In order to even help you understand why a listing on Google Plus is so paramount to your online success, first we’ll have to backtrack and try to unravel the mess that has been created since Google launched Google Plus.

Back in the day, Google just had Google Maps. It was a free way to list your business online with your address, phone number, website, directions to your businesses, photos, etc.  It was a great tool for businesses of all sizes.  Eventually the name was changed to Google Places.

Then, Google wanted a piece of the social networking pie. So they created Google Plus (Google+).  This was launched, at first, for consumers, as a sort of rival social network to Facebook. Consumers created their Google+ profiles, chatted with each other, posted photos, videos, added people to their ‘circles’ (this would be the equivalent of ‘friending’ people on Facebook), etc.  Then, Google took it a step further and started to allow businesses to create Google+ profile pages (similar to how a business would create a Facebook Business Page).

It seemed to be going well until Google apparently got bored and decided to make things more confusing for us.  To do so, they made a bunch of name changes and merged Google Maps (aka Google Places) with Google+ for businesses = Google+ Local.  So now, instead of businesses having a static Google Maps (Places) account with photos, videos, hours of operation, etc. Google+ Local gives the business an ability to list ALL of that info (and much, much more) plus the ability to make status updates, to hold live- stream hangouts, promote deals, collect reviews and be socially connected with their audience. This is a HUGE benefit for businesses. You may be saying to yourself, ‘Isn’t this basically the same thing as a Facebook page?’ The answer to that is ‘No!’ This is a much bigger deal with broader capabilities and huge benefits, especially when it comes to your potential search visibility.

The more you engage and participate in Google’s universe, the bigger the benefits you will have in TWO different types of online search:

1-     Standard Google web searches: Google wants to show local consumers local content.  Google+ Local pages are being shown in standard searches on Google if the search request includes local content (city, state for example)

2-     Google+ Local searches- Consumers ARE searching Google+ Local for businesses and services. Google is making it incredibly enticing for consumers to use Google+ for business searches.  The platform offers everything any consumer would want to know about a business and integrates maps, directions, reviews, related searches, street views, your photos, etc.  For example, a consumer could simply type into a Google+ Local search ‘Pizza’ or ‘Coffee’ and the Google map will show pin marks on all local pizza or coffee places.  If they hover their mouse over any of the pin drops, snippets of information will come up on each business.  Getting to their destination is easier than ever with Google’s help. Google will present their best options laid out on the map, including the time and distance for each route.  Plus, 3D images give consumers a sneak peak at the business they plan on visiting.  This is just the tip of the iceberg into what Google+ Local offers consumers that use their platform.

Right now, no other online listing service can even come close to the visibility and traffic that Google receives. That’s why it’s so important to create your business listing with Google+ Local, update it often and BY ALL MEANS get your best customers to write great reviews on your listing page.  Before you jump in with any of the 100 other directories trying to get your attention, focus on where the real traffic is. Google! While the other listing & review sites may be making a dent, their traffic is a fraction of Google’s potential for your business.

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• RECENT WORK

Questions You May Ask Yourself

• Do I own my website and content?
• Am I always growing MY digital footprint?
• Does my website make it easy for visitors to find what they want?
• Is my website prepared with the answers & information they seek?
• Is it easy to make change and keep my content current?
• Does my website support visitors on any mobile device?
• Can visitors easily share my pages out to their social networks?
• Does my social activity support and enhance my visibility and *my brand*?
• Does my brand & design make a lasting impression?

Perception Is Reality

Whether you are a brick and mortar business or 100% web-based, your website is often times the very first stop for people considering your products, services and your brand. With more than 80% of consumers researching businesses online first, it’s not only important to focus on web visibility BUT whether or not they are enjoying the best user experience possible. The best user experience depends on good content, an ease of navigation for it (including for visitors on mobile devices) and an appealing brand design.

Digital Footprint

The first step you want to take to create a successful digital footprint is to make sure you own your website.  That may sound obvious, but often business owners unknowingly sign on for inexpensive or even free platforms where there is no ownership nor portability. This has to be a priority because if the day comes when you want (or even have) to leave you may discover you own nothing. That you will lose the website, content, search engine indexing, bookmarks, trusted backlinks, social ‘share’ | ‘like’ | ‘retweet’ | ‘pin’ (to specific content URL) records that form a digital footprint. An entire presence on the web you have worked hard to grow!

And it’s great to be affiliated with social networks and other channels, but be sure to understand the terms. Use them as an opportunity to support visibility, shares, likes, inbound traffic and your business model. Let’s not ever forget how Facebook encouraged us to recruit everyone imaginable to our new Fan Pages only to tell us a couple years later posts were no longer going to reach them all. That only 20% of that fan base can see new posts and we’d have to pay to reach the remaining 80%.

User Experience

The next priority in creating a beneficial online presence is to create a website that satisfies the user. Aesthetic design and features certainly go a long way toward making a lasting impression and setting oneself apart, but does your website satisfy the user? Why do they visit, what do they want and can they get to it easily? Function has to be a priority over form if you want traffic to convert to leads & new business. There is just too much competition online today to make users struggle to find information on your site.

And by the way, does your website and all of its elements [i.e. navigation, logo, graphics, images, galleries and apps] support visitors on mobile devices? The research proves people are coming on devices with a ton of different screen sizes, so it’s no longer something we can glaze over. Are they panning, scrolling and stretching when they visit your website from a phone? If so, the experience is not going to be the best it can be so consider responsive design for mobile devices!

Content

And last, but certainly never least, on your online marketing priority list for 2014 must be a commitment to content! Don’t just build a website and let it sit collecting dust. In fact nothing above matters much unless you satisfy visitors with the most current & useful information. The more the better! And take it out to your social network accounts where viewers may even ‘share’, ‘like’ or ‘pin’ it for their circles of influence to see… but be sure the trail leads back to the web presence you own and can sustain without interference!

Google is certainly looking for social reaction to content as a signal, but they are also more likely to visit your website when new, relevant content is added regularly. The more Google visits your website and likes what it ‘reads’, the more likely it is to display your site in their results when consumers search keywords related to your business.

If ease of use for creating & managing content interests, WordPress is an excellent way to go. WordPress is also very portable, supporting ownership and the long term build of a digital footprint you own. If you’re a Kinetic Knowledge customer, you have already got this set up. WordPress websites are extremely search friendly, acknowledged by Google to have the superior markup.  And if you don’t have the time to write, not to worry: Kinetic Knowledge offers full-service content writing solutions.

Just keeping pace with an ever-changing digital landscape can seem like a full time job. Trying to understand website traffic analytics, social network strategies and best SEO practices can be a giant headache; however, most small to medium sized businesses WILL increase their search rankings and their overall website traffic if they can just leverage these readily available optimization tools. And while some of it may sound Greek to you, it’s worth your time and patience to know.

Typically results from search engine optimization work can take weeks or months to see online, depending on the competitive nature of your industry. And while you may be familiar with or even have some of them down pat already, the sooner you put these optimization practices into play, the sooner they can begin to pay dividends for you!

Essential Elements For Better SEO

• Content: We cannot recommend an investment in good content enough; competitive SEO is content driven! The way search engines know what your website is about is by ‘crawling’ and seeing keyword consistencies in your content, especially those that match consumer searches. Equally important, we recommend highly useful unique, subject focused content and for every page on your site! You want users to appreciate your content enough to react. Reactions like sharing, bookmarking or links serve as signals to search engines that users are having a positive experience. We recommend the careful addition of images, a sure- fire way to support more and better indexing! Video embeds are also going to be a competitive advantage! And always avoid duplication, try and mention the city, state or region you serve to help recognition in regional searches and never plagiarize!
• Meta- Tags: This may be one of those features that sounds Greek, but it’s actually quite simple. In the back end of your website, each page or post has a manual input for Meta-Tags that are then acquired into a page’s code. We advocate leveraging the Meta- Title and a Meta- Description, but not Meta- Keywords because they are ignored by Google. Think like a consumer when creating Meta- Tags. The title and description are what people will actually see on Google or Bing when a link to your website is displayed in a search results set, so you want to do what you can to be chosen. Include your business name as well as the city or town you are located to capture local search results. And whether it’s a page or you’re blogging, fill these out in a unique way for each that you publish.
• Pretty Permalinks: What are permalinks??? They are the differentiated URLs for your pages and blog posts. And search engines use them! For example, with the URL: http://kineticknowledge.com/mobile-sites/, ‘Mobile Sites’ is the part of the permalink [ 'the slug' ] that reveals everything! Your website editor allows you to change these and in many cases you should.  Most website platforms automatically create a permalink for you, and it can be a string of odd numbers, words and dashes. If you’re with us yours are set to acquire the page titles you create, but you can also override those with keywords you feel are better suited for search engines. Think page titles are for humans, permalinks are for search engines. And remember, a digital footprint is built on records related to your permalinks. Make them short and pretty and the search engines will be able to understand you better as they relate to your business.  When search engines understand your website and its page you have a much better chance in showing up in search results.
• Social Sharing: The importance of social media cannot be overlooked. Search engines are always looking for ways to validate good website content, and social sharing is one of the most highly weighted signals. Period! The more search engines see that your content is being shared on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. the more likely they will index it higher in search results. Be sure that all pages on your website offer visitors ‘ social sharing ‘ (if you’re with us you’re all set)!
• Links: This is where a lot of people get tripped up! You cannot control who links to your pages and you should not ever try to manufacture links! So far as search engines are concerned these days, only highly trusted links matter. Sure it’s good to accumulate links to your website from outside sources like social media accounts, other websites & blogs, BUT ONLY so long as the links are from sites that have trust! Something many folks don’t seem to know is that linking to different pages in our own websites is a good practice. Good, so long as it’s done to improve user experience. It can tell a search engine that pages you have linked add value for users. And adding the links in descriptive text only supports. You should certainly add links back to your pages from all of your social network accounts. For instance if you write a post go to your accounts and enter the title, an excerpt and a back link for any follower who may be interested. They may just like, share or even go out to their own website and link back to your page for its’ merit!
• Sitemap: A sitemap is exactly what its name implies. It’s an outline, or a map, of all the pages of your website. It acts as a shortcut for search engines to identify new content on the site and index it accordingly. Think about search engine crawls and their rapid comparison of what’s new versus what’s not. If you have a WordPress website there is a good plug-in application that automatically creates and updates the sitemap for you. If you’re with us you have it! Also consider creating a Google Webmaster Tools account and proactively submitting your sitemap there, a good practice versus waiting to be crawled.
• Mobile Responsive Design: In today’s world of mini laptops, tablets and smart phones, Mobile Responsive Design has pretty much become a necessity.  Todays’ user is less likely to be sitting in front of a standard sized computer and more likely to be viewing your website from their iPad, iPhone, tablet or Android product.  Each one of these products likely has a different size screen, and if your website is not ‘mobile responsive’, it will not fit nicely for their viewing. Could you imagine trying to navigate through a website where only 25% of the site was visible? It would make it very difficult to find the information you were looking for. There is no way to anticipate a user’s device nor their patience, so you need a website that will automatically respond to whatever the person is using.  It’s called a mobile responsive website, and it fits nicely into whatever size screen the person is using. Essentially, the layout and/or content of a responsive website responds or adapts. If you understand that Google is interested in ranking pages based upon user experience, you can logically conclude a user friendly mobile experience is very important. And with responsive there is no separate mobile URL, no new content nor potential duplication, all great when compared to using separate mobile website URLs.

Apply some discipline for generating good content leveraging the must- haves on our list here and in time you will see your pages climb in the search engines and your traffic will grow!

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WordPress 3.8 Dashboard Now Responsive

Your custom WordPress website files & database are saved and plug-ins & customization(s) checked for compatibility as these upgrades come down the pike [standard with Kinetic Knowledge], but here are some notable changes we think you will appreciate with WordPress version 3.8:

• The Admin’ dashboard has a new flat design to support a better responsive view for those logging in from smartphones and tablets.
• It’s lightened up quite a bit, so the dashboard can load faster.
• It should look a lot better on mobile devices, with an improved interface for devices of all resolutions; certainly better than via any iOS or Android WordPress app’, which rarely support all the functionality that should be there.
• In the upper right hand corner of your screen, there’s simplified access to help information on anything you happen to be using such as the dashboard (itself), posts, pages, media, menus, etc.
  

  Drag & Drop Menus

• Drag & drop menus have been updated, with a feature for segregating categories of your site’s blog to a new top level title tab. For help with WordPress drag & drop menus in general, this quick video will help with more of the application.

What’s really important is that no matter how you access the your website’s dashboard [i.e. Smartphone, tablet, notebook, desktop] on the Internet it will now respond to the screen resolution of the device you’re using in order to maximize that experience!

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Facebook Services Hashtags

Popularized by Twitter Facebook not only offers Hashtag service, but the practice has gained enough steam that marketers should be seeing an opportunity! For starters and as opposed to personal page privacy settings that may limit visibility to friends & family, be sure to open up the Fan page by going to your Admin Panel > Edit Page > Edit Settings … and preparing it for the kind of visibility you’d like!

How Do Hashtags Work?

By servicing hashtags (i.e. #Keyword OR #KeyPhrase) Facebook offers users an ability to search trending topics and keywords in one place. It offers the marketer an opportunity to distribute posts beyond its’ timeline wall into these trending topic pages where larger conversations exist and exposure to new people interested in the topics is likely!

When a user clicks OR searches and lands on a particular hashtag page, Facebook displays a live reverse chronological order presentation of all posts surfacing with that particular hashtag. When a marketer adds a #hashtag to a post the post arrives on the aggregating page with all others using it. You might think of them as social network bookmarks for the automatic & continuous collection of posts related to a particular topic.

Click To Enlarge

Finding the Right Hashtag! / Searching Hashtags?

Of course, if you wish to expose your business to a larger targeted conversation it would help to know where the action is. Unless you see & click a useful hashtag or Facebook produces some better insight tools for targeting than ‘ What’s Trending’, you’re going to need to search. Here are two ways to do it:

I. Search Bar

The Facebook Search Bar up top is where you start and you can type in whatever words you want. You’ll want to search based upon the # symbol plus the topic you’re looking into. So if you are an Alexandria VA Real Estate agent looking to expose good content you might want to search #AlexandriaVA and see if there’s any activity? For the NJ Interior Designer maybe #Rumson is the spot?!

And while you’re in there look around for other #hashtags added to posts > you might just find marketing gold for distributing that content!

II. Facebook URL

Another option is to fashion a Facebook URL into your browser like, for instance, https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/<keyword> where the <keyword> is what you’re looking to search. Note: do it without the # symbol! To parallel our example above that would be https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/AlexandriaVA OR https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/Rumson.

And if, for instance, you wanted to promote a hashtag on a website or in a blog post this would be the way to link to it!

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Do Your Images Drive Traffic?

A regular exercise here at Kinetic Knowledge is to review traffic analytics. Sure we look at the page view counts, but 1) where people come from, 2) what they were looking for and 3) what content interests them the most … is the powerful information we can really use! Strangely enough, we find our images are generating traffic?!

You may or may not know it, but search engines aggressively index and people often search … images! It’s proven that good pictures can drive visitors deeper into your website’s content – raising the odds for conversion, but what if those same images could attract them to your website in the first place?!

The 4 Fundamentals Of Image Optimization

Image Optimization Best-Practice #1: Descriptive File Tags

When loading an image up to your website FIRST be sure to save it with a descriptive file name. What is a descriptive file name? It’s certainly not ‘D%22DannyAdams%20PIC_CofC1.jpg’, but take this (digitally produced) file name and re- save it to your desktop as ‘Downtown-Gatlinburg-TN.jpg’ or maybe ‘Navesink-Theme-For-WordPress.jpg‘ and it becomes easy for search engines to identify & index (demonstrated in the video below)!

Image Optimization Best-Practice #2: Descriptive Alt Tags

Good websites offer a means to tag and/ or describe image files (without having to know page code techniques) and YOU should be in the habit of using them! The ‘ alt ‘ attribute is important because it is acquired into website code as a description of the image. Using the above Gatlinburg TN example, a descriptive alt tag might look something like this <img src=”Downtown-Gatlinburg-TN.jpg” alt=”Main Street View Downtown Gatlinburg TN”> or with the dog above …  alt=”Yellow Labrador NJ Shore”> . And when possible, descriptive title and caption attributes will also support. WARNING! Do not keyword stuff the alt tags because search engine algorithms are not stupid!

Image Optimization Best-Practice #3: Descriptive On Page Context

The page where an image lies, particularly the content around the image, will also provide search engines with descriptive subject matter information. Try to place images near relevant text. For (a bad) example, placing a Polar Bear’s picture on a page about ‘Waikiki HI Real Estate‘ sends a confusing message to search engines who are only interested in indexing information correctly for their searchers! My image of the dog above, again, may NOT be the best example. 

Image Optimization Best-Practice #4: Anchor Text Links

Back links to a page on your website buried in descriptive anchor text reflect how (in theory) another person views that page, including its images! While * organically * you can’t control how others will link to your pages, you can certainly use the practice within you own site. For instance, I am burying a link in the phrase ‘ Anchor Text ‘ here to a page describing best practice. And there’s nothing wrong with this practice, it can improve user experience. Search engines more than ever before strive to reward content that demonstrates good user experience!

NOTE: While it’s no longer the only search engine, Google can index the following image types: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP and SVG.

This video above specifically describes best practices for upload to and optimization of images in WordPress.

Any questions at all, please do not hesitate to contact us. And if the work or time involved in modern online advertising concerns you, give our Web Optimization Management Services a look!

If you reviewed ‘ Why Website Themes? How About More Design, Lots Of Customization And Better Service?! ’ you know that we feel a website is ‘ground zero’ for any unique business brand; however, coordinating a budget against 1) good WordPress website design and a 2)  thorough set of business support services was a task with limited, if not less than desirable, options for time- constrained business people.

It’s why we’ve rolled out Kinetic Knowledge Custom Themes for business, a variety of proven layouts with utter flexibility for color scheme, navigational element, image, title, graphics, and 3rd party integration feature customization. An affordable option versus custom (soup to nuts) with all the help & support needed to meet each unique clients’ website design expectations.

Activity, Distribution, Analysis, Repeat! 

Visible shelf space on the web is available to all of us advertisers FREE through our content; however while being in the search results is a start, it isn’t worth much if we’re buried deep.

The problem is that it’s crowded online for every imaginable keyword and climbing requires content activity that warrants the recognition of real people. Seeing how the search engines have drawn the line at good content as well as a genuine reaction from users (that they can measure), our most immediate opportunity is going to be to go direct to the qualified people in our personal lists [i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Email, etc.].

That’s right: rather then starting at ‘ ZERO ‘, let your circle of influence consume that good content and help to propel it & your brand!

Eric Schmidt Google CEO said the Internet is “becoming a cesspool,” adding  ”In a world of disinformation, brands are the solution.”

By publishing and then distributing useful information like answers to questions, compelling examples or even great sales, some of our list are likely to react [i.e. share, retweet, plus one, bookmark, back link and buy!] in ways the search engines will identify as a good experience. With this they can both measure and rank! It’s a ‘self fulfilling effort’ that (for search engines) justifies moving our information higher in their search results. And by analyzing what happens in traffic analytics data we can then leverage knowledge from the immediate data to continue to improve our activity and grow more traffic & sales.

The 4 Steps Advertisers Must Commit Too

1. Activity: Publishing content and Blogging on our website’s is activity that will put us on the search engine shelf for keywords. We recommend publishing to your website first! because this is where visitors are branded; where search engines index content that can stand the test of time; where there’s no 3rd party [i.e. social network owner] ulterior motive and because it is where we convert sales the best;

A survey done by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute shows 93% B2B organizations now use content-based tactics for their marketing campaigns while 73% indicated they now produce more content than the previous year! 

2. Distribution: Taking that same content to as many people in as many places as possible via social networks, hashtags, guest blogging, email, news directories, etc. is the activity that will maximize our potential for recognition, for reaction that search engines can measure and (bonus!) for some immediate sales;

“It’s important to note that everything we do is connected. We post to our blog and it automatically feeds to both Facebook and Twitter.  All of our team members are also fans of our page and so they get the new posts in their own newsfeed. We encourage them to “share” a post once a week with their Facebook friends.” – Kathy Schmidt, Owner of Schmidt Realty Group

3. Analysis: Measurement of the resulting traffic activity on our websites shows us where it comes from; how often it is coming; what is popular and what is getting the most reaction. With insight like this we can publish new content more likely to generate recognition, more reaction and (bonus!) more sales;

• “We’ve adjusted our marketing strategies in response to the data we get from our content. The [traffic] analytics are a gold mine!” – Claude Weiller, California Olive Ranch DoM  
• “You can’t optimize what you don’t measure.” – Johns Wu, Former Owner of Bankaholic, sold to  Bankrate.com for $14.9 Million Dollars

4. Repeat steps 1, 2 & 3 again again! And on you go to building a visible digital footprint and trusted brand!

Modern consumers research subjects before they will ever contact you or buy! As a modern advertiser/marketer with limited time, both understanding & executing fundamental Web Optimization with the useful information they’re looking for is not only affordable >> it’s crucial! Get pro- active, share your unique knowledge & experience! And if you’re just too busy to commit to modern advertising, check out our Web Optimization Services!

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• ki·net·ic = of, related to, or produced by motion

Avoid These Claims = ‘ SEO Fraud?!’

1. The SEO Guarantee: No, SEO cannot be guaranteed. Sure they say it, but the fact is search engine’s rank content based upon merit using their own secret proprietary formula. And merit is a good thing, if long term sustainable visibility interests. Google, for instance, uses over 200 signals to rank the keywords it finds on a web page. It is simultaneously crawling, identifying, consuming and ranking millions of competitive pages for their keywords while millions more arrive to compete each and every day. Imagine this and then imagine the claim that SEO is guaranteed. Add that the ranking signals used change regularly and you can see why SEO can’t be guaranteed!
2. Fast SEO Results: There are so many variables involved in getting visible for a keyword. Just the time it takes to do keyword & competitive research and then publish content useful enough to be ranked is a lengthy process. Be assured, that example of the business who showed up on page #1 quickly, has nothing to do with what the next business will experience. Adding the fact that search results are personalized for most people lends to the complexity of true SEO. It’s never a level playing field, making “speedy SEO” claims ridiculous!
3. Free OR Cheap SEO: Actual SEO requires a lot of data on the company pursuing service. There should be discussions with a client to understand their unique requirements. A tailored campaign might include particular keyword research & execution, subject specific publishing and social account work, email marketing, etc. If quality is a requirement than SEO work is time consuming so there really is no such thing as free or cheap!
4. Technology Advantage: While many black hat SEO types claim to have a secret technology advantage or even inside knowledge of ‘content ranking algorithms’, the truth is no one can outsmart Google’s army of engineers & PHDs. At least not for any sustainable length of time. Worse, when gaming (for instance with back links) is detected a site may be penalized or even cast out! Search engines openly advise on what a business should be doing, but they never fully reveal how their technology works or changes. That would only invite cheating and, believe it or not, poor search results is not only worthless to the consumer but bad for their business too. Add that the signals (200+) they use to rank content change daily and you can begin to see why ‘the technology claim’ is untrue!

Realistic SEO Considerations

1. Is it worth the time, effort & money to chase target keyword visibility?
2. Given the competition, what target keywords are realistic?
3. Being that Google personalizes search results to an IP, how does that factor in?
4. If visible for target keywords, will it bring qualified traffic?
5. Once traffic arrives, is the site’s content good enough to engage them?
6. Is there a plan for lead conversion?
7. Seeing how Google has focused its ranking algorithm on content, social media activity surrounding that content AND ‘on website user experience’ will a focus on publishing, distribution out through social networks & email for broader reach and traffic analysis be the successful strategy today?

What Should A Company Do?

Nowadays, people search and research online what they eventually buy. There’s no choice: a business has to be present for and relevant to its visitors! The shift from strictly outbound (ads’ meant to generate a reaction) to more realistic inbound marketing (support consumers that won’t react, that will only research its’ next purchase) is here! Search engines also measure user experience in order to rank a site’s content so by optimizing content for visitors a business will improve their competitive SEO! Search Engines & SEO are, in fact, ONLY a part of the bigger answer to visibility. One in several parts of a plan that will get products, services and BRAND more visible online.

How To Do It!

1. Generate good content: Plan to answer questions a target market will be researching! Have the discipline to do it often!
2. Use target keywords: Above all, SEO is keyword driven. What’s more, people are looking for information based upon those keywords. Keywords can support inbound traffic when people are in their social network accounts or when they receive trusted email. Note: do not keyword stuff, use keywords in a visitor friendly fashion because search engine algorithms reward user experience like the time they spend on a page or site. The use of synonyms versus unappealing useless repetition is good practice and something algorithms can see.
3. Social network: If trusting followers spend time in the social networks, then distribute any new content to those social networks!
4. Leverage valuable HashTags: Think of Hashtags as social network bookmarks for the automatic & continuous collection of content related to a particular topic, making it much more search- able and potentially visible.
5. Leverage email: If your content answers questions it is worth emailing to your list. Assuming the list is interested, they will appreciate the support and be that much more likely to buy!
6. Bring them to the website: All of the above should be about driving qualified inbound traffic back to where conversion to leads is most likely!
7. Measure & analyze: Everything should generate traffic back to a website where a business can convert sales; however, the vast majority will not convert the instant they arrive. A business has to review, measure and analyze traffic activity in order to see what content will keep them coming back. Studies show repeat visits are required to generate sales, so we must motivate repeat visits!
8. Design: Like it or not, people like design, navigation and ‘ease of use’. Design isn’t just nice to have, people are drawn to it and more likely to visit it again! And don’t discount mobile friendly design, it is becoming a necessity.

In summary, the answer to SEO, broader online visibility, inbound traffic and conversion is less the technology than it is the time and effort. Let us know if you have any questions, we can certainly help you execute by designing a program that both fits a budget and meets a companies particular need!

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Here are the most important tips to help leverage your Google+ account today:

1. Be a Google+ Verified Publisher: Have your website code- connected to your Google Plus profile using rel=”publisher” in order to give Google verification your entire site is official and not someone else using your company’s name. It’s also information used to determine content relevance in search and it may eventually add your company’s logo to general search results like home and about pages.

2. Be a Google+ Verified Author: Have your website blog code- connected to your Google Plus profile using rel=”author” in order to give Google verification you are personally affiliated & official as an author of content. It’s also information used to determine authored content relevance in search and it should add your personal image & name to granular topic search results.

3. Foster Google+ Followers: Find a place on your website to promote Google+ followers using an easily recognized G+ icon hyperlinked directly to your G+ page. Preferably a header or footer spot that’s visible with all pages.

4. Make Your Website Google+ ‘Share Friendly’: Set up your website so its content is easy for visitors to share out to their Google+ pages. There are relatively simple apps that will automatically add visible G+ social sharing buttons to all existing and new pages.

5. Let Google+ Be A Hub: Use the Google+ About page to link out to all your relevant profiles online. It certainly can’t hurt and shows you’re engaged and participating!

6. Have A Thorough G+ Page: Complete the Google+ profile with as much relevant information as is possible. It not only supports with visitors, but it influences how you’re going to show up in search results and how Google may suggest your page to potential followers.

7. Publish To G+: Post good content often to attract interest, keyword indexing and (hopefully) natural back links or shares. Don’t simply duplicate a post you published on a blog, but add it with useful commentary and then a link to the post. Differentiation can generate a 2nd indexing of your original content and also go a long way in any social account environment, Google+ included. And don’t necessarily limit activity to regurgitating blog content, share other useful content with your authoritative commentary as well!

8. Go Public On G+: When sharing a post on Google+, maybe your most recent blog post, be sure to make it public. Posts shared privately limit potential exposure by limiting potential public shares and keyword indexing. Go public and be visible to all and any interested parties!

9. Build Relationships: Google+ is a social network, so jump in and identify those you’d like to be connected too. Follow interesting people, comment on their posts and share their G+ posts to increase your overall visibility & influence.

10. Google+ Hashtags: Hashtags, serviced by all social networks including G+, are powerful tools for getting your story to where their is interest. It requires research on which hashtags your target audience follows and then use with new posts to G+ as a means to reach them. And heavily active hashtag feeds get indexed for their subject matter, so be there!

If you’re interested in content management services, including social account development | keyword & subject research | search optimized blogging | social account distribution mgmt. | hashtags research & execution| monthly traffic analysis for application to future work | possibly email management as well then we have a comprehensive set of Web Optimization Services that can be tailored to your needs.