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Author: Search Influence

The New Google+ and How To Avoid Getting Your Business Account Suspended
As you all probably know by now, every Google account now has a personal Google+ profile associated with it. A common practice in SEO and setting up a Google Local listing in the past has been to create a Gmail account specifically for business purposes. This generally included using a business name as a First and Last name in the Google account setup. For example, if I owned “Delicious Cupcakes Shop,” the Google account name would be Delicious (First) Cupcakes (Last), not Mary Silva.

What Changed?

Now we’ve learned, however, that with the new Google+ profiles being created for accounts, having a non-human name as your profile is grounds for having your account suspended and your Google services revoked. This includes having your account associated business page removed from search results. If your profile goes more than 60 days under suspension, Google will start to automatically remove your content from their system. Learn more about “Google+ Profile Suspensions” here!

Also, regardless of the Google suspension penalty, having a page with your business name that would now be a public profile would possibly lead to confusion and appear as a sort of duplicate business page. So cleaning up your account name is definitely an essential move to make now.

Even Google has acknowledged that having what they consider an “improper name” will happen, and offer explanation on what happened. They’re clearly aware of the fact that many accounts may have been set up with something other than a person’s name.

What Now?

If you’re like many other business account managers who have set up an account using your business name as the account name, you might ask, “What’s the next step in getting this cleaned up?” Well, it’s actually quite simple! All you have to do is follow the next few steps:

Step 1: Log in to Google at plus.google.com

Step 2: There are 3 circumstances you might encounter after login:

2a: If your account is being accessed for the first time since the Google update that created Plus pages for each account, you will see a form where you will set up the Plus page for your account for the first time. Update the “First” and “Last” name fields with whatever human name you desire.

2b: If your account has already been set up through Google+, then you’ll have to check that the name of the account is a human name and not the business name. Here’s how!
- In the top right corner of your homepage, hover over the user photo and then click “view profile”
- Next, hover over the name and you’ll see that you can “click here to change name”. Update the “First” and “Last”name fields with whatever human name you desire.
Note that for both profiles and pages, Google limits how often you can change them, so choose wisely whenever changing this information in your account.

2c: If the your account has already been flagged/suspended, you’ll see a red banner across the top of your page when you login informing you of the suspension. Follow the same steps for part 2b but you’ll have to check back in 48 hours to make sure Google accepts the changes and removes the suspension. You’ll also have to see if the account has lost Google privileges and respond accordingly.

Hope this has been helpful to anyone who has encountered this issue or has a business account with Google! If you or your business have experienced similar trouble with Google, let us know in the comments!
January 21, 2014
What’s New About the New Google Maps

This week, Google rolled out a new and improved Google Maps! With this update, many are wondering what exactly is different about Maps besides the obvious physical changes.

The new design is focused on providing smarter search results immediately and making the user experience much more effortless. In this day and age, consumer satisfaction is highly driven by ease of use, so an update like this is essential to staying on top of the trends in usability.

Probably the most noticeable change is the way you search. With the new interactive features, you can hover over search results and the map will change to show you those results. This reduces the time spent by users re-searching for what they were looking for because they chose the wrong result.

So far, I’ve found that the new interactive search results change local search opportunities for businesses to a certain degree. When I search the keyword “internet marketing service” maps displayed only three businesses in the search results but also showed a countless number of business results on the local map. On the map itself, the results were shown with two different kinds of red dots. It looks like the bigger dots are results that Google found more relevant to your search.

A new goal of Google Maps is to “get better with use,” so as you search the map, star places, and leave reviews, the map adapts and shows you more relevant results. “…the more you use the new Google Maps, the more helpful it becomes.”

Once you click on the desired result, the map reacts, showing you business information including the hours, location, and the option to go into Street View. They’ve made the new Maps more tailored for getting directions, taking some styles from how the Google Maps Android and Apple apps work. In the past, Street View was something you could access through buttons in the corner of the map or with Pegman, but Street View is now a readily available in your search results.

While we’re on the topic of Pegman, let’s talk about the new features involved with everyone’s favorite little Street View helper. Besides making him a revamped and fun—sort of—Google Maps’ mascot (Today he’s donning a Santa hat!),
they’ve moved the Pegman location to the bottom corner of the map. Also, when you use Pegman, you’ll see new color coded dots and lines indicating where you can enter Street View, “See Inside” some locations, and enter a “Photo Sphere”.

Finally, the new Google Maps is allowing users to submit their own content for Street View, allowing people to share the experience of their favorite and sometimes remote locations. Users have been allowed to share their Photo Spheres since last year, but now these Photo Spheres that once stood alone will be stitched together to create a Street View experience.

Overall, the new Google Maps has created a more pleasing and a much easier experience for Maps users while also making Maps more engaging and fun to use.

Video source of gif and first screenshot here.

December 13, 2013
5 Things You Need To Know Before Performing A Backlink Analysis

Getting lost in the jargon of backlinking research tools is common whether you are new to SEO or have been practicing link building for a long time. However, the number of other sites that link to yours (inbound links) has consistently been a critical factor for search engine rankings. So, naturally there are many tools that allow you to easily perform a backlink analysis on your site—or even a competitor’s site—to find new opportunities.

Popular sites that allow you to do this are OpenSite Explorer.org, LinkResearchTools.com, Ahrefs.com, and MajesticSEO.com, to name a few. There are also search engine sites that allow you to pull backlink reports like Blekko.com and Bing Webmaster Tools (only lets you check sites you own, though). No matter which service you choose to use, you will be faced with a lot of technical jargon that you will have to understand prior to performing your analysis.

So, here are the 5 terms that I feel are most needed to understand in order to perform this type of analysis:

1. Backlink

It seems like the most obvious one, but in order to understand the more complex vocabulary of SEO research you must first truly understand the basics. A backlink is any link from one website to another. Backlinks are also know as “incoming links,” “inlinks,” and “inbound links.” Sometimes the word “citation” is incorrectly used as a synonym, but a citation refers to any mention of a business on the web. This can occur with or without a link and can be the name, phone number, and/or address of the business.

2. Page Authority

This is a metric used by the increasingly popular Moz. Page authority describes the probability of a particular page being found on a search engine. According to Moz.com, “The best way to influence this metric is to improve your overall SEO.” It is not an easy metric to influence directly because it takes into account a varied array of factors.

3. Domain Authority

Also used by Moz, domain authority is a similar metric to page authority, but it measures the probable ranking strength of an entire subdomain or domain instead of a single page. Like page authority, it is hard to directly effect, so it’s best to use both page and domain authority as comparative metrics when doing backlink research.

4. Citation Flow

This is a metric that both MajesticSEO’s site explorer and WhiteSpark.ca’s local citation finder provide. Citation flow is a number that attempts to anticipate a site’s influence based on its link portfolio or number of inbound links. The numbers from this metric range from 0 to 100.

5. Trust Flow

Trust flow is a little bit for tricky to define, but it basically quantifies the quality or “trust” of the links pointing back to a site. For both citation flow and trust flow, the higher the number the better. It seems that a site must have a large quantity of high quality inlinks from pages with good authority to increase these metrics. Google, for example, has a 99 for both citation and trust flow.

Conclusion

As with all SEO efforts, the practices used in backlink analyses are most effective when performed alongside other internet marketing work with the big picture of SEO in mind. Hopefully this has been a good refresher for the more experienced SEO gurus and a foundation builder for some of you newcomers out there.

November 27, 2013
Influencer Spotlight- Rafiq Mandal: Many Sigils, One Purpose

Today I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with fellow production department Influencer Rafiq Mandal and learn a little more about him. One of the most interesting things I learned about Rafiq is that he has a pet bearded dragon named Falcor (for all you The NeverEnding Story fans out there, yes, that’s where it’s from!). Rafiq was born in New York but grew up in Mexico City. He ended up in New Orleans when he decided to go to Loyola University. There, he studied creative writing as an English major and graduated in 2010.

About seven months ago, Rafiq joined the production department at Search Influence as an Internet Marketing Associate. On an average day, Rafiq spends much of his time troubleshooting technical issues with our keyword ranking software, making the keyword software run smoothly. Rafiq also writes, edits, and optimizes content for Search Influence. Rafiq says his favorite part about SI is the relaxed atmosphere and his colleagues: “We’re very open and know how to have a good time, even when things are tough and crazy. My coworkers are what makes Search Influence a great place to work.”

Outside of work, Rafiq, like many other Search Influencers you may have heard about through this blog, plays Dungeons and Dragons. He also runs his own radio show through crescentcityradio.com. His show, “The Music of a Blue Haired Modern-Day Samurai,” airs on Tuesdays from 7-9 p.m. This broadcast features primarily Japanese-rock, Japanese-pop, Korean-rock, Korean-pop, and other Asian-influenced genres. Rafiq also sings in the St. Louis Cathedral choir on Sundays along with his brother who is an opera singer.

I asked Rafiq what neighborhood of New Orleans he most identifies with and why. He said that he’s spent most of his time around Uptown, being someone who was introduced to New Orleans through college. Rafiq enjoys the fact that everything you need to access Uptown is within walking distance, very unlike his life in Mexico City.

Rafiq, like myself, is a huge fan of Star Wars, so I figured I’d close this interview with a pretty tough Star Wars trivia question.

Question:
A member of what diminutive race finds Luke’s cut-off hand and light saber?

Rafiq’s answer:
On first thought, I didn’t think anyone would have it, but I guess it would have to be somewhere on Bespin, the cloud city. So I assume Ugnaughts since they are the only creatures there.

REAL ANSWER?! Ugnaught! Go Rafiq!!

October 2, 2013
5 Ways to Use Instagram for Business and Build Your Social Media Presence

Many businesses, small and large, have started using Instagram as a way to build their brands and online presence. Not only is Instagram an effective and useful way for businesses to promote themselves, but it is also a way to create connections with customers through engaging content. Also, photo sharing through Instagram allows a business to reach customers without an overload of clutter and superfluous content.

1. Employ Hashtags to Increase Discoverability

According to the press page on Instagram, they currently have 130 million active users. In order to captivate this large audience, the use of keywords is essential. It’s been said by many Instagram gurus that using less than three hashtags in a post drastically limits your discoverability. Sites like top-hashtags.com tell you what hashtags are trending and most used at the time, but anything relevant to your content is good to use. For example, a local non-profit organization for music can often use the hashtags #NOLAmusic #NOLAevents #NOLAnonprofits. If you’re a local business in a city with a well known abbreviation, you should always attach this abbreviation to keywords in hashtags in order to target your ideal audience. It is important for all businesses to understand what audience they are targeting on a social media platform like Instagram.

2. Sponsor Contests

Many businesses use Instagram for contests and giveaways. A great example of this is the cruelty-free, handmade cosmetics brand Lush and their giveaway using the hashtag #LUSHtravels. They encouraged users to post a picture of their favorite products for traveling using the hashtag. The contestants with the best photos would win a new set of their favorite products. This not only promoted participation with the brand but also created free publicity and positive reviews for their products.

3. Create Hype for New Products

Another way businesses can use Instagram to their advantage is to excite their audience about upcoming products. A company that does this effectively at the moment is the vegan cosmetics brand, Lime Crime. They are constantly creating new products for their customers, and the last set of new lipsticks they released were so anticipated that their site was crashed by too many orders on the release date. Lately they’ve been posting sneak peeks of a new lipstick color and locations of cosmetics expos where you can try it out before anyone else. Product promotion and sneak peeks are a great way to keep people feeling like they’re in the loop and not missing out on anything.

4. Utilize Cross-Promotion with Facebook

According to Ragan’s PR Daily, 60 percent of major brands, including Starbucks and Nike, are using Instagram. Many of these brands also share their pictures from Instagram on other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Although Instagram dropped Twitter support in December, they have gracefully regained popularity since then. ZOG Digital provided a chart that shows the effectiveness of cross-promotional engagement with other social media platforms. See above.

5. Humanize Your Brand via Engaging Content

Instagram is a great way for businesses to create a personality for their brand. It allows a business to mold the way it is perceived by their customers. A great way to create positive brand recognition is through engaging content like behind the scenes photos and interactive and unique hashtag involvement. The online eyeglasses brand Warby Parker has effectively done the former by showing pictures of their employees enjoying a recent “Field Day” where they show a philanthropic side to the company with relay races for charity. Also, Instagram itself has an exciting hashtag event called Weekend Hashtag Project where every weekend a theme is chosen and the best user photos taken over that weekend are posted the following Monday on the company’s blog. This kind of content makes users feel connected and shows how the product itself can be used to its fullest.

Whether you choose to engage customers or simply promote your content, Instagram is an effective tool to improve your brand and is quickly becoming a necessity for any well known brand.

July 15, 2013