Google held their 6th annual developers conference this week called Google I/O 13, and during the keynote address, some amazing new features and developments were announced. A lot of time was spent discussing Android, Chrome and Google Maps, but I wanted to focus on the developements that matter most to businesses and social media users, including these improvements to Google+ and Google Search.
Whether you're a fan of Google and Google products or not, it should be exciting to see what new developments are coming out of Mountain View. Not only are these innovations gret for Google users and customers, but they also drive creativity and production from competitors like Apple or Samsung or even Facebook.
At 9AM PST, the Keynote Address for Google I/O, the developer conference going on this week, is being delivered. The kick-off event, much like Apple at WWDC, is designed to give us a first glimpse at the latest product and platform developments at Google. Watch it live here:
Google has unveiled a new tool for marketers and agencies called Think Insights. Think Insights is a massive resource of information for marketers, providing the "latest research in digital marketing" as well as "industry-leading case studies and Google’s latest research, strategic perspectives, interviews with innovators and experts and more."
Stories and case studies will be hand-picked by Google, spanning multiple industries and businesses, to provide inspiration and insight.
Submitted by Mike Allton on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 10:30am
As a business trying to leverage the power of search engines and social media to drive interested readers and customers to our websites, it's critical that we take the time to understand and test consumer search behavior. By search behavior, I'm talking about the process that a potential visitor will or must go through before they might end up on our website. While this certainly revolves around understanding and targeting keywords, it goes a bit beyond that. I'll illustrate my point with my own experience trying to program a remote control.
Are you frightened of Pandas and Penguins? If your business and website was severely affected by Google's algorithm changes in 2012, you might be. I have talked to numerous clients who have lamented how much their traffic dwindled as a direct result of those changes. Many have told me how they're scared to do anything with their website for fear of future issues, and not a few have refused to ever speak to an "SEO Expert" again.
Fortunately, there are definitely steps that a business can take to not only improve their ranking within Google search, but also avoid potential issues with the next major algorithm change that Google will inevitably release.
For a long time, it was standard practice as part of any good SEO strategy to seek out links on other websites to your own. The ideal link was one where the text of the link included great keywords that related to your site and business. This use of keywords in link building is referred to as Anchor Text and was a very effective means for improving your site ranking in Google. That is, until the famous Penguin update of 2012.
More and more business owners have started to recognize that Google is no longer providing all of the keyword data that it used to within Google Analytics. If you monitor your website analytics regularly, you may have noticed that your Keyword report is showing more (not provided) than other keywords. This has search engine marketers and business owners more than a little concerned! Why aren't these words being provided, and what can we do about it?
Submitted by Mike Allton on Tue, 01/08/2013 - 9:28am
We have talked a lot recently about Instagram / Facebook vs. Twitter. Facebook and Twitter have decided that they're in direct competition for the same user base, specifically, the photo-sharing users, and have engaged in what we are calling The PhotoWars.
MySpace was founded in 2003 and purchased in 2005 by News Corporation for $580 million. Between 2005 and 2008, MySpace was the most visited social networking site in the world, and even surpassed Google at one point as the most visited website in the United States. The site generated $800 million in revenue in 2008, yet was passed by Facebook and has been declining every year since. Now, however, thanks a purchase in 2011 by Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake, the former giant seems poised to once again rock the online world.
When Apple released iOS6, the native YouTube app was removed as part of their break from Google. For most iPhone users, this was a good thing! Google released their own YouTube app that is far superior. An update was released today that makes it even better.
First, the new update brings long-awaited iPad and iPhone5 support, improving the user experience tremendously.
