Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has gone through a lot of changes over the years.  Search Engines are like little toddlers, they need to be taught what is relevant and quality for searches.  The goal of search engines is to provide the most relevant and best quality result to your search query.  The task of SEO is to provide search engines with all the necessary triggers of relevancy and quality to teach them what to display in search results.

The basics of SEO consists both of on-site factors, like header tags and title tags, and off-site factors, like back-links and social triggers.  Over the years the way we try to reach our goals with organic search has changed.  And with the introduction of Google’s “Search Plus Your World,” there has been a shift in search results based on the Google+ social graph.

If you do not have a Google+ social media plan in place, now is the time to adapt one.

6 Reasons Search is Changing

Google+ information is being heavily displayed in search results.  When you are logged into your Google account and perform a search, not only are you going to see the regular paid ads and the top ten search results, you are going to see Google+ results all over the page.

You will see the people that are in your circle along the top of the results page.  You will see content from your circle’s feed showing in prime locations in search.  Google+ is being displayed prominently and it will affect your traffic and potential conversion.

Google+ is in Search Results

Second, Google has made an aggressive change to the way search results are displayed.  They have introduced a new results box called “People and Pages on Google+.”  This is prominent and will grow in use.  This will only display when logged into your account, but the power is obvious.

Facebook, at the time of this writing has about 800 million active users.  Google has billions of users performing billions of searches each day.  The amount of data available to Google is significantly greater than even Facebook.

Google is essentially personalizing your search results based on your social connections and the things that you have indicated are your interests.  They are trying to learn what is most relevant to you and deliver the results that they believe you would want to view and your social connections help determine both relevancy and quality.

Google+ Adoption is Growing

Facebook has spent a great deal of energy and effort becoming the center of the social graph.  They have built an enormous amount of equity in “owning” the social space.  Google is making an effort to dislodge Facebook from that position because of the power of search.  Google+ is still a young social media platform.  At the time of this writing, it has about 60 million users.  It will reach 100 million by the end of 2012 and begin to grow at steady rate.

I don’t know about you, but when people perform a search using one of my primary keywords, showing up in organic search is good, but showing up in “People and Pages on Google+” would be great!  It is in a better position for clicks and gives me an opportunity to connect better with potential customers or users.

Enriching Result Snippets

The rich snippets that are being included in the markup will have impact in click through rates and impressions.  You now have images, icons of people in your circle, brands that you follow being displayed in the search result under a listing.  It is adding an element of social proof that search results have missed.

We will be more likely to click on links that people we know and follow have +1ed or shared on their stream than a link with no social proof.  Google is counting on these triggers.  These are the things that help provide them with better information that leads to better search results for its customers, you and me!

Social Triggers and Proof Matter

The current trend in search is to be biased toward social triggers and social proof.  The search algorithm is designed to deliver the most important content to its users.  The problem is that these mathematical formulas are missing a key ingredient, human behavior.  They are not able to understand and predict human behavior in a reliable, systematic way.  By incorporating the social element from Google+, they are able to utilize this data to help filter irrelevant and low quality results and deliver high quality relevant results specific to the user.

Your search results will differ from my search results because our social graph is different.  These triggers will impact the way Google delivers results.  Search becomes more personal.

SEO is Changing with Social

The impact of Google’s “Search Plus Your World” is yet to be completely understood.  It has already proven that is an important tool for online marketing and social marketing and it is now influencing SEO strategy.  If you have not began to look at how Google+ can improve your web traffic, jump in while there is still room to learn, grow and master.  Then you can become the authority that is showing for your keyword in the “People and Pages on Google+” results.

As an Internet Marketer, I have developed audio recordings of business tips, and many training videos.  So I began to think about another way to re-purpose that content.  Such as turning them into transcripts and re-purposing them as an ebook, a seven-step series on “how to” do whatever I was discussing, or a free tips sheet for my opt-in box.

I had used a virtual assistant in the past to to listen to the audio and transcribe it for me. Which took several hours to complete and was very costly.  I needed something quick and easy (and free would be great too!).  After some research, I found VoiceBase.  This free web-based program allows you to upload files manually into VoiceBase or automatically through their API.  They support many different file types and accept files up to 750MB.  You can also record audio or video directly from your computer using your microphone and webcam and upload it to VoiceBase.

VoiceBase has a unique feature in that you can “search” your uploaded files by typing in your keywords.  Also, there is a public search feature where you can find public radio and podcasters who have content on VoiceBase.

The free version allows you to store your files for one year.  Any time during that one year period you can choose to permanently store your files for around $1 per hour of audio.  Also available for an additional cost is human transcribing, which takes approximately three days to complete.

I uploaded a couple of webinars that I had previously done.  They were 45 minutes to 1 hour in length.  Both files uploaded quickly and in less than two hours, the transcripts were complete.  I didn’t see an easy way to save a file, so I just copied and pasted it into a Word document.  The transcribed content is not usable and will have to be reviewed extensively in order for it to be re-purposed.  However, they did state that the clearer your audio is, the better the transcript will be.  So I’m not giving up on this program as a great resource.  Keeping in mind that I should speak clearly and slower, I believe the next audio that I upload will produce a much better transcript.

VoiceBase also has a free iPhone App so that you can record from your phone.  Overall, I like it and will continue to use it for now.  What program are you currently using for audio to text conversions?

As I sat in my office watching the Live Feed from Facebook’s F8 Conference last week, I quickly saw the new Timeline being much like an online scrapbook.  I love to scrapbook and have gotten together with friends to share stamps, templates and other embellishments for by books.  But the one thing I don’t do with my scrap-booking is to…Keep It Up To Date!  I’m terrible about this.  I have really good intentions, but I put it off and put it off until my children are grown and all the wonderful events of their life are outdated, so why put that book together now?

Well, with the new Facebook Timeline,  (and everyone should remember this, you don’t HAVE to put your life out there, it’s your choice) I can can go all the way back to my birth and start building my life online.  I’m not so sure that I want everything out there or if I even want to go back that far.  But I have that option now.

And there are Apps that will make the Facebook experience more like a community.  We can share music, movies, books and videos with each other and even watch them together and chat about them, all from within Facebook.  Be careful, not to make yourself a hermit with this feature and never go out to a real theater or bookstore.  You still need human touchy-feely relationships.

Here is a run down (as I noted it) of the new Timeline and it’s accompanying features:

• The heart of the Facebook experience is your Profile
• The Story of your Life will be represented in Timeline
• Timeline will be a lot more visual
• On the right of the Timeline will be the years and you can click it to see what you posted for that year
• A large area for a Cover Photo at the top of your Timeline.  Can be changed daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
• Visual Tiles for the Apps you use
• Works on Mobile Devices
• You can go to the beginning of your life and build your Timeline, or just start where you are
• Apps express who you are by highlighting and curating all your stories and giving you complete control over everything and everyone that sees it
• A new Report feature to allow you to see quickly a summary of your Apps, like what you ate, what movies you watched, where you have been, etc.
• Ticker (which a lot of people find annoying) is a lightweight stream of information.  It moves quickly and shares posts from your friends so you can jump into a conversation with them
• Open Graph – a new class of Apps will cover four areas, Communication, Games, Media and Lifestyle
• Through Open Graph you will discover new things from your friends  – Frictionless experiences and Realtime Serendipity (this is the music, movie sharing feature I mentioned above)
• Open Graph is the biggest change on Facebook since the 1st F8 conference

The beta period for Timeline began last week for developers.  But many people have declared themselves developers so they can begin building their Timeline.  Myself…I’ll just wait until all the bugs and kinks are worked out and build mine.  Which will only be a couple of weeks.

After everyone has gotten to learn and use  Timeline, the Open Graph will be rolled out.

So you have lots of decisions and choices to make.  Do you want to have your entire life online for everyone to read? Do you want to share just the highlights of your life? Do you want to build relationships with your friends over a song, book or movie?  You can (or cannot) do it all with the new Facebook Timeline and Open Graph.

How do you feel about these features?  Will you use them?  I’d love to know your thoughts.

Just when you think it’s safe to read your news feed on Facebook…they have changed it again.  But it has strange similarities to the original news feed of long, long ago. 

Basically, they have done away with the Most Recent tab and have combined those updates with the Top Stories.  But, so we don’t miss anything while we are away from our beloved Facebook, the  Top Stories are being highlighted that Facebook believes might be important to us.  These appear at the top of your page and are marked with a Blue corner in the upper left.

The criteria for pulling Top Stories is based on the relationship you have to the person, how many people are commenting on the post, how many “likes” it received and what kind of story it is.  If you find stories that you really don’t care to read as Top Stories, you can hover over the right side of the post and click the down arrow to remove it from your Top Stories.

So basically you might see Recent Stories, then Top Stories and more Recent Stories while viewing your News Feed.  But when you log in after being away for a while, the Top Stories should pop to the top of the News Feed.

Also, you can once again view updates based on your Friends List.  To do this, from your Home page, click “More” on the left side bar at LISTS, and select which friends list you would like to view. 

I’m happy about the news feed changes, because it makes it easier to keep up with those friends and pages that are most important to me and my business. 

What about you?  Do you like the changes?

Enjoy this guest post by Ben ~

Social media has become an essential part of web promotion. Not only is it effective and helpful for increasing the popularity of your business or website, but it is absolutely necessary! Proper use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook will not only help your site gain exposure, but it will act as a catalyst for making your content more prominent and even viral.

The easiest and most important step to take when stepping into the “social” scene is adding buttons to your site to help visitors share your content. In other words, make your website “shareable” because the last thing you want to do is inhibit their ability to advertise your business for you. People love to communicate and we also love to share. Social media is the Internet’s analogy for word-of-mouth advertising. Neglecting to add buttons on your site for visitors to share your content is a lot like stripping them of their voice – let them talk!

TweetMeme is a fantastic tool for making your content very shareable. It adds a simple button at the top (or bottom) of all of your posts that people can use to tweet your content with literally 2-clicks. A common trend you will notice when observing popular sites in almost every niche is the overwhelming amount of tweets in comparison to “likes” on Facebook. Tweeting is easier and faster, and in an online world where we skim almost everything we read, we need to have quick sharing options for our visitors.

A common and effective layout for making your site easy to share is to include a button at the top of every post for Twitter and/or Facebook, a set of buttons at the bottom for a few popular social sites, and also the presence of similar sharing buttons consistently displayed on your sidebar. For the sidebar, the most important inclusions are Twitter, Facebook, and your RSS Feed. You might have other sites like LinkedIn that you like to use or a series of videos on YouTube – these would be good additions for your sharing buttons.

To further emphasize the importance of properly using social media, lets cover a scenario:

1. Someone visits your site and reads an article. They really like it, but they don’t see any sharing buttons and so it may not even cross their mind to tweet it or like it, so they move on with their day.
2. This same visitor comes to your site and reads the same article. However, this time there are social sharing buttons featured prominently on the page. This visitor tweets the post and it is quickly exposed to all of this user’s followers (dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people).

And it doesn’t stop there. The people who see that tweet might tweet it too, they might look through your site and tweet another post, or they might follow you on Twitter and become exposed to all of your new tweets. Simple processes like this can quickly multiply and expand upon your daily traffic, and all of this happens simply because you have made your website shareable.

Supplement your social media strategies with SEO. Check out our FREE SEO Course or download our FREE OnlyWire Account Creator to make social bookmarking effortless.

I love friends!  I love meeting new friends and getting to know them and how I might be able to help them in some way.  I really do.  But I wouldn’t just walk up to a stranger and say, “Hey, I want to be your friend! I don’t know you or really anyone else you know personally, but you look like someone that I would want to connect with!”   Seriously!

So why do people do that online?  I get friend requests daily from people I don’t know and they NEVER indicated why they want to be connected with me.  At least a small message saying, I’m a friend of Joe’s and he thought we might be able to help each other in business.  Or something!

Many of my online friends feel the same way and basically “ignore” those requests.  If we don’t know you personally or you don’t write a small note telling us why you want to be friends, then chances are….it won’t happen.

I don’t think people really get the concept yet of Facebook.  Your personal profile (where you have friends) is intended for people you personally know and your family.  Thus the name…Personal Profile!  The Fan Page is intended to have people who you might not know personally, but have an interest in your business or the products and services you sell.  I would love to have more folks join me on my Fan Page (psst, here’s the link Online and Social Media Training)  I would never turn you way, unless you were being rude or obnoxious.

It’s just common courtesy as my friend Kathleen Gage said on my Facebook wall during a recent discussion. When you are requesting to be someone’s friend on Facebook there is a little section in the lower left corner to Add a personal message.

As Nike says, Just Do It!  Remember online social networking is first and always about building a relationship.  You can’t build a relationship with people you don’t know.

This year’s Summer Skill Camp 2011 has a great lineup of eight 90-minute clinics including:

• Success Strategies for Creating a Social Media Monitoring System
• Creating and Promoting a Compelling Facebook Contest
• Tips and Tactics for Building an Effective Social Media Measurement System
• Discovering the Fine Art of Setting Rates and Building Packages for Your Services
• Creating an Effective Mobile Marketing Campaign for Local Businesses
• Setting up an Ecommerce Platform with 1ShoppingCart
• Mastering New Tactics for Increasing Your Search Engine Listings
• Maximizing Productivity and Enhancing Communications using Google Tools.

Watch this video for a more in-depth view of what to expect.

Sneak Preview of VAClassroom Summer Skill Camp 2011

To gain more information about the Summer Skill Camp visit:

Summer Skill Camp

At the beginning, of course!!  

Seriously, nearly everyone starts at the same place – the beginning. So, why is it that some people get to the finish line faster than others?

There’s several reasons, but one is that they get really good help from really experienced instructors from the beginning. But finding those really experienced instructors that you can trust is always tough and a little risky.

Until now!  GREAT instructors – ones you can trust – will be gathered in one room in Atlanta, GA and they will be working with you to build your affiliate marketing empire.

The Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshop is like no other out there.

For three days, two dozen of the top Internet Marketers will teach nuts and bolts results – no theory! This is a teaching workshop where students implement what they learn on the spot by following the leadership of instructors who have been through the internet marketing trials before you. Each instructor will deliver 60 to 90 minutes of instruction about their area of expertise. And the best part is that they are available to you after the session is over.  You can have lunch or dinner with them and pick their brains even more.  Plus you make lasting connections and great friendships.

You can select which experience level track you enroll in. There are four:

• Beginner 1 – starting from scratch
• Beginner 2 – maybe you’ve got a blog already, but not making money
• Intermediate – making money, but not enough
• Advanced – making plenty of money, but want more time and a sustainable business

Their goal at NAMS is that you accomplish your goals. By joining the forum and working with accountability groups, you should have firm goals established and partner teams aligned by the time you to come to the workshop.

Brainstorming and some Chick-Fil-A

I have first-hand experience because I was lucky enough to attend two of the NAMS workshops in 2010.  I went not really knowing anyone or anything about affiliate marketing, but left with a binder full notes and a ton of new ideas on how to make more money online and the contacts to help me make it happen!

So, yes – you should bring a computer, lots of notepads, your smart phone and your contact list.  Then be ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

No matter what your experience level is, this workshop is created specifically to help build your businesses. And the price is definitely right at only $397.  But Wait! (isn’t that what they say on the TV infomercials?)  LOL 

You can get a $100 discount during the month of May by simply using this code: 100special.

I hope you can make it to NAMS in August. If you have any questions, post them in the comment section below. I’ll be happy to tell you what I know or find the answers for you.  And be sure to register in May to get the discount!

Second article in a three-part series on Social Media ROI

Social media has become a driving force in American society, and the greater human society as a whole. Almost everyone under the age of 30 is aware of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a variety of other social media outlets. As people increasingly turn away from face to face engagements and toward online networking, businesses are trying to adapt their practices to take advantage of the opportunities provided by social media and online networking sites.

Businesses always think in terms of money; how much money is going out and how much money is coming in? When economic times get tough businesses always look first at where their money is going out before worrying about where money is coming in from. Return on Investment, or ROI, is a very big term in business. With the evolution of social media, businesses are increasingly turning to this new media outlet for marketing. As such, many businesses are trying to determine the ROI of their social media practices.

Determining how social media initiatives impact a business’s ROI is difficult because the results will not jump out on a spreadsheet revealing their impact in plain sight. Instead, businesses looking for social media’s impact on ROI need to go beyond cash flow, costs, and stats on paper. A better approach to measure ROI from social media should include the following:

• Providing a face for your business
• Get input from customers
• Join the discussion
• Encourage involvement
• Build business relationships

Most employees at any given company have passions related to their company, and passions that are unrelated to the business. Keying in on a passion an employee has that relates to your business, and then allowing that individual to run a social media program puts a human face on your company’s online profile. For example, if a moving companies’ provider has an employee who considers themselves an amateur photographer they should be encouraged to create an online presence where employees and customers can share photos from their travels.

Social media’s biggest impact might be in providing customers with a louder voice for the company to hear. Allowing marketing and sales departments to run social media programs will allow them a direct link to the customer base. This not only allows them to focus in on exact customer bases, but also receive feedback from those customers.

Word of mouth has taken on a greater impact in our social media age than it ever could have before. The internet allows information about your business to reach every corner of the world. Engaging in discussion and discourse with customers in a positive manner creates good word of mouth about your company that can reach much farther than just around the block or in the next town.

Lastly, the ROI of a company’s social media efforts can be seen by encouraging involvement and building business relationships. Companies from different industries can come together through social media connections to support projects that benefit the greater good, and even encourage their customers to get involved as well. Travel insurance companies, for instance, can encourage their customers to support community development projects in a region they routinely visit. It can be as simple as a donation, or as involved as volunteering time to the cause.

Social media’s impact on a company’s ROI is definitely there, but it won’t jump off the page of a spreadsheet. Rather, businesses need to dig deep for ways to make social media work for them.

It is difficult to escape the reach of social media giants like Facebook and Twitter these days. Just six years ago Facebook was only open to college students and Twitter didn’t even exist. Fast forward to 2011 and you will be hard pressed to find an individual not using one or both of these social media outlets.

Now businesses are jumping on board with social media in an attempt to advertise their products and services, and generally get their face out there for the public to see. Businesses of all kinds, from professional sports teams to health insurance providers seem to at least have a Facebook page these days. In fact, few television commercials end without the company asking viewers to check them out on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

The major factor behind businesses turning so heavily to social media is an argument that doing so improves a business’s Return on Investment (ROI). Unlike television, radio, and print ads that cost money to run, Facebook and Twitter are free to join. Even better for many businesses, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds can be constantly changed and updated without starting a whole new marketing campaign. Those companies with deeper pockets can pay a little extra money to advertise themselves across Facebook and Twitter, but in general the services are free arenas in which to market themselves.

Social media can be a tricky venue for many businesses though. Health insurance providers for instance must follow strict government regulations that govern the messages that can be passed from insurance companies to the public. All messages must pass an approval process that can often take weeks, which runs contradictory to the instant gratification of status updates and Tweets.

The big question for every company is whether or not all this social media effort is worth it. With every company looking to spend less and bring in more these days, social media outlets appear to be a great place to advertise without sinking thousands of dollars into the effort. To date, the results for social media ROI efforts are mixed, but pointing towards positive outcomes.

Internet analyst firm ForeSee Results recently conducted a survey of nearly 300,000 consumers who visited over 180 private and public sector websites. The findings initially suggest that social media ROI is non-existent with less than one percent of website visits coming as the result of direct links placed on social media pages.

However, ForeSee did note that there is a significant indirect impact on ROI from social media. The study noted that around 18 percent of website visitors reported being influenced to visit the site based upon social media outlets.

Marketing through social media outlets remains in its infancy, but it appears that the future is bright for companies looking to improve their ROI with the help of social media.