profiles that are now essentially what Google+ Pages is meant for.

Similarly to Facebook Pages, you can add your brief business information and start using Google+ to share information.

There are some key things to note with these Pages

• Google+ Pages can’t add others to their circles (or follow / friend) until those people have added the brand page to their circles (to try and stop spamming)
• As a follow on from the first point, it is more difficult to promote your page without having a personal Google+ account to promote the Page, the more people in your personal account circles the better.
• The profile information is limited, if you want to get more information out there, use links to your website or use the post facility to add them into your stream
• Your personal Google+ profile is your administrator account, you can switch between the two and post as the respective accounts.
• It is important to do the Google+ Direct Connect (this puts you in the running to have the ability to be found on Google Search by adding “+” at the start of your name like a keyword)

It would have been nice to have a connection between your Google Places listing and your Page, I hope this is integrated as this would be a sensible way to combine these common things (maps, business details etc)

It is also a new kid on the block. There are no Apps like in Facebook to add other functionality like E-Commerce, but I expect this will be added later.

Hangouts (where you can host a video chat session) can be a really novel way of interacting with people following your page. I can see this being really good for video training, Q+A sessions and other mass interactions that are currently done via forums, wiki etc.

Matt Cutts released one of his Webmaster videos discussing this and while there is not much in it (to the point he said not to change it if you already have underscores), that if you are starting a new site, dashes are the way to go.

Once that I think is really good is that of the band Incubus.

They are releasing a new album soon called If Not Now,When? and using (as far as I can tell) a novel method to promote the album, have been using a website called http://www.incubushqlive.com/ where they have been streaming live performances from the band plus interviews and clinics from band members.

But it also seems to be a great way to promote the band while practising for upcoming appearnaces and concert tour.

Each of the performances can be attended by emailing the site and getting an invite. The venue is small, only really big enough for a ring of people around the band as they play their set. The performances have been a mix of old songs and those off the new album.

The interaction of the band with the small audience is great too, they make mistakes, laugh about it and go again, till they get it right.

Most performances I have seen there have been over 4 thousand people watching the stream. Tweets with the bands hashtag get displayed live on the screen behind the band.

All in all a great use of social media and technology to promote an upcoming album.

Speaking of social media, how did I find out about this? Facebook. I’m a fan and so follow them on Facebook, where they have been advertising what has been happening at “HQ” leading up to the album release. This along with their website provide all of the information needed for fans to get prepared.

All we need now is for them to come to NZ   *hint, hint*

Using the setup screen, it generates the code needed to put on your site to display the follow button. The good thing here, is that the button allows for the visitor to follow you on Twitter without leaving your site.

This is how it looks

Follow @deepwebdesign

Looks good and well implemented.

A common occurance is when the title of the site and the description of the site is formatted with H1 and H2 tags, these tags are important for search engine optimisation purposes.

Repeating the same text in the H1 tag on every page does not allow you to focus each page on it’s specific function.

Here is an example of a header.php file that will generally have the top part of your site (header image, menu etc)

<div id=”header”>
<div id=”blog-logo”>
<h1 id=”blog-title”> <a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>”> <? bloginfo(‘name’); ?></a></h1>
<h2 id=”blog-description”> <? bloginfo(‘description’); ?> </h2>
</div>

As you can see the Blog Title is using the H1 tag and the Blog Decription using the H2.

When you get to the content (especially Pages), you find that the title of the post or page content is formatted using a less powerful Header tag.

The title of your content is an important piece of real estate that you cannot let slip by.

A second issue is that the Title that you enter into WordPress when you are creating your content. It is often used as the menu item for that page. Because of this people create poor titles as they create them as a menu label rather than a keyword rich title.

To get around these problems, I do the following:

Remove any Header Tag Formatting

Remove H1 and H2 tags from the header of the site (see above) and reformat with other styles if the blog title and blog description are necessary.

Remove the Post Title

Remove the post title from the content code (either page.php or single.php)

Example

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <div id=”post-<?php the_ID(); ?>”  <?php if(function_exists(‘post_class’)) : post_class(); else : echo ‘class=”post”‘; endif; ?>>

<h3><?php the_title(); ?> </h3> <- remove this line

<?php the_content(); ?> <- this is the content of your post or page

Lastly, write Good SEO titles as H1 tags in the actual body of the post or page.

Example

It is important to check your theme to see if it has been managed in such a way that you can get the best out of your SEO. Some themes say they are SEO friendly but it is worth checking and making some simple changes if needed.

Google counter in an official blog post to counter that specifially by saying that search quality is better than ever (though conceding a short term increase recently)

Penned by Matt Cutts, it tries to convince people that Google are always trying to improve their results, that they take web spam seriously and they are implementing new changes to combat the new threats.

Google are in a different space these days than when they were fighting spam a decade ago.

Now they are the overwhelming search leaders and are beginning the attract the kind of attention that Microsoft has had to deal with due to their size.

Any small incident or problem will be leapt upon and made larger than life.

Reports generated by people with close links to opposition search engines will appear forcing Google and it’s fans to dispute the findings.

With webspam, the easy fight has been fought and mostly won. Computer generated content is easily found and algorithms created to weed them out. Each iteration from the spammers is met by an algorithm change at the Search Engines and the fight goes on.

But now we are talking about “low quality” content, often written by people (rather than scraped off other sites) for small amounts of money, on topics far and wide to capture and convert as much traffic as possible.

But here in lies the problem:

Most online business owners are in the game of creating content and hoping it drives traffic and revenue. Same as this new form of Web Spam.

What Google are complaining about is that this content does not add to the search experience of the end user. In their eyes, the end user clicks on a link that takes them somewhere that will not solve their question or provide the appropriate information.

So, does that mean that Google are now the arbiters of what is “low” or “high” quality content? These are much murkier waters than before and we trust that Google do this job properly, not to the detriment of everyday content writers that have something valid to say but may not be the most polished of journalists.

Plenty more ammunition for the anti-Google to fire up with.

Do you think this is a fight too far? Can you algorithmically determine high from low quality?

They talk about the increased importance of social media in influencing ranking. While still small, it shows a shift towards social as a means of determining importance of content on the web.

Towards the end of the video, they talk about how Google is trying to avoid the poisoning of somones persona on the web by taking multiple sources of information, reviews etc to try to weed out any malicious or extraneous reviews or comments. Matt says that they take over 500 sources to try and determine this, I wonder what they are?

Another important note, is that even though these sites are classed as social networks, if Google can’t crawl them, (possibly because of high security settings) then that information remains hidden and cannot be used in building ranking.

So will SEO now become more about the persona of the individual or company, will the “quality” of the persona be just as important as the “quality” of the links or the “quality” of the content?

The next big industry….Persona Management

For as many fake negative reviews on the web, I am sure there are just as many fake positive reviews out there. However, the negative ones are the ones that get the attention.

TripAdvisor, Google and many others provide the ability to submit reviews on businesses and products.

While a list of positive reviews are great for business,  a few negative ones can really put people off.

When you do get a negative review what should you do? Here are some tips for you.

1. Respond quickly – as soon as you find a negative review, get on to it quickly. The longer the response, the more damage it does
2. Acknowledge the issue – most people with a legitimate gripe about the product or service they are reviewing are doing it from a place of honesty. It is important that you acknowledge this
3. Avoid “He Said – She Said” – arguments that happen on feedback sites can only end badly for the business involved.
4. Don’t let it get personal or emotional – stick to the facts, be reasonable
5. Move forward – each negative feedback is the opportunity to learn something and do better. If, in your response, you can indicate what you can do to make customers experiences better in the future, it will show your willingness to listen and take feedback on board.

Use negative feedback as an ideal opportunity to get better.

Here is an interesting video about the problem with fake reviews

I am definitely not in favour of blogging for frequencies sake. You need to make sure that the content you are adding is of value to your readers.

Think of these options for content:

• Is it new? ie new creative content, stories, artwork
• Is it a new angle on a news story? A new perspective or raises a point that has not been widely discussed.
• Is it well researched?
• Is it an opinion? Controversy is not necessary.
• Is it an experience you can relate?
• Can you solve a problem? (This is a great way to bring in the visitors)

All of these options will help you produce good quality content. If you can build a site that has regular good quality content, you will bring in the visitors.

One thing that Matt discusses, that I have found to be true is that generating new content does bring in visitors. It also feeds your readership. An increase in your subscriptions via RSS can be an indication of long term loyal readers of your content.

So while frequent posting can bring visitors, for SEO purposes write quality content. Coupled with a regular frequency, quality content will also hook your readers and keep them coming back. It’s called being Sticky!

This one with Bruce Clay, at 18 minutes long, is a great discussion around search, how it has grown, broadened in it’s nature to include Interactive Marketing and Optimisation on many levels.

He makes a few key points:

1. The new first page is actually the top three, especially as results are continually refined and made more personal
2. The distinction between Search and Find, Search being research based, looking for overall information, whereas Find is all about what is around me know, especially on Mobile
3. How Google’s Caffeine update has made the “accidental long tail”, ie those pages that are found for a phrase when that page is not about that phrase, less findable while improving the rankings for intended long tail pages.

Check out the video for some interesting information

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