Sneeze It

3 Things You Should Know about Google Penguin

 

Say goodbye to spam on the web

It’s been almost a full year since Google launched a Penguin 3.0 update. Now that it’s been rolled out to the masses, we decided it was time to go behind-the-scenes and let you know what this could mean for your site’s search rankings and if this really will eliminate spam on the Web.

Unlike Google Panda, where mostly content hubs were affected, Google Penguin promises to take on websites in a variety of categories, meaning that NO ONE IS SAFE as long as Google detects unnatural SEO practices.

How this will affect you and your website

1) If you’ve been keeping a clean link profile, chances are you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Penguin updates will now target the manipulation of rankings, so if you start seeing a lower number of site visits, it could be because Google is determining the links on your site as artificial. Make sure you have purchased your links legally and in accordance with Google’s rules and regulations. 2) If you already went through the process of updating all of your links, this may be a great opportunity for you to shine in Google’s algorithm since Google could remove filters from your website. And that means top Google rankings—score! 3) Well, this is kind of anticlimactic, but it’s possible you won’t see any changes in your website rankings whatsoever. Regardless of whether or not you are affected by Google Penguin, now is the best time to take a look at your online marketing strategy, because what worked yesterday probably isn't working today.

How to tell if you’re being penalized

So how can you tell whether or not Google Penguin has had an impact on your organic search traffic in Google Analytics? Use a Website Penalty Indicator to look up your website’s URL—this tool adds a marker on dates when major updates to Google Penguin were released. This way, you’ll be able to see if an update led to an increase or decrease in search visibility and traffic. As an added bonus: this site can help you view the backlinks for your competitors, so use it wisely! If you’d like to purchase quality links to make it to Google’s top spots, we can help! Visit us here or call us at (1-800) 223-4342 to discover the many ways we can increase your search rankings today.

Leveraging your Market (Lessons From Comic Con)

I had the chance recently to attend New York’s famous Comic Con with my daughter—the largest, most unconventional, and exciting pop culture event on the east coast. Unbeknownst to me, it was so much more than just comics—as booths featured the latest in anime, graphic novels, video games, toys, movies, and manga (a style of Japanese comics and graphic novels aimed at adults). Additionally there were other associated products one might not have visualized before attending—like 3D printing, fantasy food trucks, and even “Walking Dead” figurines and collectibles.

Brand Partnerships that Make Sense

There were a lot of brand partnerships on display that I thought were smart business decisions—like Pizza Hut and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or high-end makeup line Mac and the Simpsons. There’s even an online tutorial that can show you how you can use Mac products to get Marge Simpson’s look!

Invite Your Competition In

I spent a lot of time after the convention thinking about large-scale marketplaces and the many ways customers can leverage their businesses by teaming up with other related service providers to form one community. We are often so incredibly afraid of embracing our competition, but an event like Comic Con—where 150,000 people walk through a flea market type setting—allows audiences to see artists, products, and services they may not have known about before and make their own informed decisions.

Social media and the World Cup

It should come as no surprise that major sporting events trend quickly on social media, and with a global event like the World Cup, that number has been soaring—and even breaking records—in recent weeks (the infamous Suárez bite notwithstanding). There have been more than 1 billion (yes, BILLION) Facebook interactions surrounding the 2014 FIFA World Cup by more than 220 million users since the games started. During the recent Brazil-Chile match, nearly 389,000 tweets were sent per minute, beating out the record set during the Super Bowl back in February.

If you have absolutely ZERO interest in soccer matches, this might not concern you. But if you have World Cup fever, why not enter the conversations happening around you in social media? Include hashtags like #WorldCup on Twitter or Facebook to start a dialogue with your followers. Asking questions like “Who’s excited for the USA vs. Belgium match later today? #WorldCup” may help spark a conversation and boost your engagement online. Be genuine, thoughtful, and encouraging in your responses and you may even attract some new business!

What do we mean by “Websites are dead”?

If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. We’re all familiar with the age-old song and dance. But what happens when you attempt to do the same thing over and over with the same lackluster results?

You begin to realize your efforts are no longer working.

Like you, we’ve had to pull back and reevaluate our marketing strategy to keep up with the needs of our ever-changing market. After scratching our heads, running tests, and crunching the numbers, we have finally cracked the code and come up with a concept so revolutionary, it might initially scare you.

Websites are dead.

Hope we didn’t lose you there.

Let’s say you’re on a sales call with a prospective customer and you dump all of your marketing material on their desk at once. They start reading when the fire alarm goes off and everyone gets rushed out of the building.

You never even had a chance to say a word, figure out what they needed, and how your product could help.

This is exactly what happens when they go to your website.

Websites don’t convert traffic. But cascading landing pages do. These pages are designed to walk your client through a sales funnel, obtaining pertinent information about them that you can use in your marketing efforts later.

Imagine you’re an ice cream vendor. You can create a cascading landing page that obtains very specific information about your customer, like whether or not they keep a gluten free diet or if they have any allergies, and if they prefer chocolate to vanilla. You can use this data later on down the road to market a brand-new gluten-free ice cream now available in their favorite flavor! The customer will appreciate the fact that you took the time to learn about them and you’ll walk away with a sales conversion (and the potential for word-of-mouth advertising).

Click here to learn more!

Say hello to Facebook’s new “Ask” feature

Facebook recently announced a brand-new feature that rates pretty high on the creep scale, if you ask us. A new “ask” button appears next to a user’s relationship status if they don’t already have one listed. You can ask a Facebook friend (you must first be connected) out for a drink and then request them to list their status as either single, engaged, married, or in a civil (or very complicated) relationship.

The owner of the page can respond to the request and that information only appears to the person doing the asking (and will still remain private for all of your other Facebook friends).

What do you think of this new feature? Do you think you’ll use it to help score some dates?

The social media apps you can’t live without

Staying connected to your friends and family is much easier with the right apps at your fingertips. Here are just a few that we love!

Buffer: This app makes it easier than ever to share your content to a variety of social media platforms. The bit.ly integration (URL shortener) has an advantage over sites like Hootsuite (another scheduling tool) and there’s not much of a learning curve to get started with this app.

Snapchat: Create funny videos to send to friends, which will self-destruct after 24 hours. Available for both iPhone and Android, this is a highly addicting, lighthearted app and a great way to stay in touch.

Avocado: Don’t be that couple with the vomit-inducing status updates on Facebook—take it to Avocado instead! This app allows couples to send each other private messages, share calendars, photos, shopping lists (for those nights when you need him to pick up the tampons, #AmIRight??), and so much more.

Banter: For those of you who miss the good ol’ days of chat rooms, Banter allows users to seek out conversations pertaining to specific topics with complete strangers. Additionally, it helps them follow members they chat with frequently and send private messages.

Why you Should Always Optimize your Images for SEO

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is necessary to get people to find you on sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. These search engines crawl through webpages like a blind spider—meaning that they can read text but they are unable to see pictures. This is why it’s so important to label the images so that bots know what they are looking at.

Give your images descriptive names. When you upload a picture to your blog or website, try not to use the default camera dump name (does “IMG00.jpg” sound familiar?) but label it something like “pesto-and-garlic-spaghetti.jpg” instead. No one will search for a generic “IMG” image, but recipes are always popular (and pinnable!) which is why you’ll want to make it easy for users to find yours in the pack. Be sure to use hyphens in between words because bots are unable to separate characters, and hyphens serve as spaces.

It’s also important to give your images an ALT (Alternative Text) Attribute. This is the text that describes the image to bots and is the text you’ll find when you hover your mouse over a picture. It’s easy to add alt text on both Blogger and WordPress but use different text for both your alt text and image title (this is known as “keyword stuffing” and can actually hurt your online presence).

Is Google+ really dead?

IT news website TechCrunch recently claimed that Google+ is the “walking dead,” after head of G+’s social efforts Vic Gundotra stepped down. Naturally, this chain of events has the social media world aflutter. But, after just two years, is Google+ really floundering, and if so, why are people still active on this social platform?

Let’s just call it like it is: Google+ is no Facebook. The benefits of joining G+, however, are in many ways better for marketers in terms of branding, SEO, and establishing a bigger reach. Google+ also has the added bonus of Google Authorship, meaning that if you link your G+ page to your content, your stats and headshot will appear next to content you have written (thereby increasing the likelihood of “clicks”). We have found this to be an invaluable way of building your personal brand and gaining higher page views.

It’s hard to say whether or not this platform is a sinking ship. Here at Sneeze It, we continue to share content on G+ and urge our customers to do so as well to increase SEO value and to remain in good standing with the powerhouse search engine. You can never get your name out there enough, right?

We’re giving away ALL of our eBooks in time for Social Media Day!

There are many days we open up Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram before we’ve even had our first cup of coffee. And we know that we’re not alone. Here at Sneeze It, we recognize the needs of an ever-evolving field and we do all that we can to stay ahead of the curve.

We are incredibly excited to announce that on June 30, 2014 we will be taking part in Social Media Day (#smday) and would like to give you a sneak peek at all of our eBooks for a limited time period! Learn everything there is to know about how to create a killer landing page, how to set up Facebook contests, and how to get the most website conversions–all in one place! Click here to access all of our valuable eBooks.

#Amazoncart makes shopping while Tweeting easy and fun!

If you’ve been on Twitter long enough, chances are you’ve seen some pretty amazing Amazon deals appear in your feed. But what happens when you click refresh, or your browser closes, or your computer suddenly malfunctions?

That deal may be lost forever.

Fret not, folks. Amazon and Twitter have recently partnered together to make things even easier on you, the everyday consumer. Now you can simply reply to a tweet with an Amazon product link in it with #AmazonCart and that item will appear in your Amazon cart until you are ready to check out! Per Amazon, users will no longer have to switch apps, type in passwords, or try to remember the item they saw on Twitter. What a novel and convenient feature!

Go to amazon.com/amazoncart to find out more information about this cool new hashtag!