Google Plus: Growth by Brute Force - getFound SEM

When Google’s new search feature “Search Plus” started favoring Google+ results several weeks ago, the change was immediately resisted by competing social networks like Twitter and Facebook. In addition to receiving negative publicity regarding the new Search Plus feature, an ongoing FTC investigation was expanded to further research the potential antitrust and privacy concerns of the new search feature. However, recent actions by Google demonstrates a firm commitment to the new feature and the Google+ social network.

During a phone call with investors last week, Google CEO Larry Page announced that Google+ has doubled in size over the past 90 days. Page also stated that the social network, which now has over 90 million users, has a high level of engagement from its users.
However, Google has been accused with artificially boosting the number of Google+ users as a result of “forcing” users to sign up for the service. Now, when a new user creates any type of Google account, the system requires that the user register a Gmail account, fill out a Google profile, and join Google+.
Google said the following regarding the recent change to the registration process:

“We hadn’t changed our Google Accounts sign-up flow in more than seven years so it was due for a refresh. We’re working to develop a consistent sign-up flow across our different products as part of our efforts to create an intuitive, beautifully simple, Google-wide user experience. Making it quick and easy to create a Google Account and a Google profile enables new users to take advantage of everything Google can offer.”

In the past, it was easy for a user to simply register for one service (i.e. Gmail) without the requirement to join Google+. In addition, the option of registering with an existing email address has now been removed.
Although Google automatically creates a Google+ account for all new users, it is easy to delete the Google+ profile in the accounts setting page.

[Sources Include: Google, ars technica, & Google Operating System]
by David Angotti

Video Search Engine Optimization - Original Content, How Much Should it Cost - getFound Sem San Francisco

You are told you should have original content on your website blog. You look at your marketing resources and you know you can't fully commit a person for original content. You think should I hire a freelance copywriter to help with the work? If there is no one in the company that has the writing skills it might be a good idea. A professional coywriter will certainly have the ability to create content for a website or blog that can capture the attention to get your brand noticed or address your target market. The next question is, what should you pay to outsource this content. It does depend on when the content is needed by, how much research is needed and what is the length of the post. You are probably looking at $50 to $200 a post.

A few thoughts to remember before you outsource your content:

Never send you content overseas. It might cost you less but you more then likely won't get great content that provides value to your readers or your brand.

Don't rely on junior people to write the content. They won't have the in-depth knowledge about the business and industry to produce content. A professional will do the research.
 
ou get what you pay for! A $5 article is a $5 article. How much effort would you put into something if you were only getting $5 for it?

Tags: search engine marketing San Jose CA, getfound San Jose CA, search marketing San Jose CA, search engine optimization San Jose CA, internet marketing San Jose CA, video seo, social marketing, video seo bay area"

Search Engine Optimization Bay Area - 45% of Daily Tweets are from Mobile Devices - getFound SEM San Francisco

Yesterday, at the 2011 Mobilize conference, Twitter’s VP of engineering Michael Abbot spoke with Om Malik regarding Twitter’s overall growth and the role mobile devices play in that growth. Prior to joining Twitter 16 months ago, Abbot led the software and services team at Palm.

Since Abbot joined the company a little over one year ago, Twitter has seen exponential growth. Last summer, Twitter had just over 60 million total daily tweets and that number has increased to over 230 million daily tweets. Amazingly, approximately 45% of the 230 million daily tweets originate on mobile devices.

While discussing whether Twitter is concerned regarding the additional traffic the iOS integration will provide, Abbot indicated he is confident Twitter can handle the traffic volume:

“During the last nine months, there’s been more infrastructure changes at Twitter than there had been in the previous five years at the company.

One of the highlights of Abott’s interview was when he stated Facebook “sucks at everything” and indicated that Twitter is not focused on what its competition is doing. Abbot said Twitter is committed to keeping their service simple and providing users with an optimal experience. He believes that Twitter’s success is due to the simplified, easy to understand nature of the service.

[Sources Include: All Things D & GigaOM]

By David Angotti

Video Search Engine Optimization - Social Bookmarking Strategy Tips? getFound Sem San Francisco

A recent study found that the social bookmarking site StumbleUpon accounts for 50% of all traffic derived from social media , surpassing even Facebook as the leading source of traffic. While we have to take these numbers with a grain of salt—StumbleUpon exists solely to share links, while Facebook is the central hub of most users’ online social lives—this data lends credibility to the value of social bookmarking sites as part of your social media marketing and content promotion campaigns.

A social bookmarking strategy, when handled correctly, provides a lot more value than just a few credible links. It can help drive traffic, increase brand awareness and build your online presence. Here are 3 tips for developing a social bookmarking strategy:

1. Promote everything, every time
The crux of a strong social bookmarking strategy is consistency. Every time a company blog post or article goes live, you’ve got to submit to all of your bookmarking sites that day. You want to give all of your content a fighting chance to be found by your target audience, so cherry picking which days and which content your submit undermines your own efforts.

2. Find niche social bookmarking sites
Just because they may be smaller, that doesn’t mean they can’t be valuable. Large social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit cover dozens of topics and cater to a vast audience. A niche social bookmarking site allows you to submit your content and know that it is being presented in front of the right audience. For instance, in the SEO world, two big niche social bookmarking sites are sphinn and SERPd. When submiting Brick Marketing blog posts to these two bookmarking sites, other SEO and Internet marketing professionals are going to be reading them.

3. Make your content shareable
You don’t have to be the only one that submits your content to social bookmarking sites. By incorporating social bookmarking buttons into your blog and website, you are encouraging your audience to share your content with their own social network. The search engines look at social signals like this (how many people are sharing your content) to determine how valuable a piece of content is and where it will rank in the search engines. Every share counts!

by Nick Stamoulis

Tags: search engine marketing San Jose CA, getfound San Jose CA, search marketing San Jose CA, search engine optimization San Jose CA, internet marketing San Jose CA, video seo, social marketing, video seo bay area"

Video SEO - Does Twitter Help Your SEO - getFound SEM, San Francisco

Twitter is one of the Big 3 of social networking (alongside Facebook and LinkedIn) and a valuable component of any social media marketing strategy. There are probably hundreds of blog posts out there telling site owners to get a Twitter account because they are “supposed” to. But what are the real benefits of incorporating Twitter into the online marketing mix? Can Twitter actually help your SEO or is it just another place to make noise and hope someone notices?

Here are 3 ways Twitter affects your SEO:

Social Signals
Both Google and Bing have admitted that social media signals are being incorporated into the search algorithm as a ranking factor. While we can only speculate as to how important social signals are, it’s probably save to say very much so. Bing patterned with Facebook to create a more personalized, social SERP and Google launched its own social networking platform. I doubt the two search behemoths would do so if they weren’t assigning some value to social signals.

So how does Twitter play into this? Content shared on Twitter can be indexed by the search engines and actually rank in the search results. The more time a piece of content is Tweeted and reTweeted, the more important it becomes in the eyes of the search engines. Just like your site thrives off of quality links, so do social signals.

Author Authority
Author authority is why it is important to take the time to actually build a Twitter profile and connect with real, human users. The search engines know that when they announce a new ranking signal, the spammers come out of the woodwork and try to manipulate it. If Google says reTweets are important, you can bet that black hat companies are creating hundreds of dummy accounts that exist solely to reTweet their content. Author authority aims to put a stop to that.
The search engines don’t just look at how many times your content is being Tweeted, but who is doing the Tweeting! How long has that person been active on Twitter? Who are their followers? What kind of content do they usually share? They want to make sure that spam profiles don’t artificially inflate the popularity of a piece of content. Having a dozen real profiles Tweet your blog post or article is worth much more than having 100 bots do the same.

Brand Awareness
If you think the only goal of SEO is to rank number one, you’re missing the bigger picture. Of course you want to rank well, but SEO is also designed to increase your overall online presence and brand awareness so your target audience can more easily find you. Twitter is a great way to increase your brand awareness. It allows you to connect with your customers in a new and personalized way. When someone Tweets about your brand/products, they are broadcasting your message to their social network as well, increasing your reach.

by Nick Stamoulis

Tags: search engine marketing San Jose CA, getfound San Jose CA, search marketing San Jose CA, search engine optimization San Jose CA, internet marketing San Jose CA, video seo, social marketing, video seo bay area"

Video Search Engine Optimization - Facebook: Hot, Not, or Lukewarm? getFound Sem San Francisco

Facebook has three-quarters of a billion users and shows no sign of slowing down. Just this week it introduced a very Twitter-like and Google+-like function — “Subscribe” — and it is the social destination for millions of Americans, many of whom still do not tweet and never had a MySpace page.

Yet there are whispers that Facebook’s best days are behind it, and that it could be the “next MySpace” (or Yahoo). As far back as 2010, there was talk of Facebook fatigue. Some teens said they would quit, though they didn’t know where else to go. Now some suggest that those who forgo Facebook may head over to Google+, once it’s out of its closed beta.

In my household, Facebook is still the dominant social platform: three out of four household members use it exclusively. I use Twitter and cross-post to Facebook (which may annoy anyone who subscribes to me on Facebook and follows me on Twitter). Yet each one of my family members spends part of his or her Facebook time grousing about the service. The constant changes, the ever-more-convoluted privacy settings and the surprise interface updates lead to endless frustrations. My wife, in particular, just wants to “post and go,” but recent update changes make that virtually impossible.

The reality, though, is that we often complain about the things we love and use most. No one in my house has requested a Google+ invite. This is not surprising; virtually none of their friends or family — except me — are on Google+.

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Asking Google+

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I spend a bit of time on Google+ each day, and it occurred to me that most of the early adopters on Google’s social platform are likely also Facebook users. So I asked them if Facebook is still hot or not, and why (note: I asked this question before Facebook’s “Subscribe” update).
The consensus: Facebook is running cool to lukewarm. Considering I asked the question in the echo-chamber that is Google+, this response is hardly surprising. But many of the comments hit upon what I see as Facebook’s key faults and hurdles it must jump over the next three to five years.
One commenter said Facebook, which has added a number of new features in recent weeks, is finally “stepping it up” in the face of growing competition from Google+.
Those who still think Facebook is hot did admit that the game may change when “Google+ opens up”. A few hedged their bets, saying that Facebook was lukewarm, but also “sitting at its peak of interest.” I guess they expect Facebook to topple from its perch at any moment.

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Reality Check

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There were, however, some who could see outside the Google+ bubble. Antonio Moro wrote: “[Facebook is ] still King of the hill, very hot, and since G+ started: hotter as it’s pushing new features faster than ever. I still prefer to use G+, but this doesn’t matter.”

There were other begrudging admissions of Facebook’s dominance. Allan Petersen wrote, “I wish I could say “Not” with a straight face. Unfortunately, it’s so much more intertwined with current online culture than MySpace was. And they’re continually pushing updates. I say ‘warm.’”

Many said that despite the encroachment of brands, fan pages and confusing updates, they will stick with Facebook because their friends show no interest in moving to another social platform. The decline of platforms like Friendster and MySpace suggest that what people say and what they actually do may not be totally aligned.

Some like Tom Dignazio said the MySpace analogy is off — or at least years away from being reality. “There is no real sign that FB is hurting any way,” said Dignazio. Others said it’s not a matter of Facebook being Hot or Not as it is “a signal of evolution. Facebook can’t be the bright shiny thing all the time.” opined Shane Rhyne.

Shane is right, of course: nothing remains in the spotlight forever. Facebook is simply not the hot, fresh new thing. But the lack of pure heat doesn’t mean Facebook is going away. Few of us get excited about Sears, but the retail store survives, even in the face of competition from online megastores like Amazon.com. A little less heat, and a lot more focus on what its users want, is probably what Facebook needs anyway.

by Lance Ulanoff

Tags: "search engine marketing San Jose CA, getfound San Jose CA, search marketing San Jose CA, search engine optimization San Jose CA, internet marketing San Jose CA, video seo, social marketing, video seo bay area"

Search Engine Optimization Bay Area - YouTube Drives Traffic Longer Than Facebook & Twitter - getFound SEM

Viewers love different kinds of content, with video being one of the more popular varieties. But does it matter where you go to share that content? This week, Bit.ly decided to talk about link half-life–how long links shared through their service tend to last based on their origination point. In this context, a Bit.ly link’s half life is essentially equal to the time it takes that link to reach half the clicks it will accrue throughout its life. What did they find? YouTube links have a longer half-life than those for Twitter or Facebook.

The average half-life for links shared on YouTube is a whopping 7.4 hours. To put that into a bit of perspective, the average Bit.ly link (regardless of source) has a half-life of around 3 hours. That means that the public interest level in the links shared on YouTube tends to last twice as long as interest in links shared on Facebook or Twitter.

That’s just huge. But what does it mean in terms of actionable advice? Easy: share your links on YouTube, in the video description as well as in annotations on the video itself.

It’s not any kind of indictment of the practice of sharing links on Facebook and Twitter. Those links still get plenty of clicks–this data isn’t even about total clicks… but rather when in the link’s life-cycle the clicks reach their peak. You could even conclude that this information means you should share individual links more than once on social platforms outside of YouTube.

It makes perfect sense, really. On Twitter, you share a link, and it pretty quickly makes its way down the page, as other people the consumer is following also Tweet. Same with sharing on the Facebook wall. Whereas with YouTube, the video–and the links–are just right there… always. No new content appears on the page over time to push it down below the fold.
So maybe some of your readers don’t even see your links the first time you publish them on Twitter or Facebook? Maybe publishing the same link again at a future point in time might expose it to even more people? Of course, the loyal followers who do see and read what you post probably won’t want to deal with tons of duplicate posts, so you wouldn’t want to overdo it.

Again, this is general data. But clearly this analysis from Bit.ly just adds more evidence to the already-mountain-sized pile of evidence that all brands and small businesses should be exploring and experimenting with online video. You can’t post links on YouTube, where they hold more interest, if you don’t even have any videos or a YouTube channel.

by Jeremy Scott

tags; "search engine marketing San Jose CA, getfound San Jose CA, search marketing San Jose CA, search engine optimization San Jose CA, internet marketing San Jose CA, video seo, social marketing, video seo bay area"