The Secret Weapon of Content Marketing

Most businesses understand that their content marketing strategy must engage with multiple online channels for the best results. Prominent channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn have overshadowed other content marketing platforms, but an increasing number of businesses are finding value elsewhere. SlideShare is one of these thriving marketing channels that could be a valuable weapon to add to your content marketing arsenal.

Don’t take my word for it.

Tom Critchlow, the VP Operations for Distilled tells us:

“Consider active communities like slideshare as great places to get exposure and reach.”

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz recommends including presentations in content marketing and SEO strategy. He states:

“It’s an easy medium to post to, plus SlideShare has high domain authority. It doesn’t take a lot of links if you use the right keywords. Embedding helps your slidedeck rank better.”

Steve Olenski from Forbes shares with us his views on SlideShare and states that SlideShare is the next big thing.

“SlideShare seems to be an incredibly valuable tool for marketers, brand managers, etc., the world over. I decided I needed to get some expert advice for not only myself but for all of you for this tool is truly something I believe we all should be using to some extent.”

Sharon Hurley Hall, a professional writer and blogger on The Daily Egg tells Power Point to “Move over- your day is done! It’s time to make way for SlideShare”

Read The Rest Of The Article On Yahoo! Voices…

The post The Secret Weapon of Content Marketing appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

Don’t Censor Customer Feedback

In 2012, Volkswagen wished their Facebook users a Happy New Year and asked, “…what would you like to see us do more of this year?” So Greenpeace, citing Volkswagen’s anti-climate policies, encouraged its Facebook supporters to reply to the car maker’s query. And comment they did, largely opposing Volkswagen’s lobbying efforts against the environment. Not only did Volkswagen ignore the negative posts, but they also began deleting them. The censorship so angered the Greenpeace community that it became an international story AND is still going strong.

Want more information? You can watch Volkswagen’s social media #fail in living color right here: http://youtu.be/lQJYmIZiqho

Want more social media fails? Read the rest of this article at Search Engine Journal.

The post Social Media #Fails Every Company Should Learn From appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

Wikipedia defines geolocation as “the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a radar, mobile phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal.” Obviously in our example we will be referring to the Internet-connected computer terminal. While there is a simple way to establish geolocation by using the Geolocation API (which we have already written about on this blog), it requires the visitor through a browser prompt to allow the website to access that information. Furthermore, the Geolocation API is only available to Internet Explorer 9 and up. With our more compatible method, we are able to skip the prompt and automatically implement our unique data. This tutorial will teach you how to serve unique content to visitors within a 50 mile radius of a certain city. We will use PHP and JSON but will not require intimate knowledge of either.

First and foremost, we need to find our visitor’s IP address which we can do with this simple request:

<?php $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; ?>

Next we need to use the IP address to find out more about our visitor. We can do that by using http://www.freegeoip.net/, a public web service for searching geolocation of IP addresses and host names. We make a JSON request to them with the following code:

<?php
$url = "http://freegeoip.net/json/" . $ip;
$json = file_get_contents($url);
$data = json_decode($json, TRUE);
?>

The file_get_contents($url) function gets the contents of the url, which is http://freegeoip.net/json/whatever-ip-address-our-visitor-has. If you were to visit that website using your IP address you would see all sorts of nifty information about you, including your city, state, zipcode and more. Since it is listed in JSON format, we use the json_decode function to pass the data into a variable.

Next, we need to pass our visitor’s city and state into variables:

<?php $city = print_r($data['city'], true); ?>
<?php $state = print_r($data['region_code'], true); ?>

Since the JSON data is in an array, we need to use the print_r() function to extract the individual city. Since we want to store the data in a variable, we use the return parameter by setting the second value of the print_r() function to true. At this point, you now have the city of your visitor stored in the variable $city. We also got the region code for the state because a lot of towns and cities do not have unique names (ie: Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine).

Note: The reason I cross reference by city, state is because in testing, those were always returning with a value. Zipcode was not. While I found it simpler to find all zipcodes in a radius, I had to go the extra step to ensure my script would always work. I was not able to find a faster, more accurate process to find all the cities, but if you know of one please write and let me know! Now we need to get a list of all towns and cities in a 50 mile radius of our desired location. Our tutorial example will be Dallas, TX. First, lets get the zipcodes. There are several sites we can use, but I found a wonderful one at http://www.freemaptools.com/find-zip-codes-inside-radius.htm which puts our zip codes in CSV format. We will go there and put in our Dallas zipcode ’75001′ and set the radius to 50 miles. This gives us 401 results. Wow! Fortunately we do not have to look these cities up one zipcode at a time. I found another great website at http://pp19dd.com/zipcode-lookup/ to do it for us. Copy and paste those zipcodes into a text file and upload it to that website. It will give you a download of those zipcodes formatted in a .CSV document. Next, arrange those files in the .CSV to be all in one column. (I used this tutorial since I am no Excel wiz: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/rotate-data-by-converting-columns-to-rows-or-vice-versa-HP005203138.aspx). After they are in one column, save it as a new file and upload that new file to the same website. You will receive an output file with cities attached to each of those zipcodes. Format that data (Delete duplicates, order A->Z, put on one line) and put it in your code as such:

<?php
$dallas_cities_in_50_mile_radius = "Addison Allen Alvarado Anna Argyle Arlington Aubrey Azle Bailey Balch Springs Bedford Benbrook Blue Ridge Boyd Burleson Caddo Mills Carrollton Carswell Afb Cedar Hill Celeste Celina Cockrell Hill Colleyville Collinsville Copeville Coppell Crandall Crowley Dallas De Soto Decatur Denton Duncanville Ennis Era Euless Everman Farmers Branch Farmersville Fate Ferris Flower Mound Forney Forreston Fort Worth Frisco Garland Grand Prairie Grapevine Greenville Gunter Haltom City Haslet Heath Highland Village Howe Hurst Hutchins Irving Josephine Joshua Justin Kaufman Keller Kennedale Krum Lake Dallas Lakewood Village Lancaster Lavon Leonard Lewisville Lillian Lindsay Mansfield Maypearl Mc Kinney Melissa Mesquite Midlothian Murphy Nevada Newark North Richland H Ovilla Palmer Pilot Point Plano Ponder Princeton Prosper Quinlan Randolph Rhome Rice Richardson River Oaks Rockwall Rowlett Royse City Sachse Saginaw Sanger Scurry Seagoville Sherman Southmayd Terrell The Colony Tioga Tom Bean Trenton Trophy Club Valley View Van Alstyne Venus Village Watauga Waxahachie Westminster White Settlement Whitewright Wilmer Wylie";
?>

Now we’re ready to cross reference our visitor’s city and state with our list of cities in the 50 mile radius. This is very simple:

<?php
if ((strpos($dallas_cities_in_50_mile_radius,$city) !== false) AND ($state == "TX")) {
    echo 'Visitor is within 50 miles of Dallas, TX';
}
else {
    echo 'Visitor is not within 50 miles of Dallas, TX';
}
?>

Using the strpos() function, we reference the visitor’s location against our list of all towns and cities in the 50 mile radius as well as make sure their state is the same. We then echo out our unique content based on whether or not they fall within that 50 mile radius. Here is the code all together:

<?php 
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$url = "http://freegeoip.net/json/" . $ip;
$json = file_get_contents($url);
$data = json_decode($json, TRUE);
$city = print_r($data['city'], true);
$state = print_r($data['region_code'], true);
$dallas_cities_in_50_mile_radius = "Addison Allen Alvarado Anna Argyle Arlington Aubrey Azle Bailey Balch Springs Bedford Benbrook Blue Ridge Boyd Burleson Caddo Mills Carrollton Carswell Afb Cedar Hill Celeste Celina Cockrell Hill Colleyville Collinsville Copeville Coppell Crandall Crowley Dallas De Soto Decatur Denton Duncanville Ennis Era Euless Everman Farmers Branch Farmersville Fate Ferris Flower Mound Forney Forreston Fort Worth Frisco Garland Grand Prairie Grapevine Greenville Gunter Haltom City Haslet Heath Highland Village Howe Hurst Hutchins Irving Josephine Joshua Justin Kaufman Keller Kennedale Krum Lake Dallas Lakewood Village Lancaster Lavon Leonard Lewisville Lillian Lindsay Mansfield Maypearl Mc Kinney Melissa Mesquite Midlothian Murphy Nevada Newark North Richland H Ovilla Palmer Pilot Point Plano Ponder Princeton Prosper Quinlan Randolph Rhome Rice Richardson River Oaks Rockwall Rowlett Royse City Sachse Saginaw Sanger Scurry Seagoville Sherman Southmayd Terrell The Colony Tioga Tom Bean Trenton Trophy Club Valley View Van Alstyne Venus Village Watauga Waxahachie Westminster White Settlement Whitewright Wilmer Wylie";

if ((strpos($dallas_cities_in_50_mile_radius,$city) !== false) AND ($state == "TX")) {
    echo 'Visitor is within 50 miles of Dallas, TX';
}
else {
    echo 'Visitor is not within 50 miles of Dallas, TX';
}
?>

That is it!

Note: The website http://freegeoip.net/ is a free service and as such has a max 10,000 lookups across all users per hour. Fortunately it is open source and you can set it up on your webserver if you ever get the dreaded Error 403 Forbidden! The other free website tools I used to aid me in my tutorial were found with simple google searches. If for any reason these services cease to exist in the future, I have no doubt newer and better ones will replace them. You will just have to search for them. And I suppose a disclaimer is in line: IP address lookups are not perfect and will sometimes list inaccurate information. Using a 50 mile radius is a pretty big net however and will more than likely catch your visitor.

The post How to Display Unique Content Based on Geolocation appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

In part two of our Google I/O Developer Conference overview, we’ll be delving into Google Maps updates and changes and what it means for you. If you missed our last post about the new Google+ features, read about it here.

Attendees of the conference have been granted access to the new Maps already, however you, too, can join in the fun by requesting an invite here.

Updated User Interface

Most notable are the Google Maps visual upgrades which center on a Cards aesthetic inspired by Google Now. Cards are a sleek  and easily digestible way to consume information, so Google is implementing the theme to some of their biggest updates including the latest Google+ design overhaul.

The current version of Google Maps shows search results in a box on the left and the map on the right. In the new version, the map encompasses the entire screen and becomes the user interface. Google’s goal is to create a whole new user experience, one that is visual and customized to the user. This will have an interesting effect on local search which we delve into later in the post.

New Google Maps Interface – Hawaii

More Coverage and Imersive Imagergy

200 countries are now available in Google Maps, including North Korea. Street View imagery now covers 50 countries and 50 million miles of street and ocean view. They’ve even archived images of the Great Barrier Reef.

3-D View of Central Park

The entire map is now interactive and not limited to pins on the page. You can click anywhere to view a location as well as related places in the area. In Street View, users can view popular destinations and landmarks around the world, all 360 degrees of it in what Google calls “immersive imagery”.

New Offers

Google will feature their retail partner’s special offers when a user performs relevant searches. For example, if you search “coffee”, don’t be surprised if a coupon for Starbucks pops up.

Directions and Navigation Updates

Google will offer live coverage of traffic conditions and dynamic rerouting for navigation, so if there’s a wreck up ahead, Google will automatically offer a different route for you. They’ll also be offering more route comparisons that consider more modes of transportation, including by car, bus, subway, tram, walking, biking, and air. Maps will also automatically change the travel modes depending on the two destinations. For instance, it will revert to “walking” if the two destinations are close enough.

Google Earth

Google Earth is now integrated directly into Maps, allowing users to zoom in and out on landmarks, buildings, streets, and the like without the plugin! Even better are the 3-D photo tours generated from user-uploaded images. You can now look inside of some businesses and landmarks and take a virtual tour. The Google Earth experience is complete with real-time cloud movements (Everybody oooh and ahhh).

Interior View of Hotel ZaZa in Dallas, TX

Tailor-Made Search Experience

Now, your Google Maps results will be affected by your friends’ reviews, information gathered from your Google+ profile, and your previous search history. If your best friend has rated the pet store down the street, it’s more likely to show up on your map than it would on my map, so each person’s map will be a little different, displaying results that are customized for them. With each search you perform in Maps, Google will give you results catered to your interests and previous search data to tailor the search experience to you. Neat!

Explore Experience

Google announced their “Explore” experience to be released this summer to Android and iOS devices. No longer will you use Google Maps to get only directions. You’ll use it to explore the location to discover local lodging, cuisine, cultural landmarks, and more to visit the city before visiting the city.

What it Means for Local Search and SEO

So, what’s it mean for local search and SEO? There are a lot of implications involved, but here are some of my takeaways:

• There is an emphasis on user interface and user experience like never before. It’s all about the user, so when designing your next website or creating your next landing page, think about the user before you think about search engines. If Google’s goal is centered on the user, yours should be too, and you’ll never go wrong.
• Focus on personalization and the individual user. This is sort of a reiteration of my first point but worthy of being repeated. Google Maps learns from the individual and customizes search results to fit their needs. Keep this in mind when capturing your own data and use it to your advantage. Learn people’s names, businesses, and interests and tailor campaigns around that such as your newsletter.
• Since the map is the new interface, there are more opportunities for your business to be seen. It’s not limited to 10 search results listed in the sidebar. Now, your business will show up with an icon on the map, and the more relevant your business is to the user’s search, the larger your icon will appear on their map. For instance, if I were to search for restaurants in Dallas, over 25 business appear with a food icon.
• Reviews, reviews, reviews! Testimonials have always been important, but now they’re crucial to your local search campaign. Even your friend’s reviews count.

How do you think Google Maps updates will affect search?

The post It’s a New Google Maps Experience appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

New Google+ Updates

Google added 41 new features to their social network darling, Google+. Yes, 41! Though Google+ has 190 million monthly active users, it’s still not as popular as other social communities like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, so with 41 updates comes a more appealing, more competitive network. Software updates include changes to their Stream, Photos, and Hangouts.

Changes to the User Interface

Google+ is now image-centric much like the layouts of both Pinterest and Facebook and features a multi-column interface instead of a singular stream. Google+ will also now add related hashtags to posts and images, so if you’re following The Texas Rangers, it may tag it for you with #TXRangers.

New Photo Features

Auto Back Up

With users’ permission, Google will automatically upload your mobile pictures to the cloud. They’re offering 15GB of free cloud storage for full-size images, preserving the quality and resolution of the image unlike Facebook and Instagram which shrinks the photos.

Auto Highlights

Auto Highlights identifies the best quality and most important images from your uploaded photo album. Let’s say you uploaded 500 photos of your wedding. The Auto Highlights feature will scan and select which ones are in focus, have good exposure and saturation, contain landmarks, contain people, if those people are smiling, and if those people are in your family. Creepy, but so cool!

Auto Enhance

Auto Enhance can reduce noise, soften the appearance of wrinkles, remove red eye, adjust color saturation and exposure to improve the quality of your photos.

Auto Awesome

Auto Awesome is, in short, awesome. Someone not smiling in your otherwise perfect group shot? No problem! Auto Awesome will identify the best shot of each person in group pictures and merge them to create one outstanding picture. The Auto Awesome feature can also detect a set of photos (minimum 5) taken in succession and will combine the images into a short animated .gif. As if that isn’t cool enough, Auto Awesome can also create a panoramic photo from a series of images with an overlapping landscape AND create a photobooth-style layout of self-portraits with similar backgrounds. Keep taking your selfies, ladies!

Google Hangout App Upgrade

Available now on the web as well as all Android and iOS devices is the new Hangout App which combines the video chat service, Messenger, and Google Talk into one application. The new Hangout features group video chats, the ability to save conversations and rewatch them later, and can sync messages across devices.

What do you think of the new Google+ updates?

The post New Google+ Features Hit the Web appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

In today’s globalized world, we are constantly surrounded by and connected to the Internet. Social media has become a huge part of the time we spend online—in fact, we literally consume it. Think of all the people who were glued to their phones and computers during the Boston Marathon investigation—Twitter and Reddit were both instrumental in breaking news and updates to a population waiting on the edge of their seats.

The Pew Research Center notes that as of December 2012, 67% of all adult Internet users use some kind of social media site. 67% of those people use Facebook; 16% use Twitter; 15% use Pinterest, 13% use Instagram… the numbers are astounding. And they keep growing every day.

But you have to wonder, does all this social connectivity come at a price? Several research studies have shown that all this Internet use might be disconnecting us from our brains, decreasing our attention spans to mere minimums. Think about it—how often do you switch between tabs on your computer? When was the last time you read a whole news article without skimming? Social media has, essentially, turned our world experience into channel surfing—as you flip from one site to the next, you only see a flash of what’s there, never diving into the bigger picture.

Trying to sort out all the noise from social media is enough to make a person go mad. But this is what we, as social media managers, are called to do. Punch through the noise, connect with an audience that’s just as distracted as we are, and convince them to listen to what you have to say. It’s a neverending race to be first place. And it can drive a person insane.

So if social media is slowly driving us all insane, what can we do to stay sane in our jobs?

Make a To-Do List

Because social media is such a scattered industry, it’s likely that your workload will be scattered over all sorts of tasks and projects. That’s why I’m a strong proponent for to-do lists.

When I get lost or distracted during my workflow (which happens at least once a day) and wonder, “What was I supposed to be doing?” my to-do list always grounds me. It tells me exactly what I should be doing, organized by project, day of the week, or even the time of day. It really is my day-to-day lifesaver and definitely keeps me sane.

Some of my favorite to-do list sites and apps include:

• Todoist – available for your smartphone or as a Chrome extension
• Wunderlist – so much prettier and easier to use than the standard to-do app on smartphones
• Plain sticky notes – okay, so they’re not an app or program, but they’re just as effective (and my favorite)

Take Frequent Breaks

It has been scientifically proven that taking short breaks through your day increases your productivity and ability to concentrate on a task. This doesn’t mean that you need to get up and wander off for ten minutes of every hour—instead, try to concentrate on something else. This could be a different project, something fun or interesting you enjoy, or simply closing your eyes and meditating for a few minutes. Just give your brain some time to breathe.

If you’re able, find a break buddy! You can bounce ideas off of each other, talk about interesting things you’ve read, and share cool content with each other. It’s a win-win for both of you, since you’ll both be getting a break from your current tasks while figuring something else out or otherwise enriching your mind.

Leave Your Work at the Office

As a social media manager, I’ve often found it difficult to separate my work life from my home life. Because of the fast-moving nature of social media and the pressure of always trying to be first, it’s tempting to constantly check my accounts for new activity. But this just means that I’m constantly working—through dinner, when I remember something in the middle of the night, when I wake up in the morning.

However, contrary to popular American belief, your job doesn’t have to be your life. (If you want it to be, that’s your choice; by all means, go for it.) Taking your work home with you might seem like you’re trying to get ahead or catch up on missed work, but what it’s really doing is barring you from taking a mental break. As previously discussed, your brain needs time to think of other things in order to be as productive as it can be. Working from home after you’ve worked at the office is doing just the opposite.

When you leave your office at 5pm, leave your clients at the office with you. Most likely, they’re paying you for social media management, but this doesn’t mean that you have to be at their beck and call 24/7. Any problems that arise overnight will still be there for you in the morning.

Remember to HAVE FUN

If you’re lucky enough to work in social media, you have a pretty awesome job. You get to connect with people around the world, come up with amazing content ideas, and be at the forefront of an ever-changing industry. But the pressure, the workload, and the scattered nature of the industry can leave anyone feeling stressed, overworked, and underappreciated.

But social media is supposed to be fun! If you’re stressed, grumpy, and not seeing results, you could be overworking your social media mojo, which makes for some bad workplace juju. Instead, stop:

• Focusing on the little things – Instead of looking at a single post or Tweet and how it performed, look at your full profile and what you’ve gained over time.
• Taking user comments personally – People don’t know that you, specifically, are the person behind a specific brand page logo. What they’re saying is directed at the brand, not at you.
• Beating yourself up for lack of results – Sometimes, a strategy just doesn’t work. And that’s okay. Check your stats, regroup, and try, try again.
• Making it a race – As the saying goes, “Life is a marathon, not a sprint.” So it goes in the world of social. Things often don’t happen overnight.

Remember, you’re not superhuman—you’re just human. And you have a really cool job. Make sure you’re making the most of it!

The post Staying Sane in a Socially-Driven World appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

People buy from people that they know, like, and trust. And if you haven’t heard it yet, let me be the first to tell you that “familiarity” breeds trust.

Content marketing certainly isn’t new, but it’s been getting a lot of new attention online lately (and for good reason). Small business owners across the globe are re-discovering these tried and true marketing practices, and using them to get a big leg up on the competition.

One of the really big advantages small business owners have over the titans of industry is that you can get…

Read the rest of this article on SEOmoz: Read The Full Article on SEOmoz

Technorati Code: YNNYEPSRG8MG

The post Content Isn’t King. Trust Is King. appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

6 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself if You Want to Keep Google Happy

Take The Google Relationship Quiz

1. Does your website fail to establish credibility?

    ___Yes, my website design lacks the professionalism my visitors demand.

    ___ No, my website design is professional and well organized.

2. Is your website message confusing?

    ___ Yes, my site fails to be clear about what I am offering, I’m confused.

    ___ No, I have clear and relevant content on my site.

3. Does your website fail to compel visitors to act?

    ___ Yes, my hastily composed website fails to interest any visitor. It sucks!

    ___ No, my website generates interest and promotes visitor interaction.

4. Is your website is difficult to navigate and use?

    ___ Yes, my website is put together with Band-Aids and it’s hard to find even my phone number.

    ___ No, my website is easy to navigate and well structured.

5. Do broken links and old content fail to inspire confidence?

    ___ Yes, we have links to nowhere and our lack of commitment is obvious.

    ___ No, we run the appropriate SEO tools against our site to ensure all the links work.

6. Do your website links take visitors off-site?

    ___ Yes, we get carried away with off-site links.

    ___ No, we know this can be dangerous and keep our off-site links to a manageable level.

Communication is the Key to a Good Relationship

You don’t hear much talk about meta descriptions these days but they perform a very valuable role. Think of a meta description as an advertisement for your site or product/service. Meta descriptions need to be written in such a way that encourages visitors to click through to your website when they view its listing in the SERPs. If you can improve the ratio of views-to-clicks your website listing receives in search pages, it’s highly possible you will see an improvement in search engine rank within a week. An easy way to do this is by working on your titles and meta descriptions creating good communication with your audience.

Keep Your Promise to Your Significant Others

Depending on what you’re asking a visitor to click, you will be employing one of two marketing strategies. The trick here is to make sure that you are doing what you say you are going to do. Keep your promises and you will prevail.

1. The ‘Click-to-Content’ Promise

A ‘Click-to-Content’ promise is a type of click that normally arises from web users clicking on a textual link. The anchor text used in the link may be a simple keyword or a keyword phrase. It also may have been the title to a post or page on the website itself. Whatever the anchor text is, you need to make sure when visitors land on your website they see content that fulfills the promise you made in the anchored text.

It’s really simple! If a visitor clicked on an anchor text link that says, ”Lose Weight Now,” the visitor should be taken to a page about how to loose weight…now. Visitors clicking on a link promising the latest celebrity gossip won’t be pleased to find a page highlighting the benefits of a colon cleanse. You get the drift.

Google expects that when people click on your link they will be directed to a relevant topic. Google does not like trickery or misdirection. Delivering on your promises increases the time visitors will spend on your site as well as reducing bounce rates. All these factors are important for building the trust and relevancy necessary for some Google love.

2. The ‘Do-Something’ Promise

This style of click-enticement is often referred to as a ‘Call-to-Action’. It occurs when a website wants a visitor to perform a certain action. For example, “Click here for your Free Weight Loss Guide,” or “Start Your Free Trial of ‘Whatever’ by clicking here.”

Basically, the link is instructing visitors to do something to receive a specific result. In the above examples, it’s a simple click. The main rule is to be very clear about what the visitor will be receiving or viewing should they click. Lying will get you nowhere.

If you fail to deliver on your promise, visitors will leave. This increases website bounce rates. Honesty builds trust. Trust is very handy when it comes to word-of-mouth promotion. A visitor clicks your link and is directed to whatever was promised. The visitor likes what he or she found and tells a friend or maybe the happy visitor posts on a popular blog or forum, tweets it, and puts the link on a Facebook page. This means free advertising and more welcome attention from Google. Good times.

A Little Bit About Link Love

Website links are a huge topic and far beyond the scope of this guide. However, here’s a very brief bit of advice about links: Don’t try to force them within your content, love them gently.

• Content Links: A link should be added only when it’s relevant and natural. Try to place relevant links every 300-500 words of content. This isn’t a steadfast rule or something monitored by Google. It’s nothing more than a helpful loving ratio to keep in mind.
• External Links: Links to external topically relevant authority sites is another good strategy for highlighting the relevancy of your content. Authority site links build trust. When Google follows these links and finds they point to reputable websites, it shines favorably on your website’s reputation.
• Internal Linking: Don’t forget the importance of internal linking. This means adding links to website content which point to other relevant pages on your website. Internal links help with ranking. They help pass rank from popular pages to weaker pages and help Google to index all of your website’s pages.
• Link Guide: As a guide, think about linking to your own pages 70% of the time and to external pages 30% of the time (again not steadfast rule, just a handy ratio to keep in mind).

Remember, in theory you need to please the public, not the search engines and it should not be one or the other. It’s possible to please both at once. Google has made it quite clear, with its recent algorithm changes, that websites promoting visitor interaction and engagement will earn big Google hugs. Remember what we said in the previous Google Love article: It’s the little things that matter.

Cement Your Relationship

• Have enticing meta descriptions, titles, and links.
• Give visitors a reason to click.
• Make sure visitors are pleased they clicked.
• Encourage more clicks with content relevancy and a strong linking structure.
• Sit back and bask in the Google Love.

The post Keep the Google Love Hot! Take the Google Relationship Quiz appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

A good domain name is a critical business asset. Like the keys to your office door or access to your bank account, you need to keep your domain name under your company’s control.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that many business owners (and by many I mean most) do not have control of their domain name. Many of them had their marketing company purchase the name originally. Some had the domain purchased by a younger, more tech-savvy employee who is no longer with them.

In particularly bad situations, business owners may find their domain name held hostage by their former host or marketing company. Even worse, their domain name might have expired and been purchased by another company, resulting in downtime and sometimes litigation to regain control of the business brand.

How to Maintain Control of Your Brand

Part of the way you keep control of your brand is by keeping control of your domain name.

Buy your domain name yourself, keep the login in a safe place, and keep it under your control.

What I typically recommend to clients is that they keep their domain name separate from whatever companies they may be working with. This doesn’t mean that you can’t grant access to your SEO or marketing or IT company to make changes, but it does mean that you don’t allow them to transfer the domain out of your account.

Nameservers

You should also not let your SEO, marketing, or IT company take over what are called the “nameservers” for your domain. Without getting too technical, nameservers are something like the post office for your domain. They store records about where email, website hosting, and other services for your domain name are located. You may hear language like “pointing the nameservers.” This is something that, in my experience, you do not need to do.

If you purchased your domain name with GoDaddy or Network Solutions or any other registrar, your domain name and nameservers should stay at GoDaddy or Network Solutions. Unless you have very detailed and complicated requirements for your domain name servers (in which case you probably don’t need to be reading this post), there really isn’t much incentive to allow another company to take over your nameservers elsewhere.

Keeping control of the domain name and its nameservers will give you the power and flexibility to do what you want to do with your domain name when you want to do it.

Buy your domain name yourself, keep the login in a safe place, and keep it under your control. Your presence online will be the safer for it.

The post Keeping Control of Your Domain Name appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.

As social media sites go, I have to say, like most women on the internet today, Pinterest rocks! My favorite things to look at are funny cartoons or infographics, humorous images, and gag gift ideas—these pictures speak to me. I have always been a visual person and now with a glance at a page, aha! There “it” is. Just what I was looking for!

However, I don’t just use Pinterest for my own hoots and giggles. I also use Pinterest for my company, Advice Interactive Group and I am excited about using the new analytics Pinterest recently launched to quantify our efforts.  (You can read more about Pinterest Analytics here on Search Engine Journal: #Pinterest Analytics)

With all the attention being paid to this social media superstar, it’s easy to become desensitized to the available and all-powerful Pinterest marketing opportunities. As a matter of fact, there are so many useful Pinterest tools available; it is almost impossible to keep track of them all. So for all you Pinterest fans using the social media site for your own pinning or for social engagement/signals for your business, I have compiled a mega list of Pinterest tools that you should check out.

The Mega List of Useful Pinterest Tools

Wishpond – Wishpond.com offers social marketing apps including tools to create Pinterest contests.

Cyfe – Cyfe.com offers a Pinterest analytics dashboard that allows users to monitor everything from their follower activity to their pin activity.

PinTrack – Available via ZDNet.com, PinTrack is a Pinterest follower tracker. Users can instantly see who has followed them, un-followed them, and even see who is not following them in reciprocity for a Pinterest follow.

Top Pinterest Users – TopPinterestUsers.com’s name is self-explanatory. This site offers the top Pinterest users across multiple categories. Based upon the number of followers, brands can easily identify the top influencers within their niche. From fashion and weddings to tattoos and technology, this Pinterest resource has every niche covered.

Pin My Info – PinMyInfo.com allows users to connect with their Pinterest followers across multiple social networks. Users simply create a Pinterest board to house all of their social media profile links on one central pin board and then pin social media network icons via PinMyInfo.com. From Instagram to LinkedIn to Quora, Pin My Info offers them all.

Percolate – Percolate.com offers businesses content relevant to their niche for sharing on Pinterest as well as other social media networks. The Percolate algorithm learns which types of content a business usually shares and then offers more of that type of content. For businesses focusing on content marketing as part of their social media strategy, Percolate is well worth a look.

HelloInsights – HelloInsights.com offers Klout style Pinterest analytics. Users are offered analytics relevant to Pinterest influence, trending pins, and even Pinterest growth.

ShopInterest – ShopInterest.co is an e-commerce tool that allows Pinterest users to create their own online store from their Pinterest pins. Be careful; this one is highly addictive.

Pinterest Perks – Based out of Santa Monica, CA, PinterestPerks.com is still in the sign up phase. Once launched, Pinterest Perks will enable users to earn rewards from brands for pinning products to Pinterest.

Pickie – This New York City based startup creates a personalized iPad magazine out of Pinterest pins. Available via the iTunes store, Pickie.com curates popular pins based upon a user’s individual network. Aggregating pins from a user’s likes as well as those of their social network connections creates a result that is visually dramatic and highly engaging.

inSparq – Also based out of New York City, InSparq.com offers retailers a live embeddable pin board for their websites. With inSparq’s analytics and data feed, a retailer’s pin board is automatically updated in real time with trending items from the retailer’s social analytics. Sharing products on social media sites earns incentives for end users. This sharing not only benefits the end user doing the sharing but the brand receiving the additional social media attention.

HootSuite – HootSuite.com now offers Pinterest analytics in addition to their already impressive list of social media tools.

gazeMetrix – This 500 Startups incubated launch allows brands to monitor the pinning of their images onto Pinterest in real time. Rather than scanning through Pinterest searching for their own images, a brand receives notifications via gazeMetrix.com each time one of their products is mentioned on social media.

Piqora – Based out of San Mateo, CA, Piqora.com offers a full range of Pinterest analytics and marketing tools. Users can schedule pins, run Pinterest contests, and even obtain metrics as to viral pins and brand advocate engagement.

Alertpedia – Alertpedia.com notifies users whenever a Pinterest user they are following adds content to their Pinterest pin boards. For brands monitoring influential users on Pinterest, spotting trends via Alertpedia can be highly useful.

SnapITo – SnapITo.com allows users to pin screen grabs onto Pinterest. Rather than pinning a single image, users can utilize the SnapITo screen grab bookmark to snap an image of an entire website. This tool could be highly useful to those monitoring websites with rapidly changing front pages like news sites or technology blogs.

Woobox – Woobox.com makes it easy for brands to add a Pinterest page to their business’ Facebook account. Facebook followers can see at a glance the types of content a business is adding to Pinterest without ever leaving Facebook. For brands engaging with their audiences across multiple social media platforms, adding Woobox to Facebook is a no-brainer.

What Helpful Tools Do You Use for Pinterest?

This mega list of useful Pinterest tools are some of my favorites in terms of available marketing aides for businesses doing social. I’ve shown you, now you show me! Which Pinterest tools have you found to be the most valuable in your brand building efforts?

The post 17 Amazingly Useful Pinterest Tools for You and Your Business appeared first on Advice Interactive Group.