page rank – Small Business Odyssey

January 6, 2012January 6, 2012

Google +1 Button: Your Road to Increased Visibility

The Google +1 button acts in a similar way to the Facebook ‘Like” button. However, the Google +1 button has more far reaching effects and is likely, in the long run, to impact heavily on the effectiveness of your small business marketing.

The Google +1 button is not just a ploy to challenge Facebook’s ascendancy in social media, it represents a fundamental paradigm shift for Google – from content to people, from page rank to people rank. Google has for a long time ‘branded’ you (given you a ‘value’ ) based on your online content and your connections.

Google +1 Button represents a shift from page rank to people rank

In the days of Google’s Wonder Wheel, Google provided a visual representation of how you were viewed by Google itself and the relationships between you and particular keywords. I have written about this earlier in a guest blog post, Google is Watching You. Unfortunatley Google has dropped the Wonder Wheel but you can see the representation below that Google developed of my friend and colleague, Chef Keem:

Google has recognised that Chef Keem is a leading Squidoo Lensmaster (Giant Squid), that he lives in Austin, Texas and that he shares numerous recipes on his website and on Squidoo as well as via his videos, articles and blog posts. Google even recognized that at the time this Wonder Wheel was created, Chef Keem was establishing a new Bavarian Bistro (see the bottom link on the right of the image). If you ever want to see how to create an effective personal branding campaign, then visit Chef Keem’s Kitchen.

The reality is that Google is moving more and more to giving you and your business a “value” based on how your content is viewed by others and the extent of your associations on the Web. Google has even built up a knowledge bank about you based on your online social connections, e.g. people you are connected to on Google+, Google Reader or Google Talk.

Google +1 in search results

The net effect of all this is that Google will show your +1’s in the search results for people you are connected with. The corollary of this is that when you search on Google, you will see below the individual search results if anyone from your social connections has +1’d the particular search result. The following image gives you an idea of what this looks like:

If I use your cursor to hover over the individual names you will see how each of the people who +1’d the site are connected to you (in this case each is connected to me via my Google Plus Circles).

So the more people you connect with via Google Plus and the more you +1 Web content, then the more visibility you will gain in relation to what you value of the Web. Also if other people reciprocate and +1 your content, you will appear in more and more search results for people you are connected with on the Web. So the +1 button has a spiralling effect if you continue to build your social connections through Google Plus and if you +1 the content of others.

Your Google +1’s on Google Plus

Your Google +1’s are available to you as a stream on your Google Plus profile. The default setting for this is that this list of your +1’s is private. However, you can make it public on your Google Plus profile by changing the settings.

There are a small number of simple steps involved when you are on your Google Plus site:

Click your profile icon
Click ‘Edit Profile” icon
Click on the displayed +1 icon (see image below)
Tick – ‘Show this tab on your profile”
Click “Saved”.

Adding the Google +1 button to your website or blog

There are a number of ways that you can add the +1 button to your website or blog so that people can use the +1 button to recommend your content/site to others:

Use Google’s code for adding the +1 button to your website or blog
Use a WordPress Plugin specifically designed for this purpose

If you are reasonably advanced technically, go for option 1 above. However, using a WordPress plugin gives you greater flexibilty and it may be easier for you to install a WordPress plugin.

To find a WordPress plugin for the Google +1 button, just do a search on Google. When I did this, I came across the following Google result:

Now you can see once again, Google is using my online social connections to show who recommended this plugin. In this case it was Mari Smith, Facebook expert, who is in my Google Plus Circles. Because Mari recommends this plugin and because it is used on reputable sites like Mashable, I chose the +1 button plugin she recommends. You can access the plugin here:

Google +1 Button – WordPress Plugin

You can see this Google+1 button plugin operating on this blog, Small Business Odyssey. The plugin offers different ways to customise the Google +1 button, including adding the button before or after posts or in both positions. You can also add a count of how often the +1 button is used for your website, page or post.

In the final analysis, the Google +1 button gives you the opprotunity to increase your visibilty and to enhance your small business marketing online.

December 21, 2011

Squidoo Has a Special Relationship with Google

Let’s talk about Squidoo and its relationship with Google. Google and Squidoo have some goals in common. For example, they both want original content on websites (lenses) that are frequently updated. They both want quality and not spam. They each want to see the searcher satisfied when they use their respective platforms. One of the goals of the founders of Squidoo, for example, was to create a quality search engine.

Squidoo and Google also have some differences. While both want to generate a profit, one of Seth Godin’s goals in creating Squidoo was to generate $100 Million for charity – hence, the option for Lensmasters to donate their advertising revenue to approved Squidoo charities.

The Professional relationship between Squidoo and Google

Some time past, Seth Godin provided strategic advice on a consultancy basis to Google. As one of the world’s leading Internet marketers, Seth was well placed to do this. He has a million readers a day for his blog, Seth Godin’s Blog. He has also written 10 New York Bestsellers on the topic of Internet Marketing.

However, the relationship is on a professional basis. When Squidoo was attacked by a lot of spammers, Google had no hesitation in downgrading Squidoo to protect their own revenue base derived from quality search results. You can read about this ‘Google Slap’ story on my Squidoo Marketing Strategies lens and see way Squidoo responded to improve its overall quality.

The relationship is back on a sound footing with Google re-establishing Squidoo’s high ranking and value in search results.

How can you help the relationship between Google and Squidoo?

Fundamentally, you contribute positively to this relationship when you create quality lenses that have original content and are updated on a regular basis. When you join Squidoo you effectively sign up to the Originality Pact which I discussed in an earlier post.

The challenge is to maintain the quality and currency of your Squidoo lenses in the face of many other time consuming tasks. This is a tall order if you have a lot of Squidoo lenses. Developing techniques to improve your online productivity can help here. You might like to visit my lens on improving personal productivity for some ideas.

The reward of Squidoo’s relationship with Google

The core benefit from this relationship is that Google values quality Squidoo lenses highly. So once you create a quality lens and update it on a regular basis, you will be rewarded with an improved page rank, higher positioning in search engine results and improved web traffic. I have found that it is much easier to achieve a high page rank from Google with a Squidoo lens than it is with a blog or a website.

It has also been my anecdotal experience too that, since I became a Giant Squid, I have been indexed more quickly by Google.

One of the interesting things is that Google accords each Squidoo lens a page rank different from that of the Squidoo platform itself. Here’s some examples of my lenses:

A. Keyword: squidoo marketing strategies

Lens: http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

Google Results: Position 1

Google Page Rank: 4

B. Keyword: improve personal productivity

Lens: http://www.squidoo.com/improve-personal-productivity

Google Results: Position 2

Google Page Rank: 2

C. Keyword: tropical rainforest walk

Lens: http://www.squidoo.com/tropicalrainforest

Google Results: Position 7

Google Page Rank: 3

These results come from screenshots taken of Google search results with the added information provided by SEO Quake – a free plugin & toolbar for use with Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

The quality of the relationship between Squidoo and Google is dependent on the quality and originality of Squidoo lenses – if you create excellent Squidoo lenses you can expect good page rank and high positions in Google’s search results for targeted keywords.

October 14, 2011October 14, 2011

RedGage: Social Bookmarking with a Difference

Social Bookmarking is designed to create online bookmarks that store information about your small business.

Sites that provide social bookmarking often have a high Page Rank with Google so information bookmarked on these sites can provide quality backlinks to your own small business website/blog. This, in turn, increases the value of your own site in the “eyes” of Google.

RedGage is a social bookmarking site with a difference:

it combines social bookmarking with social networking
enables you to earn a (small) income just from sharing your content
provides bookmarking for images, photos, videos, blog posts, and other web content
provides a blogging platform to enable you to add blog posts on site

When you share your content on RedGage, you can build links to your own online content so that you generate traffic from within RedGage and via Google’s search results.

As with other social networking sites, RedGage provides a “profile” panel where you can add information about yourself and create links to your website/blog.

You could feature your small business products/services through RedGage by way of images, videos, links and by creating blog posts on the site. The blogging platform is really an excellent addition and underutilized by most RedGage members. It has all the edit features you would want and enables you to embed images and videos.

The RedGage community is very supportive and appreciates quality images and uploads. Like other social networking sites, you gain visibility by commenting constructively on other people’s content and by regularly adding your own content.

For more information on RedGage and its marketing potential, visit my Squidoo lenses:

RedGage can be a valuable addition to your social bookmarking and an integral part of your social media marketing.