8 SEO Cleanse & Recharge Ideas For Fall 2013

Whether you mark it by Labor Day or the Autumnal (Fall) Equinox, summer is coming to an end — which makes this a great time to give your website an SEO cleanse and recharge the old batteries. Here are 8 things you can do to strengthen quality.

1. Fix Errors Listed In Webmaster Tools
Both Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools provide diagnostic reports listing errors on your website. Both search engines alert you to technical issues that they monitor which might diminish visibility.




Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools provides a list of server and page indexing errors.
Visit: Google Webmaster Tools > Crawl > Crawl Errors


Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools provides a list of crawl errors plus other useful information.
Visit: Bing Webmaster Tools > Reports & Data > Crawl Reports


Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools provides a list of HTML suggestions.
Visit: Bing Webmaster Tools > Reports & Data > SEO Reports


Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools provides a list of HTML improvements to make.
Visit: Google Webmaster Toos > Search Appearance > HTML Improvements
Just an FYI: Bing takes this seriously. In my conversations with Bing engineers, they emphasize the importance of technical quality. Google tends to telegraph that as long as it can crawl your content, their algorithms will sort out what’s important and what should count. (As an example, Matt Cutts recently said not to worry about duplicate content unless it’s spammy.)

My advice is this: Don’t assume a bot is smarter than you. Do everything in your power to clean up all crawl and HTML errors, and be sure to fix content issues like duplicate pages either by removing pages or adding canonical tags.

2. Update Your CMS, Plugins/Modules & Templates
Is your content management system up to date? Are you using current search engine tags and structured data?

Begin by updating your content management system (CMS) and plugins. Review each update to determine if it adds SEO functionality and figure out whether or not you need to provide additional information. For example, if an update adds Google Author Tags, you will likely have to provide links to each writer’s Google+ profile.

Updating the CMS and plugins or modules is not solely beneficial for SEO. As people discover security vulnerabilities, the CMS publishers patch these and include them in their updates. Not updating your CMS may leave your website open to hacking.

If a plugin has not been updated in six months, visit its CMS listing or webpage to see if it is still under development. Plugin authors tend to be less fastidious than CMS publishers, so it’s important to keep tabs on them. If a plugin discontinues or appears abandoned, it may be time to find an alternative. Yes, this can be a pain. Then again, if no one updates your plugin, who is watching for and fixing security vulnerabilities?

Update Your Content Management System
Update your content management system and plugins.
Getting back to SEO: Look for plugins or modules that manage SEO data and inject optimization into your CMS generated content. For WordPress users, an excellent example is the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin. What gets managed by the CMS and what requires a plugin or module varies from CMS to CMS, but SEO managed from plugins typically includes:

301 redirects
Canonical URLs
Caching and minifying
Formatting title tags (ex. adding the company name to the end of all titles)
Authorship markup
Social media links and voting buttons
Facebook Open Graph tags
Twitter Cards
Short codes to inject standardized content such as schema.org formatted addresses
Running a search for your CMS name plus “SEO plugins list” or “SEO modules list” should help you find what is available for your content management system. Hint: Limit your search to documents within the last year or you my get overwhelmed with outdated results.

If your site uses CMS templates, make sure they utilize the newest SEO features your CMS offers. While your CMS may include some of the newer tags automatically (provided they have the data to insert), other SEO tags or markup might require adding a CMS hook into one or more templates.

A hook is a snippet of code that the CMS recognizes and replaces with data. For example, [date:yyyy-mm-dd] might become 2013-09-01. Similarly, [authorship] might become <a href=”https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202? rel=author”>Google</a>.

Alternatively, you may need to add some markup into your template, such as the new Schema.org markup for organization logos:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
<a itemprop="url" href="http://www.example.com/">Home</a>
<img itemprop="logo" src="http://www.example.com/logo.png" />
</div>
Because it is impossible to list all the updates for every CMS:

Review the update documentation for your CMS to determine what SEO enhancements and updates were made and what you need to do to implement them.
Review your SEO plugins’ or modules’ updates and documentation.
Search for SEO plugins or modules specific to your CMS that you should be using. Run a query for your CMS name plus “SEO plugins list” or “SEO modules list” and limit your search to the last year.
Keep in mind that some markup must be done at the page- or content-level. Include Schema.org markup on your contact page and provide reusable HTML/machine readable markup templates to writers of applicable content (like job listings).

3. Social Media Links
Do your pages link to your important social media profiles? Are the links prominent? Are they embedded in your website and (if you have them) applications or tools?

Without implying a direct path, high rankings are partially attributed to social media.

SEO Ranking Factors
SEO ranking factors as observed by 128 experts. Via Moz.
An active social media audience is more likely to like, share and tweet your content, which in turn can lead to traditional offsite SEO signals like links. An active social media presence can also get noticed by the media and reporters. As a result, your business becomes more likely to get coverage (along with high authority links) when you have actual news, such as a product launch or major release.

My suggestion is to add important social media links where appropriate, including:

Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Pinterest
YouTube
Link prominently where website visitors will see, at the top of your pages or sidebar. Use familiar icons to keep the necessary page space concise. There are lots of beautiful, free icon sets available on the web.

Social Media Icons
Social Media Icons by Zee Que as found in Google Images.

I am in favor of prominent visibility, rather than placing the links at the bottom of the page. My belief is that people looking for content on your site will stay on your site. The people who click on those links, and thereby leave your site, will already be fans or have interest in your brand. They’ll be back.

4. Page Speed
Run a page speed audit. A search for Page Speed Test Tools will reveal lots of ways to do this. (I especially like Google’s tool.) The Yahoo! Developer Network has an excellent list of best practices for speeding up your website.

One of the frequent culprits I run across is bloated image size. Going through your website, page by page, checking and then optimizing each image one by one is admittedly daunting. Kraken.io can do most of the work for you. They have terrific Chrome and Firefox extensions. Or, run a crawl of your site with Screaming Frog, export the image URLs, then paste them into Kraken.io. Download the results as a zip file then upload them into your website, replacing the old files. (I suggest doing this in small batches — and always preview the results before you replace published images.)

Yahoo! Developer Network has a similar tool called Smush.it; however, it has severe rate limit and seems to be down much of the time. WordPress users can try the Smush.it plugin.

Also for WordPress users, Michael Gray just wrote a nice piece on speeding up your website.

5. Update & Accelerate Your Content Plan
There is a reason Content Marketing is all the rage. Google and Bing want to present searchers with high quality content that satisfies their queries.

Many of the business pages you want to rank are not particularly link worthy. Publishing a regular stream of link worthy content will grow your brand awareness, site traffic and links. Those links will increase your site’s domain authority and make it easier for less link worthy pages to rank.

Google says:

Give visitors the information they’re looking for.
Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site.

When it comes to creating compelling content, the best piece of advice I can offer to most businesses is to write less about your products and services and write more about the things your customers want to accomplish. Focus on the upper levels of the marketing funnel: awareness and trust. This is where the opportunity to build search engine authority is greatest.

Review Google’s list of what makes good content.

If you want to learn more about content marketing I suggest:

The Advanced Guide to Content Mareting by Neil Patel and Kathryn Aragon
Content Marketing – How to Build an Audience that Builds Your Business by Copy Blogger (free sign-up then check out the eBooks)
6. Organize Link & Social Partners
According to Moz’s study (see chart above), link building efforts are still perceived to be one of the strongest factors influencing search engine rankings.

One of the best ways to get links on blogs and social media is to form a link posse. A link posse is a group of content creators that seek genuine opportunities to use and link to each others’ content.

How do you organize a link posse? The easiest way is to begin with natural relationships. Do you belong to a local membership chapter like the Association of Fundraising Professionals, International Association of Business Communicators, or Public Relations Society of America? If your startup is funded, what companies share the same investment sources? What local companies or professionals are on Biznik? Who are your business customers or suppliers that blog? With a little brainstorming, I bet you can come up with a great list of candidates.

The rules are straightforward. Follow each other on social media sites. Create and monitor a Twitter list. When posse members post about new content, such as blog articles and resources, like, +1, share and retweet. It’s okay to be liberal on social media as long as it does not appear spammy to your own audience. If you are about to promote content that you would want an influencer to share, email the posse and ask them to tweet, like, +1 and share.

When it comes to cross linking, do not engage in blatant reciprocal linking. Do not link to each other’s home page and don’t link to every blog post created by every member of your posse. A smart link posse keeps track of each others’ content then references and links to other members’ articles or pages when it makes sense to do so, naturally, within context.

Finally, use each other’s content to inspire new content on your own sites that can intelligently reference and link to other posse members’ content. This is not about manipulating search engine rankings. It is about thoughtful content building and collaboration.

7. Review SEO Tools
Make certain you’re getting the most of your SEO and analytics tools.
Review your reports and tracking. Update or recreate as appropriate.
Are you familiar with all the upgrades and changes on the SEO tools you use?
Have you checked out the other SEO tools on the market?
Each year, SEO and analytics tools die, change and join the market. This is a good time to review what is out there and update your arsenal. For example, Majestic, Moz and Raven all released major upgrades during the last two quarters. Google replaced its keyword tool with Keyword Planner. (Check out Search Engine Land’s 2013 Guide to Enterprise SEO Tools for some ideas.)

Tools change. So should you. Do not fall into the trap of keeping the exact same reports for the sake of consistency. What is more important: comparing against the past, or planning for the future? Update reports in ways that make them more useful. Chances are that any commercially available tool has changed the way it collects and measures data many times over its lifetime, so those historical charts and graphs are inaccurate anyway. Be like the Internet — dynamic.

Double check the obvious. Are your goals and tracking set-up properly? Are they current? Did you exclude your company IP address?

8. Domain Registration
One last thing: check your domain registration and max it out. Every year some big brand surprises itself, and gets reported on throughout Internet marketing blogs, because it let its domain expire. Don’t be that company.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Source from the link:  http://searchengineland.com/8-fall-2013-seo-cleanse-recharge-ideas-171376

The Ultimate Pinterest SEO Guide

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You’ve optimized every part of your website – but have you checked your Pinterest SEO potential? Learn how to use Pinterest to increase your search ranking and drive traffic to your site.

It’s no secret that SEO is an extremely important part of any marketing mix.  The right keywords, linking to the right content, shared to the right sites, help your domain rank higher in search. However, there’s probably a valuable tool for traffic that you haven’t thought of – Pinterest SEO. By applying a few tweaks to your Pinterest profile, pins and website, you can easily take advantage of Pinterest’s viral nature and recieve the SEO bump you’ve been looking for.

Your Profile

• The key to Pinterest SEO value starts above your entire profile – in the URL. Choosing the right username is much like choosing the right website domain; it should be straightforward, but it’s not.  Not only do you have to beware of other users who have potentially stolen your company name, you also must beware of the 15 charater limit imposed on usernames.  If your company name is already taken – or if your name is too long – HubSpot suggests choosing a memorable, easy-to-spell keyword related to your business.  For example, Martha Stewart Weddings in the Middle Eastused “MSWeddingsME” for their username so they could include the valuable keyword, “weddings,” in the name while differentiating themselves from the other Martha Stewart accounts.
• Although you have more freedom with your profile name, it’s still important to keep it simple.  Don’t try and be cute; just stick with your company name! Using the CEO’s name, marketing manager name or any other person’s name makes it nearly impossible for users to find you via search.
• You have 200 characters in the about me section, so use them wisely.  Check out your Google Analytics to see what drives people to your site to decide what keywords and phrases should be used. Just make sure to keep it easy to read and not overly “keyword-y.”.
• Do you now the name of the file used for your profile picture? If it reads something like “logo3.png,”, then it’s time to update! Even though it’s not visible to the typical consumer, the file name of your profile image affects alt text and image search results.  Rename the file to your company name, company slogan or anything else descriptive of your company.
• Are you a local business? No problem. Pinterest is still a great SEO opportunity for you. Use the location place on your profile to show where you are, (avoiding less-known abbreviations for your town is a good idea here). Using some of those 200 characters in the “About me” section for local keywords wouldn’t hurt, either.  For instance, since PinLeague is based in Oklahoma City, we could include “Okie” “Thunder” “OKC”, etc. in our description to find local traffic.

Your Boards and Pins

• Pinterest provides you with some basic board names when you sign up, like “My Style” or “Places & Spaces”, but who’s going to search for that?  Using keywords relevant to your company, create boards with unique, relevant titles under 20 characters. Each board has its own 500 character description available where you can write a keyword-rich narrative about the board topic. Having boards related to topics of interest to your audience helps both current and future fans find you in search.
• Pinterest categories can be your best friend when it comes to promoting your boards.  During the board creation process, there is an option to select which Pinterest category the board belongs in. Once a category is selected, pins pinned to your board have the opportunity to show up on those category pages, allowing them to be seen and shared by any Pinterest user.
• Your pins are yet another opportunity to squeeze in some relevant keywords. When pinning from your own site, it’s good to include the full link (shortened links may be considered spam), as well as relevant keywords in the description. Also, don’t think you can slack when repinning content! By throwing in a few keywords relevant to your company, you can potentially attract your target user through search.

Your Website

• First off – VERIFY YOUR WEBSITE! It’s a super easy, super powerful way to help boost your profile in search results.  Verification also tells users that it is you, not an impostor.  Learn how to easily verify your website from the Pinterest blog.
• Another easy, but powerful, tool to utilize in growing your traffic from Pinterest is to include Pin It buttons on all your images.  These buttons provide automatic links back to your site as soon as they’re used. The easier you make it on the user, the more links you will receive.
• Just like with your profile picture, you need to pay attention to your image file names on your website. Make sure they’re relevant and keyword-rich, so when a user pins from your site you receive all the benefits from the shared link.
• Perhaps the most important thing you can do to optimize your website is understanding what resonates with your Pinterest audience.  Through tools like PinLeague’s Pinterest Analytics Suite, you can see which pins are trending, what phrases are most often used in descriptions and how many pins have occurred from your site, among many other valuable site features. By paying attention to what your fans love, you can build related content to drive traffic back to your website.

Your Interactions

• Connecting your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your Pinterest account is a great way to cross-promote your brand following. By simply posting on Twitter or Facebook about your Pinterest presence, users who are already fans of your brand know to follow you on Pinterest as well. Having a strong social presence connected to your website signifies to Google that you’re a trusted source of information, giving you a nice SEO bump.
• To send traffic to your site, you must interact with your audience! Repin, comment and like others pins. Building relationships over Pinterest will, in turn, create an engaged following willing to share your content to others. After all, at the end of the day, your fans are the best tool in your marketing toolkit.

What social media SEO tips have worked for you? 

This post was originally featured on the PinLeague Blog as a The Ultimate Pinterest SEO Guide.

Source Article URL:

http://pinleague.com/pinterest-seo/

How to Search Engine Optimize Your Pinterest Page

I’ve noticed that Pinterest isn’t just dominating the social media scene, but it’s starting to dominate quite a few of Google’s search engine results.

Many brands and online marketers are missing the opportunity to rank high forlong-tail keywords through the use of Pinterest.

What are long tail keywords? I’m going borrow the definition of a long tail keyword from an article from Search Engine Watch:

Essentially, long-tail keywords are less popular keywords because they have less search volume and less competition to rank for. Consider the following two examples: “home remedies for bed bugs” or “how to get rid of depression.” These are each considered long-tail keywords as compared to trying to rank for the much more competitive search terms “bed bugs” or “depression”.

Why would you want to use Pinterest to rank higher for keywords?

Some long tail keywords may have low competition but your website may be new and find it hard to compete for them still. The good news is that you can piggy back off of Pinterest since it is a strong domain authority site.

A strong domain authority allows for pages to show up higher on search results for relevant searches. This gives your business more visibility and higher chances of people clicking on your Pinterest. If you have some great visual content on that particular board, then it will help drive web traffic to your business website or e-commerce site.

How do you exactly use Pinterest to rank higher for the keywords you want? Here are three tactics for marketers that want to get their Pinterest page, and boards, to rank higher in search engine results.

1) Name Your Boards with Long Tail Keywords

If there’s a long tail keyword that you would like to rank well for in Google, consider naming your board with that particular keyword without sacrificing the brand.

For example the keyword, funny advertisements, has an estimated global search on Google of about 2,900 times a month for that exact term. When I type in that keyword on Google, there is only one Pinterest board specifically titled as “Funny Advertisements” that shows up on the first page of results. At the time of this writing, it was the only Pinterest board that uses that exact keyword, which is why it ranked so high. There was no competition from other pinners.

The exact url of that board looks like this:

pinterest.com/appltncre8ve/funny-advertisements

With the board containing the keyword and also having low competition, that specific Pinterest board is on the first page of Google. When I searched for it, it was ranked number 6 in the first page of results. And yes that’s my article on 17 Funny Advertisements that’s ranked number 4.

Pinterest allows you to create up to 350 boards, though I don’t recommend you maxing the number of boards for the sake of SEO. I would suggest no more than 20 to start off since it can be time consuming to manage all. This allows you to compete in Google for 20 + additional keywords that may be harder for your own website to compete with.

2) Ensure Your Board Descriptions are Keyword Rich

One of the biggest pet peeves I have about brands that use Pinterest is their sheer laziness to fill in the description of their Pinterest boards.

This is one of the Pinterset boards from Starbucks titled, “Real Food.” From an SEO perspective, titling the board Real Food isn’t the best since most people are not searching up the term for real food. However, the name of the board needs to be aligned with a company’s brand, and it’s understandable they titled it Real Food.

What’s an absolutely travesty is that the description of the board is left blank. This can easily be corrected when you click on the edit button on the board, and to fill out the description with keywords. To help with their search engine optimization, Starbucks could have stated in the description:

“Delicious Starbucks pastries, sandwiches, and food that we love. Our board also contains some of our favourite foods and pastries that we would love to try and eat.”

This would have helped their Pinterest board be found for keywords such as Starbucks pastries, Starbucks sandwiches, and Starbucks foods on Google and other search engines.

Starbucks isn’t the only one that’s guilty of this, many social media blogs tout how great Whole Foods is using their Pinterest page, which they are when it comes to posting visual content, but when I clicked on four random boards of theirs, not one single one of them had their descriptions filled in.

Always fill in the descriptions of your Pinterest boards with keywords that your business wants to rank for.

3)Put Keywords Into Pin Descriptions

This technique most likely isn’t going to get you anywhere close to the first page of Google results for keywords, though it is possible depending on the search term, but it is still an excellent practice as it can help your Pinterest boards show up on the second and third page of Google search results for keywords.

Ensure that keywords that you want to rank for are in the pin’s description, as Google search engines do crawl the descriptions of pins, and takes it into consideration for search results. The website that shows up in the search engines for those pin descriptions will not lead directly to that specific pin’s address, instead it will be list the Pinterest Board’s url on which the pin is located.

A specific pin’s url will look like this:
http://pinterest.com/pin/246290673344396313/

And a board address looks like this:
http://pinterest.com/mcngmarketing/pinterest-tips/

Here’s an example of how this works. I typed into Google the following words, “Funny pins on Pinterest.”

Here are the first six results that showed up for my search:

The determining factor that the Pinterset board, 1000 repins, showed up on the first page of the results because of a single pin’s description. The actual board name doesn’t contain any of the search words, nor the actual description of the board itself, but because one of the pins had contained the words “Funny” in it, it was able to show up as result number 6 for the search words “Funny pins on Pinterest.”

In order to maximize your Pinterest page and boards on Google, ensure that your social media marketing team isn’t taking short cuts. Have the boards titled after long tail keywords that your organization wants to rank well for, as well as ensuring that descriptions are keyword rich.

Do you have any suggestions or tips on how to rank your Pinterest page higher in search engines?

GE

Business benefits of Facebook apps

With time facebook has become more of a marketing platform where brand managers create their brand’s identity and in turn derive great insights about the product/service with a correspondent increase in sales as well. Facebook is the epicentre of all social media marketing strategies; it has worked tremendously well and in favour of a large number of brands.

In such a scenario the most important task is done by the applications available on Facebook. These act as the most essential and functional tool for survival of a brand.

 1.      Building awareness

There are a large number of Facebook apps that are deployed to help a brand grow and stabilise itself in the market. Facebook apps are used by brand managers to initially help in establishing a brand and creating its awareness. The initial seeding phases are very important because they lay the initial framework on which all the marketing strategies depend.  Building awareness about a product is the first step before any activity can be done for its promotion. Applications like ‘My Yelp Reviews’, Tweets tab, Google+ tab all help in bringing traffic to a page and help in creating a valuable existence of a brand on the social networking platform.

 2.      Generates Traffic

Once the initial seeding and framework is done then comes the stage where in brand managers wish to generate as much traffic that is possible. For this very reason facebook applications are used, which prove to be beneficial to the brand as a whole. Applications like Photo Contests, Video Contests, Polls tab etc bring users to a particular page which increases the number of followers a page has. It is for the manager to ensure that the users who once come to the page are retained on the page.

3.      Reputation management

Once the brand is well known in the market and users have been converted into followers there is a need for the brand to manage its reputation in the market and in front of its competitors. By now a brand has already exposed itself to a long list of its customers and it is important that a stand of the brand is maintained in front of them as well. Facebook pages are the best means of communication between brand owners and its users.

4.      User Engagement

Applications like Multi-Videos tab, Instagram tab, Essay Contest tab, Welcome tab, Top fans tab all help a great deal in engaging users with the facebook page of a brand. These applications are such that they can keep users bound to them for long and in turn provide better results to brand managers. Users generally like applications that provide them with some returns. In such cases if a brand manager declares the name of the top fan of the page with his picture and updates it as the page’s facebook status the user is happy and continues to interact in the future. Others seeing the post are also intrigued and thereby interact.

 5.      Affects sales and profits

In the 21st century people are more technologically advanced. Online portal sites are doing very well today, if a brand owns a portal site then that acts as an added advantage for the brand.  Using the e-commerce tab a brand can promote his online portal as well which will affect the sales positively and eventually increase the ratio of profits largely.

How to make a post go viral?

Social Media is bombarded with brand pages; every brand small or big is creating its identity on influential social networking websites. These pages bring laurels to the brands in the form of traffic and a substantial increase in the number of followers. Marketing activities are taking a sharp turn and are being concentrated on the social media only. As such all brands are targeting platforms like Facebook, Twitter Google plus etc to form their niche to promote products effectively.

The weapons used in marketing range from normal posts to efficient marketing campaigns. The most commonly used feature that is used is frequent and regular updates on the brand pages. Now the biggest challenge faced by brand managers is to promote that post and make it viral such that it reaches out to a large number of people. To help brand managers, following are tips to make a post go viral.

 1.   High Quality

There are brand pages on the web pertaining to nearly every possible field. As such there is so much information and updates about social media marketing that it is not possible for users to like each and every page and each and every post. If brand managers post relevant content that relates directly to the brand and the post is of good quality generally users like it. It is normally seen that the posts that have some valuable information to pass on and make sense are the ones that go viral. It is good to be different but it is also important to stick to posting high quality good content.

2.   Market it well

In the present times nothing sells until it is marketed and promoted well enough. Just posting good quality content does not solve the purpose the post also needs to be promoted well and marketed for people to see it and eventually come in terms with it. In the presence of so many brands and even more posts, a post will not go viral until a brand manager takes extra care of that.

 3.   Hover around recent events

Brand managers are often confused about what should be posted, what should be the contents of the post. It is advised that posts should be such that they are in relevance to the ongoing events in the world. This helps in making the post a trend and chances of its going viral increases manifold.

 4.   Smart and short content

Too long posts and those that have no relevance with the brand or are totally out of context are majorly disliked by users. The posts that are short yet are able to express and carry a message go viral on their own. Everybody on the social media likes to read influential posts that have the capability of leaving them to ponder upon certain thoughts. Thus short and smart posts are preferred in the social media domain.

5.   Link all pages

To make all pages and all posts go viral the brand pages on all platforms should be linked together. Once linked together the posts automatically carry a high viral strength and easily become the most viewed and liked posts on the web.

Benefits of marketing your brand on google plus

Marketing on the social media has become a common phenomenon in the recent times and every brand is utilizing the power of this domain to the fullest. Google and its derivatives are the most widely used social media websites across the world. To be recognized on these websites is something that no brand manager can ignore.

Google plus is one such community that is making social media marketing strategies easy and effective for users. In the recent times it has gained momentum and the number of people and brands using it has increased manifold. Google plus has a lot of advantages to provide to its users in terms of search engine support, good contacts and customers, impact social media presence and increased influence of brands on the audience.



The benefits of using Google plus are many, some of them are listed down below which will give you an insight to what Google plus can offer you.

1. Get found across Google

Google is by far the largest search engine known. It is prestigious for each brand to be able to rank on one of the Google pages.One of the biggest benefits offered is that creating an account on any of Google’s platform allows you to use the same account for other Google platforms as well. Being a Google derivative it adds a lot of value to the brand’s entity on the platform and increases the reach and frequency of the brand manifold. Google Plus is influential and helps your brand to be recognised better than any other platform.

2. Get face-to-face with customers

Users need credibility and accountability in a brand, when they are able to communicate with the brand representatives directly it adds on to the level of trust and belief in a brand. Google Plus takes you a step ahead in this respect. It allows brands to carry out video chats/conferences referred as “hangouts”. Such chats and conversations speak volumes about a brand’s loyalty towards the customers. Many brands are using this particular feature to help solve all issues and queries of users such that their trust and belief in the brand is maintained and the value of the brand is increased.
3. High Ranking on Google

As mentioned above ranking on Google is important and it makes brands viral when they reach the first few pages around a certain list of keywords. Mastering certain keywords and maintaining your rank on Google enables the brand to lure more traffic and bring in more better and useful results. Google gives preference to Google Plus pages which helps in ranking the pages better.

4. Link every platform

Google Plus is a tailor made platform for brands to market themselves.Every platform
can be linked to your account and thereafter be monitored from one place only. This
particular feature helps brands to keep all their content and data together and compiled. Every platform where the brand’s presence exists is updated from time to time. It increases the chances of a page going viral bringing in more traffic for the brand and influence the brands ranking on search engines making the work easier for SEO’s. All social media campaigns are highlighted at once on each and every platform that the brand is operating on.

5 Creative Mobile Marketing Tips for Startups

Getting your business started is no simple task. It takes a lot of preparation and hard work. Once you have it off the ground, the next step is to get your company noticed by consumers. Cellphones and the Internet have made it a necessity to have your startup easily accessible to people on the go. Here are a few tips to get your mobile marketing campaign started.

1. Know Your Target Market

No matter what direction you want to take in marketing, be it an app or an e-mail newsletter, you have to know who your audience is. A few simple ways to do this are having customers fill out a feedback form in-store or after online purchases. That way, you can get the exact demographics of your products and cater to their advertising senses.

2. Search Engine Optimization

According to a Google study, about 50% of smartphone users also use search engines at least once during the day. If you have your business tied to one of these search engines, you are allowing your company to be viewed by anyone searching for the goods or services you provide. This is a great way to get your name out there and at a minimum of cost.

3. QR Codes


Image via Flickr by swanksalot

A relatively recent phenomenon, QR codes are springing up at businesses everywhere. A QR code is a type of bar code that can be scanned using your smart phone that gives information regarding a certain product.

By adding this to your marketing materials either in-store or on packaging, you can give yourself another medium of advertising. Now, anyone that owns a smartphone, even with the new the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, can get a comprehensive report of your products.

4. Apps

Although some apps can be pricey, starting your mobile marketing with the simplest of apps is the best approach. By starting with an inexpensive or simple app, you can gauge the interest of potential clients as well as see if the app is of value to you and the customer.

Many online companies let you create apps with a drag-and-drop interface for the less tech-savvy. That way, you do not have be an IT guru to design your app, and you don’t have to outsource it, saving you money.

5. Don’t Rely Solely on Mobile Marketing

In an ideal setting, having a mobile marketing campaign as your only form of advertising would suffice. However, it should be used as a tool to give customers something else. If you incorporate offers that you don’t have in-store or on your website, having mobile marketing gives value to your customers. Remember that this marketing is just a portion of the marketing product.

If all else fails in your marketing approach, remember one easy saying, “Mobile first, Internet second”. The advantage of implementing such a strategy is quite simple. As more people begin to use a smart phone as their primary device, the more important it becomes to steer your marketing for mobile consumers.

Benefits of Pinterest Marketing

There is so much traffic over the internet that most of the brand entities are lost in the rush. They fail to establish an identity for themselves. In this very respect, many such platforms are gaining momentum to participate in the rat race and sway away users from the functioning and crowded websites.

Platforms like Tumblr, Pinterest undoubtedly carry a lot of potential, with time users are realising the benefits and features that these social networking platforms can offer and are being lured towards them to a varied extent. According to a survey conducted on the social media, facebook is losing the charm it once held that attracted people towards it. Many new platforms have crept in with the dream of taking its place and you never know, they might just be successful.

Pinterest is definitely a website which has many valuable features to provide its users with pictures and images given the prime most concern here. Reports derived from comScore (an American Internet analytics company) says that by January 2012 Pinterest had 11.7 million users that increased to 25 million by the end of 2012. As per Reuters and comScore, in July 2013 the website had 70 million users and the count is still exceeding exponentially. Following are the reasons that portray how Pinterest is all ready to kill the traffic of all other platforms.

1. Visual Content

What pleases the eyes appeals to the mind itself. Pinterest’s biggest merit is the concept with which it is created. It consists of boards similar to bulletin boards where users can pin/upload images and pictures. This is one of the most effective and innovative feature that is offered to the users. Especially in the case of brand management, managers wish to showcase their products in a way that maximum interest is directed towards the pictures. No doubt, other platforms also allow uploading images but the attention shifts towards quality posts and comments rather than these pictures.

A pinterest board looks like this, here you can pin up images that pertain to your brand and eventually showcase all your products from which users can choose and select.  Giving much emphasis to pictures and images, Pinterest is ruling the social media marketing domain when it comes to showcasing of products effectively.



2. User Friendly

 This platform consists of unique features that adds on to the reasons that make it successful and different. Apart from that, it is easy to incorporate the features in your account. Creating boards and pinning images is a very easy task on Pinterest and requires no technical skills.




3. Apt for marketing

Brand are using the social media as the most impactful weapon to market the products and generate traffic. Pinterest allows status updates, posts, comments just like any other platform; Facebook Twitter etc but huge emphasis is laid on creating a board on Pinterest and correspondingly pinning up images. It creates a sort of online portal for the brand as all products are properly displayed with the price and other details in  description tab. The reach of such marketing tools is any day larger than that of simple posts and comments .

4. Demographics

If we take a close look at the statistical data presented below, we can easily analyse that Pinterest is growing at a faster rate. Daily sign ups are increasing and the platform is being preferred by users as it is giving them better mentions on the web, marketing is done easily. The number of visitors is increasing and the time spent by each individual is also large.



5.  Customer oriented

The platform has kept in mind the minutest details. Its founders have made sure that brand managers face no difficulties in marketing their brands over here. Whether it is seeding in the initial phases, generating traffic or gaining profits, all is easily done on this platform. Pinterest is designed in a way that its customers face no problems and nor do the users find it unfriendly to use.



Pinterest marketing is growing at a steady rate, in the short span of time it has garnered a lot of traffic and has brought into light some new brands. Moving at this pace, Pinterest is sure to attain great heights and may pose a serious threat to its competitors in the times to come.