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Archive for September, 2009

Sweet Spot Marketing Takes Control Of Google Maps

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

As part of Sweet Spot Marketing’s commitment to its clients, the Sweet Spot team is beginning to manage Google Maps Listings as part of its standard PPC package.

Google Maps Listings are not directly related to PPC efforts but having one can help improve your business’s overall search engine presence. When your search engine presence is greater, your PPC ads perform better. Think of it as a double whammy. Not only is your paid ad appearing to customers, but your map listing is as well. This gives you an additional chance to convert a Google user to a customer.

Most businesses do not realize it, but they have a Google Maps Listing already. However, it is most likely considered to be an “out of control” listing. Google scans business directories, yellow pages and white pages and puts your business on its map. Sometimes this information can be wrong and it doesn’t contain all the possible features of a listing. It is the responsibility of the business or representing agency to verify the listing and claim ownership of it. Until you do, you cannot fully take advantage of your Google Maps placement.

The first benefit of a controlled listing is the ability to correct any inaccuracies about your business. Once you have verified that you own your business through Google, you can edit your listing’s address, phone number, email and website. This information is often times out of date and can send your potential customers on a wild goose chase.

The Second benefit is the ability to take advantage of dynamic features. A small percentage of businesses have actually claimed ownership of their Google Maps listing. This presents a huge advantage for those who do. When your listing is controlled, you can add features like photos, logos, and videos. You can also add product categories that our relevant to your business. These categories tell Google what additional products or services you offer and help your business appear organically for these categories on standard Google search results.

The extra Google Maps features on a controlled listing can help your business standout from the competition. It also allows you to better serve your customers by ensuring Google tells them accurate information. Sweet Spot Marketing is ready and willing to help your business achieve success on the internet by helping you take control of Google Maps.

Tags: Add new tag, Google Maps
Posted in Local Search, Pay Per Click (PPC), Sweet Spot Marketing | Comments Off

 

 

How Is Google Caffeine Going To Change Search Results?

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Background Information:

A few weeks ago Google published a post on the webmaster central blog that a next-generation infrastructure update effecting  how the Google Search Engine displays results is going to take place soon. Internally it is being called “Google Caffeine”.

An interview with Matt Cutts from SES San Jose was published a few days after the announcement and is available on WebProNews.com In this interview, and subsequent posts, Matt down-plays the change as less to do with algorithmic ranking changes, and focused on the coding enhancements this update will give Google.

The purpose of this update is for Google to crawl, index, and return search results on the rapidly expanding web.  This means that results changes will inherently happen without direct intent.

To give webmasters a preview of what Google Caffeine will do they setup a sandbox for testing. Facesaerch’s Caffeine Compare is a handy new tool that directly compares the search results side-by-side.

1. Video Results More Prevalent With Google Caffeine:

After conducting several searches on celebrities and well known people you can see immediate change in the results for media types other than standard web pages.

For example, if you do a search for “Michael Jordan” in Google today the 4th listing is image results and the last results are book results about Jordan. With Google Caffeine search results we get no results for images or books, but get more video options!

If you have videos that are not published on YouTube.com then now is the time to upload them, because Caffeine is going to give them higher rankings than before.

2. Keywords in URL are more important than ever:

If you sell a single product or service and that word is not in your URL, consider re-branding your domain on the web to something that does. Even before Google Caffeine was tested we say Google search results trending to rank URL’s higher based heavily on the domain name.

We recommend you keep your brand or acronym URL if you got one, but if you are considering purchasing a new URL or re-branding, then consider your main keyword in the URL for better search results in Google.

3. Social Sites & Immediacy Results Enter SERP’s (sort of):

When news breaks who do you go to on the web? If you are like most people, you likely answered CNN, FOX, TWITTER, Facebook, YAHOO, etc – anything but Google right?

Google wants to curb this online behavior through some of their search results in Caffeine. This is so they can become not just the best everyday search engine, but also your online destination source for hot topics and current events too. Google has gone so far to develop a tool that does this called hot trends.

The death of Michael Jackson is the best case study for online search facilitating breaking news. Danny Dover at SEOMOZ had a great post on Michael Jackson’s death traveling the web. In this post he time-lines out how major websites were handling the information and displaying in search results.

I’m sure Google hated to see thousands of visitors flock to TMZ’s site for the latest info on Michael Jackson, but this is something Google is not good at. In fact, Google is susceptible to false claims, and if they are not more careful, they could end up losing credibility by having a “Jeff Goldblum episode”. If you have not seen the Colbert Report on “Jeff Goldblum Will Be Missed” it is hilarious.

When it comes to satisfying immediacy while remaining reputable for everyday search, no one has accomplished this – not even Google. The challenge with real-time search is to keep credibility by filtering out bad and keeping the good. Not and easy job when you consider how massive and rapidly expanding the web grows every day.

Tags: caffine, Google Algorithm
Posted in Google, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | 1 Comment »

 

 

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