Boost Your SEO with Social Media

Social signals are a hot commodity these days; without them, your SEO and overall traffic won’t be all it can be. Socials signals are any promotion or mention of your brand or products through tweets, Facebook “likes”, and related blasts. The more you engage your audience in commenting and sharing your social media and content, the better your overall SEO results will be.

Social Media for Business

Both Google and Bing have shown an increasing interest in the value of social signals, making an overall strategic social media plan an essential part of your marketing landscape. Understanding how and why social signals are so crucial to SEO will assist you in planning your overall SEO tactics.

How Social Signals Can Increase Your Rankings
The level of social interaction your customers have with your brand directly and indirectly impacts your SEO clout. Organic search rankings have been increasingly affected by social signals, and while it’s arguable to what degree (and varies by search engine as well), it is abundantly obvious that overlooking this aspect of SEO is flat out foolish.

How do social signals directly impact SEO?
The following are critical:

Google+ Circles – Yes, it’s apparent many folks have challenges with the popularity of Google. The thing is, Google loves its social platform, so if you learn to embrace it too, your SEO results can see a boost. Note that the number of people you have in your own circles is not as important as the number of folks who include you.

Facebook Shares – Get your Facebook followers engaged in your content. How? By creating truly valuable posts, ideally rich in graphics and video.

Twitter Followers and Tweet Mentions – Remember that a bigger audience isn’t necessarily better. You again want a demographic that is engaged and active with your content. Retweets and social mentions are golden – getting folks to write #yourbrand is extremely valuable.

Facebook Likes – Quality over quantity rules here too. 1,000 active followers are better than 2,000 fans who ignore your posts. Engagement is always key.
Social signals increase rankings in an indirect manner too.

Examples of these actions include:

Positive Reviews – If folks are saying nice things about you on sites like Yelp, Google Local, and various prominent blogs, your SEO will show it. In fact, Sam McRoberts of Vudu Marketing says the number and tone of these reviews are two of the three most substantial factors in determining local search. It’s integral that your social media strategy include near real-time responses to users that have issues or questions; many people now use social profiles for brands as their go-to for customer support. These interactions can then assist in your overall SEO results, so make a commitment to be very active in this space. You won’t just see an increase in your rankings through this policy, but in overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Inbound Links – These help increase your visibility and credibility, and have been the darlings of SEO efforts for some time. Matt Cutts, the Google search spokesperson, has repeatedly hinted that links are still SEO-critical. Although some feel this impact has been lessened in recent months, links still should not be ignored. Creating a strong social presence and a website that extends the feeling of credibility and professionalism is your best bet to attracting link support from equally reputable partners.

Advice on How to Improve Your Social Signals
You get it – social is crucial. So how do you increase your social signal power?

Here are some practical tips:

On-site Updates – Make sure your website has oodles of opportunities for folks to share your content. Let them tweet articles, Google +1, recommend, bookmark – you name it. Encourage visitors to follow you on the various social platforms too. Blogs are also essential – they not only give visitors lots of options to share, but frequent high-quality and current content makes search engines very happy.

Updated Social Profiles – Choose only those social networks that actually pertain to your business, and dedicate a member of your team to keeping it current. Profiles should be complete, and monitored daily for comments and questions. Facebook and Twitter are a must, as is a LinkedIn profile. Sites like Vine and Pinterest are hot too, and relevant if your demographic fits the bill.

Integrate Your On and Off-site Efforts – Every time you publish content on your blog or website, you should in tandem alert your social stratosphere. Give viewers the ability to follow you on your social spaces, and to comment as well. You don’t just want eyeballs, you want clicks, comments, and shares. The quality and frequency of your content is essential, as is your willingness to engage in return. Make sure everything you do is reflected appropriately on all your social channels. And please take the time to treat each social network separately – status updates and content shares on LinkedIn, as an example, need to be professional and concise. Facebook can be more informal and wordy, and Twitter is obviously short and sweet. Respect the nature and demographic of each network and your efforts will be rewarded.

All the tactics above will not only increase your SEO rankings, but your brand credibility and reach as well. Focusing on social signals is that proverbial win-win.

How have you seen your SEO impacted by your social reach – either positively or negatively? What tactics do you feel are the keys to success?

Don't Fight With Google!

Promote your business and website naturally on google without resorting to quick fixes or shorcut tricks!

Here’s the problem – Google left the door wide open and people took advantage. This led to great rankings, traffic and, more importantly, money in the bank. People started to rely on the majority, if not all traffic coming from Google and then the rug was pulled from under their feet. This kicked off an almighty struggle with the King of Search, but I’m here to tell you today that it doesn’t have to be a fight. There is another way.

Stop Building Dirty Links
If you’re going to get back into Google’s good books, you need to cease using dodgy link building tactics full stop.

This isn’t one of those situations where you can be half in, half out – you need to move away from dodgy links completely.

Stop Now!

And a word to the wise: dodgy links with generic anchors can only work for so long. Eventually Google will catch you (if they haven’t already). Then, say goodbye to Google sending you any traffic.

Get Rid of Legacy Links that Don’t Fit with Google’s Guidelines
If you have been building nasty links in the past, you need to get rid of them, or at least try to.
It’s a fact: you can’t get rid of them all, but the consequences of not doing this could lead to an algorithmic penalty or even a manual penalty.

You’ll know about a manual penalty in your Google Webmaster Tools account. You will usually see an unnatural links warning message.

If you’ve got an algorithmic penalty, you’ll only notice this when you check your analytics and see your traffic drop through the floor.

You can get a manual penalty (or manual spam action) revoked by showing Google the lengths you have gone to in order to try and remove the links. You’ll usually get a message back from Google within 1-2 weeks.

If you have an algorithmic penalty, you can go through your links, highlight the nasty domains that are linking to you and disavow them, but ultimately you may have to wait until the next Penguin refresh to see whether your rankings come back.

Dance to the Beat of Google’s Drum
Google has a set of quality guidelines that they recommend to webmasters and, when you think about it, it’s all really straightforward stuff. It includes avoiding nasty things like cloaking, hidden text, doorway pages and all that blackhat stuff.

It also involves making your pages for users, adding value and creating unique content.
This isn’t groundbreaking, or even rocket science, and remember that these guidelines are updated as Google continues to evolve along with their search algorithm.

Most importantly, though, when these guidelines are updated, don’t jump to conclusions and don’t make assumptions. This goes for algorithm updates, too.

A lot of people within the industry are being too quick to make up their minds without looking at the data, and these assumptions can often cause more problems than they solve.

Think about the Future and the Big Picture
One of the big mistakes that a lot of people are making is that what works now will carry on working forever.

Before Google’s Penguin update in April 2012, a lot of people thought that blasting nasty links at websites was going to continue working.

Those that looked at the bigger picture, however, could see that those practices were at best a calculated risk, and that Google would eventually bring the boom down and take action on manipulative link building tactics.

Content is what it’s all about, as it has been for a while (that and user experience). While there are a lot of people that struggle to get traction, there are tactics you can use that will get you results.

Don’t Put All of Your Eggs in One Basket
You can understand the temptation, knowing that some websites are getting 100,000′s of visitors a month from Google. While I don’t think you should give up working towards those insane levels of traffic, you can’t just rely on one tactic.

In business, you always need a contingency plan for anything that could go wrong, so you need to be sure to focus on other ways of generating traffic.

Just look at some of the top business blogs. Sure, they may be getting a lot of traffic from organic search, but there are a lot more things you can try:

• Social media
• Contributing to other blogs
• Doing interviews
• Link building (the white hat way)

I’ve found that the best way to figure this ‘traffic generation’ thing out is to not just look for a list of tactics, but look at how people are using them in case studies.

Summary
I understand that there may be some of you reading this post who don’t have any love for Google generally, and don’t like following anything Google says.

I understand why – Google does have a lot of power (too much), and its algorithm updates have the power to shake entire economies.

The truth about the ‘user experience’ thing is that, while Google’s ultimate aim (at a guess) is to stop users from going over to Bing and so protect its advertising revenue… Google is actually on to something.

Where are all those sites that didn’t give a damn about the user experience now?
Nowhere to be seen.

Where are all those sites that thought about user experience and building a community before anything else?

They’re still here and a lot of them are leaders in their field.

So, whether you like it or not, it’s time to get on board with the ‘user experience’ thing.

What’s your take on the current state of search?

For more information on anything you have read in this article please contact the IT Support Experts at Click Networks on 0141 530 9116 or visit our website: http://www.clicknetworks.co.uk  for information about our web services (SEO, Ad Words, Analytics).

See the original article here: http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/11/20/end-fight-google/

Social Media: How Much Do You Really Need to Invest?

Everywhere we look these days, companies are proudly touting their social media presence. Restaurants, car dealerships, ecommerce stores, even paid parking lots – they all want you to “Like” them, and are conceivably spending significant dollars to entice followers. But does social media make sense for every business? Can anyone afford to not be in the game?

The answer is mixed. Yes, everyone needs some social media presence, for reasons we’ll explore, but not every business should be required to spend a great deal of time or effort.

There are key aspects to the social landscape that all businesses need to be mindful of, or risk embarrassment or failure. Yet it seems most business owners think it’s an all or nothing cause. This attitude can waste precious marketing dollars, so read on to see where your business falls in the mix.

 Why Totally Ignoring Social Media is Dangerous


It’s obvious why many business owners would want to shut out the social stratosphere – it’s often filled with high-maintenance customers that only want to complain or score a discount or freebie. Yelp is a particular thorn in the side for many local entrepreneurs, but ignoring the complaints of the masses unfortunately does not make it all go away. Just the opposite, it sounds the alarm.

Let’s put it this way – if the internet has even a small smattering of complaints about your business that have gone unanswered, you’re in big trouble. Negative reviews can live in infamy for many, many years; like it or not, you need to have a staff member that is dealing with customer feedback. Don’t let the web engage in conversations about your company if you’re MIA. Be there, keep the record straight, make good on complaints, and be proactive about staying connected to your audience.

Need more incentive? If you don’t maintain a social media presence for your brand, someone else might do it for you, with highly damaging results. Just ask Exxon. When some clever hackers created a fake Twitter account called “Exxon Cares” this year, their lack of due diligence in watching their brand’s social presence resulted in a major PR coup. The hackers sent a gaggle of sarcastic tweets as a result of the Exxon Pegasus pipeline rupture. Because Exxon took eons to notice, the hackers had a field day, garnering hundreds of followers, retweets, and comments. It’s impossible to gauge how much this hurt Exxon’s image, or what it cost as they attempted to undo the damage, but you know it wasn’t cheap.

Finally, for the sheer sake of SEO rankings, you need to have basic contact and business information on sites like Facebook and Google+. Search engines are giving more and more credibility to social signals, and failing to have at least a minimal appearance can wreak havoc on your search results.
You know who would love it, however, if you did ignore the social space? Your competitors. If they’re working hard to build an audience of loyal customers, they would be honored and thrilled to steal your potential fan base.

 How Much Should You Spend? That Depends On Your Industry.


OK, so it’s clear that the head-in-the-sand approach isn’t beneficial regarding social media. This does not mean everyone should hire a full-time social media expert and go crazy on every single platform. In order to wisely spend your resources, it’s imperative you consider what kind of company you run, and the relevance of social media to your operation.

Let’s talk about some examples. Local businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, mechanics, dry cleaners – just about anyone who offers goods or services that customers regularly need or want, those folks all need a strong social presence. Non-profits are no-brainers too, as is any ecommerce site or fully digital business.

Who doesn’t need to go crazy in the social space? Folks that own niche businesses that customers only reach out to in isolated cases. Like paid parking lots, for example. Likewise, businesses that deal with the darker parts of life. Divorce lawyers. Government agencies. Funeral homes. Have you seen some of these funeral home pages on Facebook? One of them even posted a “business happy hour” (that has since been removed.) Seriously, do they actually think this will entice folks to choose their funeral services during a time of need? It’s bizarre, and frankly, more than a little distasteful.

Again, all of these businesses should absolutely have a basic social presence. The question is whether or not to invest hours and hours a month in creative campaigns and audience engagement. Divorce lawyers need testimonials, they need to be found on search engines – but they do not need to run social contests, to poll their fans, or to post content daily.

Social media is not, despite popular belief, free advertising. Creating a truly engaged and loyal fan base is expensive and time consuming. If it makes sense for your business, you’ll get lost in the media dust if you don’t jump in with full force. But be wise about your words and reputation, or your efforts may produce the opposite effect.

What kind of social media presence have you found works for your business? Have you opted for a “less is more” approach, gone all-in, or ignored it all together?

For more information on anything you have read in this article please call teh IT support experts Click Networks on 0141 530 9116 or visit our website here: http:/www.clicknetworks.co.uk

To read the full article visit:  http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/10/23/social-media-much-really-need-invest/

Facebook Launch Rival to Google Search

Social-media giant wants new tool to keep users on site and grab a slice of sizeable advertising revenue tied to search.

Facebook wants each journey on the web to begin and end on its site. Its first significant move into search is designed to provide all the answers to users' questions: which of my friends like Rihanna? How many of my friends speak German? Which TV shows are my colleagues watching?

Graph Search, which was announced by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, is a clear statement of intent. It is designed for the age of the social web, when internet users spend more time on Facebook or Twitter than they do searching the outside web.

How does it work? Users can search their friends, based on the information they have given Facebook permission to publish. For example, users will be able to quickly find "photos of my friends taken in Paris, France" or "Restaurants liked by friends in London".

Zuckerberg described Graph Search, in typical start-up fashion, as the "beta of version one". But he also described it as the "third pillar" of Facebook, after the news feed and timeline. He later said Graph Search could be a business in its own right – a remark that will prompt anxiety among Google executives.

The announcement – the first since Facebook's disastrous initial public offering in May last year – was strategically timed, ahead of its fourth-quarter earnings call on 30 January. Facebook has already succeeded in lifting its share price above $30. The announcement of Graph Search also comes as Facebook faces questions about whether its growth to 1bn users is petering out. Facebook's UK user total dropped by 600,000 in December, according to data from SocialBakers, a social-media monitoring company.

Nate Elliot, a social-media analyst at Forrester Research, said the graph search announcement was part of Facebook's ambition to keep users coming back to its site.

"Facebook's worst nightmare is a static social graph," he said. "If users aren't adding very many new friends or connections, then their personal network becomes less and less active over time. Terrifyingly for Facebook, that threat is very real. We haven't seen significant growth in the average number of friends per user recently.

"Graph Search seems designed to encourage users to add more friends more quickly. If it means users' personal networks change more frequently, and become more active, then that keeps them coming back to the site – which is vital to Facebook's success. If Facebook and Bing can bring elements of Graph Search to Facebook's web search tool, then that's great. But it's not the point; the point is to keep Facebook users more active within the site."

Facebook was quick to rebut many of the privacy questions that it expects to be raised about Graph Search, which essentially helps to surface photographs or other data which before may have been buried. Graph Search does not make public any information that was not previously public, so users need not rush to change their privacy settings. But some users may be surprised to be presented with photos that they did not know they had been tagged in.

Zuckerberg, a man whose past tangles with privacy still make him visibly nervous on stage, spent longer talking about privacy safeguards than at any other Facebook announcement I have seen. That may be a symptom of Facebook becoming a public company, or it could simply be a sign that it is simply growing up.

Whatever the cause, the prize for getting graph search right first time is very real: search makes up the largest portion of digital advertising spending in the US, up from $15.1bn in 2011 to $17.58bn in 2012. And which company commands 74.5% of that $17.58bn ad spend? Google.

Read the full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/15/facebook-graph-search-google-user-decline or contact the IT Support Experts at Click Networks today, visit our website: http://www.clicknetworks.co.uk/  

Google aims to lure '90% of Microsoft Office users'

Google is looking to lure 90 per cent of all Microsoft Office users to its Google Docs offering.
In an interview with AllThingsD, Google vice president and head of enterprise, Amit Singh (pictured), said that Google will step up its pursuit of business users.

"Our goal is to get to the 90 per cent of users who don't need to have the most advanced features of Office," he said.

The remaining 10 per cent of "advanced" users will continue to use the desktop version, he suggested.
Singh went on to explain that although Google Docs already coexists with Microsoft Office, the company is working hard to improve integration.

"In Q3, if you import from Excel into Sheets, you won't be able to tell the difference in Sheets. We know the gaps between our features and [Microsoft's]. We're improving them week by week," he explained.

Singh claimed that Microsoft's approach to its cloud offering was to increase the cost to its customers. He also claimed that Microsoft's overall market share had declined.

"Enterprise is the place where they are holding on. People are showing up at the office and bringing their own devices and expecting their employers to support them. And with Windows RT, there is no backward compatibility with all the apps. That's the first time that has happened in Windows. The Windows 8 move, they have done what they need to do, but it's fairly disruptive. SkyDrive is coming. SharePoint needs to integrate with Yammer. So, change is coming whether you like it or not," he said.
Google's rivalry with Microsoft in this area ramped up in 2012, with both vying for enterprise customers with infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings in Compute Engine and Azure. Google had introduced Drive to enable users to store documents in the cloud and in response, Microsoft launched a similar service dubbed SkyDrive.

In late September, Google said that it would stop allowing users to save and export Google Docs files created using older 1997 to 2003 Microsoft Office formats from October 2012.

But due to a backlash, it subsequently gave users until 31 January 2013 to make the transition.
Google then announced that Google Apps, which includes Docs, would no longer be offered free to enterprise users. This suggested that users would have to make a choice between paying for either Microsoft Office or Google Apps.

Most recently, Google revealed that it had no plans to develop dedicated apps for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 for its business products such as Gmail or Drive – even though the firm remains committed to improving and updating its iOS products.

Read more: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2233437/google-aims-to-lure-90-per-cent-of-microsoft-office-users#ixzz2HHK5JP6g
Computing - Insight for IT leaders

What tablet to buy this Christmas?

We start with Microsofts Surface’s 1366 x 768, 10.6in IPS LCD screen which may only boast a pixel density of 148dpi but its 16:9 aspect ratio is shared with most laptops and TVs so you feel right at home from the off. This is a tablet that unashamedly delivers a PC experience, which I take to be A Good Thing. With an Nvidia Tegra 3 under the bonnet, a choice of clever attachable keyboards-cum-covers, a built-in kickstand, a proper USB port and an SD slot good for cards up to 64GB, it’s a device both powerful and versatile.

And don’t forget, the Surface comes with Microsoft Office pre-loaded. That’s the sort of productivity offering you just don’t get with Android or iOS.

On the downside, at £400 it’s not cheap; the OS takes up a huge chunk of the advertised storage space; both the Touch and Type keyboards are optional extras; there’s no GPS; and the Windows RT app store is close to empty at the moment.

Even the most devout fan of Android would have to concede that it has failed to repeat its smartphone success in the tablet arena but in the second half of the year Google came out swinging to try and fix that.

In the summer, it launched a Tegra 3-based 7in, 1280 x 800 tablet at a staggeringly low price. The Google Nexus 7 immediately won friends thanks to it’s powerful quad-core processor, excellent IPS LCD screen and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS, which debuted on the new tablet.

Just last month, the 16GB version dropped to £159 replacing the 8GB model yours truly bought, while a 32GB 3G device was also introduced at a very reasonable £239. The price changes have made something that was already very attractive even more so.

Being a Nexus 7 owner I’ll admit to a bit of bias here, but for gaming, e-book reading, web browsing, watching HD video - the stuff most of us do on our tablets most of the time - the Nexus 7 is hard if not impossible to beat.

How to trump that? Easy. Launch a 10in version with a screamingly fast dual-core Cortex A15 chip, a higher than hi-def screen and charge £319 for the 16GB version. That would be the Samsung-made Google Nexus 10 then.

The standout feature of the Nexus 10 is the 2560 x 1600, 300dpi screen, which clobbers even the “retina” 264dpi Apple iPad 4 in the pixel density stakes. I defy anyone to gaze at the Nexus 10’s screen, or listen to the sound from its front-facing stereo speakers, and not be thoroughly impressed.

It’s lighter and thinner than the iPad 4 too and more pleasant to hold thanks to it’s rounded shape. Probably harder to sue, too, for that same reason. If you want a 10in tablet for media consumption, this is the one you should buy.

Both Nexus tablets offer one sign-in syncing for your Picasa photographs, Google-bought books and movies, Google Docs and Drive content. This is cloud integration second to none. And don’t forget that Google Music has now arrived in the UK so you can upload 20,000 songs into the cloud too. And all for free.

For more information on any of the tablets mentioned in the article please contact our IT experts either call us on 0141 530 9116 or email at info@clicknetworks.co.uk for more IT support in or around Glasgow.

Read the full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/

Google Nexus launch event delayed by Hurricane Sandy

Google's Android event planned for New York yesterday afternoon has been cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy but Microsoft will launch Windows Phone 8 in San Francisco this evening. 

 The event was expected to be the announcement of a new Google Android handset, the LG-made 'Nexus 4', as well as at least one new Android tablet and, possibly, an update to the Android operating system.

 The event was due to be held on the west side of Manhattan at 10am local time but with Hurricane Sandy approaching the east coast of the United States, Google has been forced to cancel the event. In a statement, it said: "We are cancelling our Monday morning event in New York due to Hurricane Sandy. We will let you know our plans as soon as we know more. Stay safe and dry, The Android Team.”  

The cancellation gives Microsoft the opportunity to focus all attention on its Windows Phone 8 launch event in San Francisco this evening. Though some manufacturers have shown off Windows Phone 8 handsets already, details of the operating system have not been fully revealed. Microsoft is expected to do that this evening. 

 Some details of Google's planned announcements appear to have leaked over the weekend. On Friday, Carphone Warehouse published a page on its website that gave details of the Google Nexus 4 handset.  

Google was also expected to have planned to announce a new, 10-inch Nexus tablet at today's event. Over the weekend, pictures were published online purporting to show a Samsung-manufactured 10-inch tablet. The tablet would join the Asus-made Nexus 7 tablet that Google launched in the summer. 

 For the full article read it here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9640311/Google-Nexus-launch-event-delayed-by-Hurricane-Sandy.html

For more information about tablets, cloud technology and IT Support Glasgow visit the Click Networks website: http://www.clicknetworks.co.uk 

Google: A Look Inside its data centers

As part of an effort to build appreciation for how it actually runs online services like search, Google is showing off its massive computing resources.

Google only rarely gives outsiders a look at its data centers, but today it's trying to make up for lost time with a large online photo gallery and Street View tour of the computing hardware.

The company launched a new site, "Where the Internet Lives" with a lot of eye candy for people who enjoy racks of computer gear, raised-floor ventilation systems, multicolored cables, and massive air-conditioning chillers. Urs Hoelzle, Google's senior vice president for technical infrastructure, announced the site in a blog post today.

It's short on details for those who want to eye Google's servers up close, but there are some glimpses in the accompanying video about Google's data centers and in a view from last year.
But to a certain extent, Google's individual servers are beside the point. They may be a fundamental computing unit to ordinary people, but Google thinks at much larger scale. Several jewels in the company's software crown -- MapReduce, the Google File System, and Spanner, for example -- are designed specifically to run on massive clusters of machines and to keep on running even when individual servers fail.

Superficially, Google's custom-built servers look similar to the one unveiled in 2009, though: computing components bolted or strapped to an open-topped piece of sheet metal. Steve Jobs might have cared about the aesthetics of his computers' innards, but for Google, the highest calling is the most purely economical and functional object.

Showing off the data center is smart move for a couple reasons. First, it could help outsiders value an operation at Google that's under increasing scrutiny for consuming tremendous electrical power in an era when enlightened companies are supposed to minimize their impact on the environment. Second, it could trigger some ooh-aahs among people who've begun to take Google's truly impressive computing achievements for granted.

It's something Google can genuinely brag about. The company gets grief for alleged privacy invasions and monopoly abuse, but the company has earned respect when it comes to running a colossal computing operation. Not for nothing do people joke that Skynet is most likely to become conscious within Google's infrastructure.

 Article via c|net

Enhance your website through Microformats & Google Rich Snippets

Microformats and rich snippets allow you to enhance your website in the SERP's (search engine result pages) and indirectly increase your clickthru rates and visitor traffic. Over the past year, search engines such as Google have started using Microformats to enhance their search results for users. Let’s look at how this can work with reviews, people and events.

Reviews




You may have noticed in Google's search results product reviews appearing before the rest of the search result listings. Sometimes these reviews feature star ratings. Google calls such listings ‘rich snippets’, which are most often based on the hReview microformat standard. If you have product reviews on your website, hReview gives you the opportunity to mark up single user-generated reviews and an overall score of multiple reviews. In the image above, reviewer name and date of review can also be included in the search result.

More information on how Google uses the hReview microformat

People



If you have searched for a collegue or friend in Google before you may have noticed that sometimes their name, location and job title is in the SERP's. These results are rich snippets that Google uses based on the hCard microformat standard.

hCard is dedicated to marking up data that describes contact and social networking information. hCard can describe names, job titles, locations and the name a person is associated with.

More information on using the hCard microformat from Google


Events



Some website's like The List, have event information displayed in Google's SERP's. This is because they have marked up their events data using the hEvent microformat standard. hEvent describes information such as event location, start date and time, and event name.

More information on using the hEvent microformat from Google


Benefits of Microformats

Microformats benefit the search engines in that it enables them to understand the data they collect more semantically and to easilly extract this data and incorporate and syndicate it across other contexts and mediums. This means they are able to deliver more relevant and timely results faster and easier to the end user.

Microformats also enable website's to distribute their content more effectively and thus indirectly gather more visitors through increased click-thrus to that data. If you are a website with lots of information on reviews, people or events then you should consider investing the time to convert your existing data to a microformat that will have a real effect on the bottom line of your business and give you a major advantage over you competitors in the SERP's.

Google do not accept all website's that have rich snippet microformat data, but are instead reviewing sites on a case by case basis. To be included in Google's rich snippet SERP, they recommend webmaster's submit their website's for review through this form.

If you would like to find out how Clicknetworks can help your company or organisation enchance its online presence and gain more traffic through microformats and rich snippets then simply contact us.

Google Caffeine and its impact on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

There has been a lot of buzz recently in the blogosphere about Google's new planned search architecture update codenamed "Caffeine". This new architecture has been designed to return results faster and to better deal with rapidly updated information from social media services including Facebook and Twitter. Google claims that the new search tool will improve the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search.

In the latter half of last year developers were given a preview opportunity to test out the new search architecture in the Google Caffeine Sandbox. Our initial testing showed that the new search update was very quick returning results in around half the time of the current setup. Other differences we noted was the impact upon search engine optimisation which seems to focus more on heavier keyword weighting and the importance of the domain's age.

So when is Google Caffeine going live?

There is a lot of speculation on blogs that Google Caffeine is live on around 80% of data centres. Unfortunately, there has been no official confirmation from Google yet that the new service is live, however some users will note a different Google search and results interface and some website owners will notice a shuffle in their rankings.

Ensuring your website does not lose its current ranking

We suggest that website owners and SEO specialists should take notice of Google’s rules in Webmaster Central to ensure they do not lose their rankings in the search results for major keywords. More specifically we suggest the following:

1. Do not copy other website’s copy. Google now checks for duplicate content and will penalise site’s with similar text content. Obviously, the website that has been online the most will contain the original content and won’t be penalised.

2. Do not duplicate the same content over and over again through doorway pages on the same domain. Your website may be flagged for duplicate content and you might lose significant positions for all your major keywords.

3. Do not hide keyword text or provide different results for Google other than what a normal user would see. Google has made it algorithm more sophisticated recently to catch out people who abuse the system. Exceptions to this rule can include tabbed content. As long as the content can be opened and closed by a user script this should not be a problem.

4. Do not link to suspected link farms or site’s which seem to be setup only for the purpose of obtaining a better Page Rank.

5. Do not Spam the Open Directory or Yahoo Directory with multiple listings for the same URL. Google does take into consideration whether a site is indexed with ODP and Yahoo and awards a higher weight for sites that have been included. Yahoo informs us that they are currently in the process of weeding out and penalising sites that have attempted to bypass their one URL policy. Those websites that have multiple listings in Yahoo may very soon find out that there domain has been permanently banned.

We advise all our clients to play by the rules. Yes there are unscrupulous SEO companies out there that will perform black hat techniques to get their client’s website to the top of Google, but for how long will their shady techniques last? I suspect not long as the major search companies perform ever more sophisticated checks to ensure the quality of their indexes. Matt Cutt’s from Google tells us that the single most important thing for webmasters to ensure good future rankings for their website in Google, is to provide high quality original and engaging content for their key audience. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

HTML5 for today right now - It's a DOM thing ok!

Last week I brought up the question of whether it was ok to start developing and authoring sites in the still being devised markup language of HTML5. Today I will talk about which tags you can start using now in your web apps to future proof them for the future.

The vision and aim of HTML5 as mentioned in my last post is an attempt to make structured data more semantic (carry more inherent meaning inside of it) which will allow more advanced processing of the data than is currently possible with other doc types such as HTML4 and XHTML.

Apparently, when developing the HTML 5 spec, the editor, Ian Hickson of Google, analyzed over a billion web pages to find out how authors were actually using these elements. He discovered that in the top 20 class names used in the markup for this huge set of data were classes for common requirements: footer, header, nav, menu, content, and main.











So the foundation of the HTML5 markup spec consists of the following new tags which allow us to markup our website or blog in more meaningful ways:

• header


• footer


• nav


• section


• aside


• article

Now even though not every browser supports these tags at the moment, there is no reason why you can't start using them now to future proof your documents for the next wave of development. Whilst Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera provide limited support, again Internet Explorer provides almost nothing (no surprises there from Microsoft).

So the way to get IE8, IE7 and possibly IE6 to start recognising and parsing these tags and therefore enable the ability to style them via CSS, is to introduce the tags into the DOM via the use of a tiny and non-intrusive linked javascript. Then we can add style rules—floating, background colors, margins. This one line piece of code introduces the following tags into the DOM: abbr, article, aside, audio, bb, canvas, datagrid, datalist, details, dialog, eventsource, figure, footer, header, hgroup, mark, menu, meter, nav, output, progress, section, time, video.. Once in IE's DOM the browser recognises them which allows you to style them even though actual functionality for that element and attribute may not work, which means that you can start developing for the other browsers and at the same time enable backwards compatibility for IE as well as forwards compatibility for IE9 which apparently is being shipped with some support for HTML5. For more information, discussion and comments about this HTML5 DOM script please see: http://remysharp.com/2009/01/07/html5-enabling-script/

Alternatively you can use a script in the head of your document which enables you to call only those tags you wish to use:









So start authoring your docs in HTML5 today and future proof your sites whilst getting ahead of the competition. Although there is no evidence as yet that Google is making any meaningful sense out of the new tags, there is ample evidence to suggest it is wise to be prepared for the change in the algorithim when it happens for SEO purposes.

Next week I will go into more detail about HTML5 and even introduce some new ideas about how you can use Microformats and rich snippets to enhance your website, synidcate its content and improve your ranking and overall brand in Google and Google Maps all at once and at the same time.