Tag: Google

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Google Pushes Google My Business Forcing Google+ Pages

The Google+ Carrot and Stick in AdWords.
The Google+ Carrot and Stick in AdWords.

Google will simply not give up on Google+. They have tried over the years to push individuals and businesses into Google+ and now have take the original GMail model to try one more time to build growth in this social media network that simply has not caught on.

Google’s most recent push started in October using the AdWords platform to require participation on a Google+ page in order to use their AdWords location extensions. Here’s how they are doing it:

1. If you did not already have a Google+ location page tied to your same Google AdWords login or used manual address extensions, Google stated that you would not be able to use location extensions anymore.

2. Google then auto-created a Google+ page for every Google AdWords login and automatically tied it to Google AdWords. Too bad if you already had a Google+ page under a different user name, for it to show in AdWords the page had to be tied to your AdWords login. Welcome to your new page.

3. What is even more complicated is that actually Google has auto-created two pages for every AdWords account; a location page with map that points to your website and is pointed to from your AdWords ads AND a new Google+ page that they are hoping will become a new social media portal for your business and a central location for your online reviews.

This heavy handed approach shows how serious that Google is about growing Google+ pages and location identification for local advertising. Google took the exact same model when GMail came out. Google required that to use GMail, you had to set up a Google account forcing everyone to open a GMail account. They are doing it again to force businesses to utilize location specificity via Google+ via AdWords.

If Google thinks Google+ is so important you may want to reconsider if you should consider it important too. We offer minimally priced options to have content created to keep your Google+ page updated. Just a consideration if you are going to embrace what Google thinks is key to them.

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It’s Time to Put Your Website on a Diet

Put Your Website on a Diet!
Put Your Website on a Diet!

Well what I really mean is to put your website on a content diet. In months and years past, it was a great idea, and SEO strategy, to build some really great content to help build site authority. This was a winning strategy when Google was counting links and in counting inbound traffic.

Now however, Google is watching relevancy and that means click through rate and bounce rate of your website. Content that was informational in nature that gave your site a 75% and higher bounce rate is now a liability for organic placement.

As an example, before my own cleanup due to some of the content I was carrying, my bounce rate was around 75%. After my cleanup, my bounce rate is now 39.07%. I simply redesigned my site, revamped my content and actually dropped pages that were just built to be informational, instructional or to build authority.

As you make site changes you should at least shoot for the overall global average bounce rate of 46.9%. What used to be great to fluff up traffic and boot organic placement may now be dropping you in the SERPs!

If you would like more in-depth information I suggest this article that mirrors my own recommended strategy for websites in today’s world for Google.

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Google My Business Explained

Cover of my own Google My Business Page.
Cover of my own Google My Business Page.

If you have been using Google Places or Google+, Google has a new property call Google My Business that you need to be looking at and migrating to.

First notice that even if you have been posting on Google+ pages you may not have a Google My Business site. For that matter if you’ve had a Google Places or Google Maps page, you may still need to re-verify to migrate that page to Google My Business.

Here’s what I’ve found out. I have a number of Google+ pages that I routinely post to as well as a personal Google+ page. I even had one Google Places page. When I set up my own Google My Business page, it was a different URL than any of them. Sigh… that means I had to start all over in building a fan base as any of my existing pages did not migrate into the new Google My Business page.

The Google My Business pages even look different. You’ll know you have one if over the cover image you see things like your office hours, your address, and website URL. You can see the cover image of my own in this post and view my site online.

Google is really pushing the Google My Business pages. My Google AdWords account rep even told me this past week that Google AdWords will be doing away with the ability to add business addresses manually in AdWords and using only the Google My Business  page for locations in the near future. This means that it is time to get going on embracing this new Google product.

Personally I hate that the migration did not allow me to pick up one of my existing pages about my business that had a nice number of followers, but this is Google, it is their way all the way.

So, better get prepared for the future, as it is clear that Google will want to only deliver Google Maps and Google organic results pointing to a verified Google My Business page in the very near future.

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Google’s New Quality Guidelines for Websites

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

Updated in 2014, Google’s Quality Guidelines for webmasters spells out some new details that all website owner’s should keep in mind.

In a nutshell, Google wants quality, relevant, unique, mobile-optimized content. The content that appears highest in the search results will be those that Google deems are the most relevant for a user’s query. The key is what Google deems most relevant and how a business owner’s website can make it into the pool that Google will select from to show for each unique query.

With Google showing results that are mobile-location determined specific, based on the user’s current location, and based on historical data of a user’s search history; relevancy simply cannot be determined by the keywords or for that matter even content on your website that you control. There is simply no way, based on the current Google parameters, to consistently garner top organic placement with some many variables being determined by Google’s file on the end user.

However, Google has still provided insight into what it considers important for a website owner to do on their end so that a website can even be included in the results that will be “racked and stacked” based on the individual users needs. These items are hugely important to embrace if your website is going to be a player in the way Google now delivers search results.

Here are some of my top tips for website owners to follow:

1. Make sure you craft your message for relevancy to users not search engines.

2. Be transparent in all you do; what you sell, who you are, what you do with user information; where you are located, and so forth.

3. Don’t use tactics that you may find difficult to explain to others or that may degrade over time in an effort to simply garner search engine placement now.

4. Focus on what makes your website, products or services unique and sell that uniqueness on each and every page.

5. Here’s the big list of don’ts – no automated content, no scraped content, no link schemes, no hidden text, no affiliate program sites will place without additional unique and value-driven content, no abuse of rich snippet coding. You’ll want to visit this page for more don’ts.

6. Google has even noted that website owner’s should pro-actively monitor for hacking now, as well as rogue installation of malicious code and excessive spam comments.

Additionally Google states that low quality pages are not okay, hiding content with CSS or JavaScript is not acceptable and will now be filtered out algorithmically, as well as inclusion of about us pages and contact us pages are now must have’s.

The key for website owners to consider, to even have the chance to appear for a user’s search, is to focus on the positive, unique, winning aspects of your business or product. Be transparent and honest about what you sell and do. Doing all of this then gives you the opportunity to be added to the mix of results that Google will then chose from to return a list of sites each unique user search query with a strong focus on what is “right” and “best” for the searcher.

If you need help with your content changes or a refocus strategy, I encourage you to contact my firm today at www.McCordWeb.com.