Google Ratings: Could they Change Your Business?
Honestly, I was a little negative about the idea of ratings extensions when they first started being syndicated. How will we manage the bad feedback? Will the swamp of reviews associated to aggregators ruin small-to-mid level advertisers' chances to benefit from this extension?
Consumer Driven Call to Action
After a little introspection and some peer debate, my attitude toward the product flipped. If anything this extension allows brands the ability to take over more space on the page while introducing a more dynamic call to action.
As mentioned in "Image Ads in Search - Yep, They Help" around Google's other extension products, we've seen an average increase in CTR of 13 percent while conversion followed at more than 14 percent. Should we expect to see similar increases for advertisers? If Google eventually picks up more onsite review content...you bet.
Onsite Review Partnerships
A majority of the ratings have been scraped from sources like Epinions, ResellerRatings.com, Viewpoints, and Bizrate. I traditionally skim these aggregators during research mode, however I prefer onsite consumer feedback.
Google's partnership with Bazaarvoice on the product search side of the business should tie in well with paid "ratings" enhancements. Will Google eventually allow advertisers the ability to filter onsite vs. comparison sites? Will advertisers be able to manage certain aspects of these ratings? Will ratings ever be involved in quality score?
Extension Stacking
Visual search will continue to evolve. Google's platform truly gives them the momentum to try anything. Their ability to stack extensions within the results is creating a better user experience through informative visual cues.
One of the better extensions is anything related to their plus box product (e.g., product plus box, local map extensions, form extensions, etc.). What about stacking ratings within the plus box extensions? Would it benefit retailers to have product plus box extensions that include product specific ratings under each product? What about hoteliers using the map extension to show property location plus associated ratings?
Real-Time Search
As more results shift to real-time search, expect the engines to also try integrating the same results into paid search. Could Microsoft leverage their Facebook investment by incorporating the "Like" functionality within their paid results (i.e., 15 People Like this product).
Pandora has already taken a step in that direction with their "Joe Smith Likes this artist" setting within the music interface. Your Facebook friends with similar musical taste are then pictured below the live artist. What if Microsoft uses their profile (and opt-in) information to match you with ratings created by your friends with congruent profiles?
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International Link Building -- the Best of the Whole World
The absolute best thing about the Internet is having no country borders. You're only a mouse click away from websites all over the globe, allowing you to chat, share, and trade with anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Online business can offer a worldwide variety of people to buy your services or products, which is a great advantage. But how do you make sure you target the right audience, local or international?
Search engines operate internationally and locally. For example, a search query in Google.com can and will give different results with the same search query prompt in Google.es, Google.nl, or even Google.co.uk. No matter what keyword.
Of course, you'll have some overlaps (e.g., when you look for an international brand or product), but search engines always try to offer you the most relevant result (i.e., results in your language). Your preferred language is determined from the language settings of the browser, chosen search engine (.nl, .es, etc), and (in most cases) the IP address of your (local) Internet connection.
What Causes the Search Results to Differ in Local Search Engines?
Some country-specific aspects help search engines easily determine if it's relevant enough for the local search query. The major aspects:
* Top-level domain (TLD) (i.e., domain extension).
* Language of the content.
* Additional robot instructions (meta/Webmaster Central).
* Location of the hosting.
* Source of incoming links.
Incoming Links Provide the Right Signs
If you're looking for an international brand locally and it has a multilingual website, you'll most likely get the website on the local ccTLD (country code top level domain -- .nl, .de, .fr, etc.), instead of the international website on the gTLD (generic top level domain -- .com, .net, .org) domain. This result is preferred because of the matching ccTLD, language, and hosting -- especially because there will be a lot incoming links with these similarities.
In other words, the backlink profile of majorbrand.nl will have more incoming links from Dutch sources than majorbrand.com. Therefore, Google.nl will prefer to show you majorbrand.nl in the search results simply because it's more relevant for the Dutch search query.
Active in Multiple Countries?
If you're active in multiple countries and want to gain rankings locally, it's wise to split up your website. Splitting up the content is absolute minimum, but this probably won't be enough to rank within the local search engines.
You have to clearly distinguish your multiple languages so it's easier for search engines to discover and mark the right language. Of course, you can split up your website into local TLD versions (if still available). As stated before, TLD is a major factor for search engines to determine the language.
The pros of splitting your website into local TLD versions:
* A local TLD is the most important locality factor.
* Local links are gained easier to local information.
* The right country information scores, not just the right language.
But, be aware of the cons of local TLD versions:
* Domain authority takes time to accumulate for each TLD.
* Unique content is needed, even if it's the same language.
When to Split up
There are best practices when it comes to splitting up your website if you want to offer your services in multiple countries. Depending on the main country you're focusing on, the amount of local competition or different languages in one country (e.g., Canada, Belgium).
Depending on your own situation you can split up your website you could use one of these solutions:
* Focusing on one mayor country and some additional countries: Make sure you have your main content on one ccTLD and use and gTLD (e.g., .eu,) for the other countries/languages.
* Many countries, but minor competition: In this scenario, a gTLD with separate subdomains (de.brand.com) or directories (brand.com/de) per country/language will do.
* Multiple countries with competition: The best way to compete is with ccTLD domains for each country. With separate domains you can boost individual domains and compete more effectively.
* Multiple languages in the same country: A common question, one that can easily be solved with a ccTLD domain for the country (e.g., .ca for Canada), but separate the languages on subdomains (fr.brand.ca, en.brand.ca, etc).
Link Building on Country Level
if you have a local business or made it local by splitting up your website, you can start with local link building. Good local links have relevance, authority, and transfer (RAT), as covered by my colleague and friend Peter van der Graaf.
Therefore, you can start off with a search for "www" in country-specific Google versions. This is a great start for exploring unknown territory, directly showing you the local authorities. Analyze the local importance by searching for relevant search terms because you need to pick potential link partners that are relevant for your business.
The unknown territory of local search engines makes link acquisition harder because you might not have the right language skills yourself. Fortunately, this can be overcome. Here are some helpful tips:
* Submit your website to local directories. Directories don't require much language skill and are available in every country, so this is a great way to start (bonus tip: check your competition from here).
* Hire local link building teams. Every country probably will have some clever Internet marketer who offers (local) link building services.
* Get links from local business partners. If you're doing business internationally there could be some local business partners to hook up with. Offer your products or services in exchange for a listing.
* Get into the local news. You wouldn't have started your business internationally if you didn't have a unique product or services. Use this to your advantage by publishing facts, results, or other findings, which you applied to the local market. If you make it to the local news listing you'll rapidly gain authority.
Pitfalls -- Please Keep off the Grass
Getting good, valuable links isn't an easy job. Hiring a local link building team is a good option, but you should never buy links. Of course you can buy links, but just know that nine out of 10 times these links won't help your local business.
A lot of services simply can't help you obtain relevant links that are also local links. You may be promised 1,000 links, but none will help you because the links are gathered from non-local directories, non-local weblogs, forums, and websites that aren't relevant. Result: You're stuck with 1.000 links with zero value.
Avoid these pitfalls, and use these other link building tips if you want to be viewed as serious competition by the locals. Good luck expanding your horizon!
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10 Top Tips to Secure Social Media Success
Social media is constantly developing. The sooner you get on board and up to date, the sooner you can take advantage of all the exciting new technologies and opportunities.
1. Get Going
It's easy to decide you want a social media campaign and then get distracted and delayed -- social media marketing will rarely be a business essential.
But you must not put it off, your competitors won't. Get planning, get prepared, and get going.
2. Get Prepared
OK, so you're socialising online and suddenly someone launches an attack against your brand, what do you do?
By using platforms such as Twitter, you lay yourself more open to attack through these mediums -- it's easier for angry customers to leave negative comments publicly, for example.
Of course, they would possibly be doing so anyway, but if you're actively promoting your brand through social media, than you're also probably searching for mentions, so you'll probably see any comments sooner.
So, work out a strategy. If you see a negative mention, will you refute it? Use legal threats to silence it? Ignore it? Respond to it as though it's any other customer complaint?
A blend of refutation and resolution works best. If you're in the right, then make your case and, if you're in the wrong, aim to resolve the issue.
Whatever you decide, have a strategy in place in advance so that you aren't left scrambling when the situation arises.
3. Get Blogging
There are many ways to socialise online but blogging is definitely my favorite. It's great for SEO because it encourages inbound links and also fills your pages with naturally keyword-rich content.
But the social implications are at least equally important. To name just a few: a blog presents your brand in a friendly, accessible way, it shows you as a thought-leader within your industry, it encourages conversation and it gives people a reason to return regularly to your pages.
If you only do one social marketing activity this year, make it a blog.
4. Get Tweeting
Twitter is an excellent marketing platform, although it admittedly can be hard to do well. However, there are some easy wins to be had on Twitter: it's less time consuming than a blog, but it has the same potential to massively expand brand awareness.
There's loads of online guidance for getting started -- just make sure you remember that quality is important, even when you only have 140 characters to play with.
Follow the rest of the advice in this blog post to avoid spamming, overselling, or otherwise alienating your followers.
5. Get Some Perspective
Before you start trying to use social media, work out what it is you want to achieve. There's no point spending time and money interacting online if you don't have a clear idea what it is you hope to get out of it.
For example, if you get 10,000 Facebook fans, what do you then intend to do with them? How will they benefit your brand? If you have 500 Twitter followers, what then?
Before you write your first Tweet, post your first comment or launch your blog, take some time to work out what you're planning to achieve and how social media will help you.
Make sure you're realistic because it's attaining these goals that will keep you motivated to continue when the novelty has worn off and the regular work is being shunted to one side by other projects.
6. Get Talking
Social media is just that -- social. It isn't a one-way street. You need to be having conversations online if you want to gain followers, fans, and readers.
So get socializing. Reply to tweets about your company or brand, interact in forums, answer comments on your blog -- have conversations.
In a real-life social situation, you'd be pretty unpopular if you simply talked without listening -- and it's the same online.
7. Get Realistic
People don't want to read advertising. They won't share your blog posts if they're just sales pitches, they won't retweet your messages if they don't add value to their own followers.
Understand this before you embark on your social media campaign, because it's at the heart of this difficult area of marketing.
Your interactions need to have value for the online market. They aren't a captive audience and they won't read or interact with your online presence if they get nothing out of it.
If you're adamant that you want to sell socially, then offer discounts and voucher codes in the social media space -- that's value-adding and is pretty much the only way you can get away with pushing products through blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other online community spaces.
8. Get Active
Once you've begun your social media marketing efforts, it's important not to get bored or let the momentum drop as other projects intrude on your time.
Successful social media marketing is really a daily effort, not something you can work at every now and again.
The real benefits come when you make a regular effort -- even a weekly blog post or forum presence is better than nothing. This is especially true since Google launched its new indexing system, Google Caffeine, which searches the web far more quickly than before, and places a high value on regular content.
So, don't begin working with social media only to abandon it when it becomes obvious it takes effort and time. Effort and time is the price of a successful social media campaign.
9. Get Good at it
This is perhaps the most important tip here. It doesn't really matter how often you fill your pages with new content if it's not interesting and relevant.
Rewritten press releases, content copied from elsewhere, irrelevant ramblings about your favorite types of cheese -- this kind of filler content won't be read, it won't be shared, and there will be no online buzz (unless, of course, you're in some way involved in the cheese industry...).
You need some skill at writing articles for the online audience. Not to worry, though, there is plenty of online guidance. Just remember to keep trying to add value.
When it comes to subjects, consider the kinds of questions you asked when you first entered your industry and write answers to them. Your expertise will make your post valuable.
10. Get Motivated
What destroys a social media campaign? It's rarely negative press or legal issues. More often than not, it's apathy that kills your marketing campaign.
Social media is an ongoing effort and you need to keep the effort up. Success is slow growing but it will only come if you maintain your campaign.
That's why you need to keep your goals in mind at all time -- and use analytics tools to see just how helpful your social promotion has been. If you can see the difference it's making to your business, then it will be much easier to make time for the work.
Stay motivated by keeping your goals in sight and monitoring your success.
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Google Tops U.S. June Searches Again With 65% Market
Google is once more number one search engine in the U.S. for the month of June with a market share of 65%, research firm Nielsen said in a report.
Google's cut of the U.S. search pie was 65% or almost 6 billion queries out of the total 9.1 billion conducted in June, just 0.1% below May's level and compared to a 66.1% share a year ago.
Yahoo came in number two. It registered 1.2 billion queries, or 13.7% of the total market, or the same slight 0.1% weaker month-on-month performance but a more significant drop from 16.2% the same period last year.
Closing in on the gap with Yahoo, number three was MSN/Windows Live/Bing, accounting for 13.4% of the U.S. search market in June, up 0.4% from last month and also a jump from last year's 8.9%.
Number four was AOL at 2.1%, unchanged from last month and down from 3% last year. Ask.com was number five, at 2%, also unchanged from May but up from 1.8% in June 2009.
Google, Yahoo and the Microsoft sites accounted for 92% of total U.S. searches in June, compared with 91.8% in May. Including AOL and Ask.com, the top five search engines accounted for 96.1% of total U.S. queries in June, up from 95.9% in May.
Nielsen said it does not count contextual searches.
Google is slated to hold its second-quarter earnings call http://investor.google.com/earnings.html tomorrow, July 15th, at 1.30 PM PST or 4.30 PM EST.
source from:http://searchenginewatch.com/
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