Getting conflicting information about whether the mobile-first indexing change will impact your rankings? Brush up on the different processes behind search results: Mobile-first indexing: Will it change your rankings on desktop? – Search Engine Land
Previously known as Google Local and Google Places, today’s Google My Business has undergone many changes. Google adds new features to businesses listings with each new evolution, and Google My Business posts are another feature improving searches for businesses and users. If you don’t know how to use Google My Business posts, now is the perfect time to start: How To Use Google My Business Posts To Get More Customers – Web Ascender
Jason DeMers writes:
Google wants to make everyone happy. It’s at its most profitable when everyone is happy; when people get what they’re searching for, they’re more inclined to use the search engine, which makes its ads more valuable. When businesses get more visibility on the search engine, they’re more inclined to use it (and eventually pay for that advertising, which is rapidly approaching $100 billion a year).
Accordingly, Google constantly introduces new tools and features that businesses can use to improve their visibility. One of them, Google My Business, promises to help local companies get more visibility (and search engine accuracy) than ever before—but is it worth the effort?
There’s no shortage of SEO tools to choose from, but which ones get results and who’s got time to try them all?
Source: 7 Search Engine Optimization Tools Every Content Publisher Should Know
Looking for questions that demonstrate your expertise? Try the quirky website Answer the Public! It’s fun and it’s awesome…
Source: AnswerThePublic.com: that free visual keyword research & content ideas tool
Mike Blumenthal writes “Yesterday at Streetlight Magazine during David Mihm’s and my conversation he noted: You’ve been banging the drum for the last 12-18 months that for most businesses, Google Is the New Homepage. The reality is most customers are coming into your business digitally with Google as the front door.” Source: Google as the New Mobile Website
Google began indexing and ranking pages on its search engine based on the mobile versions of websites rather than the desktop ones.
Source: Google has made it official: The internet is now mobile-first
Another good article from Mike Blumenthal via BrightLocal:
The Google Q&A feature presents a brand new minefield for business owners to navigate. Here, local SEO luminary Mike Blumenthal shows you how to use Google Q&A for businesses and explains how to counteract the bad while making the most of the good.
Source: Google Q&A: Google’s Newest Knowledge Panel Feature That You Might Just Hate or Love – BrightLocal
5,000 people make seem like a lot to be able to circle, but if you’re serious about using Google Plus to build your personal or corporate brand, eventually you’ll want to get rid of some of the people you followed early on and find the most relevant people in your space to interact with. Enter Circlecount and Circloscope — two great Google Plus tools that go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Here are some of the things I’ve learned with early experiments with both tools.
Click here to listen to Jeff Korhan’s interview with Martin Shervington: Google+ Communities: Amplify Your Content In Search – Jeff Korhan.
Google Plus haters thank you for perpetuating the myth about Google Plus being a ghost town. You’re like a guy with a tiny schwanz posting about how size doesn’t matter! Everybody knows you’re overcompensating for something…
Believe me, I used to be a hater, too! As an instructor in Content Marketing, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media at NWTC, my world was perfect until Google Plus came along. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were all I needed until I learned last fall that Google doesn’t index any of them. Then I got religion. And traffic. And clients. And now thanks to Google Plus, I get higher rating for the word elevation than Bono of U2! Now that’s the power of Google Plus for elevation in seo…
Start your education here:
And continue on here:
https://storify.com/toddlohenry/reasons-why-i-believe
I’ll see you at the top of the serps!!!
The Huffington Post writes:
According to experts, it’s wise to see if the Heartbleed bug has affected the websites you visit most. CNET has compiled a list of the top 100 sites across the web that shows which sites are vulnerable to this bug. When you look at CNET’s list you’ll notice that a password change is recommended for most sites including Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and more.
Before you join the collective groan being heard around the Internet at the prospect of changing your passwords, look at the bright side. This security glitch actually offers parents and their kids an opportunity to share an important and timely “teachable” moment. Why not use Heartbleed as reason to talk to your kids [and adults!] about how and why to make safe and secure passwords in the first place?
via Heartbleed: A Teachable Moment About Passwords | Diana Graber.
Here’s a tip that most of my clients and students love for creating relatively secure passwords that you won’t forget:
Now, for each website where you need a password, use the 3 numbers followed by the name of the website or service you are using and use a capital letter. Follow that with the 3 letters and the special character so that your WordPress password would be something like this:
123WordpressABC!
Like I said — relatively secure and you’ll never forget it — just be sure that your number and letter combinations are relatively random!
Update: April 11…
It doesn’t do any good to change your password in a service that has not been updated to protect itself against Heartbleed because your new password will be subject to the same concerns. Check this list of services that has already been updated and in which you can safely change your password. Other than that, be on the lookout for emails from service providers who are telling you it’s now ok to update your password in their service. Questions? Feedback?
One of my favorite clients is trying to get a handle on how to save things for later in Google+. Here’s a quick pass at a couple of ideas…
Looking ahead to 2014!? Is it too early to think about that already? Not if you’re a content marketer! I mean think about it — most of your competition will spend the month of December partying like the Grasshopper in the classic fable. It’s time to think now about being more intentional with your search engine marketing and social media and decide if you’ll be an Ant or a Grasshopper…
Looking ahead to 2014 I think the content marketing world will fall into two categories; those who are dominating search through effective use of Google Plus and those who are scratching their heads. In which category would you like to be? Don’t get me wrong! All of the basics still apply but now is a great time to review what you’re currently doing and thinking about adding Google Plus to the mix. Here are some thoughts I have on the subject:
Here’s the link to the Traphagan article — and sorry, it was Search Engine Land. By the way, I may turn this into a series depending on the feedback I receive so let me know what you think in the comments!
No doubt about it — I’ve been obsessed with Google+ this month. Here’s a recap of my top posts on the topic in a more or less logical progression…
Perhaps I managed to convince in my previous post that Google+ is a tool you should take a look at. If that’s the case, you might be saying ‘what’s next?’ Here is a small sampling of great resources I am using to help me get my mind around ‘circles’ — one of the most fundamental features of Google+…
Here are some good tools for getting started!
http://storify.com/toddlohenry/google-resources-for-beginners
A few years ago, Eli Pariser did a now famous TED talk on the concept of filter bubbles. Here it is in case you haven’t seen it yet:
Now as a consumer of information this concerns me on some levels but as an internet marketer, it gives me all kinds of reasons to love any tool that allows me to create my own filter bubbles for myself or my clients and to use this to my/our advantage. I have come to believe that the best tool for creating these bubbles is Google+. Here’s Rand Fishkin of Moz talking about how it works:
Here are some of the world’s greatest Google+ practitioners [and Hulk Hogan] discussing how to put Rand’s insights into practice:
Does it work? It’s scary how well it does! If you agree with me that the number one benefit of using the internet for thought leadership is to get found when people are looking for you or what you do, Google+ is now the most important tool for you to understand and leverage. It’s all happening here…
Google+ and Blogger; two Google tools that go great together like [insert favorite food combo here]. I show you how in this video:
One of the powers of YouTube is to create commercials that people actually WANT to watch and distribute while avoiding the constraints of television advertising which most people ignore anyway!
A couple of days ago, Craig Badings of the Thought Leadership blog asked me to complete the following sentence: “Thought Leadership is _______”. My response? Fundamental. As in “thought leadership is fundamental”. Craig asked me if he could post my definition on his site with attribution and frankly I don’t know if it’s because he thought my response was stupid or brilliant or somewhere in between. Let me explain however, what I meant…
At a time in history when almost 90% of people search Google before making a buying decision you need to show up in search in a good way. To me a thought leader is someone who uses the incredible good, fast and cheap tools we have at our disposal to get found when people are looking for what they do, or, in what Google calls the Zero Moment of Truth. They use blogging and social media to attract and retain fans who either buy into their ideas or by their products.
It was Leonardo da Vinci who said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. I maintain that if you aspire to thought leadership there are only two activities you must master: finding and sharing good information. When I teach my college classes, I call this deepening your expertise and documenting your expertise. Any person who aspires to thought leadership has probably done Malcolm Gladwell‘s 10,000 hours of work to gain their expertise but if you want to be a thought leader you must continue to nourish that expertise and stay current on the things that are important in your field of study. That’s what I called deepening your expertise. The second part, documenting your expertise, simply means to use the publishing tools available on the Internet to provide social proof of your work. If you’re a great thinker who aspire to thought leadership that’s all you need to know — hence my statement that thought leadership is fundamental.
I have developed a simple workflow that I call a ‘Me’cosystem which anyone can use to establish a thought leadership position over time. All of the tools are best of breed, free or freemium, and completely cross platform down to the smart phone level. There are nine different activities in which the thought leader must engage and I outline them here:
I’ll be going into more detail in each of these stages later on in the series. Organized efficiently from the beginning to the end of the process, it looks more like this:
And again, I’ll be going into more detail in subsequent posts. All I think you really need to know at this point is that the process really does work and that it’s simple enough and cost-effective enough that even someone who does TED talks can use my system. :-)
Next week I’ll start with the analysis phase in the flowchart. Questions? Feedback?
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Bright, shiny objects! 
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