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Google+ Business Pages – What You Need to Know

In early September, Google+ opened up to the general public, inviting an influx of millions of users—eager to try out the newest feature from Google. However, many users noticed a distinct problem with the site right off the bat—where were the Google+ business pages?

Two months later, the pages have finally opened to the public, and social media managers are flooding the site, adding their businesses and trying to figure out how to use Google+ to their advantage. At this point it is difficult for small business to gain a following, because even though the numbers are large, it is still nowhere near Facebook in terms of active users.

Despite the lower amount of users though, Google+ has a lot of advantages. First of all—it’s a Google product. Therefore, Google+ business pages are going to be integrated into Google’s search engine results pages very quickly. As a matter of fact, many of the larger Google+ business pages have already been indexed and are showing up on SERPs.

Using a Google+ Business Page

If you still haven’t set up your Google+ business page, here are your goals this week:

1. Set one up! Remember to do it from a company account that someone else has access to, as well. www.google.com/+/business will give you all the directions you need.
2. Put together your scrapbook photos. This is the most noticeable part of your Google+ business profile, so make sure it represents your business well—and looks nice!
3. Promote, promote, promote!

The third is the most important goal—because of the few active users on Google+, your small business isn’t going to get added to a lot of circles for a while… unless you promote it. Put a Google+ logo on your blog or website, tweet about it and share it on your own Google+ profile.

After your Google+ business page is up and running, post often on subjects your circlers will want to hear about! Let your circlers know that you’re there and provide them with content that’s worth sharing. Remember to track your traffic to see how you’re doing!

And while you’re at it—add Smart Solutions to your circles! See you on Google+.

A Google Doodle Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Celebrate by stuffing yourselves silly and spending time with family and friends. And while you’re taking time off to relax, check out a few of the past Google doodles… Thanksgiving style!

From 1998 – 2010, Google has made some great Thanksgiving doodles, and you can see them all here! For a complete archive of the many Google doodles, you can head over to www.google.com/logos. Enjoy Google’s Thanksgiving logos!

Note: In 2010, Google had a contest for their Google doodles, and there were three winners. The last three Google doodles are all from 2010, and Google showed each of them leading up to and on Thanksgiving last year. Google’s doodle this year was customizable – did you see it?

How to Choose the Right SEO Strategy

We have talked about the importance of SEO maintenance previously about how you need a monthly active SEO plan to stay ahead of competition and rank high on the search engine results page (SERP). To help you choose the right SEO strategy, we will focus on what should be included in the SEO maintenance plan.

• Rank Reports – It is important to have a rank report run so you can monitor your rankings on the SERP. There could be fluctuations due to actions done by your competitor, new sites being added, and changes in the search engine algorithms. Rank reports are a must for a SEO strategy.

• Keyword Research – Competitors can try to outrank you for different keywords or long tail phrases. This means that keywords that you used to rank high for might not be optimal for you to appear on the SERP. Some keywords receive more traffic while some receive less. With the keyword research in your SEO strategy, you can determine what keyword phrases will work best for you – such as whether to rank well on high traffic keywords or target niche ones with possible better conversion rates.

• Competitive Analysis – A competitive analysis in a SEO strategy provides you with a summary of where your competitors are in terms of their SEO efforts. You can see how your competitors are ranking for your keywords and other site elements. Also what are they factors contributing to them ranking well on the SERP. Through that, you can decide the direction of your SEO efforts in order to compete. Factors that come into play include inbound links, meta tags and keyword density, and seo content.

• SEO Copywriting – It is important that your SEO strategy includes SEO copywriting because of the need for fresh content. It is important that new pages or articles are added on a regular basis as it can help expand your reach with more keywords and ways your visitors can find you. Having fresh content is also one of the important SEO ranking factors.

We have outlined the components of what we think is important for SEO maintenance, thus should be included in a SEO strategy. There are other components that are important, such as link building and social media—as outlined in SEO ranking factors. Let Smart Solutions come up with a customized active SEO strategy for you. Contact us now to find out how we can help your business.

Choosing the Right Business Name – from an Internet Marketing Perspective

What’s in a name?  Frankly, a LOT.  Any marketing and branding agency can go through the important details of naming a new business or one that is renaming from a brand perspective.  It’s fascinating how business naming research is performed, tested and consumer analysis is created – in fact I totally respect it.  However (and this is important), it is essential that this research is embodied from an Internet Marketing perspective.

Here’s how to protect yourself from online blindness when naming your business:

#1 – Make sure the domain name is available or easy to acquire ahead of time.  Domain names, i.e. www.yourbusiness.com are the life force of branding online.  Your domain availability should include these principles:

1. You can “see it, spell it.”  In other words, it’s simple enough to resonate without a lot of possibility for misspellings.
2. Determine that most or all extensions are available.  Everyone thinks of the ‘.com’ but it’s important to grab the important extensions (.net, .org, .us, etc.).  If you’re a larger organization – grab as many as you can.  Brand hijacking – by your competition buying those domains is not a pleasant situation to find yourself in.
3. Misspellings are available.  If there is a possibility of misspelling your domain name, grab all the necessary misspellings too.  A random example would be:  www.smithswarehouse.com – be sure to grab www.smithwarehouse.com and www.smithswearhouse.com
4. Moderate length.  We get the question, “Is my domain too long?” quite a bit actually.  With domain names at a premium these days, it’s more important to “see it, spell it” than it is to keep it short.  Moderate length of the domain is okay as long as it’s not overwhelming.
5. Domain names (i.e. business names) with search specific keywords have a double advantage.  Although sometimes this is not practical, it is helpful.

#2 – Evaluate the competitive landscape of your business name online.  If it’s competitive, be prepared to have the resources necessary (time and money) to effectively launch an SEO campaign early.  Here are some basic things to check when evaluating the competitiveness of your keyword phrases:

1. Review the total number of Google results for your prospective business name.  (As a very general rule of thumb – If it’s less than a total 250,000 results, and incorporate SEO from the beginning, you’ll be golden).  Any words results over 1 Million – plan ahead for potentially robust ongoing SEO resources.
2. Review PPC bids for your phrase, amount of PPC ads.  You can use Google’s AdWords tool to evaluate the average bid amount for your business name.  Anywhere over $1.00 per click mark may get expensive and is an indicator for the need of a moderately or severely competitive SEO marketplace.
3. Evaluate the number of links/number of pages indexed of top results for your keyword phrases using tools such as the: Bruce Clay Toolbar, SEO Book , Yahoo Site Explorer.  Plan on acquiring the same amount of links and pages of content indexed as the other top 10 listings.  If this will take significant effort, that may be an indicator for a competitive marketplace.
4. Evaluate whether you business name of choice has associations outside of your category.  For example, a recent organization named their business the same name as a popular TV show – their rankings were buried at onset outside of local specific searches.

#3 – Check to see if your Social Media profiles are available.  Social media is essential for business marketing in most all cases, so double check to see if your profiles/usernames are available.  The big three would be Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – but that’s just a start.  Social media profiles, such as:  www.facebook.com/smartsolutions or www.twitter.com/smartsolutions are just as powerful, and just as limited, as domain names.  Check profiles using www.knowem.com.

As you can see, there are many factors to determining a valid, compelling business name at the onset.  Along with your branding, marketing research efforts – don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you get out of the gate by not reviewing the online marketplace of your potential business name F-I-R-S-T.

We welcome comments on example stories – please post!

By: Wendy Roe

Bend Blogging Panel – SmartGroup Recap Notes

Thanks to those who attended this past week’s September SmartGroup on Blogging.  It was an energetic discussion and our panelist did an excellent job on speaking to the do’s and don’ts of both business and personal blogging.  Below are the presentations from Andre Jensen and Meg Thompson as well as the notes from Jake Ortman and Jon Abernathy.

If we didn’t get to your specific blog question during the Q/A, please leave a comment here and we’ll create the ‘virtual panel!’

GetListed.org: Have you claimed your local listings?

We often work with small business looking for easy ways to gain exposure for their local specific business. We offered a Local specific SmartGroup (recap notes) recently to help small business owners get up to speed and own their local listings.

Not sure if you have claimed your local listings? Recently released, GetListed.org (http://getlisted.org), is a SIMPLE, easy way to understand which of the major engines you may have missed when claiming your local listing.

Here are the steps:

1) Go to GetListed.org
2) Type in your business name and zip code
3) Voila! View your score and understand which engines you need to go register with.

Other Local Specific Resources:

http://searchengineland.com/anatomy-optimization-of-a-local-business-profile-12943.php

http://www.wolf-howl.com/local-search/local-search-interviews-information-and-resources/

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

http://searchengineland.com/looking-back-at-the-summer-of-local-14900.php

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