Summary:  Google+ doesn't aim to be another social network, it's creating a social data layer that will impact nearly every Google product from search to shopping.  With a broad array of services like Search, Gmail, Chrome, Android and YouTube, Google offers tools that are fundamental to the online lives of consumers; and these can be tied to Google+.

Google+ Page Elements:  Google+ is new for everyone so I wanted to take just a moment to explain each part of the page and show you how to optimize your new brand page.

1. Profile Picture - This is a 200 x 200 pixel image.  This will also be shown as the thumbnail so it is important to utilize this space wisely for branding and for a visually appealing page.
2. +1 Button - It's merely a light-weight action a user can give saying "I recommend this page/company/service"  It has ZERO stream implications unlike Facebook's counterpart (Like button)
3. Share Button - G+ users can use this button to endorse and share a link back to the page on thier own profile.  It can be shared with a single circle, multiple circles, individual users or publicly.  Users can post a comment with the shared content and it will be seen in the stream of users.
4. Page Name and Caption - The tagline below is meant to be 10 words however I have done some testing that shows it can display 83 characters before truncating.
5. Circles - This is the Google+ version of the Facebook Like button, but it comes with greater ability to categorize the page.  Once a page has been added to a circle, the page can then add that user/page into a circle of their own.
   • Pages cannot add a user to a circle without that user first adding the page.
   • You can have as many circles as you want.
   • Maximum of 5,000 users can be added to each circle.
   • If a user deletes your page from their circle, they will automatically be removed from the brand's circles.
   • Circles are only visible to the owner of the page so a user can't see what circles they've been added to.
6. Photo Bar - Post upto 5 images.  This section supports Animated GIFs.  Take a look at Burberry's Page.
7. Who's Following Who - On the left section, you can choose to showcase who "you are following", who's "following you", and "followers in common"
8. Posts - This is the home for all content posted to "Public".  Users are able to +1 (giving endorsement of your post similar to a Facebook Like), comment and share with friends/circles.
9. About - This section gives the opportunity to introduce the brand and give additional information including contact info and links to other social networks.
10. Photos & Videos - This section houses any media posted as well as any albums created.  Followers can also add photos and videos here.

Google+ Hangouts:  This is a highly engaging video chat tool to communicate with users on Google+.

1. You can control invitations to these events
2. This is limited to 10 users at a time
3. G+ is currently testing expansion of this tool to include shared notes & sketch pad, Google Docs integration, and Screen Sharing.

More!:  This is going to be ever evolving, especially here at the beginning where many early adopters are providing feedback.

1. Direct Connect - Shortcut to joining a circle.  For example type "+pepsi" in a Google search.  This is still rolling out to all pages.
2. Badges - This is very straight forward and simple to add.  These allow users to publicly acknowledge the page with a +1 or add that page to a circle.
3. Search and Adwords Integration - Google+ could be a huge signal for Google search.  As social activities of +1's become more a part of how sites are ranked, Google could lean pretty heavily on this data.  For example, Google's advertising algorithm will start to factor in a user's +1 history as well as the history of people in a user's circles.

Conclusion:  It is vitally important for brands to engage early on Google+ to gain some of the first mover advantages, especially for the SEO implications.  Content relevancy will be very important and strategically shared amongst a page's circles which will create a greater challenge for a winning content strategy. 

If you'd like help putting together your winning content strategy, maximizing your online potential with Google+ or just have questions, don't hesitate to contact our team to see how we can help!

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.

Jumping into Social Media is all about cultivating and building new and existing relationships.  Is it important?  -Some experts say that Social Media will be more valuable and widely used than search engines within the next 3 years!  With Intercoastal Net Designs, you WILL see increased traffic to your website, search engine placement, new relationships, sales and MUCH MORE…
 
Building Relationships
Social Media is all about building new relationships and cultivating existing ones.  By encouraging interaction, facilitating a platform for questions and activity, and networking with individuals on a more personal level; we will build these relationships, develop your connections and gain trust from clients and partners.

Managing the Conversation
Whether you like it or not, people are going to talk about your company and brand.  We are providing a platform for people to speak so that you can control the conversations and leverage them to your advantage.

Maintaining a platform for questions
Potential clients often need a place to ask their questions, whether they are intended for you or other clients.  We will encourage this activity and facilitate the questions that are asked.  A relatively quick response time can be very important to retain an active page.  With questions that require specific knowledge, we will notify you to either answer the questions or direct Intercoastal Net Designs how to correctly answer these questions.

Brand Recognition
The number of users that will see your brand, your logo, and your name on a daily basis will increase drastically.  Because of the nature of how Facebook was created with News feeds, viral marketing tactics to increase brand recognition is a great advantage of using Facebook for business.  Every time that there is an update given on one of your Facebook pages, all of your friends see this on their “News Feed” when they log in.  Further, every time one of your friends interact on your page by leaving a comment or doing a number of other interactions, a message is posted on all of their friends news feeds!  This puts a great deal of value attached to each additional fan.

More Interaction by Fans = Greater Brand Recognition

Creating Brand Loyalty
This increased brand recognition will develop into brand loyalty.  You don’t want to just sell a product or service; you sell an experience that brings them back time and time again.  Further, this experience makes them want to refer you to their friends and family.  By building relationships and increasing brand recognition, you will be cultivating this brand loyalty through-out Facebook and encourage users to come back to company again and again.

Top of Mind Advertising
The Facebook News feed is a powerful tool that keeps your brand and name in front of users on a daily basis.  Like any advertisement, you want your name to stick in a client’s head.  As we post more content within the fan pages and users interact as well, News Feeds will be filled with content to keep your name on the top of a clients mind for the next time they are looking for a home or asked for advice on home buying from a friend.

Create referrals through personal connections
A personal referral is much stronger than a random advertisement that you see online or on television.  By having a Facebook presence, you are giving users the opportunity to “Suggest to Friends” the pages and brands they enjoy.  Additionally, the interaction on a page suggests to their friends satisfaction with a company and entices them to come and look at a page as well.

Utilize viral marketing
Viral Marketing is all about encouraging clients and brand supporters to share content with their sphere of influence.  Both Facebook and Twitter are two of the most widely used forms of viral marketing as it is easy to do and many of their connections are already on these social networks.  On Twitter, you can simply “Retweet” a comment to all of your followers to share content that you thing they will enjoy or find interest in.  Further, you can give credit to someone on Twitter by “Mentioning” them which will link back to their profile. 

On Facebook, viral marketing is done through a news feed with every action you take place.  Although there are security settings that you can use to restrict the content that is shared, most users do not restrict this content.  Fans can “Like” posts as well as comment on each post, both of which are generally shared in all of their connections news feeds.  Further, they can leave a new post on your pages which will also be shared in the news feeds of their connections.
We want to turn “Fans” into fanatics that enjoy sharing content and news from your company to fully take advantage of this very powerful viral marketing strategy.

The Human Side
Advertising with Social Media has turned the old way of marketing from a “1 to many broadcast” (Television Commercial) to a “1 to 1 conversation”.  Users don’t want to think of themselves as 1 in a crowd that is bunched in your target market.  They want to feel noticed and have more of a connection with companies that they deal with.  By putting a face and a name to a business, you are showing off the human side to your company.  You are creating relationships and showing the average user that you care about each individual.  Through social networks, we are going to show off the human side of your business.

Gather Feedback & Listen
It is great to think that every little effort is going toward bringing in new clients, but sometimes you need to stop and ask about the customer’s needs.  This is why you often research with surveys and questionnaires.  Through Facebook, you can retrieve immediate feedback from the “Fans” that care the most.  By asking the users on Facebook and Twitter what they think, you get real feedback on ideas while showing them that you genuinely care.

Give advice and become an industry resource
By giving advice on industry news, giving tips, and sharing your industry thoughts; you are opening up to the type of people that will come to your fan pages and share your brand.  Becoming a resource in the industry lets people know your stance and that you are here to help them.
Joining industry groups

Again, opening up your target market and bringing more users into your social circle to share your name is a major point of emphasis.  As you join industry groups and connect with big industry players, you will find that they have a larger network to share your content with.  We want to build strong relationships with these influential socialites and encourage them to spread your company’s brand.

Becoming friends with industry professionals
Industry professionals can be very influential and have a strong following on both Facebook and Twitter.  We want to connect with their existing fan pages to reach out to a larger crowd.  Also, these industry professionals have a strong network of personal connections that we would like to tap into.  Leveraging these partners and taping into the connections through a personal referral will be a key strategy to build a fan base and following.

Hosting fun competitions with giveaways
Once we are able to build strong social networks, we want to keep them active and coming back.  We would like to host competitions and have giveaways enticing them to share your company with their networks.  This will grow your social networks in numbers and in loyalty.  The bigger the giveaway, the more effective this competition will be.

Follow like-minded users on Twitter
As we tap into the industry professionals on Facebook, we will be doing the same on Twitter.  Sharing their content and building relationships with existing influential Twitter users will aid in the growth of this network so that when we have a message to get out, we will have more targeted followers to receive this message.

Making the Connection
Creating links between all of the social networks and cross connecting them with your corporate website and blog are vitally important.  This is where we turn your typical interactive fans to closed sales.  Don’t worry about how to set these up, where they go or how to implement the process; we take care of it all.
Utilize the highly targeted “Facebook Ads”

Facebook ads are some of the most effective online advertising as they allow you to target a very specific group based on information provided in a users profile.  We can leverage this information that is provided by Facebook users to find potential clients and bring them to your company’s Facebook Fan Page.

Cultivate Targeted Followers
We will be using “Tweet Adder” to find targeted Twitter users.  This is software that allows you to search for users who might be interested in your service based on things that they mention and people they follow.  This will allow us to grow a following base of users on Twitter and bring your company potential clients.

Staying Current
In an industry that is evolving so quickly like Social Media, it takes many hours a week to stay up to date with the newest trends, strategies, and techniques to become successful.  If you look at the evolution and impact of Social Media in the last:  1 year, 3 years, 6 years (Facebook Launched); it’s mind-blowing the ongoing change that has occurred.  Many predict that Social Media Optimization will be more important and valuable to a company than Search Engine Optimization in less than 3 years!

CONTACT US TODAY TO LEARN MORE!

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.

Question:

How is our Facebook monitored?  I do not use now for myself... on a business Facebook, can we view before allowing comments to show?  As you know, there are a few ugly people in the world who like to put themselves out there...

Answer:

While there is no way to "moderate" comments on Facebook, there are a few tricks so that you can keep watch.  When you make a post, go in and like that post that way anytime someone would make a comment you will be notified.  If you are finding you are having more negative reviews and comments then positive, the most important thing is how you handle those negative posts.  Many times your followers will stick up for you before even having to respond, but if you do, make sure you are proactive and using the customer service skills to turn that customer around.

If you want to go a super conservative approach, you can turn off wall posting in your "wall settings" area of your page.  I don’t recommend this because you want to have all the positive feedback from your followers.  ICND also offers a Social Media plan for a monthly amount.  We help monitor all your posts, get you set up with feeds so everything is posting on FB, Twitter, your blog, etc., help you out with setting up Facebook Tabs, Sweepstakes, Follower generation and incorporating the benefits of social media into your SEO plan.  Plans start at 3 hours per month and go up depending on how many projects we get into.  We do require that you have someone on your end who can be quick to respond to negative postings should they happen.
 

Please contact me if you should have some more questions or like to know more about our Social Media Plan.

Vanessa Humes

Sales & Marketing Director

InterCoastal Net Designs
*****************************
PO Box 7633
Ocean Isle Beach, NC 28469
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Phone: 910-575-6095 x2
Fax: 910-575-1095

 

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. 

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.

To give a little history, PageRank used to be a major indicator in determining where your website (web page) ranked in the search engines. PageRank ranges from 0 to 10, 10 being the best.

The higher the PR (PageRank) the better you ranked (historically) for that particular page (each page is assigned its own PageRank).

PageRank was important before other behavioral factors/indicators took the limelight. Google and other search engines used PageRank as an indication of popularity among web searchers (almost like a meta-behavioral indicator). Now Google (and others) have been tracking real behavior, like click behavior, search history, geographic location, etc. Its a web users actions that will determine a web page's "popularity" and relevancy, which in turn has helped to make PageRank (mostly) obsolete.

Has Google dumped PageRank completely? No. They haven't said that officially. They have officially said that following PageRank as the sole indicator of ranking and indexing of your website is foolish and incorrect. Much like putting all your time and effort into ONLY optimizing your meta keywords on each page.

Google has always said that there are 200 indicators that they look at for each page when determining ranking and indexing. PageRank is still one of those indicators (as is meta keywords). You need to monitor as many of these factors as you can to keep a good mark on why your web pages rank the way they do.

As Google says, a high PageRank might not mean that you rank well for a certain term, but a low PageRank can be an indicator of why you DON'T rank for a certain term.

Read more at "Google Ditches PageRank in Webmaster Tools"

What is Google "Caffeine"?

First of all, Caeffeine is just a code-word (like Shock and Awe) for the secret project Google has been working on. Project was revealed in the last few days on Google's official blog. So, it's not so secret now. And it's no big surprise that Google would reveal some fire power after Microsoft and Yahoo inked their deal.

What is Google Caffeine's purpose?

Reportedly, Caffieine is an under the hood version of their existing search engine. What does that mean? "Caffeine" or whatever it will be called, uses the existing algorithm to produce results. However, those results will be "more comprehensive and streamlined". As the code name suggests, this under-the-hood version will be faster. Faster how you ask? Who knows. Perhaps it will have a separate indexing process, or a more streamlined quality guideline that will be more black and white. If your website is built to Google-perfection, you're in. If not, you're out. Your guess is as good as any ones.

Google could be doing some spin-doctoring here, revealing a reportedly super secret, revolutionary product to pull headlines (and rising consumer use) from MicroHoo. Google is a multi-national state unto itself, so you shouldn't be surprised if it starts acting like one.

Should businesses be worried?

For those business who live and die by their Google rankings, the answer is maybe. Google won't do anything too detrimental to their advertiser base. But, they will shake things up in the name of consumer progress. But if you're business is chasing the dragon (so to speak) with Google, you should get your hand slapped. Diverisify. Diversify. Diversify. Have you learned nothing from the current American economic meltdown? If not...remember what you're grandmother used to tell you. Don't put all your eggs in one basket...even if that basket is Google.

Will Caffeine's search results be any different from the standard Google SERP?

Well. According to Google. Yes. In reportedly "minor but significant" ways. I checked it out and found no differences as of yet...but perhaps this under the hood version relies more on user behavior? There have been rumors that Google has been enamored by real time search results fed by real time source like Twitter. Maybe Caffeine takes a snapshot of real time search behavior rather through the traditional bot indexing process. Is that what makes it like Caffeine, that it keeps you alert? This is all just speculation of course. But if I lose my life in some strange and unexplained way, then you'll know I was right about something. You've seen Conspiracy Theory I'm sure.

Can I try out Google Caffeine?

Sure can. It's sandboxed, so Google is keeping the program a safe distance from their Standard Google search engine. After all, they wouldn't want a coding error to pull down the whole sha-bang. Check out Google Caffeine. I would be really interested in hearing what difference people discover while searching.

I'll keep you posted as more is revealed.

Hurry, you have only a few days left to register for our Get Found Giveaway in June. The Get Found giveaway includes: 

Free comprehensive SEO analysis on the top 10 words for your business (based on market, services, and business area), plus 3 months of free hosting services, and FREE implementation of Google Analytics, Smarter Stats, and webmaster tools.

The Winner of this our Get Found! SEO giveaway will be given all the information they need to know to optimize their website for top 10 penetration in the major search engines.

So what are you waiting for? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You can also call InterCoastal Net Designs at 1-910-575-6095.

I have to admit. I'm not very enthused about Facebook's decision to allow users to create Vanity URLs for their profiles (and pages...though I haven't seen any for those yet. Not sure who is eligible, and when the rest of us will be?)

Of course, it just makes sense that a person can give out easy-to-remember static looking URL's to their family, friends, and clients/customers instead of a long string of variable gobbledeegook. But, I knew - as an SEO professional - that the mad rush to SQUAT on the best keyword phrases would ruin the usefulness of Facebook's move.

Can I blame anyone for the rush? Nope. The opportunity is there, so why not take it? I blame Facebook for allowing the opportunity to be there in the first place. How fair is it that some unrelated person, business, or organization can steal (take) your name, your identity, or more likely, YOUR MAIN KEYWORD PHRASE?

First come, first serve. And that's all that qualifies you to choose your URL "username".

And the change is permanent? So no swapping. Once you're TheKiKi, or MyrtleBeachSEO, you're that until death do you part. Does that mean the squatters can't unload the goods? Not sure, but money talks so there's always a way around such obstacles, like swapping account logins. And is Facebook monitoring for copyright infringement of identity theft...or can anyone swoop in a take Nike, McDonalds, Coke...or even Barrack Obama or Kobe Bryant?

In the coming weeks (probably much less than that) you'll see Facebook pages inundate the SERP's. And the 'why' is obvious. Facebook hit critical mass some time ago, and continues to balloon. Think of how many times you see Wikipedia pages in the SERPs.

I hope that Facebook makes good on its promise to combat blatant squatting. And, I hope that Google and the rest of the Search Engines do their due diligence with their own algorithms. After all, the premise of the page URL's text [ALWAYS] properly defining the focus of the page went south when the first black hat SEO salesman crawled out of the mud.

Maybe I'm peeved that someone got to my name on Facebook before I did? I can only imagine how annoyed I'd be if someone snaked the name of my business.

So let's have some fun, and you tell me whose side Facebook is on. The common man (and thus small business) or the Superstar and million dollar brands.

Go to

www.facebook.com/kobebryant

www.facebook.com/lebronjames

www.facebook.com/ashtonkutcher

www.facebook.com/barackobama

www.facebook.com/coke

www.facebook.com/pepsi

 

And watch what happens. Do you think Facebook would let you - oh common man - set something up like that for yourself or your business?

Now start searching for things that you KNOW what have been snatched up right at midnight Saturday morning, like Disney or Myrtle Beach (yeah, Myrtle Beach...I know there are plenty of companies licking their chops over that one).

Find any other glaring inconsistencies in Facebook's new vanity URL's. Let us know. Disgree with me...well you can let me know that too.

 

Bing is Microsoft's new upgrade of its search engine LIVE search. Infact, LIVE is now Bing. Live.com is redireded to the new search engine. So what's new? Bing promises to make search easier by allowing a searcher to drill down through the search results until they find exactly what they want. Searchers looking to shop for something (say a digital camera) or book a flight or hotel can get directions, price ranges, specials, and even categories of different types of travel (cheap, luxury, oceanfront, etc).

So the big difference? Most other Search Engines want to give you the best results for your search the first time (whether they really are or not is debateable) and then pass you along to that website. Bing is different. It wants you to keep plugging around until you find exactly what you want (you do your research and reviews within the results page so to speak).

From an SEO standpoint, this means top rankings aren't as weighted as significantly in Bing as in a traditional search engine's results page (though it shouldn't be outright ignored). Why? Because your top ranked page, say for the term "Myrtle Beach hotel" is competing with "clarification" content. Bing says, ok - here are some hotels - but which kind of hotel do you want? Did you really want a condo? Did you really mean North Myrtle Beach?

For Bing rankings I imaginee (if their premise works) that terms will be more long tailed, traffic more qualified so much less quantity (amount of traffic), and the conversions should be higher.

I'm not exactly sure how their PAID ADS measure into all this "drilling down" of content? Or how your analytics would actually track which keyword phrase the visitor came to your site from. If I started with searching for "Myrtle Beach hotels" and ended up drilling down to "cheap Myrtle Beach hotel on the oceanfront" which keyword is actually tagged for drawing the traffic to your website? And better yet - which phrase should you optimize for?

For all you webmaster concerned with the new quality guidelines of Bing.com (not so far off from Live.com's quality guidelines), please read Microsoft Bing Quality Guidelines.

Microsoft is a big player, so it's never a good idea to figure them out of your SEO equation (even though their search market share is nominal compared to Google and Yahoo). If you need a current assessment of your website and how it measures up in the search engines, contact InterCoastal Net Designs today, a North Carolina SEO company.