Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Traffic Battle Plan 2012

Check out my Traffic Domination Plan for 2012 I announced the war with Google and Facebook over a year ago. Did SEO Just Die Since then many have said that yes SEO is dead. As Google has changed time and time again. Over the next few weeks I will be chronicling some of these deep changes that are effecting your website and your social graph right now. » Its a Social World In a nutshell Google blinked. And much of that has do with the velocity of content being created in the social media. Facebook, Twitter and more. And now the new kid on the block Pinterest is digging into the Facebook Traffic. » Its about the data. Google's and Facebook's business is not search and Social. It is datamining. While Google has been changing many have complained that Google is no longer relevant. That is the point of search relevancy isn't it?   Google's job is guessing at your and my behavior such that they can serve us relevant advertising.   Google grabs that data through all the data it gets from your cookied searches, visits to websites with adsense, analytics etc, your signed-in behavior, and your Google Plus behavior and your Android phone locations and behavior.   Facebook gets to know you through their graph of likes, follows, friends, clicks, etc and of course your profile you create when you sign up. In effect Facebook wants to be Google, Google wants to be Facebook. » The world just got smaller. Do a search in New York and chances are real good that Google will serve you local results having to do with services in New York. Google Places dominates the local searches with at least 4 results. Often times number 1 of yesterday, is now possibly 8.   Littered within that search will often be images and videos. We ran a post years ago that some day Google will be the new Yellow Pages. That day has come. » Disinformation. Google has succeeded largely from incredible public relations to compliment their just good enough search engine. With their online personalities, they have been able to spread vast and complicated concepts to misinform what is/was actually going on.   The more things change the more they stay the same. Google has always been about links, then the title tag and matching h tags. This concept has not changed. Its just that there is less of the same coveted prize called organic search results for you to grab.   Less competitive terms are easy as they have always been and the super competitive keywords will continue to be difficult to get.   Links have expanded in their definition. Links are 80% of the game. But now you have likes, Google pluses, and other social markers that Google desperately is trying to track. I call these social noise makers.   One reason Google has moved forward with Google Plus as an answer to Facebook, and recently adding SearchPlus Your World is that they were being blocked out of tracking social graphsof the biggies Twitter and Facebook.   Additionally local citations, or your business name, address, city, zip and phone weigh heavily for your Google Places (local) ranking. They serve the equivalence of links in local search. » To make things more crazy. Your website will need to adjust for mobile phonessome day soon as more and more searchers are using mobile phones to search the web. Soon to out number desktop searchers.   The long term answer is to get strategic and hire a firm like Spider Juice Technologies who can help you get your arms around the changes, while not getting swallowed up by all the marketing hype.   Step 1 is to embrace the fact that you must become a publisher of your own unique content, ghost written content, curated content, and collaborated content if you are to survive in this ever changing online environment.   Because the fact is. Google simply doesn't need you anymore. The only medicine is to get big on publishing. More on all of these changes and tactics soon.   We are here to help you.   Tim O'Keefe http://www.spiderjuicetechnologies.com/ 310 533 9145

Video Emails

You have seen them in your email box.This is what I just received in my inbox not too long ago.

A Video that you can actually click and it will play. However, of course you find out it will not play in your email. It is only a graphic that looks like a video say from Youtube.

So I was recently asked how do you make a Video Email work?

Tha short answer is you don't.

You simply create a snapshot of your Video you wish to link to, and then put it into your html email editor as a graphic that links to a Video URL.

So how I explained it was by demonstration. One of the best ways to teach. I took a snap shot of one of my most recent Videos.  I used my favorite snapshot tool-Snagit. I then layered an arrow play button on top of the graphic. I got the icon at my favorite Icon location called http://www.iconfinder.com/.

Here was finally what the graphic looked like. Now it is ready to paste into an email editor and link to its real web location. This is a video of yours truly, many years ago when I was a web marketing extraordinaire in training. In Business school we were learning Pascal on punch cards if that tells you how long ago it was.

 

 

 

 

 

Facebooking for SEO Rankings

Image via Wikipedia

About a year ago I asked this question. Does Facebook help your SEO?

Since then Google and Bing have made some changes. It is well worth a read as it delves into the importance of links in ranking power.

Today, links can be defined as more than just a link. It falls under the idea of reputation management.

When we look at how reputation matters in ranking in the search engines. We discover many forms of reputation:

• Citations-for our purposes this is where your business name and address and phone are listed. Or even a non clickable URL.
• Reviews-Reviews can come from local business directories like Google Places, or Yelp, or even blog posts. 
• Link or Anchor Text-This is still what matters most. A good link and keyword in your anchor text.

So what does this have to do with Facebook and social media?

Off Page -Social Networks

Google and Bing are measuring social signals. So when a post gets a like, it it is similar to a link as it is almost a vote for the page liked.

Google +1 is a similar tool. Bing has the advantage of getting some of at least Facebook data to include in their ranking factors. But Google cannot get very deep profile data. Not until starting the Google Plus One Social Network.

Which in many ways is bringing all their tools into one house. By conglomerating all their tools into one profile Google is able to measure your own authority better.

This brings to mind a video I recently did that displayed the advantages that Facebook and Google have over one another.

Facebook launched their social graph over a year ago. And Google uses a concept called FOAF. Friend of a friend. By measuring the authority of each friend that is "linked" to another friend, the idea is that the authority can drip down through the network.

Very similar to linking.

On Page Social Networks

On Facebook your pages are indexed onto Google or Bing to the extent that Facebook or any other social network will allow them. Your personal profile is ranked slightly with limited info and a chance for a no followed generic anchor text.

While a Fanpage gets indexed. Thus its important to title Fanpages correctly. The name of the page is the title tag. Also any text you provide. And probably the most underutilized part of Fanpages that offers a gold mine of ranking potential. The Notes.

It is more important than ever to embrace a publishing model to allow you to rapidly take advantage of publishing opportunities and rapid change in the social media and searchable web.