The Blog

Online Video Ads

Want to capture customer attention with online video ads? They’d better not be more than 15 seconds long, a new poll suggests.

According to a survey

Online Video Adby Poll Position, about 54% of Americans think 15 seconds is the acceptable time to view an online video ad before seeing free content, from YouTube clips to streaming TV episodes.

The poll — conducted among 1,179 registered voters via a telephone survey — found that patience is low when it comes to sitting through a lengthy commercial before gaining access to the content they want to watch. Only 12% of consumers believe 30 seconds is an appropriate length.

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13 Tips for Increasing Your Company’s Google Rank

Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, a nonprofit organization that promotes youth entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment. The YEC provides young entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

It goes without saying that entrepreneurs know the importance of search engine optimization, and how to boost their Google search rankings. Right? Or is SEO a foreign language that you haven’t quite mastered?

Google rank is critical to a business’s success in this digital age. Savvy entrepreneurs know that search engine optimization is a necessary part of the marketing toolkit — and it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Instead of letting your Google rank get you down, apply these tips and techniques from a group of successful, young entrepreneurs in order to boost your company’s SEO results.


1. Create Evergreen Content


You’ll want your content to take the top slots for your name and various keywords and phrases, so you’ll want to have high-quality, authoritative content. The best way to make sure your content is seen this way to is create content that is forever useful, not trendy and disposable. Create content that people will be reading 10 years from now, and you’ll be getting linkbacks for a decade.

- Colin Wright, Exile Lifestyle.


2. Audit Your Online Profiles


Take a few minutes to login to each of your company’s online profiles. Is the biography up to date? More importantly, is your website’s URL listed somewhere? The incoming links from these profiles may not weigh too much in Google’s mysterious algorithm, but you’ll be surprised what it can do if you have more than a handful of accounts online.

- Logan Lenz, Endagon.


3. Think Like Your Customer Types


Think about what your ideal clients and customers might be typing into Google, and then find out if your hunch is right by looking keywords up in Google’s free Keyword Tool. Keep in mind that 25% of keywords have never been typed in before, but you’ll want to aim for popular keywords with low competition if you can. Then write content around these keywords and learn to optimize.

- Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media.


4. Hire an Expert


I suggest hiring a search engine optimization company or freelance specialist to develop an effective strategy to improve your rankings. The Google Panda updates has made the SEO space even more challenging to produce results, so I suggest outsourcing this task to the professionals. Look for individuals or companies with proven track records, and monitor their bi-weekly reports closely.

- Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings.


5. Guest Post


Start guest posting on tons of relevant blogs. Blogs love fresh content, and for you it’s a great way to build links, which will boost your rankings on Google.

- Ben Lang, MySchoolHelp.


6. Content is King and Links are Queen


Yes, creating good content is very important to make your business rank higher in Google. But links are even more important. Google loves links, especially those from other relevant, authority websites. Join any and all industry associations, guest blog with a link back to your website, and submit your site to any relevant directories to grow your backlink profile and your searches.

- Warren Jolly, Affiliate Media Inc..


7. Bust Out the Camera


Video is such a huge thing now for business owners. Not only does it give your company personality, but it can also be spread across networks while linking back to your site. Create great videos filled with information people can share and then repeat. Now videos can be distributed across multiple platforms from one single platform, causing Google to love you.

- Ashley Bodi, Business Beware.


8. Colleges and Universities


The biggest SEO secret is that when .edu sites link to your website it gives you a higher Google ranking. Contact college and universities and find a reason for them to link to your site by running a special internship opportunity, for example.

- Nick Friedman, College Hunks Hauling Junk.


9. Update Your Site Frequently


The more often you update your site, the more important Google thinks it is. If you can publish content to your blog every day, Google will start to recognize you as a great source of information for whatever your keywords are. With every blog post, you have another chance at ranking for new search terms, so each article increases the odds of your site being found.

- Matt Wilson, Under30CEO.com.


10. Use the Right Keywords


Two effective ways of increasing your SEO rank are tagging articles and keyword analysis. You want to make sure your headlines are descriptive. You should also choose keywords that people are going to look for — so imagine yourself as a searcher.

- Lauren Perkins, Lauren Perkins.


11. Move Away From Flash


Many small businesses, especially restaurants and bars, use Flash for their sites because it’s easy to launch, looks good and is fairly cheap. While the sites might look decent, they rank really poorly in Google (without doing some tricks). Change your Flash-based site to WordPress or another platform, and you’ll rocket up the search engine rankings.

- Nathan Lustig, Entrustet.


12. Have You Taken Advantage of Local Search?


Are you a local business? Have you claimed your listing on Google, Yahoo! and Bing? If not, stop reading this article now and go claim your business listings immediately! I’ve seen a huge jump in traffic for businesses by simply claiming and filling out all the fields on these local profiles. The future of search is personalized local results, and these valuable profiles are often overlooked.

- Andrew Saladino, Just Bath Vanities.


13. Know Exactly What Words People Use to Search


The biggest mistake people make in trying to rank high in Google is having no clue what people are actually typing into search engines to find you. An easy way to find this out is to go to the Google homepage and slowly start typing in your phrases. You’ll notice Google suggested searches come up. Use those exact phrases in your titles. That’s what people want, so give it to them.

- Trevor Mauch, Automize, LLC.

 

How Brands are using Google +

Google+ Brand pages may have debuted just a few months ago, but many companies have already flocked to the social media platform to reach out to new fans. And it’s not just the big companies that are adopting brand pages: Google+ Group Product Manager Christian Oestlien says small businesses are also jumping on the Google+ band wagon.

“We have obviously a lot of involvement in the local space,” Oestlien says. “We’re seeing a lot of small businesses get on Google+ and use that to directly engage with their audiences.” Continue reading “How Brands are using Google +” »

Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics

Google Analytics has since revamped its design, giving it not only a cleaner look but also updated data sets. You can now find everything from real-time stats to details about which mobile device your site visitors come from.

Though the data possibilities seem endless, Google Analytics product manager Phil Mui says the design reflects three core metrics: acquisition, engagement and outcome. Let’s take a closer look at what these numbers mean and how you can track them with one of the most widely used web analytics platforms.


Acquisition


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IE6 and Facebook

Facebook phasing out support for Internet Explorer 7. Summary: Facebook has started phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. The browser is not allowed to show the new Timeline profile, and renders the old one instead. This is just the beginning.

New Google Analytic Features

Over the past eight months, Google has steadily released one revolutionary new feature after another. On March 17, the company announced a new version of Google Analytics. Up until this point, users could decide whether they preferred to stick with the old interface or switch to the new one. However, Google recently announced that the old version of GA will be turned off in January 2012.

If you’re not already familiar with the new version, take the next few weeks to get comfortable with it. To help you get started, let’s review the top 10 features of the new Google Analytics.


1. Dashboards


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