Google’s Penguin 2.0 Is Here

May 23rd, 2013

google penguin 2.0We all know that nothing shakes the world of search engine optimization quite like a Google algorithm update. The first huge earthquakes were the original roll-outs of Panda and Penguin. Every smaller update to the two algorithms is like an aftershock.

Well, an earthquake happened yesterday. Matt Cutts posted on his blog that the “next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm” (referred to as Penguin 2.0) had completed rolling out.

This is actually the fourth Penguin-related update, but since the others were considered a “data refresh,” rather than an actual updated algorithm, Penguin 2.0, it is.

So, what’s the difference? According to another Matt Cutts blog post explaining terminology, an actual algorithm update seems to yield more changes, even if noticeable changes may not happen much. On the other hand, a data refresh is when data in an existing algorithm is refreshed. The resulting changes to search results is usually even less noticeable.

So, what sort of results can we expect to see from Penguin 2.0? Let’s take a look:

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Small Business Spotlight: Rogers Family Company

May 22nd, 2013

rogers family company coffeesAfter taking a break from interviewing small businesses for a few weeks to wrap up what’s been said so far, we’re back to our regular Small Business Spotlight. I’d say we learned a lot looking at the “greatest hits” of the first ten weeks of the series, wouldn’t you think?

Well, now we’re back and talking to Rogers Family Company. A family owned business with a long history, online marketing wasn’t always around to be part of their business strategy. However, you wouldn’t be able to tell that there was a time that they were quite used to traditional marketing by taking a look at their online channels.

Tell us about your business, including the products/services you offer, your target customer, and overall marketing strategy.

Rogers Family Company has been in business since 1979, originally selling tea and freshly roasted coffee to the local businesses in San Francisco on a day-to-day basis. Our original working space was so small we had to move the pallets of coffee beans out each morning just to complete the day’s work.

Over the next 30+ years, we have grown our business to supply the highest quality coffee and tea to major retailers, as well as individual consumers under the brand names: San Francisco Bay Coffee, Organic Coffee Company, Fairwinds Coffee, Black Mountain Gold, Pleasant Hill  and East India Tea & Coffee. All of our products are available on our e-commerce store.

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What Are Facebook’s Intentions for Waze?

May 20th, 2013

waze logoRumors are circulating about a huge buyout of the popular navigation app, Waze. Which company supposedly has plans to acquire Waze to strengthen their mobile offerings? Facebook, of course.

The two companies are already in cahoots as partners, but Facebook may want more; and more is what they’d have to pay. Waze has been in acquisition talks for months and is said to be valued at a staggering $800 million to $1 billion.

Neither company would comment on the rumors, but we all know Facebook doesn’t back down when they set their sights on something. Do you recall back in 2012 when Facebook bought the photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion? Or the facial recognition specialist Face.com for an upward $50 million?

There’s no question about it: Facebook has been exasperating all their efforts in its mobile business. As of March 31, 2013 there are 751 million monthly active mobile users on Facebook, an increase of 54% year-over-year. Their desktop business only experienced an increase of 23% year-over-year.

To gain a better understanding of Facebook’s intentions with Waze, let’s review the features that set Waze apart from other navigating apps and devices:

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Google I/O 2013: What You Need to Know

May 17th, 2013

google i/o 2013

This week is one of those big ones for the tech world: the week of Google I/O, Google’s developer conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. In addition to the dozens of technical sessions, lab sessions, and demonstrations of Google technologies such as Android, Chrome, and APIs, Google had a lot of announcements about the future of their products.

Similar to Apple, Google announces product updates and news during the keynote at the beginning of the conference. The massive 3.5-hour keynote was full of important statistics about Google’s impact across different products and sneak previews of new updates and features to those same products.

It’s a lot of information to take in, to say the least, so we put together an outline of the important updates from the keynotes and a few other tidbits of information from I/O:

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Online Marketing Advice for Small Businesses [Slide Deck]

May 15th, 2013

online marketing advice for small businessesAs regular readers know by now, we’ve been interviewing marketers on their experiences with online marketing for small businesses. One of my favorite questions to hear the answer to was a question asking what advice they thought small businesses needed to know before going about improving their online presence.

This question probably received the most varied responses, partly due to how much advice each marketer interviewed provided. These marketers truly want to help others. They didn’t throw us a single sentence about optimizing for search, or how social media is important. These professionals often gave us multiple paragraphs full of detailed and helpful advice.

The advice ranged from what they thought should be at the center of an online marketing strategy, to what sort of content drives conversions, to the importance of qualities such as uniqueness and extreme dedication.

About Small Business Spotlight: Since we love small businesses and online marketing (so much so that we have a new product just for them), we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention. So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

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10 Ways to Use Twitter Lists [Infographic]

May 13th, 2013

10 ways to use twitter listsWe’ve already explained how to create and edit Twitter lists, as well as suggested a few tools to make doing that easier. But we have yet to go into much detail on the most important part of Twitter lists: how you use them.

You could use the handiest tool out there to create a Twitter list of everyone you follow, but that isn’t the best use. The stream for that list would be exactly the same as your timeline on the homepage. The effectiveness of a list depends on how you use it.

Instead of just explaining how our company uses Twitter lists, we wanted to be able to suggest uses that go beyond our own needs, so that you can find ideas that will really help you.

So we turned to a few people that use social media professionally, day in and day out, since it’s their job to know how to use Twitter lists effectively.

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Explainer Videos: Convert Website Visitors Into Paying Customers [Guest Post]

May 10th, 2013

video marketingThese days, there’s a lot about video to get excited about if you’re a marketer. As a conversion tool, it has proven to be highly effective in generating huge returns and value as part of an online digital strategy. Companies of all shapes and sizes are finding ways to integrate video into their overall branding, marketing and sales programs because it works!

What’s even more exciting is that custom video does not have to break the bank in order to be a potent source of potential; animated video creators aren’t charging Disney-fees to take a totally custom explainer from script to screen.  So, whether you’ve got a multi-million dollar marketing budget to work with or you are building your web presence on a shoestring budget, custom video is a fit for any size company looking to boost their marketability online.

Animated video is not just child’s play. Custom explainer videos introduce a brand’s value proposition in a way that is engaging, simple, and interactive. Video marketing has the properties to drive traffic, generate sky-high conversion rates and enhance your search engine optimization.

Here’s how custom explainer video converts window shoppers into paying customers…just like magic!

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Online Marketing Misconceptions from Small Businesses [Slide Deck]

May 8th, 2013

online marketing misconceptions from small businessesAs regular readers know by now, we’ve been interviewing marketers on their experiences with online marketing for small businesses. When asked if they had any misconceptions starting out, this is what they said.

Notice a common theme is search engine optimization, an online marketing tactic of growing importance with each year. Learn from the rookie mistakes of these smart marketers and follow in their successful footsteps.

It’s not enough to have a website, or even to have a beautiful, well designed website. It takes time and effort to be seen by search engine users. Additionally, you need to use a combination of several online marketing methods to truly spread the word about your product or service.

“If you build it, they will come,” does not apply to websites anymore. (Tweet this!)

About Small Business Spotlight: Since we love small businesses and online marketing (so much so that we have a new product just for them), we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention. So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

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3 Tools for Better Twitter List Management

May 6th, 2013

3 tools for twitter list managementLast week, we brought you a little Twitter Lists 101: what they are, how they can be used, and how to create them.

But we have a confession: we may not have told you the easiest way to manage Twitter lists. In our defense, we told you the most basic way, and the way that Twitter intends for you to make lists.

However, Twitter’s methods for creating and managing lists can be time-consuming and tedious. Thankfully, a lot of services have been created to make using lists easier for you. From creation to completion, there are tools that make Twitter lists and their management much more quick and efficient.

To understand how Twitter lists work, it is a good idea to use them on Twitter.com. But once you have a few lists to your name and it’s become time consuming to manage them, these three tools should come in handy.

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Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page [Infographic]

May 3rd, 2013

perfect landing pageOur friends at Formstack know a thing or two about landing pages. Their product is an online form builder, and what good is a landing page without some sort of form to capture leads? None.

So when we came across their infographic about landing pages, we knew we needed to eat up every morsel of information found in it. We also knew that you all would probably benefit from it, as well.

We’ve already talked about the most essential components of a landing page, but what we need to talk more about is optimizing those components. We also didn’t give you much advice about design: where those components should go and what they should look like. Please forgive us.

So to make up for only covering the basics of landing pages, we found this for you.

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