jon, Author at Outsource Force

How to Use a Google+ Brand Page as Your Business Website

Posted on March 31, 2013 by jon

Some Google+ users are concerned about how Google+ brand or business page cannot be used as a “regular website”. Businesses are limited by Google’s predetermined page names – Posts, About, Photos and Video, and thus restricting the contents to these specific page names, and not able to create new and personalized pages.

Internet marketers, especially those doing search engine optimization coordinates with their social media specialists in putting up a Google+ brand page that is well optimized without the losing the concept of it being a social media page or account. Combining both social media marketing and SEO is one of the best assets of Google+ brand page.

There are, however, a few methods using Google+ brand page to make it your business website.

About Page of Google+

Google+ has “About” page and businesses should use its full potential to make the Google+ page as their business website. On this page, businesses must create a limited 250-word rich, original and compelling content that best describes the business, its products and services or other offerings. The information on this “About” page should aim to convince visitors to contact the brand or the business to make an inquiry or make a purchase.

Google+ Brand Pages and the Links

Google+ encourages businesses to include relevant links in their “About” page content. This is facilitated by the use of HTML editor which is provided by Google+. This capability should be used wisely and only when you need the visitor to leave your Google+ page and go to your main website in order to understand better what you are offering, or have more detailed information that will help them make the decision to take your offer. Google+ users should know that these links have been changed by Google from do-follow to no-follow links. What this means is that you cannot rely on this links to boost up your SEO campaign, but will definitely serve its purpose for the visitor.

In addition to the standard website link and contact email address, Google+ “About” page has a Links area below it that offers another significant opportunity to share pertinent company information such as social media profiles and promotion pages of the business. And these are do-follow links so these are extremely valuable in terms of SEO results. Caution should be exercised though by Google+ users to be mindful of the visitors leaving the page when they click these do-follow links.

Google+ Brand “Posts” Page

Having posts on Google+ “Posts” page that are associated with the business’ brand page allows the business to have the platform to directly communicate with the consumer base. Regardless if it’s sharing product information, or delivering prompt customer service, or launching promotions and special offers, this page allows businesses to enjoy interaction with their customer audience.

The Value of Google+ Circles

It would seem that the benefit of most value for a Google+ business page is having Google+ Circles associated with them. This allows the Google+ user a good opportunity to target their audience by gender, geographic location, occupation, industry or profession, etc. Promotional campaigns and messages can be directed to the selected and most receptive audience members. With this approach, audience will appreciate a well-crafted branded message enough to share it with friends, followers and fans of the inspired audience members.

By taking full advantage of the single page offered by Google+ About page in making the presence felt and serve their marketing needs, Google+ users are able to make the page as a business website of some sort. And although it’s uncertain at this time how the Google+ page will display in Bing or Yahoo search results, the Google+ user should really focus in making their Google+ Business Page as appealing as possible for Google+ users and audience, no matter what the limitations are.

If you’re still not convinced by the importance of having a Google Plus page for your business, you can read here seven reasons why you should use Google Plus now.

Skunk: Possible Animal for the Next Google Update after Panda and Penguin

Posted on March 24, 2013 by jon

People who have been involved in the Internet activities for the last 12 years surely felt the sting of a Google update to their search algorithm. Imagine the voluminous amount of 12 years worth of work that has to adapt to the updates. Long time Internet workers would give a shiver when they hear the words “Panda” and “Penguin”. Google interestingly uses black and white animals to name its updates and when people talk about updates, speculations are going around that another Google algorithm update is in the offing and will be named after another black or white animal, a skunk, maybe? And surely, whatever algorithm update Google is brewing will leave SEO specialists and SEO outsourcing companies in the Philippines, website owners, bloggers and other online collaborators keenly and anxiously waiting.

Vertical Response in their post published on January 28, 2013 shared what they believe is “the next black and white, anti-web spam, animal algorithm update which Google’s Matt Cutts is raising over at Google”.

Some of the things Google is expected to focus on with the next algorithm update include:

1. Weak Content will most likely get hit again. No one will be surprised by this anymore. Google has been openly advocating on quality content as vouched by the past duplicate content penalties they have imposed. What is surprising though is the tons of low-quality duplicate contents still being published. Website owners who use guest bloggers to supply them with content for their blogs, should be very careful and should stay away from weak content spun from another post maybe, as this is a great issue for Google.

Guest bloggers with little respect for quality content will usually distribute the same exact article to different websites and Google may not appreciate such behavior and treat it as a way to trick the system. One can anticipate a penalty on the site as a result of low-quality blogging. Even guest bloggers who do great work should keep an eye on their content being duplicated by other blog writers.

Fortunately, there are available tools to check for duplicate content. And whenever possible, instead of using guest bloggers, efforts should be pushed towards writing original and good quality content as a way to start a penalty-free content marketing strategy just in case Google releases the next algorithm update.

2. Poor Backlink Profile. Unknowingly, your backlink profile may not be that spot-on anymore especially if you have been in the online scene for more than five years (as per Internet terms). This means that the links from other websites pointing back to your site are spammy and low quality. And these types of backlinks are Google’s pet peeves which it has openly declared it will penalize.

To avoid this, you should constantly check your backlink profile to make sure that no blackhat practitioners have victimized your site. SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer will be a very useful tool for this purpose. However, if you have been victimized after all, you should use Google Disavow tool to get rid of the spammy links which could bring your site down in terms of ranking and all. This tool simply tells Google that you don’t want them to look at the links for some reason. But you should make sure that you are not accidentally disavowing good quality links as Google still places high SEO value on them.

And while everyone seems to be scrambling about the looming update, until it’s official, it’s just rumor and speculation. And this is not unusual in the SEO industry especially if it’s about Google update which most of the time is in the habit of not releasing details regarding their updates until announcement day. This can be a good thing since everyone becomes concerned enough to check their backlinks painstakingly. So even before Google releases its update, backlink profiles are as good as new for those who got worried anyway.

With Google’s constant yet unpredictable threat of an algorithm update, webmasters and SEO specialists should have learned their lessons well by now. Google has been very vocal about wanting to provide the user with the best search result and experience. And yet every link building strategy that has been heard of and used in the past 5 years is guaranteed to earn a penalty slap from Google. Apparently, many seem not to have learned their lessons well to date.

By now, you should know by heart what will keep you out of trouble in view of the upcoming Google algorithm update – high quality, compelling and original, and evergreen content. If you keep your content as natural as possible and not over-stuff it with keywords, and if you keep your keywords and landing pages diverse, you steer clear of any Google penalty.

Do remember that in creating content, you give your audience something worth reading. Internet users use search engines to look for valuable content. Give them what they want and you’ll get what you want; high ranking.

So regardless if a Google Skunk update really comes out or not, sooner or later, if you go along Google’s pronouncements on quality content, by the time the new algorithm update hits the Web, you can just sit back and relax, and not worry about being skunked!

If you outsource your online marketing activities in countries like the Philippines, ensuring that these search engine optimization companies do adhere to Google’s standard in topping search rank will be of great benefit to your business. You can check here a good SEO company in the Philippines.

What is Crowdsourcing and How Important Is It

Posted on March 17, 2013 by jon

The term crowdsourcing means work being done by a “crowd”. Crowd refers to the public at large. It is the process by which work gets done, usually online, from a crowd of people. Coined from the two words “crowd” and “outsourcing”, the idea is to take work and outsource it to a crowd of online workers, specifically.

One famous example of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia. You know that Wikipedia is some sort of an online encyclopedia. This online encyclopedia, however, gave the crowd the ability to create the information on their own and make it a part of Wikipedia. This resulted to Wikipedia being the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the world as there were no geographical boundaries, language barriers, culture variations, etc. that restrict anyone from participating in the process.

Believe it or not, the concept of crowdsourcing has long existed before the term was even invented. This concept was used to provide evidence of Bigfoot or the UFOs. The open-source software movement proved that it can be done with large numbers of people and this has been done many, many years ago. With today’s crowdsourcing, technology plays a key role as it makes possible to enlist an even-larger number of non-technical people to do more complex and creative tasks at significantly lower cost.

How Important is Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing adapts the principle of “more heads are better than one”. Superior quality of content is therefore achieved because of the involvement of a large crowd for ideas, skills and participation. With numerous people offering their best ideas, skills and support, one can only expect quality results. In terms of information, it will be most comprehensive. In terms of design, it will be the most conceptualized. In terms of micro tasks, it will be the most detailed. Crowdsourcing allows you to select the best result not from a single provider but from a sea of talents. Results can also be delivered much quicker than traditional or conventional methods since it is a form of freelancing.

Crowdsourcing can also improve the creative process and enhance productivity. Labor and research expenses are minimized. And since the process is internet-based, the amount of time spent collecting data through formal focus groups or manual research, is dramatically reduced because a passionate community of customers are at the other end willing to contribute their knowledge resources for a crowdsourcing task. It drives and seeds enthusiasm among the willing participants and creates an eagerness or anticipation for upcoming products. Imagine having a pool of participants with expertise in marketing, branding and product-development processes, management, etc. and see what the collective collaboration will produce.

It is highly possible that outside the walls of your company, there are people who can help you perform better whether it’s an ad campaign design or some issues on R&D problems, etc. They can be another resource available to you so you can get the work done. With crowdsourcing, most participants will simply request for some recognition or acknowledgment for the contribution, a sense of community, and though rarely a financial incentive.

Confirmed: Google Removes “Not Selected” From Webmaster Tools

Posted on March 13, 2013 by jon

The “not selected” filter within Google Webmaster Tool’s Index Status Report was confirmed removed by Google. To find out and confirm, open the Webmaster tools and navigate to the Index Status Report and click on the advance settings tab. Do you see the “not selected” option, which used to be there? And Google’s John Mueller mentioned that the removal of the said option was “causing more confusion than actually helping webmasters with their sites.”

Before its removal, the “not selected” option has been quite a controversial filter for a lot of webmasters. Some regard it as useful while others couldn’t comprehend to this day the filter’s variety of meanings. For some webmasters the ambiguous term could have helped determine a number of issues such as duplicate or thin content, duplicate URLs, a rel=”canonical” to another page, and a redirect to another page. A lot of webmasters consider this option as an effective tool to identify a number of crawl issues. And its removal is being lamented by webmasters through blogs.

It then causes one to doubt about the usefulness or non-usefulness of the “not selected” option. If it was confusing and not helping webmasters, why did it elicit negative reaction from the webmasters? Even John Mueller seemed to have contradicted his statement not so long ago, saying, “ the number of “not selected” URLs is based on URLs that are either substantially similar or re-directing, meaning, if you have changed your site’s URL structure and have redirected those URLs, that would be a good explanation for that. That curve would also be fine and not a signal of a problem”.

Said previous statement contradicts his recent statement about why the option was removed. The move came shortly after numerous reports of Google Webmaster Tools having issues with reporting the number of links pointing to a site.

Use Trending Topics to Get More Twitter Followers

Posted on March 11, 2013 by jon

For many, having Twitter followers is the holy grail of being on Twitter. Others would think of Twitter followers as a by-product of successful community building. Regardless of the nature of motivation one has in having Twitter followers, one thing remains – having more followers means more people to impact or learn from. So, how do you get more Twitter followers?

You might not know it but the trending topics on Twitter’s trending topic list could very well be useful in gaining new followers. But while this is a fact, you need to first understand the reasons behind a trending topic. It’s not enough that you pick a hashtag topic from the trending topic list and start tweeting using the trending topic selected. You need to have a clear understanding of why a certain topic ends up trending.

A topic that is trending is one which people are talking about now more than any other time in the past. It could be a popular topic before that has become popular again now with a new group of people. Twitter explained that the Trends list includes not just what is popular or being talked about but all the hottest rising topics. In other or simpler words, Twitter captures novelty topics more than the popular topics. Hence, when using the trending topics, you should take advantage of this knowledge in order to increase your Twitter followers.

Rather than just sticking a trending hashtag topic onto the end of your tweet, you must make sure that your content is relevant to the trending hashtag topic. You can’t stay away from your niche or from the topics which normally define or characterize your tweets. The trending topic should be relevant – to your niche, and to your regular tweets.

The best way to illustrate this is by using a trending topic “#Vegetarian”. This trending topic will work well for people involved in restaurants, foods because it jives well with what restaurant or food people tweet about. The trending topic can be enhanced and made more interesting by sharing a recipe or photo of a dish, include the hashtag and send tweets to as many followers as possible. However, the same trending topic will not likely work for people involved in, say, social media marketing. It will take a high level of ingenuity to be able to make this work without looking or sounding “off” or awkward. And in terms of gaining new followers, it’s far from happening.

If you pick an unrelated or “non-relevant” trending topic, you might stand a chance of getting a few new followers, but these new followers are not likely to get interested in the contents you normally tweet. The likely scenario would be the new followers “unfollowing” you after a few days. The interaction stops right there.

In order to capitalize on the trending topics and use them to your advantage, you should focus on finding or selecting trending topics that are relevant to your niche or business. This will make your regular followers sticking by your tweets and new followers interested in the trending topic could be added to your existing follower-base. The new followers will get to know you and what you tweet about which most likely they will also be interested in.

When tweeting trending topics, make sure that your content is funny, unique and “novel” and interesting. The competition is stiff and a stand out tweet can easily get the attention of the readers or followers. A compelling tweet is likely to be re-tweeted. Make your tweets as mess-free as possible. There’s no need to over-stuff a single tweet with more than one trending topic. Not only will it look messy, it will also be mistaken as spammy. And lastly, when tweeting you must make sure that your tweet will be of help or be of value to those who will see it.

To know how to optimize a tweet and get more followers apart from using the hashtag and trending topics, click here.

Get Ready for Another Google Update: Big Changes to Mobile Campaign Management

Posted on March 03, 2013 by jon

Google has recently announced a new update that will affect all Google advertisers via the New AdWords Enhanced Campaigns. According to Google, the enhanced campaigns offer a major change in the basic organization and behavior of AdWords campaigns. It is a first step in simplifying yet smartly managing ad campaigns in a multi-device world as it combines mobile and desktop search in every campaign.

Growth of Mobile Queries Make Way for the Change

This change may have been driven by the glaring fact that the growth of mobile queries has incredibly outdone desktop queries. With more activities done on the mobile phone platform, it is, but right that the paid ads for desktop users be made available to mobile users as well without having to set up and manage multiple and separate campaigns for each device. Through Enhanced Campaigns, instead of creating several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions, the right ads based on their context like location, time of day and device type can reach people across different devices using one single ad campaign.

How AdWords Enhanced Campaigns Work

Recognizing the ever-growing multi-device expanse, Google is upgrading the old PPC campaign structure to allow advertisers to leverage on important mobile advertising features without the need to create separate campaigns intended for every location and device combination. What this means is that ad campaigns will now be different in the following ways:

Geo and Device Targeting. Google is expanding on bid adjustments to include options for location and device instead of confining to time of day options. Geo targeting is key to a successful mobile strategy by targeting the campaigns for different locations – states, cities, radius targeting and many other geo options. With this, more people are reached by the campaign. With Enhanced Campaigns, geo-targeting and device-targeting were made like dayparting. Advertisers will be able to adjust bids either raise it or decrease it in specific locations, consequently, whenever a search is made on a mobile device, a bid adjustment of -100% will equate to zero mobile targeting or advertising in that location.
Smarter Ads Optimized for Different Users. The idea of Enhanced Campaigns is to take the features of mobile advertising and offer them in a much more scalable way for Google advertisers. The Enhanced Campaigns will show the ads across devices with the right ad text, app or extension, sitelink, etc. Furthermore, there is no need to edit each campaign according to the purpose or intent. In a single campaign, Google will make note of what device is executing the search and will correctly pick the right ad to run on the identified device, automatically adjusting depending on what device is used and the geo-location.
Increasing Adoption Rates among SMBs. Enhanced Campaigns are bound to increase the likelihood of adopting the best practice among SMBs that would benefit from mobile PPC. Some of the advantages for marketers that upgrade to the new system will have include:
- Better Reporting Options. Google used to offer mobile call reporting features that allow advertisers to see details of phone calls received – the phone numbers, duration of call and when the call was received in exchange for a dollar charge per call. The reporting options for mobile are now getting a lot stronger, and Google is dumping the $1 per call tracking fee. They’re making mobile search ROI much easier to track and measure minus the fee.
- New Mobile Conversion Type. Conversion tracking was always more challenging on mobile than on desktop search, previously, conversion tracking was based on a user finding a thank you page after placing an online order or after goal completions were made. Technology has enabled people to take action on ads in new ways – see your ad and download your app, or see your add and call you. With Enhanced Campaigns, Google is introducing a new conversion type based on calls and app downloads counted will make it easier to measure the value of your mobile ads.
- Dramatically Simplified Campaign Management. Advertisers can now target users across all kinds of devices using the same campaigns, rather than having to explode their campaigns out for different devices and locations. This will drastically reduce the time needed to manage mobile ads.

Upgrading to Enhanced Campaigns

The upgrade path for a vast majority of advertisers who never bothered separating campaigns to cater to different devices is pretty straightforward. A previously created ad campaign intended for desktop only will by default be upgraded to run across both the mobile and desktop devices depending on the device identified by Google users used for their search. Google will automatically set a non-zero initial mobile bid adjustment factor on behalf of the advertisers.

Google will give advertisers to manually upgrade to the new Enhanced Campaigns until around end of June 2013 before it automatically upgrades all accounts.

Why Online Customer Review Matter to Local SEO

Posted on February 24, 2013 by jon

Online marketing experts are saying that local SEO will be the “in” thing in 2013. And as many SEO specialists scramble to gear up for such imminent trend, they are discovering that customer reviews actually serve its two-fold purpose – it provides prospective customers the chance to know about the success of the business, and making the site look good in the eyes of Google.

Why Online Customer Reviews Matter

Every SEO knows that search engine spiders like regularly updated unique content. Customer or user reviews are a great way to create more of this. Online users would normally refer to customer reviews whenever they are not sure about certain product or service offered by some unknown companies through their websites. Through such reviews, the online user gets an idea of how other customers rate the product or service. And from information gathered, an informed decision can be made. And since customer reviews serve as a powerful tool for increasing the website’s ranking and visibility, every review therefore, has an effect on your search engine optimization campaign.

Customer Reviews Make a Difference on Your Site

The usual product search would often generate websites that offer similar if not identical description of a specific product category. This is because most businesses use the standard description supplied by the manufacturers for the product. And if online users are presented with pages that look essentially the same, nothing differentiates your site or page from the others. Thus, online users can randomly pick from the list regardless of other criteria. This issue can be countered by including customer reviews on your page for online users to see the difference.

Search Engines Look for Fresh Content

Customer reviews represent the opinion of the customer on your site. The customers not only provide fresh content but they also activate user engagement, which is an important factor in SEO ranking. For the search engine crawlers, the more comments and reviews your site generates, the higher ranking and visibility your site will enjoy.

Gaining Effective Keywords

Another impact made by customer review is its usage of keywords. Usually, customers review your business by its niche, nature, product or service provided; this is a good point to take advantage of in increasing keyword density in your website. By doing so, search engine spiders will find your website more relevant to the keyword or keywords you wanted to rank.

To have an idea on how to choose the right keyword, you can click here.

Increasing Local Ranking

Google and other search engines customize search results by geographic location. For businesses catering to local market and clientele, the customer reviews will help keep your site at the top of the local search results. If possible your site should encourage customer reviews from genuine local customers. Here’s the reason why local search engine optimization is important.

By encouraging your customers to provide reviews or ratings for your products or services, you are actually helping your site get optimized for search engines resulting to increased visibility and higher page ranking without having to do hardcore search engine optimization techniques because your customers are helping you with credibility and reliability.

SlideShare as the Fastest Growing Social Network

Posted on February 17, 2013 by jon

Chances are, you have never heard of SlideShare although it’s possible that you have encountered it in one of your browsing sessions. SlideShare is projected to be the fastest growing social network in 2013 even if it didn’t enjoy such popularity in the past. The reason for that is simple, SlideShare caters more about business content. While this is true, the following figures according to some experts would say otherwise:

SlideShare is one of the top 150 websites in the world
It has an estimated 60 million visitors a month
About 3 billion slide views are recorded per month

SlideShare according to Michael Arrington, TechCrunch founder and co-editor is “The YouTube of PowerPoint Presentation”. It allows uploading of PowerPoint presentations into globally-accessed slideshow. Uploading a PDF or PowerPoint presentation on SlideShare, much like uploading a video clip on YouTube means sharing it with over 60 million monthly visitors. Imagine the media mileage your presentation will enjoy with that kind of audience. It has a highly visual platform which places it well in the social web that is always hungry for visually-appealing images and content.

To date, SlideShare is the world’s largest professional content sharing community. Unlike content done in regular text formats, using PowerPoint allows greater creativity and clarity in expressing new ideas. Users and readers are presented with easier ways to understand the message conveyed through appropriate visual and text representations. People can easily share ideas and discover some innovatively presented stories at the same time.

No doubt, SlideShare is an effective platform for social networking but you should keep in mind that for that to happen, your presentations should be such that they are not slides after slides of boring stuff. The key to a successful SlideShare is creativity, innovation and high visualization. When using SlideShare, backgrounds and images are extremely important. The more colorful and meaningful slides you make, the greater attention it will gain from the visitors.

Some basic rules to follow when creating SlideShare presentations include:

New and Interesting Idea. This is the most important factor in creating a good slide. As it is, those who support SlideShare are similarly creative, intelligent and have very selective taste. Only brilliant ideas will gain support of such group or community of viewers
Text. It will always work out to have simple yet BIG words – in size and in meaning. There is not much need for too many words in SlideShare as it is more focused on the visual representation of the ideas and not explicit explanation of any sort. A few but strong keywords would be enough to put in between strong and powerful graphics. Also, equal importance in creating the text font big and yes, a little bit stylish.
Images. More than anything, the photo that will be used for each slide should be the accurate representation or visualization of the concept. An effective photo is one that users or viewers understand easily at first glance. The image should have strong co-relation with the idea and the words or text used on the slide to create a complete story.
The First Page. Like in a PPC ad where the landing page is very important, the first page of the SlideShare shares the same degree of importance. Users or visitors of SlideShare.net should be able to tell it upfront if the slides they are about to see are interesting enough to go on. The first page is like the cover of a magazine, so it should be attractive and appealing enough for the readers to continue flipping the pages to find out what comes next after the cover and the title.

A popular slideshow means you were able to hit right through the interests of the SlideShare users. And for many who use the platform to build brand awareness and strong online presence through the social media community, a highly-creative and visually appealing slideshow is the best way to engage the huge SlideShare community.

9 Feature Twitter Vine Should Change

Posted on February 12, 2013 by jon

Vine is the latest and hottest new mobile service available in Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch from Twitter that lets the users capture and share short 6-second videos. Expecting the same degree of creativity that people exhibited in their Tweets, Vine is yet to dictate the creative outcome from such time restriction in capturing motion and sound.

This new iPhone app promises a lot of potential as it encourages users to be creative in telling their stories aided by short span video clips. While this new video-sharing app from Twitter continues to attract people sharing moments in a rather unique way, some experts deem that some features that would possibly cause Vine’s unprecedented success are still lacking and keeping many users from really giving their all-out support to Vine. Some of the things to be changed about Vine should include:

1. Desktop Management. The app does not provide any feature for users sharing a vine to interact with. The link displays a user’s profile picture but that’s about it. The app should allow users to have the ability to manage posts, likes and profile and as an added feature, providing a way to organize all of the vines online would be pretty cool.

2. Ability to Save Vines. With all the apps available in the market today, users get frustrated with apps that don’t allow saving of content – text, image, video, etc. Regardless of the reason for such inability, Vine should have a feature that counters this disadvantage. Users should be able to save vines just like a Twitter draft before the bugs ruin it. The feature should also allow the users to craft quality content which will automatically encourage more creative contents.

3. Ability to Manage Multiple Accounts. Vine lacks sharing capabilities that cater to multiple accounts. While private Twitter account can be created solely for the purpose of uploading vines, the app does not allow the user to manage multiple accounts. So, users who have restrictions on sharing the vines now with the entire social audience may be a little short-handed by this lacking feature. It would be more functional if Vine will allow people managing a personal and business-related account to have the ability to select which account the vines should be uploaded to.

4. Audio. This is one of the distinct features that make Vine stand out from the rest. Users should be able to replace the choppy sound that usually accompanies cuts with a feature that allows laying of separately created audio over the post. The Vine feature should also provide the option for the users to remove sound as and when necessary.

5. Editing Functions. When recording a content, the users would love to have features that would allow them to zoom through a button on the bottom. The entire capture screen acts as a record button but it would be cool to have an omnipresent button to press when they need to zoom the video. Additionally, focusing the objects before recording will eliminate the blurry and distracting vines.

6. Using Front Facing Camera. iPhone has this feature and Vine should have taken advantage of it – being able to switch from the device’s two cameras. This could potentially open new avenues for creative dialogue vines.

7. Recognition Feature. While the app allows users to find friends, it does not have an accurate way of executing that. The recognition feature doesn’t seem to work and users eventually have to adopt manual search of people using the app. Users should have a platform that will search for their friends more accurately.

8. Access to New Content. Vine users navigate the “Explore” tab when they want to look for new and interesting content. But this tab relies on specific editors to hand-pick new vines. Users would prefer to discover new content and users through an enhanced browsing feature, which can be web-based.

9. Better Engagement/Interaction. Vine while intended to be a social app fails in this department. Aside from posting comments, no other form of engagement is allowed, not even tagging. Vine should at least allow users to tag people in captions and comments. In Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the symbol “@” is used as a way to tag someone. On Vine, the same “@” symbol just sync Twitter contacts to Vine.

An application’s success solely depend on its usability. If your application lacks in so much feature and if your developed application is supposed to work as a social media platform, then being really social and user friendly should not be eliminated. Yes, there will be suggested improvements once the developed application is out in the market and the catered market cries out for some added features. What is important is you know how to listen to have longer shelf life.

Does Google Automatically Localize Your Business?

Posted on February 10, 2013 by jon

There are two answers to this question – yes and no.

It is a Yes, in a sense that Google partially localizes your business automatically if the search query is made on a mobile phone with the GPS function activated. Local results will be shown based on the GPS location for their phone. If a search query is made, setting the location to a specific city or place will show local results.

Otherwise, it is a No, if the GPS function on a mobile phone is deactivated or if the search query is made on a desktop computer, which has no setting for a location, the searcher will be shown national results. In this case, Google does not automatically localize your business.

For many businesses, the process of localizing simply means registering with search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing so they can link your website with what they find in their search index. This will make it easier for the search engines to be more accurate in serving the search queries of the internet users.

Search engines verifies the legitimacy of your business as well as the other information they’ve gathered on the internet to update the details which regards to your business. If your business do not register with those search engines, there is a risk of losing out on some search queries simply because your business has not been registered and therefore not verified. This could result a miss out on business opportunities.

Search engines are flooded with innumerable scams that they need to deal with on a daily basis. So, their priority when it comes to business websites is to validate or authenticate their legitimacy first. Those questionable websites will be sorted out as last priority. Therefore, if your business location has been registered with Google or other search engines, your online presence will definitely shoot ahead of those unregistered businesses.

If localization is done properly, traffic to your site may double. But if you have not properly localized your business with search engines, it could result to removal of your website from the natural search rank. To know more about local SEO, click here.

Below are 5 basic steps to localize your business.

Declare and register your location with Google. Make sure that your ‘place pages’ are properly optimized through adding descriptions, products, licenses, associations, hours, languages, etc.
Add local tags and terms to your web pages together with the relevant keyword phrases. These are the physical address, contact details, zip code indicated on every page of your site.
Build and create numerous backlinks to your site using local search links, social media listings, relevant anchor text which contains local terms.
Promote and encourage customer reviews or comments. It’s important to see local people showing interest in your business.
Adapt relevant content that promotes your services and products to include geographical area through localized photos and videos of the locality you serve.

Here’s how you can convert your Google Places account to Google+ Local to gain visibility locally. Remember, mobile searches has been dramatically increasing, you don’t want to lose opportunities by not being visible on local searches.