How to Harmonize Google+With Your Other Social Platforms

Google's Search Plus Your World is the most recent and arguably most significant change the search engine behemoth has made to search yet. In the old days (old = a couple of weeks ago) search results could be based on say, keyword relevancy, page authority, and social signals. With Search Plus, the nature of search, relevancy and ranking is transforming.
Search Plus essentially aggregates data from your Google+ network (when you're signed in) and delivers personalized results (from your Google+ network), which get bumped up to the top of your search engine result page (SERP). So if you search for SEO, you'll get suggested People and Pages on Google+ that are relevant to your search term. Regardless of whether there is more relevant or pertinent information about SEO, Search Plus gives preferential treatment to Google+ activity.
Essentially, Search Plus has been forced on to users, and is singlehandedly knocking down the rankings of quality sites. This has made Twitter mad. It has made lots of people mad. In fact, it drove Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to team up to create a Don't Be Evil browser add-on, which counteracts this latest Google update.
But let's get beyond the anger and instead get practical. How can you play nice with the new update and your existing sharing platforms.
Search Plus has magnified the importance of blending your web marketing strategy so that it will adhere to the at once social, personal, and personalized search algorithm. Search Plus Your World doesn't mean Social Minus Your Other Networks! Use your extended branding channels for specific purposes.
Here's a drill down on how to harmonize Google+ with your current platforms.

1. Perfect Your Website's Usability

Before throwing all your eggs into the Google+ basket, make sure you've perfected your main website's usability. Think of website optimization as the lungs of your web marketing strategy. Your optimized pages act as the oxygen being delivered to the heart (search engines) so that that it can travel through the rest of the body (the SERP).
This means having the following.

Clean Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

Make your website robot and human-friendly. The more personalized the web becomes, the more important it is to create metadata for the user. Properly optimized title tags should contain the search terms you're targeting. Titles are the first to communicate with both spiders and readers, so clean, concise title tags can get your site reviewed faster by search engines and by people.
While meta descriptions don't significantly influence search engine rankings, they are extremely important in gaining user click-throughs from SERPs. Meta descriptions are a way of telling searchers what your content is about and how it's relevant to their search.

Proper Alt Attributes for Images

Images are one of the most shared pieces of content on the web, but especially in the social sphere. Since Googlebots can't see images directly, we need to provide them readable information in the "alt" attribute. Alt tags should be brief, clear, and descriptive of the image.

For example:


Would look something like this:

<img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-3252" title="pew-pew-pew"

src="http://www.example.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/24/pew-pew-pew-300x225.jpg"

alt="adorable cat wizard meme pew pew pew" width="300" height="225" />

Doing this simple (but often neglected) step will help make your images more accessible to other platforms. Image descriptions also add rich snippets of data that enhance the user's experience and understanding of the visual.
Adding alt attributes and descriptions can help boost your rankings in image search if you choose to include a keyword you're targeting (but only do it if it's relevant).

Linking Website Pages With Your Other Community & Social Networks

On top of linking specific web pages to their valuable counterparts (product pages, about page, contact form), you need clear links to your social platforms on your home page. This will help keep your brand name SERP filled with listings of your social platform pages and clear from less predictable brand related content on other sites.

Share Buttons

The most important pages (from a user perspective) on your website (like the home page and product pages) should include the top share buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.) in easy-to-find locations on the page. Generally, the top or bottom of the content is good starting point for position optimization.

Fresh Content

Before the Search Plus Armageddon, Google's Freshness update was the big change to search. With this update, Google returns the latest, relevant web content for certain queries. We were speculating that it would make real-time sites like Twitter a main contender for top rankings in the SERP. No dice with Search Plus.
The main takeaway is that you should be modifying your website's content (e.g., adding new products to products pages, modifying descriptions) but mainly, you should be using your brand's social profiles as key channels for publishing fresh, updated content.
Key takeaway: Optimize for humans.

2. Learn From Your Competition

Once you have a fully optimized, human-robo-friendly website, it's time to start investigating what others in your niche are doing on their social platforms.

• What's working for your competitors on their social networking pages?
• How many people are in their Circles?
• How many Fans do they have?
• Twitter followers?
• How much engagement are they actually inciting across these platforms?

Look at what your competition is talking about, sharing, and promoting and run an exhaustive analysis of their social channels to determine what kind of content is getting the most positive feedback, and what does poorly.
You can do a quick assessment of their content using tools like Open Site Explorer or bit.ly to track the number of shares, votes, and Likes the content got. See if you can find a connection between the top content and the platform it was submitted to. Maybe you'll find that Facebook has more video and images being shared while Google Plus users may prefer news and articles.
Once you know what your competition is doing right, determine what they could be doing better. Fill that gap.
As an example, one surprising search result you can find is for Coca-Cola's Google+ page. Not only do you have to type that exact phrase to find it, but Pepsi's Google+ page actually outranked Coke's for a branded search term!

Seriously, look at what your competition is doing.
Key takeaway: Steal and improve. (Don't tell the SOPA patrol!)

3. Measure Your Social Presence

You know what other major players are doing right, you've identified what they could be doing better, now you have a comparison base to start initiating your own search/social coup. But first, know thyself and know thy audience:

• What kind of engagement are you getting across platforms?
• Who is your audience on Twitter?
• Are they different from your Facebook audience?
• How about Google+?
• What type of content is working with your Twitter followers?
• What gets shared the most from you on Facebook?

Again, find out which avenues are better for specific types of content. Use social tracking tools like Radian6, Sysmos, or even less purpose-built tools like OpenSite Explorer, bit.ly and Blekko to help you pull a thorough analysis of both your best and lowest performing content.
Now, start thinking about how you can harmonize your content/sharing strategy.
Key takeaway: Master what you've got.

4. Regroup & Define

Once you've determined where you (and your competitors) stand within your specific platforms, consider creating unique strategies for each.
Each social platform can provide rich channels for engaging with your different audience segments in unique ways. Harmonize the accounts by defining specific roles for each.
All these extended channels allow you to show your business' many faces. For instance, Facebook could be your go-to venue for promotions and contests. Twitter may be where you offer quick tips, answer questions, comment on industry-related news. Your own YouTube channel could be a space where you post instructional videos or entertainment (be aware that corporate videos will very rarely see the same kind virality as user-generated ones, unless your campaign is really unique and engaging).
Google+ can (should) be a tool for improving your rankings (you can actually apply your SEO tactics to Google Plus!).
It's still early to draw any conclusions about how deeply Search Plus will influence your sharing strategy in the long run, but you need a strong presence. That means lots of people in your Circles, and an SEO-friendly profile that is fresh and updated. These will directly impact your rankings, so act now and define your G+ presence.

Living in Harmony

The adoption of Google+ is growing fast, 90 million users strong, 60 percent of them active. If you snooze on this one, you're missing out on some really easy ranking opportunities.
An important lesson that we can take away from events like Search Plus is that we should always leave room for interpretation and change in our online marketing strategies. Keep tabs on what industry leaders and competitors are doing. Draw from their strengths, and modify them to implement them into your own practices.
Making sound business decisions comes from learning what's going right and wrong on the other side. You have to try things out, take risks, and establish a presence in the many existing facets of social media.
This will help you understand what the advantages and drawbacks are in each platform. By keeping abreast of the web climate, you will learn to develop a sixth sense about when things might be subject to change. This way, you can hear the quiet before the storm.
By adopting strong SEO and social strategies, you can diversify the way you raise your brand to search engines and most importantly, to people.

Why Every Site Owner Needs a Client Friendly SEO Agent

And Why Search Engine Friendly Optimization is a Necessity?

Owning a business web site is comparable to owning a road going, commuter car, which unless is worked upon to the standard, is never ready for the (business) race track. But to put it on the business race track, you got to find the right kind of developers, builders, and optimizers, who should not only claim to know all about SEO, but let their work show returns on the track. With so many fake SEO’s on the sprout, clients who reach for services aren’t sure where to find a client friendly SEO agent. And even the authentic SEO agents, sometimes fail to offer the required page optimizing solutions, or even to advice clients about the necessity of creating search engine friendly (SEF) pages before optimizing for the next level of marketing and promotional campaigns.

Search Engine Friendly Schema Makes it User Friendly too

Whether or not site owners understand that creating a Search Engine Friendly and user friendly sites through better keyword lists, punchy sales copies, optimized site structure, minimal number of clicks that leads to the content-in-search, SEF architecture that aids easy navigation, and clear-cut channels for marketing to reach clients who would end up as conversions, SEO’s have to ethical responsibility to educate them on the ‘what’s’ and the ‘How’s’ when clients pay and seek solutions. While the Landing page URLs that figure on the SERPs, against search engine queries, are being evaluated by Google’s URL evaluators, pages should be optimized in such a way as to figure within the first couple of search engine result pages, which would also enable a bigger compulsion for the customers to click on you.

In addition, the more harmonious a website schema is, the easier it becomes to navigate that website. Bad attitude developed over confusing navigation on a website, is more like the attitude developed toward a bad ad, which has direct correlation to the acceptance or rejection of the brand displayed on the site’s pages. Likewise, a positive experience that gradually forms over good site basics and navigation is sure to transfer the same experience toward a new product or service on the site. While partnering an SEO agent who can tune your site and top it up with a report on the attained results is hard to find, there are many who blow their trumpets louder than they are worth and do little to find you the right returns. Only diligence will help you find a SEO partner, who guides you towards better ROI and delivers on the promise.

The Googlization of Search and the Panda Penalties

2011 was the year of the Panda, when it was time to rethink strategy starting from the landing page, which bids you to reorganizing the URL, meta-structure, meta-data, the content, the site-structure, PageSpeed, schema elements, Social Media signals and every other thing that would fall within the Search Engine perspective to gain a better ranking, and 2012 is not showing any signs of deviation from the past, though we can expect more additions to the same logic. If you are still cursing the Panda for what it has done to you, it is also time you analyzed what went wrong with your website and how you handled it.

Well, the 2011 Panda is only an indicator that there could be more to follow as search engines algorithms are being bettered to bring out the best search results, and unless we are prepared to find recourse that get the basics right for any websites, only those who don't cater to the desired search engine standards need worry about what the next Panda-like update could do and you know, who the loser would be. It would be foolish to stand your ground and blame the algorithms for ‘what went wrong’ when the ‘wrong’ is within us to rectify. Google implemented some 30 additions to its value system in the last month of 2011, and with the 2012 updates set to happen earlier than expected there sure is a lot more to follow, as Google stands by its resolve to help users find the best answers against a query for which websites that are found good, in Google’s terms, rank. And Google has to be taken into account as it dominates the search engine domain with an 80% global market share.

Optimizing beyond the Landing page

There are a few things to consider for you to shoot your way up the search pages, like optimizing all your web pages instead of just the landing page, which is often being rated by human raters, at least for Google against a set of pre-defined indices. While Google’s leaked 2011 URL rating scheme would give you some idea on how to manage your landing page and the others, it doesn’t end there. Optimizing the landing page is one option that site owners can’t over-ride, though every page on the site counts in finding the best ranking on the SERPs as one page with duplicate content or wrong schema or site architecture can spoil the rest of the pages on the website resulting in a low page rank. Duplication of content in the sub-pages and flaws in design, coding, site structure and architecture can lead to degradation of a site in no time, when Panda is still in force. The best possible solution is to rectify the present against future damages by optimizing every page on the site, while also making probable off-page marketing and ranking solutions thereby making onsite and offsite solutions work together towards higher organic ranking and more traffic that monetizes in lesser cost per customer acquired.

So inorder to let SEO, SEM and SMP work to your benefit, start with optimizing the landing page and let the effect flow to the linking pages. Your landing page only succeeds when all of its elements work together to persuade visitors to take an action.  Yet, the task is never an easy task to make valuable conversions from a single page as it requires a deep analysis of whom you are targeting, what they are looking for, and the art of developing a message that will appeal to the masses yet feel personalized enough for every individual visitor. Unless your site is search engine friendly, you would not stand to gain the actual benefit of any number of campaigns, as the site would function like a bottomless pit that never fills up. Building search engine friendly pages is not the same as optimizing a website for top search engine ranking performance.

Finding the Right Recourse

Any owner of a website, who has been in the business of selling a service or a product for a year or more, knows Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Social Media Promotion are vitally necessary to bring in customers within the stipulated marketing budget, unless over shooting the limit would mean more conversions. Moreover, 2012 is going to see the expansion of the SEO budget for over 72% of the businesses according to research stats. Optimizing and marketing against a growing list of keyword phrases is useless unless there is a real demand that can get you bigger profits while it would make sense to score on a few that would convert into profit. Moreover, all these would work to your favor when you have products and services on your site that has some demand and is priced to provoke a customer to buy.

To build or retune your website so as to make it SEF, the existing flaws should be analyzed and the site reconstructed with an understanding of visitor usability and needs to be built on a sound architecture that would channelize visitors through conversion funnels, in addition to making it friendly for search engines bots to index your page. Once your site is made SEF, then you would find better returns from the SEO, SEM and SMM/P strategies that can continuously be employed till you attain the visibility and ranking that would result in more organic traffic and conversions on your site. Inspite of  both SEF and SEO, requiring two entirely different approaches, the efforts need to be a coordinated to maximizes the efficiency of the site.