It appears it’s no longer enough for local businesses to be ranked well in Google search engine results but now it’s of even more importance to be listed in the results of Google Places. With 97% of consumers searching on line for local businesses it’s important that your business be there.

It’s easy enough to get listed in Google Places. Using an existing Google account for your business, go to Google Places and set up your Google Map listing…for free! If you’re not sure if you already have one, just type in your business phone number and your question will be answered. Once you are registered, you get to work towards better ratings on the Places page and we’ll tell you what that involves.

Google ranks its results on the Places page based on relevancy. The most relevant are those listings that have the most activity associated with them via citations, reviews and user content. For those who don’t know, citations are any mention of your business name, address, and phone number anywhere on the Internet that Google travels. When Google crawls content across the web and finds a citation for your business they give you a point. Those with the most points go to the top of the list. It’s as simple as that.

All citations are not created equal though so it’s important to get citations from sites that Google values highly for your type of business. Don’t know what those are? Let InterCoastal Net Designs bring you to the top of the Google Places results. The SEO professionals at ICND know how to speak the language of Google and look forward to working with you.
 

As if Social Media isn't new and exciting enough, there's lots of things going on recenetly and soon in the social media world.  Not only will it shed some light on your efforts, but also integrating more and more with your other marketing mediums especially, Search Engine Optimization.

Facebook just announced that their new insights/analytics is being released for Facebook pages tomorrow, October 6th, 2011.  For our clients, we'll be reviewing your insights more this month and providing you some more detailed information about our successes with our new Social Media Specialist, David Hutnik.

If you haven't seen anything about the new Facebook insights, here's a quick blog on it:  http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/10/03/people-talking-about-this-page-insights/

Impacts on SEO
Squidoo is launching magazines.  We use Squidoo for our SEO efforts to build content supporting your popular keyword phrases we're targeting on your site.  Just recently, they've become #73 in the top websites surpassign Hulu, NBC, or Digg. 

By launching online magazines, Squidoo will give us more power to publish our online content supporting your site and should have a great impact on supportive PR for SEO purposes.

Google+ button is a pretty huge success - A couple Key Announcements:

 "Since introducing the +1 button earlier this year, we now have more than 5 billion impressions on publisher sites a day." Nick Fox, VP of Product Management at Google

And on the enhanced search ads marketing website, the company claims: Our +1 button is being served 2.3 billion times a day all over the web.

That's incredible impressions of the new Google +1 button.  It is so important you jump in the game now and get this implemented on your site.  Give us a call if you still don't have it.  If we just put it in your header we can implement it in less than an hour.

Last but not least - Facebook is launching the new "timeline" profile, which I'm sure you've heard about.  Facebook is testing it out on some profiles so you may already see it,  but it should be rolling out to everyone soon.  It was pushed by a week by the court as there is a potential issue with the "timeline" name and a small Chicago based company.

Also, Facebook is launching their new “Gestures” which means that developers can turn any verb into a button.  Instead of "liking" something, we will start to see "booking", "watching", "listening", etc...  We'll be leveraging this for our customers as well.

Couple new Facebook Stats:
1)  Facebook has now hit 800 Million users adding about 50 million since July; and most are considered active.
2)  Facebook just saw a new record for the most visitors in one day: a ridiculous 500 million!!

If you haven't taken advantage of our Social Media services, now's the time.  Give us a call or contact your account manager for further details!
 

Now you don't have to wait for a website to put the Google +1 on the site  (though it's our expert opinion that you should).  Google just announced "+1 a web page, anywhere you go on the web."



Right now the button is only available for Google’s Chrome browser and there have been no indications as to when it may show up on other browsers as well.

Google+ is the next big social network released by Google and poised to be a major threat to its’ much larger rivaled competitor, Facebook.  While Facebook has accumulated an incredible 750 Million users in the last 7 ½ years and Twitter has reached over 200 Million registered users in 5 years, in just 2 weeks Google+ has jumped to over 25 Million users.  Further, it’s not even open to non-Gmail users or to brands yet!  So why should your business jump on the Google+ bandwagon? …because it’s not a trend, it’s major shift that will affect where your customers and potential customers spend time online.

Let's face it, Google is an internet powerhouse and they create the best platforms.  The term “Google it” has become a commonly used house-hold phrase for “Google.com”.  As the #1 most popular search engine (by far), can you guess what #2 is?  It's YouTube, also owned by Google.  Blogger is one of the worlds most popular blogging platforms and Android is the most widespread mobile operating system... all owned by Google.  The most popular rss reader is “Google Reader”; and I can go on and on!  Gmail, Maps, Chrome browser, Analytics, Docs, News, Calendar, Buzz, Talk, Adwords, Translator, etc... all extremely successful tools owned by Google.  So why all of the Google Talk? (no pun intended) Google's new social network Google+ will be the future of Social Networking.

Let me compare the 3 big game players in social media right now.  This graph describes a few common features and how they relate to each other.  Privacy is one of the biggest concerns with Facebook users and this graphic also touches on that as well.


As you can see, Google+ might be a little more tricky to understand right now, but it certainly makes things better in the long run with privacy.

With its' 25 million users so far in just a few weeks, they are making huge strides in functionality and features every week.  They recently reported the introduction of gaming, which is a huge part of Facebook, and Google just announced this week that it will be re-introducing their real-time search feature with Google+.  If you're a brand that wants to stay ahead of the curve in social media and leverage it for your business, here are just a few reasons why you need to jump in NOW:

Search
Google owns search and that plays a huge role in how people find you online.  If Google owns search, don't you think it'd be crazy for this search giant to not have benefits for Google+ brand pages?  It's specualtion at this point, but they will definitely be searchable and integrated with real-time searching.  Possibly a call-out in search results like a colored box or a simple priority placement.  Regardless, there are sure to be major benefits for brand pages when it comes to search results on Google.

Advertising
Google is fully prepared to support this platform with its Google Display Network, AdWords and DoubleClick advertising products.  There are tons of optimal ad placement for brands.  Also, with all of the video capabilities, rich media ads are sure to be a key enhancement over Facebook ads to give brands better opportunities and deliver a strong message.

Statistical Information
It seems inevitable that Google will integrate its analytics tool into Google+ brand pages for the valuable insights into who their fans are, what content they're consuming and where they're coming from.

What can you do NOW to be prepared?
First, you could jump in with our other social media packages to become fully immersed into the social atmosphere.  We have some incredible packages that are helping other clients engage with fans and build this online presence.  As a current social media client with us, you will get priority rights to a new Google+ brand page when it becomes available.

Also, getting involved with our social media team, you will get all of the updates about this platform including assistance in setting up a personal profile and a white paper on how to enhance your personal Google+ page.  If you have a personal Gmail account, contact our team to see how we can help you get into this new platform now so that you are prepared to get your brand page started right away.

What to expect and what to see in 2011...

Hotels

In the first quarter of 2010, RevPAR increased around the world with the America's being up 5.3% according to Smith Travel Research (STR).  In 2011, the growth is on trend to continue across the globe. It's obvious that, although today’s bookings aren't quite where they were at during the pre-recession days, the industry is slowly managing to crawl out of its slump.  Which is good news for all of us!

Travel Industry:

With so much inventory on the market for rentals, competition remains strong and customers are becoming increasingly selective as they can.  In order to take advantage of the upward trend, travel operators will need to be increasingly flexible in not only marketing their rooms, but determining what price their customers are willing to pay.  Vacationers have a wealth of comparative pricing information at their fingertips with portal sites, ensuring that they won’t book if a hotel or vacation rental's pricing is too high. More and more, even a few dollars can make the difference between a customer booking and not booking with a property or company.

This year it will be more important to stay on top of your game in the online marketing arena and companies who do so and put their budgets into online marketing will reap the rewards in 2011 more so than any other year we've seen thus far.  Gone are the days we'll be able to rely on direct mailings and a few postcards and we'll need to take every avenue to stay on top of the trends in online marketing.

Think about how Google's $700 million takeover of ITA Software, which will not only make the internet powerhouse a serious operator in the travel business, it will also rewrite the rules for bookings. As Google keeps its hooks in every inch of the internet, it will seed its travel offerings throughout the online space. It's very possible that starting as early as this year, web surfers logged into Gmail will be able to plan and book their entire vacation with a few mouse clicks inside the Google web ecosystem, making it much easier to do from anywhere, while on the go.

Mobile will also take a bigger role in 2011 than in 2010.  Check your Google Analytics and pull last years data with mobile users compared to 2010.  2011 will be even stronger.  Customers, particularly, business travelers, will make even more booking while on the road or in the air and as close as while sitting on the boardwalk outside of the hotel while sipping on a tropical cocktail.  They have the chance to wait until the very last opportunity to grab the last minute deals in an arena where there's tons of inventory left and we're fighting for every dollar.

To top it all off, vacationers will be using more and better smartphone apps to sniff out available rooms and, crucially, the best prices on those rooms and rentals. According to Priceline, 58% of customers with mobile devices made their booking within 20 miles of their hotel where they ended up staying. More impressively, 35% of those polled were within one mile when they clicked on the “reserve this room” button.


Consumers have the power

We've been preaching it for years, but the recent boom in rooms and houses available to rent, along with the advanced OTA's and their ability to dominate the search engines, topped with the technology of smart phones and on-the-go research sets up an interesting arena for 2011.  Driving your customer loyalty with programs and customer relationship marketing strategies will play a crucial role in this years marketing.  A huge development just taking place has been American Airlines pulling form Orbitz and subsequently being dropped by Travelocity.  American Airlines now relies on their own website to deliver the marketing message that they will find the best deals with AA.  Even though they are driving down prices, they avoid the costs of placement and fees with the OTA's.  Travel leaders will need to find their own solution to optimizing their bookings OTA's as well as their own websites.   Increase customer loyalty through programs and interacting with social media.


Social Media

With Facebook taking the lead over Google and other powerhouse websites at the end of 2010, we'll see a huge shift in the involvement of Social Media in your overall marketing mix.  Sooner rather than later,  the travel industry will find a way to book within Facebook and need to plan accordingly, before they lose out on valuable social media bookings.

Local Search – Make Sure You Claim Your Listings!

In a sea full of big fish, you want to make sure that you brand is protected.  One way to do that is to optimize your local search listings.  Beyond Google and the major search engines (Bing Local and Yahoo Local), here are some other useful places to be sure to claim your listing and optimize for your business name and specialties:

Facebook and Twitter Places – Above Facebook and Twitter fan pages for your business, you need to make sure that your Social Media pages for Facebook and Twitter are also included in the Facebook and Twitter Places so that your business info is available via mobile Facebook check in.  Also Twitter is experimenting with this feature so be sure to update your info at Localeze.

Location Based Social Media – Be sure to have a social media presence and business listing information located on all the social media sites that allow mobile users to check in such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

Local Search & Business Directories – There are many local search site directories throughout the internet that get a significant amount of traffic for local search.  Making sure you have an optimized listing on these sites can add traffic to your site for people looking for you or businesses like yours.   Some of the top directories we recommend you claiming your listing would be:
 

•Merchant Circle
•Local.com
•Superpages.com
•Yelp
•YP.com
•Intuit’s Business Directory
•Magic Yellow
•ShowMeLocal
•WhitePages.com – Business Search
•Yellow USA
•Yellowbot
•BOTW Local
•Boulevards
•CitySquares
•Get Fave
•Kudzu LocalLife
•Mojopages
•OpenList
•Tupalo

 
The benefits of optimizing these listings are many:

•Branding – when someone types in your company name your results show and link directly back to your site

•Online Reputation Management – by monitoring these listings, you’ll have instant access to positive and negative reviews about your business.

•Inbound links – having information and quality links back to your site helps build credibility to the search engines

•Increased traffic – These smaller directories account for 10-20 million monthly local search queries.  Having a presence will increase your traffic to people looking for businesses like yours in the area.

For more information about claiming your listings or to get help with this, contact us at info@icoastalnet.com.

Over the week we have noticed that Google has had another algorithm change where you may notices that on some searches, your internal pages are ranking over your homepage.  This has been on of the many algorithm changes noticed in the past month. 

As the search engines rank content they are looking to find the top sites that have the best content and deserve to rank well and base the ranking on their popularity and content.  However, rather than ranking the homepage that may give an overview of the company, they are ranking internal pages based on what page is the most relevant to the performed search.  Over the next few months, there will be a lot of testing going on to see how searches respond to these changes. 

Have you noticed the recent changes to Google Search?  Google Instant - a new feature that tries to predict what you are searching for and shows results as you type. It uses Google’s autocomplete technology to show predicted search terms in a drop-down box, and begins to display search results below the drop-down before you even hit the search button.  Faster searches, faster results.

It does, however, omit pre-typing and showing searches that Google deems inappropriate.  It omits typing for you suggestions that may be pornographic in nature.  So if you looking for nude pictures of celebrities you'll have to type that all in yourself!  Or if you are Google-ing the color Fuchsia to expand your 3 year-old vocabulary you don't have to worry about what other popular searches beginning with Fuc would be...

Thank you Google.  But don't worry.  If you really want to search for dirty stuff you can always just type it in.  It won't stop you!

For full article and more information, check out Search Engine News: http://www.searchenginenews.com/se-news/content/search-engine-strategy-and-optimization-updates-for-january-2010#2

To help get set up in Google's Local Business contact ICND today.

A few months ago Google released a video demoing their revolutionary product, Google Wave. It promises to be everything Google is as a whole, all rolled up into one easy to use interface, not to mention make email obsolete. That's a pretty big promise, and if anyone can accomplish something so huge it's Google.

If you watched the entire hour and twenty minute video or read anything about Wave, you know a little about what it's capable of, but even so, you probably weren't one of the lucky folks to make it into the beta to test the software. That's where we come in.

First logging into Wave, I'll admit, was overwhelming. We had all watched the whole demo video, and I felt I understood the interface and how it worked. The good news is that the overwhelming feeling goes away pretty quickly. If you're like most and have a Gmail account, you'll notice that the interface is set up to mimic the Gmail interface.

In the center of interface is the Wave inbox. This is just like your inbox in your email, with the subject of the wave, and the icon or avatar of some of the people in the wave. On the left side of the interface will be a link to start a new wave. This will open a window to the right of the inbox one where any current wave you are interacting with will be. From here is where the magic all happens. Also note these windows are collapsible so you can maximize your screen real estate with what you are currently reading or maybe just hide your inbox during a meeting to stay focused.

Basically Google will allow you to do just about anything you could think of inside of a wave, and this is why it has the potential to be the biggest thing to happen to the Internet since...well since email. The wave combines Gmail, Gtalk, Google documents, Google maps and probably some other Google things that I can't remember.

That means if you want to send an email, instant message, directions with a map, or create an entire collaborative presentation or document that everyone can edit in real time - you can do it all with a wave. Plus, you can drag and drop photos from your PC, or Google image search and you can even embed YouTube videos straight into the wave. Sounds like a lot of content to suddenly fall into if you get added to a wave late. Google thought of that and made it possible to use what that call a playback ability to see the progression of the wave from the beginning - edit by edit.

Of course the ability to install extensions means that Google Wave has unlimited potential. Right now there are only a few basic extensions created for the beta, like a yes/no/maybe chart for decision making with your friends, a weather extension, and a couple map and trip builders. The most basic, but probably the most convenient is the Google Search extension that comes by default. Anything you search within this small window can be inserted into the wave for others to see.

The most amazing of the extensions Google has in the works though, is the universal translator. Though it's not quite complete, Google did demo it in the video, and it did allow them to translate from one language to the next in real time, and with Wave's ability to display all sorts of characters, the language possibilities are seemingly endless. Though, there are also some addons for things like prettying your code so you can share HTML/MySQL/PHP/etc. code while developing and have it look nice and be color coded. There are so many possibilities with the bots/addons that can be created we are all very excited.

We're very impressed with the ambition and the ease of use of the program. The Google design team has thought of almost everything when it comes to things like drag-and-drop, which makes the program so much easier to use. As a challenge, we tried to figure out how many different ways we could do the same action within a wave. (I'm not sure we've named a winner yet.)

It's important to mention that some news has come out suggesting that Wave will have some security issues with bots, but seeing as how it's not officially released yet, it's unfair to assume that Google won't deal with that before release.

For more information on Google updates, please see our friends at SearchEngineNews.com.

For more information on Google updates, please see our friends at SearchEngineNews.com.

Don't forget, ICND specializes in SEO, so if you have any problems installing or monitoring and element of your website, from hosting, analytics, webmaster tools, emails, or just content, we can help. Schedule a free SEO consultation, and the Internet Marketing team at ICND will walk you through every step.

For more information on Google updates, please see our friends at SearchEngineNews.com.

For more information on Google updates, please see our friends at SearchEngineNews.com.