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If you have teens you already know Facebook, but do you know Ask? Ask is an app accessed from within Facebook that encourages your teens and children to tell all about themselves. Scary if you actually take the time to read what your kids and teens are posting there and the questions that are asked of them.
Here is a scenario that is playing out right now in our family as a cautionary tale. One of my kids has been pretty open about herself on Ask. All her answers to questions from Ask are then posted to her Facebook profile. Her Ask profile page and Facebook page are automatically linked by the app in Facebook.
Routinely she gets asked all kinds of questions by people many anonymously. She answers nearly all of them. Her young wisdom, sense of fun, and essence are clearly revealed at Ask. This is very troubling for a parent. Recently she got friended at Ask by a person called Tyler Damon Allen. This person has pushed his way into my daughter’s life and she has reacted as if this was a real and legitimate love interest. What got me concerned was all the emotional drama this person had:
1. Supposedly the same age as my daughter in school, but birth date was two years older.
2. Was a teen but did not have an online presence or even a Facebook page.
3. Stated he was in England because brother had cancer. Then decided he actually lived in New York.
4. Claimed he was going to commit suicide and needed my daughter to talk him down.
5. The next day claimed he had a serious longboarding accident (this is a skate board) and posted images of his body damaged. But there is snow in the ground right now in New York and England and you could only get these types of injuries if you were shirtless or boarding with a T-shirt on not a heavy coat due to weather.
6. Then Tyler D. Allen decided to create a Facebook page so he could chat directly with my daughter. His profile picture did not match his Ask Profile. Haircolor and facial features were different. Hmmmmm… I did a search and found his Facebook profile picture at a clip art site.
Scary scenario for any parent – right? You bet. If you have teens it is important to know what they are doing and sharing online. There are bad people out there not only sexual predators, but emotional predators.
This is what I did. I sent a friend request to Tyler and then sent him a Facebook message letting him know I was watching all online interaction and would not hesitate to report him to the authorities for cyber stalking as my daughter is a minor and that the legal penalties were fierce. I recommended that he cease all contact with my daughter. There are laws about cyber stalking especially when it comes to minors. The predator may be located half way around the world, but data shows that they may also be in your own community and may actually be a family or extended family member.
Sometimes an emotional predator will build a relationship and then move into the sexual arena. Anyway you look at it someone who is hiding their true identity and then interacting with your teen is a potential recipe for disaster. As parents we have to all work together to keep our kids safe by education, monitoring what is online about them, and stepping in when need be.
In continuation from Tuesday in this blog post on trends for business website marketing and visibility, I’ll talk about Google+ Local pages and YouTube.
Google+ Local Pages Also Known as Google Places
Big changes happened last year for Google+ Local pages. First, Google removed many of the fields you can use to add information, removing any degree of optimization you could previously do on keywords. Once the account is set up, what the customer sees about your business is limited. Google now returns listings not based on optimization or the number of reviews but based on the smartphone user’s location. For desktop searches, Google Places/Local Page listings are shown based on proximity to your location and possibly in some markets based on the number of reviews and possibly again on click through rates.
What a business owner used to be able to do to get placement on location specific keywords is gone. We do still recommend a regular update of videos and pictures on the account, but there is simply not a lot of updating to be done once the account is set up. In fact in the last three months, Google even removed the owner’s comment field where promotions and specials were listed.
YouTube Videos
For many businesses we work with, YouTube is still “undiscovered country”. Many business owners feel that they have to pay to have professionally created video for YouTube, but actually even videos made with your phone or camera are considered the same to Google. Videos that show your products, explain your services, explain briefly a concept are still excellent for business owners to use for exposure. As videos may be shown in with organic results and not even associated with a link to your website utilizing YouTube better should be a New Year’s resolution for business owners for 2014.
Product Listing Ads Now Called Google Shopping Campaigns in AdWords
If you have an ecommerce store and are an AdWords advertiser and are not using Product Listing Ads – soon to be called Google Shopping Campaigns, you are missing out on one of the best things that Google has brought to the AdWords arena. Google shows pictures of products within the organic results and you pay be the click for activity on your store products. Although the data feed is onerous to create and requires much more than just a download of your products (it requires the use of Google’s own taxonomy for each product,) implementation can really boost your individual product sales. Your competition is already embracing Google Shopping Campaigns!
2013 has brought us some sweeping changes at Google. It will be interesting to see how these important changes will impact business and visibility as we enter 2014.
Today we’ll talk about when you can and should guest blog for others to improve your own organic placement.
First, I have to say that I do guest blogging on a regular basis for two sites in my own industry: the Bing Ads Community and SiteProNews. I personally find guest blogging in certain parameters authority and visibility building.
Here’s when I feel that guest blogging can be a workable strategy for you:
1. If you have an industry or trade publication that shows articles to the public (not locked behind a gateway) online I would consider the opportunity to write an article that would include links back to your website writing as an authority a great opportunity. I would highly encourage you to see out and write in these types of situations. Make sure that before you write you have your personal Google+ profile set up and that you link to this profile in the article bio block using the rel=”author” syntax. This discreet action will tie the article to your Google+ profile which you in turn link to your website. This type of guest blogging article may help with your own business exposure.
2. If you have been approached by someone in your industry outside of your geographic area and they are willing to allow you to guest blog on their quality blog and you have vetted them as a respectable business, I would consider a once a month guest blog post a wonderful opportunity for you. However, I would properly vet them to make sure that the link from their site to yours is not tainted by other types of activities they may be participating in that would be a high negative for Google which would bleed into your own site’s Google profile.
When would I steer clear of guest blogging:
1. If your SEO firm says “we’ll charge you $XXX a month to send out guest blog posts and they’ll be placed on hundreds of sites so you’ll get a high number of links”, I would be very cautious. In a recent analysis I did for a client we queried exactly where the content was placed and were shocked when the blog post for a medical call center was found on a hemorrhoid medication website and numerous off-topic/no name blogs. There is NO VALUE to your content appearing on sites like this! In fact, links from sites like this you may actually need to disavow with Google.
2. If your SEO firm says “we will write one article but then slightly reword it so it is different for every site we place it on.” Steer clear! This is called article spinning and one clear practice that Google has very clearly disavowed and has stated it considers content spam.
