Social Media Archives - SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines

How to Track Youtube Rankings with Accuranker

Tue, 04 Feb 2020 10:39:08 +0000

With more than a billion active users, YouTube is the second-largest search engine which makes it the place to be for content creators and marketers looking to get more search traffic.

This makes YouTube optimization a necessity for content creators and marketers alike that don’t want to miss out on the opportunity of growing their audience. I wrote a YouTube SEO guide if you want to know how you can further optimize your videos.

Just like in any other search engine, tracking your rankings on YouTube and being aware of how you are doing against your competitors is crucial.

Lucky for us, Accuranker just released an awesome new feature that makes monitoring YouTube performance easier – you can now track your keyword rankings for your YouTube channel. Knowing where your channel currently stands gives you a better understanding of our channel’s performance and gives you more opportunities to optimize.

Before I get going with the review, I highly recommend that you check Accuranker out. They provide a 14-day trial so you could take a look at what they have to offer. You could get your Accuranker free trial by clicking this link.

Track your Video Rankings

Setting up keyword tracking for YouTube is pretty much the same with keyword tracking for SEO. The setup is easy and won’t take more than 5 minutes to set up tracking for a channel.

The first thing to do is to open up Accuranker and create a new project. Rather than putting your website’s URL, this time you have to put your YouTube channel’s URL.

Next, you can select the locale and location you want to track and select YouTube on the list. You can track both Desktop and Mobile rankings.

Finish up by adding keywords you want to track. It will take a few minutes for Accuranker to check the rankings depending on the number of keywords that you put. Here’s how it looks:

In the dashboard, you could immediately see the current rankings and the URL of the video that is ranking for the keyword. Accuranker will also give the average monthly search volume of the keywords.

YouTube SERP Features and Competitor Analysis

What I like about most about this update is that Accuranker also shows if there are YouTube SERP features for the keywords you are targeting such as:

Channel
Playlist
Related searches
Promoted Video

This already gives me an idea on how I could further optimize my channel and videos. Similar to how featured snippets can greatly increase click-through rates, grabbing a YouTube SERP feature can boost your videos’ traffic. If you want to know more about YouTube SERP features, you could click the icons on the further right column in the dashboard under ‘SERP’.

Track Rankings Across Search Engines and Monitor Competitor Performance

Aside from YouTube search results, Accuranker can also track the performance of YouTube videos in search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. It is available for both mobile and desktop.

You could also add up to 10 of your competitors and Accuranker will also check their rankings. This allows you to compare your competitors’ performance to your own.

Key Takeaway

Whether you are a business owner looking to improve brand awareness and attract leads through video marketing or a solo-content creator aspiring to be a YouTuber, tracking your rankings on the search results for the keywords you are trying to rank for gives you a bigger perspective on just the numbers on your videos’ engagements.

The post How to Track Youtube Rankings with Accuranker appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

What You Need To Know About Facebook’s New Video Updates

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 02:41:20 +0000

Video content on Social Media has been at an all-time high recently, with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram seeing a rise in the amount of video content from their users. This has led to numerous brands promoting their content through the use of video, which has proven to be effective in generating traffic and user interaction.

When it comes to Facebook, the popular social media platform has become one of the largest video platforms across the internet, with millions of views on a regular basis. In the past few months, more and more video content has been published on Facebook, with a good number of these videos becoming viral. The emergence of video on the platform has proven to be effective in generating reach and creating successful social media campaigns, which has led to numerous updates that aim to optimize quality and add more variety to what users can create and share.

Here are some of these updates coming to Facebook video:

Gamification and Poll Videos

With the prevalence of video content in the platform, one of the new updates about to be launched by Facebook aims to bring in more creativity to how video is done, and give it more functionality. This enhance functionality comes in the form of live video polls and gamification, which allows an improved level of interaction. Live poll videos allow users to vote on various questions and topics and see the results real time.

This can be used by brands and channels for their shows or major events and helps keep the audience interested by giving them the ability to interact real-time. Imagine being a part of an online game show, where picking the right results allow you to progress through the next set of questions and win prizes in the end, and getting incorrect answers means getting eliminated.

On the other hand, live online polls allow you to vote for a variety of choices, such as picking what the hosts will be doing next in their live video or picking a certain personality to see which one is more popular. The update will be launched soon, with popular pages like Buzzfeed and INSIDER launching live shows that utilize and demonstrate the new features.

While these features have yet to be released, users who are interested in testing out the early access version can do so through registration.

Content Monetization and Pre-roll Ads

Another new feature that users that video content creators will find very beneficial are content monetization, which allows users to earn income from their videos through advertisements. This is similar to how YouTube users earn their income through their videos, which is one of the most popular ways to earn online. When users want to submit a video they want to have monetized, the video must first be evaluated by Facebook as a precautionary measure to ensure that it is fit for monetization, which can also be seen as a way to filter out offensive content that may not be suitable for younger audiences. With the number of active users on Facebook, allowing video content to be monetized on the platform is a bold step to making it into the largest video streaming site.

Another new update that will be launched within the year will be Pre-roll video. This feature allows users to be able to view a short snippet of videos on Facebook, which helps generate interest and shows users a glimpse of content that they might want to view. This feature helps increase traffic by a significant amount, which improves your Facebook page visibility. With these two updates, it would not be a surprise to see more Facebook users utilizing the platform as their channel to create their videos.

How does this affect SEO and SMM

With the push to increase the amount of video content on Facebook, implementing a strategy that focuses on this is now more crucial than before. This means utilizing live video more when it comes to promoting the brand and the content to a wider audience and using the gamification features to create more interactions.

These new features can also create more viral social media campaigns, which help generate a great amount of organic traffic that would prove beneficial for your website. Using relevant hashtags and keywords make these videos more searchable, Along with more video content, it is best to practice mobile optimization, as most Facebook users access the platform using the mobile application on Android and iOS, which means that they would be viewing your website through their devices.

Key Takeaway

Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, and with video content being optimized, it would not be surprising to see it going toe-to-toe against YouTube as the most popular video streaming platform as well. With these updates, expect more Facebook users to create their own video channels with the goal of getting monetized and becoming viral, which helps their brand grow.

If you have questions about Social Media Marketing and SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.

The post What You Need To Know About Facebook’s New Video Updates appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Ranking Better by NOT Focusing on Social Media

Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:28:19 +0000

The debate on whether social media marketing could positively impact your overall SEO campaign has been around for quite some time now, and even though Google has already given the answer, I still believe that a great social media marketing plan can still help your SEO.

Do not misunderstand. I still respect and believe that your social rankings are not a direct ranking factor, however, it is still undeniable that when you have a proper and successful campaign, it will be an essential part of increasing your overall organic traffic received and search visibility.

I’ll be showing you how you can incorporate your social media success into your SEO to gain better results in organic traffic and your visibility in the search results. Let’s start.

#1. Building Up Your Brand

More often than not, consumers do their research before availing of their desired products or services, and the main platform for their research is through social media websites. It is perfectly understandable because these websites are where people, highly likely, express their own opinions on a variety of things – including a great (or bad) product and service.

Which is why your product or services’ reputation with its users plays an important role in the overall conversion of any potential customer. This is due to the fact that a person shells out money because of trust, desire, need, and likeability of a brand or person.

Consequently, what you should do is to make your brand’s social media identity stand out more than ever. By improving your brand’s identity there is a high chance that your SEO will improve as well. Some of the things that you can improve on regarding your brand’s social media identity are:

Improving the aesthetic appeal of your products and/or services.
Constant engagement with your audience.
Continuing the publication of content regarding your product and services.
Reaching out to influencers with endorsements and offers.

After establishing the proper amount of trust with your customers and audience, make a habit of continuing the processes I just mentioned because this is an integral part of the success of your social media strategy.

If you still haven’t guessed it, if you have the sufficient amount of trust among your audience and customers, they will most probably look for your website regarding promos, new products, and any other news about your brand. It will also open your site to the possibility of gaining more organic traffic through the sharing of other delighted customers – which will be a definite improvement with your site’s overall traffic.

Basically, because your brand is trusted in the social media landscape, you’ll be looked for in the search engine landscape as well. This means that you are regularly increasing the demand for your brand, and more demand means better ranking signals. Just keep in mind that building up your brand is critical for your long-term SEO strategy.

#2. Social Profiles

People don’t just search for your brand or company. They also search for people that are related to your brands such as the CEO or any representative. Which would entail that if any user searches for a person in any search engine, the top results would be that specific person’s social media profiles.

Basically, all your social media profiles should possess the necessary information any user wants to know, from your position to what you can do for them. If there is a chance that a user happens to find your social profile, and it does not contain any information that is beneficial to them, then there is a high chance that they will opt to go for your competitor just because they have the necessary information on their social profiles.

This is the same for your business. All the information that the users need to know should be on your company’s social profiles.

So, along with having a proper social media strategy, you should also have an active and keen management of your profiles. Here’s what you’ll do:

Update all your images, videos, contact info, varying content, and CTAs for each and every social profile that you and your company have.
Build up a positive reputation by constantly engaging your audience through comments and other interaction in the social media platform. This will help the reach of your posts, and hopefully, improve the traffic that enters your website – which means a good thing for your SEO.
Understand your social profile settings, and use them to further understand the audience of your social profiles.
If other people are allowed to write on your timeline (Facebook), make sure that the posts are monitored and managed because the wrong message could be detrimental for your brand name.
If your business has multiple branches, make sure that Facebook and Youtube’s location function is active.

#3. Social Search Engines

As you may know, people could also search on social networks as well. Since most of the people here are professionals, let’s use LinkedIn as an example.

Most of the members that found you on LinkedIn have used the search tool to look for someone with your qualifications. So, you should make sure that your LinkedIn profile is optimized because it actually improves your profile’s visibility if your profile is active and up-to-date.

Optimizing your LinkedIn profile means you are updating your skills, summary, experiences, and other details. Whenever people regularly go back to your LinkedIn profile, it is inevitable that they will visit your website.

Key Takeaway

As I have mentioned, social media is not a direct ranking factor. So, if you are thinking of focusing on your social media strategy rather than link building or content marketing, then you are making a grave mistake.

However, social media can definitely help with your link building campaign (link potential), content writing (brainstorming), and your overall SEO endeavors. Always remember the tips I highlighted in this article, and you’ll surely have an easier time managing your social media profiles while at the same time improving your SEO.

Do you know other ways on how social media can help SEO? Tell me in the comments below, and let’s help each other out.

The post Ranking Better by NOT Focusing on Social Media appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Facebook Has Added Sound to Newsfeed Videos

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 13:45:44 +0000

Facebook has been changing things up a lot for both desktop and mobile users; and the most significant change, in my opinion, is that they are making Newsfeed Videos play automatically with sound.

Here are Facebook’s latest and biggest changes:

Newsfeed Videos Autoplay with Sound

Image courtesy of Facebook

The norm for Facebook in the past is that videos would autoplay as the user would go along their newsfeed. The videos were muted and would only play with sound if the user deliberately “tap” on the video. Facebook reasoned that people are now watching more videos on Facebook and feedback have reported that users expect the sound to automatically play.

Facebook conducted a focus test on a number of users and having videos play automatically with sound returned positive feedback which prompted Facebook to start offering the feature on a larger scale.

Of course, this is simply the new “default” setting for videos but the option to turn off the sound will still be offered.

Worth noting is that if your smartphone is set to silent mode, your Facebook videos will be silent as well.

Personally, I feel that this is simply a matter of taste. While it’s true that some people prefer to have this option, a number of people prefer the old silent-until-tapped feature – and that is perfectly fine.

Vertical Support Added for Videos

Facebook has finally added vertical support for newsfeed videos regardless of the user’s platform of chocie i.e. iOS or Android.

Facebook has modified the old system and added a new thumbnail as well as progress bar for when you are in full screen.

Picture-In-Picture Finally Implemented

Image courtesy of Facebook

Facebook has finally made it possible for users to keep browsing their newsfeed even if they are watching a video. Android has an added bonus: Facebook will also allow users to watch videos even from outside the Facebook app.

This is a smart addition and in my opinion the best addition to Facebook because it allows the user to keep moving even as they watch videos. One of the many concerns that people have is the attrition rate for Facebook’s new Video Algorithm. With this addition, content creators no longer have to worry about people skipping over their content because they are busy because now, then can simply keep watching as they browse their newsfeeds.

TV Facebook Video App in the Works

Facebook is working on an app which will allow users to connect their Facebook accounts to their televisions. This is a result of people calling for more ways to watch videos. According to Facebook, this new app will “roll out soon to app stores for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV,” with more platforms being worked on for the future.

Another nifty feature is allowing users to save videos that they want to view later on their TV storage as well as having the ability to share videos, save their favorites as well as watch live videos from content creators from all over the world.

Facebook stated that they are excited for the future of content creation with the advent of this new feature.

Key Takeaway

After reading through Facebook’s announcement, I came to the conclusion that Facebook is essentially following Google’s footsteps – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Facebook is not really innovating on anything groundbreaking but this is a good start, maybe except for the “autoplay with sound” announcement.

I am personally looking forward to the future of content creation on Facebook and Youtube et. al, due to the competition between the various social media websites intensifying as time passes. Do you have any experiences relevant to content creation on Facebook? Share your story with us in the comments section below!

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Facebook is Testing a New Way to Show Ads on their Videos

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 09:22:08 +0000

We’ve talked about websites going Mobile-First for a while now and I think that’s a good thing. Mobile is essentially the primary way for people to access the internet as well as their social media accounts – and Facebook is one of the best examples for this.

The Rise of Video Content

Facebook apparently has the goal of making “videos” the primary source of content for their website. It seems as though they are working hard at this endeavor with the not too recent release of their feature “live videos” which allows people to stream whatever they want – primarily with their mobile phones.

The social media giant is of course planning a version of “live” for desktop devices but their primary target are of course, mobile devices. The reason for this is simple: Everyone is using mobile to access the internet and this happens more so than people using their desktop computers.

Try asking the people around you: How do you check your emails or your social media accounts outside of work? I bet you that most of them will answer their phone or tablet. Mobile has become so big that Google is actually releasing rhe majority of their algorithm updates geared towards optimizing web browsing via mobile devices.

Facebook’s Live Feature is Great

Anyway, I digress; What I’m trying to say is that Facebook is now riddled with videos of people showing other people whatever they want. I once came across a Facebook live-stream of a popular mixed-martial arts tournament.

It was literally a cellphone pointed towards a television screen, streaming the pay-per-view event in all of it’s pixelated glory courtesy of the portable camera. What’s surprising is that it had at least a hundred viewers despite it being so low-def.

Of course, I thought it was brilliant but then it really hit me. Facebook should do something about letting content creators monetize their content ala YouTube since a lot of people use Facebook anyways.

Facebook did just that – which is great for people who are looking to become content creators themselves!

According to Marketing Land, Facebook is now giving content creators incentive to upload videos that can attract views and viewers. Facebook is the middle of testing out a new feature for ads which will run in the middle of videos.

These ads are triggered after 20 seconds of watching a video so long as the video is at least 90 seconds long. What this means is that if your video is at least 1:30 (one minute and thirty seconds long), after 20 seconds of watching your viewer will then see an ad run seamlessly.

Facebook is going the same route YouTube did by offering 55% of ad sales to the content creator – and I think that’s very attractive. Furthermore, Facebook is calling this new feature “In-Stream Videos” and these mid-roll ads will run for a limited of 15 seconds (or less).

The great thing about this new feature is that Facebook is also allowing advertisers to choose the categories of the videos that they want their ads to appear; this is also the same with categories that they want to avoid.

What this means is that if my ad is SEO-centric, then I can choose to only show it to people who are interested in SEO or Internet Marketing. The possibilities are endless but in the meantime, learn how to create a killer video by re-reading one of our best pieces about YouTube SEO.

Key Takeaway

Yes, videos are definitely a great way to monetize your content but the more important fact that you should remember is that these are also a great way to build a connection with your viewers. Making money is good but quality should never be compromised in favor of making a quick buck.

In the long run, it is wiser to please your readers or customers with quality content that they find compelling or great enough to share with their friends, family or co-workers.

Do you have any experience with content creation that you want to share with us? Feel free to talk to about them in the comments section below!

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Six Ways to Get People to Share your Content

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 02:31:30 +0000

Fifty percent of content marketing is dedicated to topic and content creation, while the other half is for its amplification.

There are so many ways to amplify your content (like through e-mail marketing or joining communities), but getting social shares is what marketers aim for. Perhaps because it’s still the most effective way to reach the right audience, and to actually broaden your reach. With more than a billion active Facebook users, and almost 300 million on Twitter, who wouldn’t want to be viral in social media?

And this is where I want to focus right now – how do we get more social shares? And I mean organic social shares. How do we get people to share our content?

Prepare your minds for some mind-blowing techniques.

How to get people to share your content?

Even if you have good content, you can’t just sit there and expect people to share your content. You need to do something, in fact, after this article, you’ll realize that you have so much more control over the amount of social shares your content is getting.

1. Customize social meta tags

By default, social networks will automatically pull data from your webpage’s meta values whenever you share it in different social media accounts. The post will be something like this:

But with custom title and description, you’ll get this:

Now, which one is more attractive?

Yes, I think it’s too obvious.

If you’re not very familiar with how you can create custom title and description for social networks, you can easily create one through open graph meta tags.

[bq1]

Open graph (og) meta tags

Open graph meta tags serve the same purpose as regular meta tags (that you should still fill out), but when your link is shared on social media (by you or a fan), the open graph data will be used instead.[bqc]

Visit The Open Graph Protocol to know more about this.

It only sounds complicated, but believe me that it isn’t, especially with plug-ins that make it easier for users to add title and meta descriptions for social.

You may use SEO Ultimate:

or SEO Yoast for this.

Other than making your social post more attractive, custom title and description allow your readers to have a better understanding of what your content is about through the title, meta description, and the image associated with it. This gives your audience more reasons to share your content.

2. Ask for shares

There’s nothing wrong with asking, in fact, initial shares from my posts usually come from people inside our office and my sister. Well, because I ask them to read and share it. In fact, by just asking, your social engagement can grow by 40+%!

But don’t keep asking if you’re not willing to do the same favor for them.

3. Use images

Just like the sample I used earlier, which one is the most attractive – the one with the photo or the one without?

People love images, in fact posts that include pictures on Facebook get 104% more comments, 84% better click through rate, and 54% more likes. Also, in a study conducted by Buffer where they analyzed tweets, they discovered that tweets with pictures get 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets.

To help you with creating images that will fit in your social media accounts, you can try out Canva, or follow this 2015 Social Media Image Size Cheat Sheet.

4. Use tools

If you have the budget, you can use tools to help you boost social shares. There are tons of tools that you can try out. But be careful, there are some who use fake social media accounts to generate shares.

Go for trusted ones like Blogpros – this is actually a personal favourite of mine.

The process is easy, just go to the Blogpros Sign-Up Page, choose how many posts you want Blogpros to promote every day:

Then select how many (range) shares you want for each post:

Enter your blog URL:

Then click Sign-Up, and Blogpros will do the rest!

Easy, right? In fact this image is so accurate, you will just have to wait and observe what will happen next:

The best thing about Blogpros is that it actually gives you what they promise – shares from real humans.

5. Do round-up posts

Whenever I do a round-up post, I make sure that the experts included are informed that my article is already published so that they could share it in their communities, then the people from the communities will read and share it too.

There are many ways for you to do this, but what I usually do is to e-mail them that the article is live – just like this:

Or mention them in my post:

This doesn’t just strengthen your relationship with the experts, but it actually makes you more credible because these experts trust you with their advice, and this trust is extended to their audience.

6. Add social sharing buttons

This is very easy to do.

Don’t make it so hard for your audience to share your content. You need to put social sharing buttons if you want them to easily share your post after they finish reading it. You can code it yourself, or you can use plug-ins to help you.

You can check out Blogging Wizard’s post on Social Sharing Plug-ins for WordPress 2015 to help you choose the right plug-in for your site.

Now, where should you place it?

While placing your social sharing buttons at the top of the article can be used as a form of social proof – because the audience will more likely read your post if they see high share numbers – natural readers usually share posts once they are finished reading it, so social sharing buttons should be placed at the bottom.
The best way to understand this is through testing which one works for you.

Final note:

As marketers, we want our content to be shared. But more than just the number, our goal should be to reach the right audience. So consider these practical ways on getting more social shares, but don’t neglect the fact that you have to produce great content so that people will find you relevant, and will not think twice about sharing it.

The post Six Ways to Get People to Share your Content appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Using Klout to Measure your Social Influence

Mon, 07 May 2012 05:06:34 +0000

If you are new to the world of Social Media marketing, you may ask yourself, why am I focusing so much attention and effort to build up my presence online and how do I know if it is paying off? One tool that has gained prominence in the circle of Social Media marketers and influencers is Klout, an online aggregator of your influence in your Social Media networks.

Webmaster’s Note: This is a Guest post by Daniel Day of Onerightclick.com

What is Klout?

Klout is an online tool for measuring your or your company’s influence in Social Media circles. The Klout score is calculated using a proprietary algorithm based on several different factors, such as the True Reach of your social network, your Network Impact and your Amplification. Recently, Klout changed its scoring algorithm to add more weight to your Amplification, basically a measure of how engaged and motivated your followers on various social media outlets are. Amplification is extremely important to more accurately measure the true influence you are having on your network. Having many followers who aren’t engaged or excited about the content you are posting doesn’t really have much use. Klout can be a useful tool for the burgeoning Social Media marketer, and because the score is updated daily, you can see how your efforts from the previous several days have affected your presence online.

I personally use Klout kind of as a bellwether to see if I am spending my time online wisely, if I am making the right connections and to make sure that I am engaging my audience effectively. I also understand that my Klout score may be used as a lens through which I may be viewed by my peers, clients or employers.

According to Klout, your score is based on three factors:

True Reach: How many people you influence
Amplification: How much you influence them
Network Impact: The influence of your network

Some Social Media marketers swear by Klout as a means of vetting one’s influence online. Some marketers mention that if your Klout score is not above 50, you do not matter online. Don’t let this discourage you though. The world of Social Media is huge and it is getting bigger everyday. Use your score as a type of benchmark to see where you stand online.

With Social Media becoming a ubiquitous part of our daily lives, it may be important to have a single clearinghouse that helps to interpret influence and trustworthiness of the people you interact with online.

Of course the Klout score is not infallible. Many influential Social Media marketers have sworn off Klout and have actually searched for ways to disable their score availability online. Once you delve deeper into the world of marketing, you will find that there are many other more useful and sophisticated metrics available for you to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts. I think that the best way to use your own score and the score of others is with a grain of salt. You can use it as a sort of vetting tool to have an idea of the influence of the people you are interacting with through Social Media. There are many more traditional marketers who are new to creating campaigns online.

Should You Rely on Klout?

Being a successful Social Media marketer is about learning to effectively use tools at your disposal. No one tool or metric can be the basis for Social Media efforts. Integrating tools such as your Klout score can only show you a small part of your effectiveness. Every tool that you spend time using should have some usefulness to measure the effectiveness of your online efforts.

For small businesses and start-up initiatives, it is vitally important to have some measure by which you can gauge your Social Media efforts. Using Social Media marketing can be an cost effective alternative to other more traditional forms of marketing as well as more expensive outlets such as paid Internet advertising.

I personally use other tools such as Google Analytics, Webmaster to measure my traffic and sources and use Sprout Social to manage all of my Social Media campaigns. TunkRank is also one of the great ways to measure Twitter influence. Another useful tool that Klout offers is a dedicated plugin for web browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox that display scores next to Twitter usernames.

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How Foursquare affects SEO

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:52:37 +0000

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, are among some of the many social media outlets that affect SEO. However, what many local businesses don’t know is how Foursquare can also aid in their SEO efforts.

This entry is a guest post by Alexis Tate edited by Sean Si

Foursquare emerged in 2009 and was deemed the “new Twitter” in 2010. A social media outlet specifically created to allow users to “check-in” to their favorite restaurants, stores, etc., receive deals, and share their check-ins with friends, Foursquare is yet another free social media tool to be used by businesses to better their SEO and overall sales.

Here’s how Foursquare works:

Users create an account and check-in to the places they go.
Participating businesses offer deals and discounts to those who check-in as well as specials to those who are “regulars.”
Users’ check-ins not only get shared with their Foursquare friends, but to all of their Facebook friends and Twitter followers if they opt to do so.

Foursquare encourages not only sharing, but brand loyalty. It’s truly a win-win situation for those businesses and customers that choose to participate.

Apart from the impact sharing and customer incentives will have on a business’ online presence, Foursquare affects SEO in a very simple way: Businesses with Foursquare profiles get indexed and crawled by Google. This means that it could directly affect business’ ranking on search engines.

Here’s how you can use this free tool to your advantage:

First, if you discover that your profile has already been created, you must claim it and ensure that all of the information is correct; or if your business does not already have a Foursquare profile, create one. It is imperative that your location is correct because when crawlers go through your Foursquare page, they will take note of the address and, if all goes well, this will aid your business in showing up in local Google searches. For instance, if your Italian restaurant is in New York City, you want it to show up in Google searches for restaurants local to New York City, not Denver, Colorado; Denver does your business no good.

Second, when creating your business’ profile, include keywords in its description, without over-doing it. You want to adequately describe your business without making it seem like you created the profile specifically to get ranked on search engines. Google developers have implemented certain precautions to weed out blatant SEO attempts. Keeping things simple and natural is your best bet in this situation.

Third, leaving tips in a business location that you ‘Manage‘, allows you to place in a nofollow link to your site. It doesn’t really help your SEO directly but traffic coming in can indirectly raise you up a bit.

Put very shortly, Foursquare offers businesses not only public customer endorsement, exposure, and loyalty, but also an opportunity to directly affect page rankings. Ultimately, businesses using Foursquare have the potential to increase traffic to their physical and virtual address, and increase their earnings.

Key takeaway: Foursquare has limited effects on SEO – we have yet to see Foursquare really open up its gates to the SEO world – in fact a user’s profile looks like this: https://foursquare.com/user/8960212

It didn’t even get my name right. The description is also the same for every profile. It’s just not that friendly to SEO. In fact, it’s a very weak social media account that I don’t recommend it for Social Media Reputation Management or for Linkbuilding either.

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Why Google+ Wants You to Get Social

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 02:14:58 +0000

It seems the past few weeks have been abuzz with talk all about that new Google+ thing … what it is, how to use it, and why it will eventually kill Facebook.

Instead of adding to that chatter, I wonder if we might be able to discuss a few other topics.

What will change in terms of the search experience, search engine optimization, and the fight on social spam.

The User Experience of Search

As the web becomes more and more populated with content, the harder search engines need to work to discover what should be prominently positioned. By working harder, I mean including more signals, looking to other sources for insight, and slashing sources that fall short of dependability.

In addition, when the web became a much more social environment, search engines took notice and wanted in. They created Social Search early 2010, which featured content from various networks, including Twitter, but Facebook shut Google out at some point — probably because they heard Google was working on a little project themselves.

So in addition to providing content from the social web to users searching Google for content, Google also wanted to use the information they found to rank pages with better insight. Instead of looking for keywords and meta, Google could use the social information they found, including what’ was being shared and voted up or re-tweeted, and factor it into their algorithm and make a more informed discussion regarding whether or not the page was relevant and worthy of prominent search results.

The Social Signal and Search Engine Optimization

With social data, Google will be able to present content people like, because similar to linking, social sharing (bookmarking, re-tweeting, and +1ing) is a form of link. Links, as you know, are the gold to search engine optimization because it takes a lot for one web publisher to link to another. It requires you to put your reputation on the line, because if your following doesn’t like the link, you’re not going to look good. With social sharing, if you share content with your friends and it’s cool, then you’re cool.

This is even more risky for people with personal profiles, because you’re risking your reputation as yourself, not from behind your website, so Google is probably going to be paying even closer attention to the social stuff in addition to the contextual based links. Not to mention the Google authorship markup that it has included for blog authors.

Search engine optimization specialists will surely begin exploring their options in terms of increasing their social activity, even though there’s one simple solution: create compelling content people want to share. Because not everyone will be interested exploring social optimization from a white-hat perspective, we’re going to see black hat specialists on the scene as well, which means more spam, manipulations, and perhaps even penalization from Google.

How Social Spam Will Hinder Our Social Experience

Though Google has their users’ best interests in mind as they move into the social scene, they’re also opening the opportunity for a lot of manipulation and risk of ruining the experience for users. That said, you can’t let a little risk stop you from trying new things. Google will strive to create the best search experience possible alongside fighting the endless battle with the spammers interested in manipulating their system.

These spammers will likely create dummy profiles and try to cheat the signal by adding +1 votes to their own content. Come to think of it, who knows whether or not they’ll find success in this method, as Google should be able to analyze the data and figure out the ghost user is tied to x, y, and z votes, which are all tied to l-m-n-o-p website … curious.

How Are You Getting Social With Google+?

As Google encourages us to get involved with the social web, not only because the social web is incredibly fun and informational, but also because the data they receive first and foremost helps them create a better experience for us, their users.

I’d love to hear how you’re getting social with Google+, including whether or not you’ve implemented the +1 button on your pages and whether or not you’ve started engaging with others at Google+ itself.

How do you like the functionality Google included into their search results pages?

The post Why Google+ Wants You to Get Social appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Should you use Google Plus over Facebook?

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:27:56 +0000

There are lots of people asking which is better social network – Google Plus or Facebook? There are certain advantages of Facebook as it already has an established user-base, a running business model that caters to the users, great apps and ways to connect, etc. Although there is a certain hype about Google Plus that just draws people in – especially the SEO and internet marketing type of people.

I’ve asked some of the most authoritative experts on the internet which they would prefer to use. Let’s see what they have to say:

“As of right now, my answer would be that I would choose Google+ hands down. Google+ now offers the kind of personal interaction we, as an online marketing community, have been craving. Now this might not last, considering that Google+ is still in Beta, but this window of opportunity to get in touch and get noticed by the bloggers that otherwise might be unreachable is priceless.

I would love to see Facebook remain a “family” social network, and Google + gear more towards business professionals, sort of like LinkedIn, just with more dialogue. From SEO perspective, Google+ is priceless and we can’t afford to ignore that. All the initial signals indicate that G+ actions, like shares, +1, etc. might become an active ranking factor in the near future.

Let’s face it: Google runs the search engine ranking show and if we want their attention, we’d better dance when they say we need to. I know I will.”

– Ana Hoffman
Self-made Internet Marketing, blogging and SEO Specialist
(Check out her Google Plus Social Network Tutorial)

“I DO use Google+ over Facebook. I got rid of Facebook over a year ago for several reasons. First, I was just tired of the platform. Second, the stuff showing up in my newsfeed wasn’t relevant to me. Third, I’ve grown quite annoyed over Facebooks practices with privacy and member relations. Fourth, I was even more annoyed by all the apps and friend requests I would constantly have to delete.

Those are the reasons why I left Facebook, and I replaced it with Twitter. Twitter allowed me to follow and connect with industry peers in a way that Facebook didn’t. I’ve been quite happy with Twitter, and it’s the core of my personal brand development strategy.

When Google+ launched, I had mixed feelings. I didn’t like the fact that it was yet another social network that I needed to monitor and build friends on again. However, they did do a great job with importing contacts from your Gmail accounts, and using Circles couldn’t be a more enjoyable to create those relationship connections needed for a social network to form.

I also realized how important social signals are to search results. It’s not hard to see that Google is going to rely quite heavily on Google+ for it’s profile information and social signal mining. If you want Google to recognize you as influential on a topic, you had better build your home on Google+. If at very least you want to understand how Google’s social graph will impact the SEO industry, it would be wise to have a working understanding of Google+. Clients are going to need a strategist who understands how Google+ can help their brand, and if you aren’t using it yourself, your Social SEO strategies are going to be weak at best.”

– Daniel Cristo
Seasoned SEO professional and founder of Fluttrs

“I find myself using Google+ more for sharing my blog posts and other professional updates as those get a lot more traction on Google+ than Facebook. Then for Facebook, I find I’m starting to use it more for personal updates since getting into Google+. I’m not sure what the change has been, but posting links on Google+ gets a lot more +1’s, comments, and reshares than when I post links on Facebook which seems to have dropped in engagement. Regular status updates on Facebook have been receiving much more reception though.

The other thing I love about Google+ is getting to share information directly with specific groups only. Instead of sharing something with everyone that I know half my audience isn’t interested in, I can now just share with that side of my audience thanks to the circles. That in itself is a huge value!”

– Kristi Hines
Freelance Writer, Blogger and Social Media enthusiast

“I would personally use Google+ over Facebook, but I wouldn’t ignore FB as well. We need to use both to get the best out our social media connections. Why? Because no one tells you to stop using Twitter just because you love Facebook more or vice versa, G+ is just another great thing we can utilize to improve our social and SERP standings.

To answer why I would use G+ over FB would take a lot, so I’ll try to keep it short. The reason number one being Google’s ability to recognize our connections on other social networks and thus show our pages ranking better for everyone that is connected to us, having your image show under a SERP result will surely increase CTR, so what’s not to love about that one. One more reason to use facebook, twitter and other social networks as well, but that relates more to +1 button than the network itself. What I love about G+ now are the circles, which you can really play around with and avoid spamming your non-techie friends with SEO rubbish.

Also tagging and geo-tagging, a great thing when sharing geographically tied content and lastly, Google+ is the most active social network at the moment due to all the hype, so things get +1’d and talked about more then they do on Twitter at the moment, and this is a wave we should all ride while it lasts.”

– Zarko Zivkovic
SEO Specialist, CEO and Founder of Practical SEO

For professional content in my particular sphere (web/inbound marketing and startups/technology), I would choose Google+ over Facebook.

First off, I like to be an early adopter of new technologies and platforms. Second, a lot of the people I want to connect with are using Google+. Third, as was shown in our recent experiment, Google+ users seem to be more highly engaged and likely to click

– Rand Fishkin
CEO and Co-Founder of SEOMoz

As of me, I would say that Google Plus should be the focus right now since hey, it’s Google who owns most of the search market. In fact, Google plus has already affected SEO. And they would probably make their social network matter more when it comes to search ranking factors than any other social network. Of course, if they are to do that, they would have to make it so in a way that it will positively impact all users and will be useful to all people.

Facebook is still something not to be neglected though – since it also holds a significant share in the social signals factor. And the established user base in Facebook makes it a powerful sharing tool still. It’s exciting what would happen with these two as they both try to claim hold of the social network arena.

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