Brandify - Social Media Made Easy

Brandify - A Best Social Media Tool

Published on August 11, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Microsoft has stepped up to deliver Brandify which is a free and handy social media management tool. Brandify allows a business to obtain a social media health check that shows key successes and key areas for improvement. Brandify is now in the beta stage but is already proving to be quite a useful tool in the social media marketer's toolbox.

The Brandify Story

BizSpark member Brandify launched a free brand reputation management tool earlier this year. The tool was designed to enable a business track, analyze and improve their online brand reputation. In observing the great value of this tool the people at Brandify then envisioned an opportunity to develop a similar tool to help the average business measure and develop their social media presence. Subsequently, Brandify was born and is now available to any business and requires only a quick sign-up at the Brandify sign-up page. Because Brandify was built specifically for small to mid-sized businesses (SMB's), and that it is free, makes it a no-brainer for every business.

Why Is Brandify Special?

Certainly there are a lot of social media management options, and the better ones are paid services. Many of the top social media management tools can be a bit intimidating to the avaerage business owner, and hiring a social media management company may be cost prohibitive. Brandify is the answer for the small business owner.

Brandify has a very user friendly user interface and dashboard. The service is in the beta stage and improvements are being made on a continuing basis. Even in beta form, Brandify brings real value and practical, useful information. A particular aspect that we find very appealing is that your initial benchmark analysis requires just a few minutes. The benchmarking analysis shows actual results and provides suggestions on areas for improvements. A simple interactive search function allows you to easily add account profiles that may have been missed in the benchmarking review. As you improve your social media footprint, a visual score and graphic display provide real-time updates to the strength of your social media presence.

Brandify For Agencies

Brandify, as a third party solution, can be a great tool for an internet marketing company or inbound marketing agency. Whether it's an in-person client meeting or a phone call to a prospective client, the agency has the ability to quickly show a business what needs to be done to help their business. Brandify can be used to start a dialouge that can result in the important improvements for a client organization, and allow the agency to increase revenue from social media services.

Why You Need Brandify

Make no mistake, social media signals are a key element of current search engine algorithms. What was once a seemingly pointless task (tweets, posts and comments) are now a necessity for an y business that wants better SEO results.

Our suggestion is to take 20 minutes to join Brandify and run a quick benchmark snapshot. Then take actions on your own to improve what you can handle, and hire an internet marketing company to handle other social media tasks. You can easily self-manage new tweets and comment posts but the agency can assure that the pieces are unified in a manner that delivers maximum results from everyone's social media work. Try Brandify, it's easy and very useful!

Google Business Photos Atlanta

Google Business Photos & A List Of Google Trusted Photographers

Google Business Photos is a new feature whereby small business owners can hire "Trusted Photographers" to take high quality photos of their business to spruce up their Google Places business profile and page. Although still photos can be used, the ultimate opportunity is for the small business owner to have the photographer create a virtual panoramic view of their business. This is especially valuable to a business where atmosphere and visual presentations make a difference. A good example is the Street View Gallery which let's Google users get a good idea of your business environment.

As with most Google roll-outs, the Google Business Photos feature with the work of Trusted Photographers was available in only a limted number of markets. Now this opportunity has been greatly expanded. Our Atlanta internet marketing company has teamed up with a local Trusted Photographer to offer our local clients the best level of service for Google Business Photos.

Business owners can certainly hire any photographer to provide images for Google Business Photos however the relationship between Google and the Trusted Photographer offers some advantages in terms of the photographer having proper equipment, and knowing the exact output specifications for the deliverables to meet Google standards. It is worth mentioning thta hiring a Trusted Photographer has some strings attached. Notably that Google reserves the rights to your pictures and you give Google implied consent to use your photos in other ways.

How Google Business Photos Works

As a business owner you can hire your own photographer or hire a Trusted Photographer. In either case, you make all arrangements with the chosen photographer and move on to complete the photo shoot. The still photos, or composite panoramic view, can then be prepared and uploaded to update your Google My Business page and/or Google+ business page. In less than a week, your new photos can be online and working to promote your business.

Again, because of some of the special requirements, we do recommend hiring a Trusted Photographer for optimal assurance that the work will be properly done.

List of Google Trusted Photographers

To help you get started in the right direction, you may be interested in viewing this List of Google Trusted Photographers. Make a few calls and learn more about their services and rates for Google Business Photos.

Recovery After Google Penguin Update

Post Penguin Recovery Process – part I

Published on May 22, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

In the wake of the Google Penguin update, there are literally hundreds of thousands of site owners who are desperately seeking information on how to recover after Penguin. Although there is no quick fix or silver bullet solution, there are things that can be done to amend the offending issues. This article will provide a Phase I approach to solving website ranking problems.

Google Penguin made a loud statement about unnatural backlinks, and related backlink patterns that seem spammy or dubious. Working to manage backlink issues is the first step to solving your problems. Most likely it is NOT going to be quick or easy, however it is an essential process – unless you want to start completely over with a new domain name.

Penguin Recovery Step 1

Check backlinks to identify potential problems. You can use free backlink checker tools to generate a list of backlinks to your domain. Most of the free backlink checker tools do not provide a truly complete list of backlinks however they are extremely useful. You want to look for patterns such as an excessive number of links from a single site or domain, links from site that appear to be totally unrelated as they may be part of a link farm, and links from article submission sites.

DISCLAIMER: Below, we are showing EzineArticles merely as an example of a WHOIS lookup for an article submission site. We are not implying or stating that use of their site has or can cause search egine related problems. Google has not specifically identified this site as a source of ranking issues.

Penguin Recovery Step 2

Remove backlinks that are spammy or questionable. The removal of backlinks is the most challenging part of the process. This is true because it takes a lot of time to manually access and remove each link, and many of the links are on site where you do not have the direct ability to remove links to your site. When you do not have control access to a site where a backlink exists you can use a WHOIS Lookup Tool to identify the owner of the website (URL). Some WhoIs lookups will return incomplete information, and other queries will not yield information if the domain owner is using any type of privacy protection. For those domains where the can find the site owners physical address or email address you can send correspondence to request that they remove links to your site.

Link Removal Request Text

To request removal of a link you should make a sincere and polite request to remove links. We advise against using any threatening or emotionally charged language. A sample message is as follows:

Dear Site Owner,

A WhoIs lookup indicated that you are the owner of the domain name XYZ.com (insert domain of site showing link to your site). We request that you remove all links from this site, or any others that you control, which may point to YourDomain.com.

Sincerely

Your Name Here

Your expectations for site owners to remove links should be rather low however any actions are better than no actions. Remember that these site owners have no motivation, beyond being respectful, to help your cause. If a paid service has placed these links on your behalf it is difficult to imagine that they will devote free time to undo their work.

If your website has experienced significant rank losses after Penguin you cannot afford to be passive, and think that all will be resolved on its own. You should be proactive and take this time to clean up the loose ends in your internet marketing.

Google Places and Gogle+ Now Merged

Google To Merge Google Places with Google+

Published on June 5, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Google has made another bold move in online content structure by deciding to merge Google Places into Google+.  Industry analysts belive that the strategy behind this change is to position Google to increase market share in the rapidly growing, and highly profitable, world of mobile advertising.  Many of these people also see this as a way to "encourage" more people to join Google+.

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Here is a video that shows you aspects of the changes:

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About the New Look

When Google+ users login to their Google+ home page, they will find a sidebar link for Google Places.  Google+ is becoming a very personalized asset for accessing the online information that you need, all from one central point - your own Google+ page.

Google Places will now include Zagat's reviews instead of the previous 5-Stars rating system.  Google owns Zagat's and has now found an excellent manner to leverage its authority reputation.

The new online presentation is a much richer user experience, and provides a very ample amount of relevant information about a particular business.  It does appear to be a format that is going to be more advantageous for a business which can afford to create high quality content (including videos) versus the small business which may not have the budget to market in a robust manner.

Google+ Advantages and Opportunities

As with any change, there are opportunities which can become advantages for those who are first-movers.  The die has been cast, so this new format IS a reality.  Accordingly, the smart business owner or manager will contact an internet marketing company to get Google Places consulting and/or Google Places and Google+ help to leverage every part of this new situation.

Google+ and a Positive ROI?

For Google there certainly will be a very positive ROI, and there certainly should be for savvy business owners who have customers that arrive via mobile search . . . but then again, isn't this what local search advertising is all about?  The likeability factor of merging local search with social media may not initially be enthusiastic however people will adapt.  What may start out as no-big-deal could prove to be a huge traffic driver for many businesses. Certainly the industry stats on mobile use, advertising investments and click through rates indicate a steady year-after-year growth that has not shown any signs of leveling off.

The bottom line is that themerging of Google Places with Google+ is something that will impact your business.  Whether it impacts your business in a positive or negative manner has a lot to do with how quickly you react, and the actions you take to make the most of this opportunity.

What Are Google Penguin and Panda

Google Penguin and Panda-monium - What's It All About?

Published on May 22, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Earlier this year, Panda hit and we saw changes that we personally thought cleaned up a lot of search results pages.

In March, Matt Cutts announced more changes were to come, with the intent of the changes to penalize over-optimized websites. This action hit both sides of the fence - sites that were over-optimized and hit the online companies that were providing these services. In fact, a major provider (BuildMyRank.com) closed their entire operation.

Next, in April of this year, Google made over 50 algorithm updates including launching the Penguin update, and several subsequent Penguin updates (refinements). And substantial, noticeable changes to search results did occur!

What Is Over Optimization?

At face value you could think that it concerns sites that have had strong SEO success (from black- or white-hat tactics) where Google had been unable to auto-budge through "existing algorithm factors", but it's far more precise and involved than it appears at a first glance. Specifically, the Panda and Penguin updates are combo-punches to neutralize two nasty areas of black-hat SEO. First, Panda went after sites, and site networks, where meaningful content are absent or woefully lacking, and one-way outbound links are bountiful. The intent of these sites is obviously to manipulate search results. Second, Penguin came in to clean up obviously sloppy, spammy black-hat SEO such as knocking down sites that have had an exceptionally rapid growth curve for inbound links, and/or unnatural consistency in anchor text for these links, keyword stuffing, and ties to the targeted link farms. If this is the case, the next question is "what is the percentage, rate or point that things are okay?". Don't worry about managing numbers so much as simply doing things that you know are proper.

How To Handle Penguin

Our opinion on how to handle Penguinis quite simple. First, if your clients' websites have been affected negatively you need to review and substantially alter your SEO practices. While current information claim that the Penguin update impacted over 3% of all search results, that Google issued over 700,000 messages through Webmaster Tools, and that some link-building operations have closed, we've seen no changes that warrant concern by anyone who has played by the rules. It appears that Google has simply caught up with the more complex black-hat tactics, and applied a remedy. Unfortunately this does mean that some innocent business owners are going to suffer from the work of black-hat SEO hacks.

Use Penguin To Harm Competitors?

Another question, to which Matt Cutts briefly commented, is whether or not a person or entity could intentionally apply "over optimization" to competitor websites to inflict negative consequences for their competitors. At this time our opinion is that sure anything can happen, but this is probably not worth a lot of concern.

What if my site was penalized by Penguin?

Take a minute to sigh because you have a big problem. It's not as simple as making a reconsideration request to Google. The basic solution, albeit somewhat impractical in many cases, is to amend anything that you know you should not have done in the first place. If you have an abundance of spammy links, you probably can't do much, if anything, about it. It's laughable to think that your shady link builder is going to take the time to undo their sketchy work - or that Google will care at this point. A good way to get back on track is to fully understand Google's Webmaster Tools and Quality Guidelines - and use them! In other words, learn to live within the law . . . and work to improve your website in a proper manner.

If your rankings have been decimated, such as your top rankings have fallen five or more pages, then you may have to ditch your "over-optimized domain name" and start over with a new domain name . . . and next time be careful about who you hire to work on your website. If your site (domain name) was dinged for "over optimization" then it's a bit silly to think that you can "SEO it" back to health.

Looking To The Future

If your website(s) have been hit by Panda or Penguin, you should take this as a wake-up call, and learn better ways to manage your online presence. Anyone doing SEO, novice or professional, could make a decision that now or later proves to be less than stellar . . . and Google may look past a simple matter. However, if you continue to deliberately, knowingly and willfully engage in black-hat practices your situation is going to end badly. If you're totally confused, you should contact a SEO company for professional advice and SEO services. From what we have seen, Panda and Penguin have generally been good for website users and ethical SEO practitioners.

AT&T Sells Off Majority of Yellow Pages Print and Online Business

By James Hobson
AT&T Inc. has announced an agreement made with Cerberus Capital, in which the telecommunications behemoth will unload a majority stake in its floundering yellow pages business unit. The sale is reported to be for $750,000,000 in cash and $200,000,000 in notes which represents a 53% share of their yellow pages business.

There was no mention of how this transaction may impact internet marketing advertisers. Personally, I believe that this abandonment of their previous cash-cow, and the glaringly rapid decline in usage (advertiser value) underscores the need for the remaining yellow page advertisers to seek alternative internet marketing services such as seo, local search marketing and ppc management.

The transaction is anticipated to directly affect less than 10,000 people. AT&T's statement did not clarify if "affect" meant job terminations, transfers or reassignments. The people to be affected are a mix of union and non-union personnel.

Industry rumors are that AT&T is working to strengthen its footprint in the wireless communications business sector, and decided to transition away from the dying yellow pages business. A recent article stated that the AT&T yellow pages business has shrunk by 30 percent in the past two years. AT&T, as with other yellow pages publishers, learned that the business community as a whole was eager to break free of the expensive print directories and embrace the many choices they had for internet advertising and internet marketing services.

Yellow pages generated approximately 3% of AT&T's 2011 revenue ($3.3 billion)so it's a certainty that stockholders will want to keep a close eye on how well AT&T does in replacing this revenue.

While some industry analysts see the sales price as very low, it is easy to read into this sale that Cerberus Capital expects the yellow pages revenue to continue to decline and priced their valuation accordingly. The assets being sold include 1,200 Yellow Pages print directories in over 20 states, and their coveted directory website Yellowpages.com.

The agreement still must pass a review by the U.S. Justice Department and could close as early as mid 2012. There are no rumors of any forseeable complications to the agreement's approval.

BuildMyRank.com Smashed By Google De-Indexing

Effects of Google Panda Update

By James Hobson
The ever-present slugfest between Google and service providers that offer "white-hat SEO link building" to improve organic rankings recorded a solid hit on one of the "better" link builders, BuildMyRank.com.

On March 19, Google deindexed a large majority, almost all of, a blog wheel network which served as the backbone of the link building services offered by BuildMyRank.com. The effect was so pronounced that BuildMyRank.com has opted to cease operations, and amend customer billings. Obviously the net effect includes ranking hits on a multitude of websites that had subscribed to their link building services.

You have to wonder how many customers of BuildMyRank.com will now see their rankings fall, lead generation decline, and ultimately lose sales and layoff workers. You also have to wonder how many hard working people in overseas shops are now looking for work because BuildMyRank is no more. Regardless, the punch has been delivered and the ranking shuffle is underway.

There are rumors that other link building networks may have been tagged. If your website has been affected by this event you will definitely see significant across the board ranking drops, and may (if you use it) find a message in your Google Webmaster Tools dashboard that mentions "unnatural links detected".

There is no doubt that countless companies have outsourced their SEO work, and given very little thought to the process being used, and simply enjoyed the ranking ride. I personally think that Google understands this and will not have any particular dislike for businesses at large. If you're curious as to why all of this matters so much to Google, you may be interested in reading an informative post at Hospitalera's Blog.

If your site has been affected, our recommendation is to brush it off and march forward. It would be a good idea to ask more questions to the next SEO company you hire so you don't waste your internet marketing budget or get ambushed down the road.

We are very curious to see which of these types of services will be hit next, and how it all will play out. If you, or your SEO service provider, is on top of their game this will create some superb opportunities to move up. It is quite obvious that any SEO strategy needs to focus on user value, be based on a wide array of SEO tactics, and be flexible enough to react quickly to market changes. Let's call this, the "Google Spring".