How Everything Changes Once Google Places is Over

As you read this, more than 80 million pages of Google Places are already being swapped with Google+ Local pages. Google Places is over and for the good. It is transformed into something much better and useful. We’ve consolidated a list of changes which the users will see and admire about Google+ Local.

More dynamic and interactive

The new Google+ Local is more user friendly and interactive than its former counterpart Google Places. Apart from driving directions, Google+ local also displays pictures and more extensive information on a single page than was possible with Google Places. It also lets business owners to generate a following and be able to message their followers for offers and discounts. This was a limitation with Google Places. Google+ Pages will enable users to interact in a manner similar to Facebook or Twitter.

Better Ratings

Google’s star based ratings are also done away with. It has been substituted with 30 point scale ratings from Zagat. Zagat ratings are far more reliable than five-star ratings because Zagat scale provides separate score for food, ambience and service. A greater 30 point scale also averts the tendency of marking 3.5 stars for everything.

Finer Search Options

Another improvement to see when Google Places is over is the radical search tab which includes two search boxes – One for place and other for location (street, city, state). This option greatly narrows down your search to only those places relevant to your location preference. You can also choose variables such as popular, recommended or social content which further thin slices your search.

How to Access Google+ Local once Google Places is Over?

Once Google Places is over, users will be able to access Google+ Local in multiple ways. If you have a Google+ account, you can fully utilize Google+ Local by simply clicking on the Local tab on your home page. Moreover, you can filter and sort content by “circles” which lets you know about places already visited by friends in your different circles. Even if you are not a Google+ user, you can access Google+ Local in your regular Google.com search or Google maps. Users are not forced to use Google+ to access new content, though the user experience is far richer if Google+ is the gateway to Local search.

The new improved version of Google places is here. Now officially, Google Places is over. With new Google+ Local, both marketers as well as consumers are at an advantage. Though, the initial hiccups will be there for business owners who have been using Google Places for quite some time now, it will be smooth sailing with little adjustments and a small learning curve.

Top Five Guidelines on How to use Social Media Marketing for Business

Moving ahead with the times is very crucial when you run a local business. You have to take into account current trends and devise new ways to reach your target audience. Everyone today is aware of social networking sites and businesses are leaving no stone unturned to leverage its benefits. It’s high time you discover the tricks of the trade and learn how to use Social Media Marketing to its full potential.

Using multimedia

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video’s worth? Pictures and videos have a visual appeal which creates a sense of relatedness or bonding with the customers. Making your page interactive by using multimedia is any day better than even the most nicely written article. Therefore you must recognize the power of multimedia an what it can do for your business to fully tap its use.

Different platforms

Understand that different sites have a different ecosystem of their own. You have to make specific strategies for each of the platforms. For example, Twitter terminology is not used in facebook. Similar is the case with Google+ or Linked in which are completely different in its approach and style. Therefore, it is the business owner’s responsibility to customize and adapt the message according to the website. If you’re having trouble with working on multiple platforms simultaneously, it is advisable that you pick one such platform of your preference and build this channel. Once you start getting the nuances right, you can expand your channels to include more such websites and a different strategy for every channel.

Offers and discounts

In order to lure online users who just visit your page, you need to think of ways to keep them interested so that they become your loyal customers. The idea of using social media marketing is to create a buzz about your business and make it spread virally. You can start contests for your online members and provide coupons to them. This not only builds your brand but also gives a sense of acknowledgment to your online followers that they are getting rewards for associating with your online business page.

There are many advanced strategies used by marketers to garner maximum advantage from social media. True power of this medium lies in its ability to propagate sales and marketing initiatives by the businesses. An important tip: Make sure your business is listed with local online directories so that people can find you easily. As far as social media is concerned, it’s definitely here to stay. So it would be better to invest some time in building up this channel for marketing by studying how to use Social Media Marketing to drive sales. Or else you might find that your business is left far behind the times to generate sales on its own.

Ways to distinguish Penguin from Panda

Since Penguin algorithm and Panda algorithm updates target two different practices, it is better to identify their objectives in the beginning. You can waste a lot of time and effort if you’re acting on a problem that was caused by the Panda update but you believed it to be the effect of Penguin. So save yourself some time and discover ways to differentiate between the two:

Check the dates

Penguin update was launched on 24^th April 2012, whereas Panda was a week before on 19^th April 2012. You can use Google Analytics reporting tool which can give you a good idea of day-wise traffic on your website. From the graphs, you can easily make out the days when traffic was too low and whether that coincided with Panda update or Penguin.

Different targets

It is important to note what these cute animal updates target. So you can link it to your website content. The Panda algorithm is designed to attack poor content or duplicate content by excessive keyword stuffing. Whereas Penguin Algorithm update targets web spam, link schemes etc. The two algorithms tackle these issues separately and downgrade the rankings of such websites. Those penalized will not rank high in Google search results and as a consequence, lose out on traffic.

Rework your website

Study your website carefully keeping these pointers in mind. If you think you have used keywords excessively, most probably the Panda has punched you. On the other hand, too many ads and links make your website susceptible to a Penguin strike. So it’s better to make amends timely in order to get your website back on track and ticking with visitors.

Remember, you cannot cure a problem unless you correctly diagnose it. However, it’s always better to prevent rather than go looking for a cure when adversity strikes. So it is advisable to provide rich and useful content on your website for enhanced user experience. This way you need not even worry about attacks from these little Google animals in future.

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Tame the Penguin with Proper Anchor Text Usage

The impact of the Penguin update on your website wouldn’t be alarming if you were employing the right Anchor text usage techniques. You just need to follow the basics of Search Engine Optimization and focus on quality.

Avoid Overuse of Money Keywords

If you have been overusing the anchor text with exact match keywords, then that might the main reason why your website rankings have nosedived. You clearly need to reconsider your SEO approach if you want to regain your position in the SEO world. According to research published by the Search Engine Journal, high ranking websites that used the least number of exact match keywords in anchor texts retained their rankings even after the Penguin update. Therefore, it is advisable to use a minimal amount of exact match keywords as anchor texts and avoid any type of keyword stuffing.

Use Partial Match Keywords

Rather than using exact keywords for anchor texts, use them with slightly similar or rephrased keywords. This ratio can be a bit higher than the number of exact match anchor texts. This way, the content looks more authentic and natural.

Use natural anchor texts

You will gain brownie points for using natural looking anchor texts for example; the link to your website URL could be used as an anchor text (www.example.com) or more conventional anchor texts as “Click Here”, “Here”, “Buy now”, “Article”, “Blog post” etc.

Therefore, keeping in mind all these points, a useful thumb rule would be to use anchor texts in the following manner:

• 60% URL based or non-keyword anchor texts

• 30% broad match or partial keyword and rephrased anchor texts

• Only 10% exact match keyword anchor texts

Opinions may differ on this distribution ratio of anchor texts, but as hard-hitting as it may sound, it is clear that Google is pretty serious regarding quality issues. It is also evident that Google will continue to launch more updates of such kind to reward quality content sites and penalize sites with spam links and keyword stuffing. So it’s better to revise your approach and act now to build a White Hat SEO strategy aligned with Google’s focus on superior user experience.

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In order to level the playing grounds a little bit, he pre-announced the changes that will target people abusing SEO or SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION through over optimization. Over optimization usually contains too many keywords on a page or whether they exchange way too many links and everything that a normal person does not expect in a particular area. So if one writes texts with a keyword density of 10%, one should be worried. A simple method of preventing keyword excess is use of Keyword Density Cloud tool. It warns against the excessive use of keywords. Duplicate contents can be diagnosed by Page checker. Similarly tools such as Site Link Analyser for links spam can be used to avoid Google’s penalty.

Aimed at making the Google Bot smarter, this algorithm will also try to make Google’s relevance more adaptive. This new algorithm will ensure better ranks for sites with user-desirable content rather than sites with optimization. This revolutionary approach by Google will provide it with a better understanding of sites that have good quality content even if it is not search engine optimized.

A content driven site should not expect penalty when the new algorithm is in the market. Content driven strategy has been the principle of Google’s rewarding scheme. It stresses more on the content needed by the user instead of what search engines want. This policy came into effect after Google introduced last year’s Panda updates. Website administrators all around the globe need to focus on selecting topics that are helpful for the user. Everyone must learn a lesson from Duane Forrester, the senior project manager from Bing, who was also present in the conference. He highlighted the importance of social sharing as a signal that others actually like your content — one of the key indicators of relevancy for search engines. “Does the rest of the world think you have a great product?” Forrester asked. “If they do, they will amplify this. If you’re not engaged socially, you’re missing the boat because the conversation is happening socially about you and about your content. Those are really important signals for us. Whether you are involved or not is your choice, but those signals still exist whether you’re in the conversation or not”.

A major concern among the delegates was whether Google is going to release an algorithm update that could create problems for the ethical use of SEO activities which have been recommended to marketers to help their search rankings. This concern was taken care of by Matt Cutts who clarified that this algorithm is only against those who stretch the concept of SEO beyond the ethical norms.

So the bottom-line is, that companies work according to the content driven strategy and users should have an upper hand over search engines.

The new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson has rich and diverse background of being PayPal’s CTO before becoming its president. Before that, Thompson worked at a technology subsidiary of Visa; and before that, he was the CIO of Barclays Global Investors. With such diverse skills and abilities, Thompson is considered the best choice for Yahoo!

The Path Ahead for Yahoo

Expectations from the new CEO Thompson are lofty at Yahoo! According to Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock, “Scott brings to Yahoo! a proven record of building on a solid foundation of existing assets and resources to reignite innovation and drive growth, precisely the formula we need at Yahoo.” Thompson acknowledges the new responsibilities with, “Yahoo! is an industry icon and I am very excited about the prospect of working with one of the great teams in the online world to deliver Yahoo!’s next era of success.” He adds, “Yahoo! has a rich history and a solid foundation to build on, and its continued user engagement is one of the many reasons for my enthusiasm,”

As the new CEO, Thompson is also expected to bring innovation, new vigor and focus to the company and the brand. Thompson is also expected to lead with a long-term strategy and push the strategic review process or sale talks forward. Before Thompson’s appointment, Yahoo had plans to sell the entire company or at least a part of it. However, after the appointment, Yahoo plans to sell only its Asian assets (stake in Yahoo Japan and Chinese Alibaba). While the sales deal is expected to be highly lucrative (amounting to billions), questions regarding its funding and having to pay huge taxes in America still remain.

Challenges and Opportunities

A key challenge for Thompson as the new CEO is to focus on stabilizing Yahoo. This might be a challenge because online advertising market leaders, Google and Facebook, have almost replaced Yahoo’s dominance in display advertising. So, Thompson will have to work on regaining this position, even though he is not a media or an advertising executive. However, this shortfall is easily compensated with the skills of Yahoo EVPs Ross Levinsohn and Blake Irving.

Yet another opportunity for Yahoo is the mobile segment. While Yahoo’s early leadership in mobile product development and advertising has been almost entirely removed by Google, Thompson is expected to re-erect yahoo’s stature in the market. Thompson’s wide experience in the mobile market will certainly come in useful to achieve this goal. Given Thompson’s skills, capabilities and knowledge and temperament, the new CEO is expected to be perfect fit for Yahoo!

To know more about the latest and official news about the online world, simply visit http://www.earnseo.com/.

Google had indicated a few months ago that it would be doing away with the Google News Archives Search feature whereby Google provided scanned copies of old newspapers that users could browse through and search online. They had specifically mentioned that although the service would continue to be available online, they do not intend to provide further features or functionality to users of this service. The rationale behind dropping the homepage of this service is that it makes it harder for users to locate the service and the material.

This feature provided by Google allows users to browse through and track news articles that are reported by Google but dated back longer than 30 days – something like a veritable News Archive library. Although the service is still available at the aforementioned URL, the service has become a lot more difficult to access. In fact, only those who had an inkling of its existence previously and have the determination to use the service again can access it.

Although Google may be fully justified in its decision to drop features that are not popularly used, it must be remembered that Google has a responsibility to its large clientele. There are people who make use of the service and abandoning it without sufficient warning to readers is in poor taste. Google seems to be making a habit of committing this mistake as this is a repetition of what happened when Google abandoned their oldest vertical search engine.

According to Google’s analysis, this new launch will impact 6-9% of searches although the initial launch in English impacted about 12% of searches. In the launch, Google has also tweaked their English version although this will not affect search engine results significantly. Google clarifies that the updated version of Panda that has been released worldwide is meant to improve search quality across the board. Besides, user response to Panda updates has been encouraging.

It has been the ongoing attempt of Google to identify websites that have low quality inside pages. This helps them weed out search experiences that are not up to their expectations. Panda updates have been useful in identifying such pages and providing them with lower ratings. However, it must be remembered that Google’s algorithms depends on a number of factors. Therefore, Panda alone cannot impact a site’s rankings. A number of factors are at work when it comes to deciding page rankings.

Through this feature, Google is attempting to offer users the best possible search results in a holistic manner. Websites therefore have to offer users the best possible results, not only in terms of the front page or the main page, but in the entirety of the website.

Google provides guidelines that help people assess the quality of their website so that they can make use of the Panda updates to offer the best to their users. A website that is sure that they are offering original, unique, useful content need not worry about the impact of these updates. For more information you can get in touch with our SEO Expert at http://www.earnseo.com

Google explains that the Sitelinks that appear below search results will be URL’s added to a single line of text. These links will be quite similar to regular search results. By expanding the number of links to twelve from eight, Google makes this feature more robust and dynamic.

In addition to the whopping number of results displayed by Google, the search engine has also improved their search algorithm. They explain that by combining sitelink ranking with regular result ranking, they have been able to produce better quality of links. By doing this, Google says they have been able to get rid of result duplication. Search results are more refined and the results are organized better in the results page too.

Although Google has tried to produce expanded results, users have observed that twelve results may not always appear for all brands. In some cases, certain brands produce as few as 6 site links also. However, the number of results produced increases when more description is added to the query string. This could point to certain algorithms used by Google to produce the optimal number of Site links. In this sense, Google could have found a brand new way of rewarding brands that are doing quite well through other forms of advertising.

Although webmasters have greeted this upgrade with mixed reactions, Google on their part is still experimenting with this feature. They are still in the process of identifying the best links to show. If times are a little unsettling, webmasters could use Google analytics to determine changes in bounce rates and make use of strong SEO optimization techniques to get good traffic to inside pages too. This will definitely help in search engine rankings.