Follow Jason on Google+ for More Info on SEO | Social Media Marketing | AdWords.

Certainly, in our courses on SEO and Social Media Marketing we will add the Knowledge Graph to our discussion of search, search engine optimization, and how social media marketing venues like Google+ and social search are opportunities for small business.

It’s very early to tell. Read the blog post, above, or click on the picture (far right), for a YouTube video… and let’s think about what trends we see emerging at Google.

First, social search. Google is changing to take into account how your friends or connections (people connected to you via Google+) are searching and responding. We already see this if we are ‘signed in’ to our Google account. It’s often called ‘search plus your world.’ So, if we are astronomers and our friends are astronomers, you can speculate that a Google search for ‘mercury’ will yield information on the planet and not the insurance company. Second, personalization. Google is paying a lot of attention to what we do, who’s in our email, what we click on, etc. So it can feed personalization into the ‘knowledge graph’ and show us pictures and content on the right that follow from our search patterns. (Goodbye privacy!). And, finally, authorship. Google is rewarding authors (like me) with our pictures on Google search and our followers (Follow me on Google+). Therefore, if you are following someone who is an astronomer vs. an insurance agent… it’s a good bet that your search for ‘mercury’ means the planet and not the insurance company.

SEO / Small Business Opportunities with the Google Knowledge Graph

It then follows that we need to a) build followers in Google+, b) enable authorship, and c) position ourselves and our companies as ‘knowledge experts.’ The Google Knowledge Graph is clearly part of Google’s master strategy of leveraging social search, Google+, authorship and all those details it knows about us and our search habits to connect search with social. Oh, and did we mention Facebook? Recently Facebook and Bing announced some tighter integration… The whole Google Knowledge Graph also looks a lot like Bing’s tag line – a decision engine, doesn’t it?

Sincerely,

• Jason McDonald.

Google Sign

First of all, as I explain in my free webinar, AdWords Gottchas, there are two major ‘gottchas’ than can easily negate the value of your $100 free AdWords coupons. Namely –

• Broad Match – Google, by default, sets your AdWords keywords to ‘broad’ meaning that it ‘thinks for you.’ You enter ‘animal boarding’ and it matches on both ‘cat boarding’ and ‘dog boarding’ even if you only board dogs!
• Display Network – Google AdWords, by default, runs your ads not only on Google, but also on the Google Display Network which includes blogs, portals, and a lot of crazy sites that may cost you a lot of money without generating many conversions.

Take AdWords Gottchas for more details on these issues!

Free AdWords Coupon Codes

So drum roll please… here are your free AdWords Coupon codes for 2012 –

Second, let’s return to those free AdWords vouchers for 2012. They’re actually pretty easy to find –

Free Google AdWords Coupons for $100 and $75 in Free AdWords Advertising

Google gives these away like candy if you know where to look. First, here are some links direct to Google that will give you a free $100 Google AdWords Coupon Code or free $75 Google AdWords Coupon Code. Just click on either the

• free $100 Google AdWords Coupon Code or

• free $75 Google AdWords Coupon Code link
  

and you’ll go straight there.

You can also search using Google, to find the most current offers. It’s pretty simple. Just enter site:www.google.com {keywords}. Here I’ve built the searches for you -

• site:www.google.com/ads AdWords voucher

Browse through the links provided there, and you’ll usually find the most current free $100 AdWords Coupons or free $75 AdWords Coupons, depending on what Google is promoting. Note: this are for NEW advertisers only!

Free $100 AdWords Credit – Call Google AdWords

The final easy way to get a free $100 or free $75 AdWords credit is simply to call Google before you set up your first AdWords campaigns. Simply call 1-877-906-7960 and explain you are interested in AdWords, and want to set up a free $100 campaign. They are very lenient at giving away these credits, and the helpful Google sales rep will email you a coupon code. Presto! You’ve just saved yourself $100.

Sincerely,

• Jason McDonald

Follow Jason on Google+ for More Info on SEO | Social Media Marketing | AdWords.

Follow Jason on Google+ for More Info on SEO | Social Media Marketing | AdWords.

• Follow Jason on Google+ for More Info on SEO | Social Media Marketing |
  AdWords.

First, the hoodie. Zuckerberg – like so many Silicon Valley CEO’s – clearly wants to be cool, and probably is pretty cool. I don’t know him personally. Silicon Valley is also known for being casual, and CEO’s strive to leverage cool casual as they present their companies. Steve Jobs was well known, for example, as the CEO who wore the stylish black turtleneck at nearly every Mac gathering. Jobs epitomized not just cool but successful cool: Jobs turned Apple around, and made the company the cool synergy of form and function that it is today.

Today, every CEO in Silicon Valley wants to be Steve Jobs.. Let me repeat that for those who are not ‘in’ the Valley culture: Today, every CEO in Silicon Valley wants to be Steve Jobs..
They want a) to make their companies cool, b) to make their company stock as valuable as Apple’s, and c) to achieve the kind of total almost dictatorial control that Jobs had over Apple.

What does Zuck’s hoodie mean then? Beyond just his personal style, it it a fashion statement that a) he is cool (vs. Wall Street suits), b) he intends to make his company’s stock as valuable as Apple’s, and c) he wants the kind of dictatorial control that Jobs had over Apple.

The hoodie matters. The hoodie isn’t just Facebook marketing. It’s a symbol of the corporate culture of Facebook: cool, leveraged, with one person in charge. That might be good. That might be bad. But the hoodie rules, people the hoodie rules!

Bing has an alliance with both Facebook and Twitter, and the trio clearly sees Google as a threat with its own Google+ social network. So the interesting questions for our classes in SEO are -

First, can Bing leverage its Facebook and Twitter relationships to become relevant enough so that more people actually use it vs. the market leader, Google? The far right column in the new Bing search will be social – with links and highlights to one’s friends on Facebook.

Second, if/when Bing becomes a serious competitor to Google in search – does that have any SEO implications? We already know that Bing is more focused on domains and less on links than Google. So if/when Bing ever becomes truly important in search, we might then work on our Bing SEO optimization. It’s too early to say.

Finally, the nightmare that makes Larry and Sergey wake up with night terrors is when Facebook BUYS Bing and/or launches its own search engine. A Facebook-enhanced search engine would be a huge competitive threat. We can only hope.

The same is true for SEO and local search SEO: Location, location, location!

What do I mean?

First and foremost, does location matter to your searches? Role play your target customers, and identify the types of searches that they are putting into Google. Are they location specific? If you search for words such as –

Watch repair
Watch repair NYC
Tag Heuer repair Midtown Manhattan

Do you see Google Places? Do you see results being returned that are geographically specific? Try the searches above, and you will see that YES these are geographically specific. On the far left of the Google screen, click on your location, and change it to somewhere else: for instance, New York, NY. Be a Google Detective and notice how Google pays attention to either a) your physical location, or b) the helper words like NYC or Midtown Manhattan.

Check out my favorite New York, NY Watch Repair Shop as an example of localization done well (by yours truly).

Localization Matters for Google Search and SEO!

So we realize that for many searches localization does matter. So how do we communicate to Google our location? Here are some critical tips about SEO and localization -

• Place your keywords in your TITLE tags, including your geographics. So name your website ‘Ron Gordon Watch Repair, New York, NY’ – that is, put your CITY NAME in your TITLE tag starting with your home page.
• Claim your Google Places listing at http://www.google.com/places/.
• Cross-link your website to your Google Places and vice-versa.
• Put your PHYSICAL ADDRESS on your home page and on EVERY page of your website. Make sure that it is the SAME address as on Google Places.
• Claim other local listings such as Yelp, Citysearch, Bing.
• Build local links; get links from other local businesses.
• When you write copy for your local web pages, make sure to include your city, state, etc., many times on your web content. Don’t assume Google realizes you are in New York, NY. Write sentences and copy on every page that remind Google (again and again and again) that you are physically located in your target city.

Real estate and local search are about location, location, location. You have to TELL Google where you are located to show up on local searches.

Sincerely,

• Jason McDonald.

• Be like a politician! Kiss a lot of babies! Shake a lot of hands! Get votes! Get links!

What I mean is be like a politician seeking votes. Do EVERYTHING you can to solicit links and over time, you will get them. Don’t over complicate it, don’t over analyze it! Just GET LINKS.

That said, what are some Best Practices for SEO Outbound Links? That is, when you link outbound to websites, how should you do this?

Rules of thumb for SEO-friendly outbound links –

• Outbound links possibly hurt, but only a tiny bit. MOST of the game is 99% getting INBOUND links. So
  don’t stress too much about outbound links.

• ONLY link outbound in your KEYWORD communities. If, for example, you are a health care facility in the San Francisco Bay Area then your KEYWORD communities are a) health care related, and b) SF Bay Area related.
• It’s a GOOD idea to put the rel=”nofollow” on outbound links especially if we are not getting anything in return. But not use for internal “link sculpting” (our own links). Not required. Some SEO people believe that overusing the NOFOLLOW attribute in and of itself is a bad thing. So this is somewhat the “ART” of SEO.
• On blogs / user generated content ALWAYS use the REL=”NOFOLLOW” attribute. Otherwise you’ll attract BLOG SPAM / COMMENT SPAM (not good).

Hope this helps,

• Jason McDonald.