The wait is almost over for Google+ Pages. Since the announcement regarding Google+ Pages, millions of people have been waiting for its arrival. Recently, Google officially announced the looming arrival of new Google+ Pages for brands and businesses which is a significant piece of the Google+ puzzle. Marketers have been waiting for months because of its possible significance in SEO. Currently, there are already about 20 Google+ Pages available, however, if you visit the “Create a page” link, you will be informed that creating a page is still not available.

As of now, several Google+ Pages are already live including Anderson Cooper 360, Angry Birds, Burberry, Fox News, Good Morning America, Macy’s, Pepsi, The Muppets, WWE, etc. Some of these Google+ Pages like Pepsi and Macy’s still have no content.

What are Google+ Pages?

Google+ Pages are Google’s own version of Facebook Pages which allows brands or businesses to connect with customers or fans. This enables the brand or business to post updates/news, interact with customers/fans and check the number of +1s. To create one, you need to have a personal Google+ profile and choose one of the five categories namely Local Business/Place, Product/Brand, Company/Institution/Organization, Arts/Entertainment/Sports or Other. Then, you can add additional information that depends on the particular category you choose.

The Difference between Profiles and Google+ Pages

At initial glance, Profiles and Google+ Pages appear very much the same. However, there are key differences according to the help page of Google:

1. Pages can’t add people to circles unless someone adds a Google+ Page to their circles or mentions) using the + or @ before the name) the page.
2. Pagesare for entities; profiles are for people.
3. Pages are public by default.
4. Pages have a +1 button.
5. Pages can’t +1 other pages, play games, share to extended circles, receive notifications via email, text Google+ bar, or hangout on mobile devices.

Google Direct Connect

This is in unison with Google’s vision to “transform the overall Google experience” by including identity and sharing in all of its products. Regarding search, Google is adding a feature which allows you to enter a plus sign followed by the name of a Google+ Page and you will be taken directly to the Google+ Page. According to Google, a small icon will appear in the search suggestion box. The search results page will thereby be bypassed. As part of Direct Connect, Google advises owners of websites to add the Google+ icon. To be eligible for Google Direct Connect, your Google+ Page should be linked to your website and your website to your Google+ Page with the use of the rel=”publisher” code.

The latest news is regarding Google’s newfound trust to user reports about the address, hours and operating name of businesses. Unlike before, submitted updates will appear even without verification. However, business owners will be sent a notice giving them the chance to stop the change. This is so unlike Google to simply trust users but there is a reason behind the update according to them.

All about the Update

Based on the official announcement of Google regarding the update, they are introducing a streamlined process for updates to possibly wrong listings. When the submitted data update includes the business hours, location/address or name of business, the organic listing will be automatically updated and the owner of the business will receive an email notification verifying if the changes are correct.

In addition, Google is currently working with other organizations to receive current information on businesses. They have also implemented updates on their web-crawler for the purpose of finding business data that is current. In instances where Google’s system receives new information from a trusted source, the update will be made automatically.

As a precaution, business owners will always be sent an email notification that a change is going to be made. Then, the business owner has the option to prevent any of the changes using their Google Places account. According to Google, their goal is to create a “digital representation of the real world” without relying too much on updates from business owners. Instead, Google wants to rely on other people who want to contribute correct information.

Organizations sending promotions through AdWords and AdWords Express will not experience changes on their ads but the other segments of Places will experience big changes. Although this feature has already been released officially, implementation is still done gradually.

Will this Make Businesses Vulnerable?

This seems like a very hasty move especially when you consider previous system abuses. There is always a possibility of someone taking advantage of the newfound trust of Google. Although the precautionary measure will minimize abuse, there will always be certain isolated cases wherein people will be able to manipulate the system.

Businesses are now a little more vulnerable and can be the target of shut-down campaigns. However, this can be prevented as long as business owners are always updated on check their Google Places account for notifications on changes. This means that business owners now need to check their account and email frequently in order to prevent false data.

Today, Google News is one of the top news portals on the web with millions of users. This is obviously an excellent opportunity for web sites to take advantage of. You can achieve a significantly higher traffic for your site by getting good rankings in Google . However, doing so is not very simple and requires some technical knowledge. Here are some tips to help you:

Be the First

Well, you don’t really have to be first but you have to submit the news as soon as possible so that searchers will come across your news article. Make sure that your article is also unique and well-written. Remember that any sign of copying will usually result to penalty from Google News. You have to be on your toes and avoid being caught off guard. For example, the latest news regarding the death of Apple’s co-founders Steve Jobs was one of the biggest news stories that millions of people searched for. This would have been a great opportunity for any news site to achieve high rankings and gain traffic.

Be Consistent

One big news article will not be significant in the long run. You have to always be one of the first to release big news stories so that Google News will remember your site. This way, Google will know that you have an extensive collection of news that they can use as a resource. This is one of the best ways to achieve higher rankings in the long run. After some time, your site will be considered an authority site.

Quality

Always remember that quality is very important. Typos, grammatical errors, broken links and other errors on your site should be avoided. These common site errors will only sabotage your chances of attaining higher rankings. Copied and re-written content will only result to penalty. You could’ve gotten away with these errors in the past but the recent changes in search engine’s search algorithm will easily detect these errors.

Beware of Google News Ranking Myths

Having an image next to the article for higher rankings is one of the most popular myths about Google News. Also, timing the publication of the article for higher rankings is another myth. Remember that it is best to release the news as soon as possible in order to attain high ranking. Another myth you should be aware of is not being able to see the reason why your article is not included in Google News. The truth is that you can easily check the reason why your article wasn’t included.

Baidu, the Chinese search engine giant recently announced a 95% increase in profit. This is proof of the skyrocketing popularity of the search engine. In fact, in China Baidu has a significantly bigger market share of 84% compared to Google. If you take into consideration the 444 million internet users who speak Chinese, you should be convinced that Baidu SEO is really very important. Some experts predict that it won’t be long before English is overtaken by Chinese as the most common language on the internet.

The Steps You Need to Take

Even if you’re still not fully committed to the task, all you need is to take the first step to Baidu. This is the most crucial step that can help you with this endeavor. You have to create a Chinese-language site correctly. However, always keep in mind that optimization is the key and not having another language available for your site. Users need to find your site first before they can visit it. Also, you need to remember that Baidu is completely different from Google so you need to take a different approach.

Baidu Optimization

First of all, your site needs to be hosted in a local domain. It needs to be hosted by a server in China and you need to purchase a top-level domain (.cn or .com.cn). Remember that internet content is heavily censored in China. This means that you have to monitor your site’s content very carefully in order to avoid getting banned. A native speaker is a must-have because word-for-word keyword translation wouldn’t work. For popular keywords, Baidu index or their keyword tool can be referred to.

Baidu still gives importance to metatags for SEO unlike Google who significantly reduced its importance. This means that you should give importance to the optimization of keyword and description metatags. Also, keep in mind that Baidu’s crawlers are not as powerful as Google’s. This means that you should put the most important keywords and information at the first part of your page.

Baidu pays less attention to the credibility and importance of inbound links compared to Google. This means that even links from less-popular websites can help your SEO efforts. However, like Google, internal links from your site are also given importance in Baidu. Once you have followed these simple steps, all you have to do is to submit your Chinese-language site to Baidu and surely you will have great rankings.

Google recently introduced two new link elements. These additions aim to show better identify duplicate content and show the relationship of different documents on multiple pages. Also, Google announced that one of their goals is to show single-page versions in search results.

All about Pagination

Basically, pagination refers to the sequential numbering of pages. This is very important for SEO and should be kept in mind when creating and implementing any SEO strategy. For several years now, webmasters have been trying to figure out ways for improving pagination utilization. In the past, the solution was just to add unique titles and descriptions for each page. Now, to give Google an idea of how to process your paginated resource, you can use rel=”next” and rel=”prev”. This is quite simple, the first step is to simply identify where pagination is happening on your site. Remember that it is possible that pagination is already happening on your site without your knowledge. Make sure to check thoroughly in order to determine if it already is.

The next step is to check if there is a “view all” page and if it is being used correctly. Keep in mind that the use of the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags is to highlight the relationship on a series of articles, products, multi-part forum threads or common pages. The old tag rel=”canonical” now has an additional use. Initially, it was known as the meta tag used to identify the original source and this is used to eliminate duplicate content. Now it is to be used as a “view-all” page that contains the entire paginated series.

Google, in a separate blog post, stated that it is preferred for the “view-all” page to be in the index instead of being displayed in each page. This will give them a clear idea on which page to rank for the whole document title. This basically means that the view-all page is a very accurate way to determine relevance and accuracy against the particular search query. A “view all” page is recommendable unless the load time is too high or the site has poor navigation.

Conclusion

These new tags are definitely useful if implemented correctly. However, it would be much easier if Google just included this as an internal function. Since it is not, we just have to deal with this problem ourselves. After all, this is part of our job description. Hopefully, Google will have more updates such as this to help us achieve our SEO goals.

Brian Souter is a Scottish bazillionaire who recently pointed the fingers at Google for his website’s ranking drop. His website dramatically decreased in SERP or search engine results pages which made him blame Google for his demise. For him, Google should not decide which sites should be seen or not.

ust like Souter, there are many website owners who complain like this every day. They accuse Google of de-indexing their site or penalizing them in a way which causes the drop. Nonetheless, none of the complaints has received this attention yet. One of the problems with website owners who complain like this is that they lack looking at their website objectively. Before whining and complaining, they should see where the website has gone wrong.

The Google Panda

Google Panda was released August 12 and it was the day after when Souter noticed that his website has fallen back in the rankings. He claims that his website has mysteriously disappeared from the SERP. Nevertheless, 46 of his web pages are still indexed which means Google did not block his website. Does the launch of Google Panda have anything to do with the decreased rank of Souter’s website? We believe not.

Maybe Your SEO Stinks

Has it ever occurred to website owners who always complain that there might be a problem in their SEO or search engine optimization? Since this complaint was given much attention, people were quick to check what kind of website Souter has. Upon checking, Souter’s website was discovered to be old and not user-friendly. These are the most obvious reasons why readers so not stay long in browsing his website. In fact, someone said that you won’t know what the website is all about unless you go to the Profile page.

If you have SEO techniques being used at your website, you’ll know that your site has to always be updated and visitor-friendly. These are the top ways to get your visitors to stay on your site. But if you built your website 10 years ago and hope for it to bring in the same results at this point in time, you must be hiding under a rock for quite some time.

What to Do?

If your website has dropped its ranking or you believe that Google has stopped indexing you, here are some things that you need to before you continue assuming:

• Search for your website in Google and use your URL when searching. If it is still indexed, this means that Google didn’t remove you and there must be another reason why your website ranking has dropped. Perhaps, it’s time to look into your SEO?
• Search for your website in Google but enclose your URL with quotation marks. You should see your website in the top ten. If it’s ranked at 5th or 6th, Google has penalized you.
• Did you hire someone to do some changes in your website? Obviously, if it was ranking well before and a sudden drop occurred, the person you hired may have made a wrong marketing move or used black hat techniques that has gotten you penalized.
• You must hire a search engine optimization expert to help analyze your website. He should know what is lacking and what needs improvement. He will make the appropriate changes to get your ranking back up. He will also get to the root of the problem that caused your ranking drop.

Brian Souter told all webmasters to send him a message if their websites were blocked by Google too. It is quite funny because his website wasn’t even blocked at all. Surely, he will get tons of e-mails from webmasters who will just tell him that they were penalized legally or offer him advice on how to make his website more current-this should be pretty embarrassing.

The search engines are one of the best sources of traffic. More than half of the internet users rely on search engines when looking for website. Thus, having a high search engine ranking is the goal of many sites. Unfortunately, the search engine ranking is not permanent. You may hold the top spot for a certain keyword today and fall to the fifth spot tomorrow. Here are some reasons why your search engine ranking may decline. From here, you should be able to think of the right SEO technique to avoid losing a good ranking.

Your Site Is No Longer New

The search engines especially Google give a special treatment to new sites. For a certain period of time, when your site is relatively new, you will find it enjoying high search engine rankings. The site’s search engine ranking may then decline without proper SEO strategy.

Your Site Wasn’t Able to Prove Its Worth

The new sites get a special privilege of having high rankings but can also be placed in the sandbox after failure to prove its worth. It is much like a punishment. Luckily, SEO techniques can now help you get up again.

Your Site May Have a Broken Link

Links are very important in SEO and broken links are a big problem. You can check your site’s link manually or you can look for a plug-in that regularly checks and detects broken links.

Your Site’s Content Can Be Found Somewhere Else

Having your site’s content published in another site can be a serious problem. The search engines hate duplicated contents. It can also be a problem even if the content is found in two of your site’s pages.

You Have Server Problems

Whether it is your or your host’s fault, server issues can cause your site’s search engine ranking to decline. They can prevent search engines from accessing your site and they usually opt to decrease the ranking when they cannot verify the site’s worthiness.

Your Site Has a Malware

It is best to keep your site clean. A malware in even just one page of your site will cause its search engine ranking and traffic to decline. Google can detect malware and can warn visitors even before they reach your site. The warning is a great discouragement for visitors to continue so expect your traffic from search engines to drop.

The Algorithms Changed

The search engines regularly update and change their algorithms. It is a great way to ensure that the users will get the most relevant search result. Three things can happen when algorithms change. First, your site may increase its ranking. Second, your site may get a decrease in its ranking. Third, the sites linking to your site may get an increase or decrease in search engine ranking affecting your site’s ranking.

Like any other kinds of businesses available today, doing business online or focusing on building your own website to generate traffic to earn revenues also has a lot of threats that you should be known of. One of the most common problems SEO has today is hacking. If you are not knowledgeable enough about it you may end up finding your business out of your hand already.

In line of this, here are some of the most common forms of hacking you may encounter in your SEO business:

If you are using new tools or applications like that of Google’s Page Speed Service, you might want to know a thing or two on how you can lessen its vulnerability to attacks. Since this kind of service is one of the latest today, there are not much tests than to it in connection to keeping it away from hack attacks. But the best thing you can do about it is to make sure to know how to clean your code.

You must also beware of attacks if you are using Javascript applications or extensions. This is one of the most vulnerable applications to hacking. You server can also be hacked to if it’s not properly patched or up to date and if it lacks of proper security.

There are many more forms of hacking that you can encounter. Some may totally cause your business to fail!

Hackers can simply penetrate into your system or your website if you lack knowledge on how you can protect your page. Hence, hiring someone or seeking help from a person who’s equipped with enough knowledge and expertise on securing and maintaining your stuff is really a must especially if you are not so technical.

To prevent your SEObusiness from being hacked by other pathetic people out there, you can start by researching and finding out the latest techniques hacker do to infiltrate a system or a website. By familiarizing yourself with these techniques you’ll be able to come up with proper actions and security measures. In line with this, you must be able to find enough time to learn all the things you need to learn in connection to SEO security.

On the other hand, if you can’t endure long hours of researching and you just want to be protected without exerting much effort to do it you can hire an expert to do the job for you. Just make sure to hire one that definitely knows what he’s doing.