Google’s New Privacy Policy under One Roof

seocompany — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:20:36 +0000

Google has updated its privacy policy in a way that breaks down product silos, but allows the search giant to mine data across all of its services. In a blog post, Google outlined the changes. These changes are good in many respects. Companies everywhere want to break down product walls to get a 360 degree view of customers. The difference with Google is reach and it is actually succeeding. In short, Google is:

1) Making its privacy policies easier to read.

2) Aggregating data across products for Google and user experience.

3) Arguing that it’s easier to take your data and go somewhere else.

Coming 1st March, Google is collapsing its more than 60 different product-specific privacy policies and terms of service into one overhauled, streamlined document that more accurately reflects the search giant’s priorities. The shift in policy came up as Google worked to revamp a confusing maze of privacy policies for each service. The search giant did away with all those policies, replacing them with a single set of rules to govern all the data it collects. From Google’s point of view, this will serve to make the Web more relevant, its chief objective.

But still for many web users, this caused a bit of shock between work and personal uses. Here’s how this boils down:

The good: Anything that simplifies privacy policies makes sense—even if you may not agree with them. Google has more than 60 privacy documents today. That will be boiled down to one privacy policy.

The bad: Unified user experience aside, it was kind of nice to have my YouTube personas different from say, Gmail and Google+. Philosophically it makes sense. Emotionally I’m not so sure I’m on board the one for all approach.

The scary: Google will know more about you than your wife does. Everything across your screens will be integrated and tracked. Google noted that it collects information you provide, data from your usage, device information and location. Unique applications are also noted. Google is watching you as long as you are logged in. It’s also unclear whether this privacy policy move will be considered bundling in some way by regulators.

I’ll be curious to watch the discourse on Google’s new privacy policy and terms of service between now and the March 1st implementation. What about you? Leave your comment and feedback.

New Twitter Layout 2012

seocompany — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:44:09 +0000

Twitter, very recently added fresh look & features which rolled out to approx 7.5Billion Twitter addicts. Twitter has made few extra feature addition & modification to surviving service (mention) only as @connect & #discover. Twitter this time focusing on rising the users & making the surviving users experience a lot enhanced fresh twitter design 2011.

Twitter has as well updated its buttons graphics to suite well through the whole fresh twitter layout & design. New twitter layout is easy to view multimedia such as picture and video. The profile popup makes it easier to check others profile and to make decision whether to follow them or not.

Facebook Comments Box Plugin Goes Mobile

seocompany — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:54:34 +0000

Facebook has launched a mobile version of its comments box social plugin, which websites and blogs can use to let people comment using their Facebook profiles.

One of the cool things about the comments box plugin itself is that it threads the conversation through your blog as well as the user’s Facebook wall.

“The Comments Box for mobile is the latest update to the plugin to make commenting more social and authentic, improve the quality of conversations online, and drive traffic and engagement to media sites,” Facebook said in a blog post. “For example, in December we added a Subscribe link in the plugin next to the names of people who’ve turned on Subscribe to help them grow their Subscriber base. You can learn more about adding the Comments Box to your site, and best practices for implementation here.”

“We’re continuing to see media sites of all sizes add the Comments Box, including the York Daily Record (York, PA), The USA Today Science Fair blog, and Gannett sites such as The Statesman Journal (Salem, OR), Burlington Free Press (Burlington, VT), and Detroit Free Press,” the company said.

They’re making things pretty easy for those publications looking to implement it on their mobile sites. If you use the plugin on the desktop version of your site, it will automatically appear on the mobile version of your site as well. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

New Google Algorithm Changes

seocompany — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:46:06 +0000

We understand that people wants to know how search works. Google has been making a big deal about wanting to be more transparent about its search algorithm. With a control over revealing all the secrets of course, Google has been doing a great job with plenty of algorithm announcements. Recently, the company announced many of the subtler algorithmic and visible feature changes.

Here is the recent list of changes:

Related query results refinements
Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”

More comprehensive indexing
This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.

New “parked domain” classifier
This is a new algorithm for automatically detecting parked domains. Parked domains are placeholder sites that are seldom useful and often filled with ads. They typically don’t have valuable content for our users, so in most cases we prefer not to show them.

More autocomplete predictions
With autocomplete, we try to strike a balance between coming up with flexible predictions and remaining true to your intentions. This change makes our prediction algorithm a little more flexible for certain queries, without losing your original intention.

Fresher and more complete blog search results
We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both fresher and more comprehensive.
Original content
We added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.

Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League
This change displays the latest scores & schedules from these leagues along with quick access to game recaps and box scores

SEO for Your Facebook Page

seocompany — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 11:39:47 +0000

It might be something new to you that your Facebook page is getting indexed by search engines. It helps your customers find your page when they use Google or any other search engines which is very important for your business reputation.

But more than that, search engine optimization for your Facebook page is not something new for you to learn. If you have been doing SEO for your website, the same rules apply to your Facebook page. It is important to start with your keywords, or the search terms that you want to target. Then create content for these keywords.

The only difference is that there are some places within a Facebook page that are more SEO-friendly than others. Today’s post is based on what to do effectively to push your Facebook page up search engine rankings:

Use business name in Custom URL and Custom Tabs
Search engine spiders put a premium on your custom URL, page title and tab title, so be sure to use your business names in all these places. Your customers are going to try and find you using your business name, so promote it like crazy.

Use your Info and About us Tabs
It is within your Info and About Us tabs that you talk about your business and tell people where to find your website, your physical store and just about anything about you and your business. Make sure that you include keywords and search terms in your copy for these two tabs. Refrain from using images as these images are not going to be indexed by search engines!

Mind your Custom Tabs
The truth is that even your wall posts are getting indexed on search engines, but it is temporary. Yet, you should still write your wall posts with SEO in mind. Better yet, take time to create SEO friendly custom tabs. Use your keywords in your headings, bold them in the body of your copy, and include your keywords in titles.

Link Building
With the Panda update, a lot of “experts” are saying that link building is no longer important when it comes to getting higher rankings on search engine. That is simply not true. Even for your Facebook page, getting quality links from different sources is very important to help it ranks well on search engines. Search engine spiders use incoming links to your tabs and Facebook page to gauge just how important and authoritative your page is.

SEO for your Videos and Photos!
Video titles are very important because search engines give it a whole lot of importance. Insert your keywords to a relevant video; put your business name as the file name of your company logo, use filenames that reflect what is in the image or video that you are posting.

Multi-Admin for Google+ Pages ‘Coming Soon’

seocompany — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:39:25 +0000

Google+ will allow multiple admins to manage a brand page “before 2012,” Kristoffer Sorensen, a Google marketing strategist, said on in a live Q&A on Wednesday.

Currently, brand pages are tied to one admin account that has total control over the page and profile. This has been a point of frustration for social media managers who have multiple team members updating their company social profiles.

Until two weeks ago, when Google gave select third-party apps early access to the Google+ API, the only solution was for a team to share one login or for one person to maintain the Google+ page alone. These situations are less than ideal because they can cause security and workflow issues. When the social media management tools in the pilot program integrated Google+ posting, companies not using these tools were still at a loss. Even some social managers using one of the six select services with Google+ are struggling as they wait for the early Google+ API to iron out some kinks.

Sorensen and his team addressed other popular feature requests in the live Q&A. While scheduled posting and events integration seem to be up in the air, the Google reps said analytics, widely-available Hangouts on Air and mobile page management are in the works.

Effects of Fresh Content for Small Business SEO

seocompany — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 12:22:45 +0000

Most people Google to find products they are looking for, and Google’s pushes fresh content, only those businesses with new content make the cut to get on the first page. This becomes a real challenge for some really high quality but small businesses out there. Big companies know all about managing search engine optimization; they have the staff to deal with and get the company noticed. However, small business search engine optimization has become an even greater challenge with the latest updates to Google’s search algorithms.

In 2010, Google released an update dubbed “Caffeine” which sought to deliver faster and more accurate results from the increasingly complex and demanding search environment. While technically providing faster, more comprehensive, and more accurate results, the indexing system had little effect on small business search optimization.

The latest update, however, may prove to be a bit more of a challenge. The goal of this ranking update is to provide fresher content on time-sensitive topics. The search algorithm is supposed to be designed to differentiate between content that needs to be as fresh as possible, and content that is less time-sensitive. Google says this “fresh” content algorithm will affect approximately 35% of searches. Under the new update, a person searching “Olympics” will be given results for the Olympics that are right around the corner, not those from 50 years ago. Content may be only minutes old, and will be listed in order of occurrence.

While all businesses need to be aware of the effect of “fresh” results on small business search engine optimization, it would appear that businesses dealing with rapidly changing technology would be the most affected by the change. Big businesses have more financial leverage and staff to be able to get content out in the front pages of search results. Small businesses need to be aware of the trend and find efficient means of getting fresh content so that they can be front-page news as well.

Why Not to Buy Facebook Likes?

seocompany — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:40:59 +0000

There are many companies these days offering you to increase your Facebook page ‘like’ numbers in terms of money. I understand that its frustrating looking at your page and seeing that nobody likes it. But it is much more annoying to notice your updates without any comments or likes.

Business owners may have the tendency to brag about the number of likes they have received. Some of the pressure may come from seeing the competition getting more likes on their pages than others.

In today’s post I would like to share why not to buy Facebook likes. So, here are 4 reasons why you should not buy likes for your Facebook page:

Engage Your Customer
The ultimate goal any business owner should have when starting his or her Facebook page is to engage the customers. So it’s good to involve your customers on your Facebook page. This is how you keep them coming back to your page and into your store. This is how you increase your Facebook likes.

Engaged likers will recommend you to their friends. These friends will trust their recommendations because it is not you marketing or selling to them, but a friend personally telling them to try you out.

Stop Being Weird

Suppose you have more than 10,000 fans and nobody takes time to comment or even like what you posted? Is this the picture that you want people to see about your business?
When you do something artificial, chances are, you will get caught. While your customers might not be inquisitive enough to see which of your likers are real people or not, your competitors might be.

Waste of Money
Most services that sell Facebook likes guarantee, for instance, 5,000 likes within 30 days. But you may not be sure if those likers would be fake or real. You may not be assure regarding their existence and how long will they stay in your page.

Save Your Reputation
If your real customers find out that you bought likes, they might resent it. For one, they might think that you are dishonest or desperate and may not want to be associated with you.

It certainly baffles us why businesses still buy Facebook likes when it is easy to get likers.

Just make sure that you:

Have a steady stream of useful and informative content that you share on your page.

Give out exclusive updates, promotions and other incentives to your customers who like your Facebook page.

Design your like page attractive. A great design, coupled with videos, audio, lead capture forms could very well encourage them to like your page.

Tie in your Facebook page with the rest of your marketing plan. Put up signs in-store, invite people to like you on Facebook on your website, create a contest to get them to like you.

Why I Should Start a Blog?

seocompany — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:43:46 +0000

Blogging is not a new term. Many of us run a blog where we express our thoughts. But still few do not have a clear idea about blogging and few stops updating the blog even having one. So I decided to describe all the reasons, personal and professional, that should encourage you to start a blog or continue to update the one you write.

Codify Your Thoughts
Blogs are short form and often contain a single serving of news, opinion, analysis or recommendation. This style provides an easy entrance to the world of journalism & writing in general and it’s a perfect fit for those who are seeking to record their experiences & ideas.

Build Name/Brand Recognition
Blogging builds credibility and creates a readership of devotees. While you may not have “fans” like a rock star, you’ll certainly find people from diverse geographic and professional backgrounds that enjoy your writing and have a positive association with you. Outside of blogging, there are very few channels that offer this reward.

Grow Your Business
Blogging could help you to get more businesses from your dedicated readers. Blogs build familiarity and positive branding. People do business with you because they know you, like you and they trust you – blogging accomplishes all three and they show off your expertise in a subject.

Connect with Co-Workers/Employees
Blogs are excellent tool for reaching employees and co-workers. Blogging internally at a large or small company, when given the right freedom, creates cohesion and builds shared experiences throughout the firm.

Share Knowledge/Experience
As a child my mom would always encourage me to share my food, toys, time and allowance with other kids, stating “if you share, you always get more.” Blogging carries the same mantra. Sharing the knowledge and experience through the blog, we have reaped incredible benefits in terms of our own knowledge, new clients.

Create a Personal Voice
Companies often suffer from an overload of PR-style publishing. Blogs humanize people and companies to the outside world and make far deeper connections than newsletters or press releases. The less formal, more conversational style is an excellent way to truly connect and build fans of the brand.

Connect with Industry Leaders
If you’re looking to build a rapport with the giants of your field, building a blog readership base is remarkably effective. Not only can you develop relationships with industry leaders, you yourself can become one.

Make Money
I put this last on the list because, with the exception of some very smart, talented writers who can create groundbreaking content in their field, financial success does not always follow blogging. There are probably a hundred other pursuits that will earn you more direct income based on the hours invested. This rule applies only to the personal side of blogging – if you’re blogging as a business or for one, it can be an excellent investment with a very direct monetary return.

Personally, I love to share my experiences, love to hear from others blog too. I am aware of the fact that there are dozens of other reasons to blog, so please do share. Feel free to link out to your own blog in the comments as well.

How to Increase Twitter Followers?

seocompany — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:35:16 +0000

The concept of Twitter is very unique and cannot be replaced by any other social network. So having a lot of follower would make your profile more noticeable. But unfortunately it is noticed that many people have less number of followers compared to the following numbers. So here are some important tips that would help you to increase followers in Twitter easily.

Provide Value
Post tweets those are valuable and interesting for others. Before you post a tweet, think about the target audience and whether or not they are likely to respond to your Tweet. Your followers should never feel that your tweets are just as boring and useless as some of the tweets by other users.

Mix Tweets
It’s always good to mix up your tweeting style. When your tweets are a mixture of interactive and interesting messages, interesting external links and witty responses to other people’s tweets you would enhance your chances of getting more and more twitter followers.

Interact
You should regularly interact with your follower which improves your chances of increasing twitter followers. Some of the best ways to interact is to reply to other people’s tweets and re-tweet other people’s tweets.

Short Bio
Many people do not fill the bio box. None wants to follow an unidentified people. So always fill up your short bio box.

Follow who are relevant
If you follow those people who come in your category then the chances are more to get followers. If you are a blogger then you should join these account @Mashable, @TechCrunch and so on.

Profile Picture
Believe it or not but some people are attract on faces or pictures that you upload. So create an attractive avatar. Mostly high definition picture with clear faces attracts a lot.

Incorporate Twitter Follow Button
If you have website and blog then it is very necessary to put your twitter follow button on the top. It will help people to follow you easily. Add your twitter handler on Email signature. Facebook profile and as many social network you have.