The Social Sponge SEO and Social Media Consultant

Search Engine Google filters out fake web sites

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Gavin Linde - The Social Sponge SEO/Social Media Consultant

I am not sure what is going on over at search engine GOOGLE, but finally I agree with a major move that the search engine is making. As we all know thousands of domain names are registered every day across the world, unfortunately about 90% of them are for the creation of spamming the search engines. These sites are primarily affiliate marketing webmasters who make huge amounts of money by tricking the search engines into believing they are relevant search engine results. This coupled with their huge experience in mimicking all the attributes that search engines are looking for, allow them to rank on the top pages of Google. Link trading, XRUMER submission services, and bots, are just a few of the tools they use to fool search engines into ranking them high. This causes the average business owner a huge amount of stress, and huge amounts of money by “BUYING” their way into the results by either employing a third party to optimize and manipulate their pages, or buying ad space on Google.

Kit Eaton over at Fast Company as some great insight on these changes in the Google filters. To read the full article you can click on the Fast Company link, the bolded text below is what interested me the most.

“What Google’s going to do is basically trying to interpret a user’s query as a fact-seeking question, and then surfacing context-sensitive answers to the top of the results page rather than a mere list of links. The semantic aspect is about using smart algorithms to try to divine a user’s meaning, rather than simply a hunt for words that match the query text”

“Statistics also show Siri now makes up over 25% of queries to Wolfram Alpha, the semantic-powered, context-aware intelligent answer engine.”

Search Engine Google to filter out SPAM type web sites

Very interesting stuff here, I for one have been really fed up with Googles search engine the last few years since the results that are on the top 2 pages when I do a search are very rarely what I am looking for. On the flip side as an SEO consultant I build organic keyword pages for my client that if on a clean playing field my pages would rank in the top search engine results. The companies I consult for are legitimate companies, with legitimate products and services, and unless we do a campaign with Google Adwords we cannot get to the top pages of search results. I can get as far as the third page, and sometimes the second page, but unfortunately the huge amount of SPAM type web sites dominate the top results. I too know how to do this, but I feels it’s a huge waste of time and money for my clients to have me create a bunch of feeder sites to get more of an online presence. One web site should be more than enough, and if you are a relevant content, reputable company, then you should rank high in the results without having to pay for advertising. With this new change, this should be possible, and relevant, well conceptualized, and well written sites should rank high.

The second statement from Fast Company was even more interesting, Google has lost a lot of its audience over the years for serving up bad results in their queries. Most heavily competitive keywords would return web sites that you would have to click an affiliate code to get to the real information, that could bring pop up hell, or even worse a virus to your computer. I have even started putting my notes, reviews and comments on Facebook for my friends and clients to use for information that they normally might of gone to Google to get the information. The reason being, it’s a trusted environment on Facebook so they would get the results they are looking for, and not the result a smart search engine manipulator was providing them with. To see that SIRI has picked up so many search queries makes total sense to me, since the APPLE database is responding with the best answer that their users have pre qualified so the chance of you getting the right answer to your search the first time is very high. I have to agree, I think the future is going to be systems like SIRI, and I am glad that Google has woken up before the damage was too far gone and they lost more users. I think a search engine like Google will always serve a purpose, and by cleaning up the results it delivers is a great step towards getting their reputation back.

The Internet is moving so fast, you have companies like ZunguZ that facilitate the transfer of money amongst Facebook friends without anyone needing the other persons bank information. I think with services like ZunguZ, SIRI, and a new Google, the Internet has a chance of being more of a trusted environment. If you are looking to get more internet traffic to your web site, or participate better in Social Media I would love to help you. You can call me at 858-314-8145 or fill out the Contact Us form at the top of the page. Millions of people surf the web and use social media every day, if you are not putting your service or product in the arena of those results you are losing money.

Posted in BLOGS, FaceBook, Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engines Optimization | Tagged facebook, google, Internet Marketing, relevant context web sites, search engine results, search engines, SEO, siri, social media, ZunguZ | Leave a comment

Imagine sending money to a friend on Facebook through Facebook

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Gavin Linde - The Social Sponge SEO/Social Media Consultant

Imagine no more my friends, within the next few months or less you will be able to send money to a friend on Facebook through Facebook through an application called ZunguZ. After months of closed beta testing the application was unleashed on Facebook South Africa this past week and the results are insane. You might go Facebook South Africa???? Yes, ZunguZ is the brain child of 2 of the smartest South African tech guys, Rob Sussman and Lance Fanaroff, they have had great success as the founders of Integr8, the largest privately owned ICT Company in Africa. Formed in 2001, Integr8 is an ICT management and managed-services company, which employs in excess of 550 full-time professionals throughout multiple African offices. It’s also super cool because I grew up with Rob Sussman, and it’s always great to see guys I grew up with do big things. To read more about ZunguZ take a look at their web site http://zunguz.com.

Rob shared a little insight for in layman’s terms about ZunguZ, ” While there are a host of diverse P2P, P2B, B2B payment systems in the market, ZunguZ is the first platform that allows a Facebook user to pay another Facebook user (with no requirement for a user to have a bank account or email address), ZunguZ does not compete with the likes of PayPal. It is the intelligence that exists in the level 2 and 3 layers where the core ZunguZ business model exists, allowing the referred distribution of purchases to your network. After all, people trust their “friends”.

ZunguZ is a payment processing platform for Facebook users

ZunguZ is the first social media payment platform that allows a Facebook user to pay another Facebook user

I see a huge potential for this application and its ease of use, how many times have I participated in a joint gift for a friend’s birthday and needed to PayPal or send them a check in the mail for my share, or wanted to send money to a family member for a birthday, too many times. With ZunguZ you can just hit the button, a one click button none the less and send the money straight to them. Now take that simple concept and go bigger, imagine a company accepting money through its Facebook page, you will be able to do that too with ZunguZ. This is why I love Social Media, your customers, your friends, people you trust in your network are no longer statistics, you know more than most of their parents know about them. Accordingly you can give them that warm and fuzzy feeling and they are not just a number. This takes customer service to the next level.

When I work for companies doing their SEO and Social Media I get a small feel for the individuals, if we use Facebook to interact I can get a total feeling from them, and they pay me through my Facebook page, its social media customer service genius.

ZunguZ has set up an office in Palo Alto, and have consulted with top social media guys and Facebook too as they take their product global. Once this hits the US it’s going to be virally out of control, the ability to pass money through Facebook will change the way we use it forever in my opinion. Just to get an idea of how fast Facebook is growing take a look at my article back in June about Facebook users logging 700 billion minutes a month, now click the stats link. 800 million Facebook users, 50 % of which log on every day, can you see how huge the potential is for ZunguZ now? If you know of a company that is not using Social Media I would love to talk to them, if they are and are not seeing results I still want to talk to them and would love the referral. To contact me fill out the simple Contact Us form and I will get right back to you.

Posted in FaceBook, Social Media News, The Social Sponge | Tagged facebook, facebook payment application, facebook payments, rob sussman, social media, social media payment, the social sponge, ZunguZ | 1 Comment

Making your web site search friendly for the search engine Google

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Gavin Linde - The Social Sponge SEO/Social Media Consultant

If you own and operate a web site for your business and personal and you want your brand to be featured on search engine giant Google you need to play by their rules. Google continues to dominate the search engine results marketing campaigns and is not showing any signs of slowing down. When someone is looking for something they go to Google, so having your web site search engine optimized is key to getting visibility in the search results.

Remember Google likes relevant topic web sites for long term search results, they also like web sites that update often with relevant content, and they like web sites that have other sites linking to them. If you read my SEO article about web presence and relevant content, then you will understand the importance of being consistent in your online marketing.

Here are some tips I have used over the years to help my clients achieve high ranking on Google for their search terms. Remember you are not only targeting search terms, you also need to target your brand name when developing your Search Engine Optimization strategy.

Making your web site search friendly for the search engine Google to attract customers online

1) Press Releases – a simple press release with 3 to 5 paragraphs of content rich, search term intensive keyword can help you get listed on Google, always remember to add your domain name, and your brand name in the title and in the body of the press release. All the good press release companies are very well connected to Google, so these press releases appear very quickly on the search engine.

2) Google Places – Most business owners forget about using Google Places, this is a key part to registering your brand with Google. It’s also a great link back to your web site from the search engine.

3) Social Media – everywhere you look today you see Social Media. Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, YouTube, and Tumblr are just a few examples of social media. Google has been giving Social Media very high rankings in their search results, so make sure your make use of them. Also make use of them often, mention your brand name, your web site, and your keywords when you make use of Social Media. It’s very important to make use of Social Media daily to secure your brand name in the search results.

4) Search Engine Optimization aka SEO – if your pages are not optimized correctly with title, description, keywords, and even an abstract description in the META data you are in trouble. Google cannot go read through the whole page so it reads the META data to get a quick summary of the page content. It then uses other algorithms to aid it in ranking your pages correctly. Do not duplicate the same META data on every page, make each page unique so Google sees it as unique relevant content. For a FREE SEO evaluation please contact The Social Sponge.

5) Local online profiles – As I stated earlier Google loves to see other high ranking sites link back to you, so make sure you take advantage of review sites like Yelp, global directories like Brown Book, and local directories like Yahoo Local Listings. Google + is another great online profile that is free to create, if you Google my name Gavin Linde you will see my profile on Google +.

6) BLOGS – your own BLOG is a great way to send traffic and links to your sites, I suggest registering a domain and then putting it on TUMBLR, you can see how I have done this by going to www.gavinlinde.com, I use this BLOG to link together all my web sites, it’s also linked to my Twitter and Linked In account so every update goes to both social media outlets.

7) Link Building – Google likes when other sites link to you, so go out and search for forums and BLOGS where you can leave a comment and make sure you link back to your web site. Most online news sites allow you to do this, make sure you add a comment that is useful otherwise they will delete you.

If you follow these 7 steps you are on a good path to getting ranked higher in the search results on Google for your Brand Name, and your company keywords. Remember having a web site online requires work to consistently maintain it. So if you are depending on Google to send you customers you need to make sure your constantly update your web site, and are constantly promoting it online. If you would like a help promoting and marketing your web site online The Social Sponge would love to help. For a free SEO and Social Media consultation click here.

Posted in Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engines Optimization, The Social Sponge | Tagged google, Internet Marketing, Search Engines Optimization, the social sponge | Leave a comment

Web presence and consistent content creation go hand in hand

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Gavin Linde - The Social Sponge SEO/Social Media Consultant

Day after day when I am approached by companies to help with their SEO, internet marketing, and social media needs they always ask, “How can I be number one”. The truth is to be number one takes consistent and dedicated internet marketing, and using SEO, internet marketing, and social media outlets is just part of the work.

Search engine giant like Google has to deal with thousands if not more sites per day fighting to get indexed, and fighting to get page rank. What Google likes is consistency, they want to see a site that is frequently updating, and updating with relevant content. I have one client for a pretty high trafficked search term that I have been able to maintain a top ranking for awhile now. Let me preface this by saying, getting ranked on the first page of Google is by no means impossible, its maintaining that ranking that is tough. For the client that we rank number 1 we have to do 2 blog posts per day, and do the posts with surgical precision, making sure we tag correctly, use a good image, write relevant content, cross link, and finally up sell. That consistent process 5 days a week, twice a day is what keeps us up there, not to mention a domain name that matches the keyword phrase we target.

SEO geeks will get what I just said, but to my average client this goes way over their head, they are still stuck at the how do I get to number one question. When I lay out the work required to have a chance to do that, they all look at me like they are too busy to do that, which is where I come in. I set up The Social Sponge to write about my experiences on the Internet, and my excitement with this social media era we are in. I also consult for companies, so the web site helps show my experiences, knowledge, and internet marketing services I offer.

To be successful on the web and get traffic to your site you have to be prepared to work on it every day, social media tools have made it a lot easier. You need a solid SEO foundation, internet marketing skills, and a relevant keyword domain name too. In the old days you would have to code your pages and create new pages on the fly. Now you can use Twitter, Facebook Pages, Linked In, and BLOGS to mention a few, to get your web site out there, all with basic typing skills and no coding knowledge necessary. If you truly want your web site to get noticed you have to be prepared to work at it, or hire someone like me to do it for you. You also need to incorporate a marketing plan of action to target your consumers, if they can’t find your web site you go find where they are hanging out, i.e. forums, chat rooms, and other like BLOGS where you can leave comments and a link back to your site.

If this sounds like too much work for you but you would like more business, please contact me, you can call me and we can talk about your internet marketing needs at 858 314 8145 or email me here.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engines Optimization, Social Media Advertising | Tagged Internet Marketing, Search Engines Optimization, Social Media Advertising | Leave a comment

Social Media mogul Facebook is getting into the music business

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Gavin Linde - The Social Sponge SEO/Social Media Consultant

Absolutely ingenious this move by Facebook, not only do they have almost all the Fortune 500 companies using a Facebook page they will now have the music labels too. Facebook announced this week they are entering the music business with Spotify, MOG, and Rdio, and I think with the demise of Myspace the timing is perfect.

“It will allow users to listen to music from within Facebook.com. Evidence of Facebook’s music platform first surfaced in the code of Facebook’s video chat service.”

With over 650 million users logging around 700 billion minutes per month, social media giant Facebook has more power than any other social media company online because they log the most amount of minutes by user. That is incredibly powerful because its user engagement is incredibly high. So imagine if a recording artist wants to deliver a new music video through their Facebook page, the impact of millions of users would be almost instant and make it more powerful the YouTube that is currently the social media choice for the music industry.

As well all know Facebook created a very sticky interface that a majority of use daily. I never used to click the LIKE on any pages but now I really do like some of them so I click them. Imagine I click on a music artists page that I like and when they release something new it would appear on my wall, that to me is insane.

Facebook just makes it really easy to do a lot of social media marketing from one simple domain without having to go to all the other outlets and check them all. I have 3 of my own Facebook pages for my businesses, GL Investments, The Social Sponge, and The Lindes. I love the fact that I can get people that I am not friends with to LIKE the pages and in that way I can send them updates when I do something on my Facebook page. I can just imagine the power the recording labels will be wielding now as Facebook and its music partners enter the online music through Facebook arena.

If you own a company and are not on Facebook your are losing out for sure, I would love to help you get set up, you can either call me at 858-314-8145 or contact me at the Social Sponge.

Posted in FaceBook | Tagged facebook, social media, social media marketing, the social sponge | Leave a comment

Groupon might not be the best idea for your business

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Gavin Linde - The Social Sponge SEO/Social Media Consultant

Coupon king Groupon is taking a lot of slack recently and it spawning a whole division of rival coupon sites. For those of you not aware of what Groupon is, it’s an online coupon service that allows you buy discounted coupons for just about anything and everything. You visit their web site and put in your email, or you download their apps and just as simple as that they start communicating to you. It’s the ultimate social media penetration because they are in front of you every single day via email or your smartphone/ipad applications.

Well now this 2 year old company is starting to have some problems. Read this excerpt from the article in The Wall Street Journal about study done on Groupon.

“Daily-deal site Groupon skyrocketed to stardom in just two years, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and inspiring a number of copycats. But this flourishing group-buying model isn’t a guaranteed revenue driver for the participating local businesses, according to a recent study by Rice University.”

“The Rice study found that 66% of the 150 merchants responding found the program profitable, while 32% said they were unprofitable. Forty percent of the respondents said they would not run such a promotion again. Groupon founder and Chief Executive Andrew Mason recently wrote that 97% of its merchants want to be featured on the site again, showing quite a discrepancy in their numbers and those found by the study.”

Here in lies the problem with Groupon, when they first started this coupon business all that stood in their way were the two for one offers that your local papers all carried. Enter Groupon and we all eagerly gave them our emails and downloaded their app, and even I am guilty of buying one. You see I don’t care about what happens to the business, I am only supporting it because I have a coupon for it. The chances of me returning are slim to none because I can really just keep buying coupons and eat and do something new as much as I want to. So the days of loyalty are gone, and this is what is hurting the businesses touched by Groupon.

Social Media wise they probably have the largest database of emails and users in the coupon world, so their penetration to our screens is pretty pretty high, and why would you complain about Groupon they just facilitate the deals. I bring the term complain because a large amount of businesses that use Groupon get slandered on the internet through social media if that customer is not happy. This means damage control could go pretty high if say 500 people show up to your 100 person restaurant in one night.

Some other finding in the study:

“Among the service businesses, restaurants fared the worst and salons and spas were the most successful. Businesses with unprofitable promotions reported low rates of spending by Groupon users beyond the deal’s face value and low rates of return to the business again at full price”

Groupon to me is a great exercise in social media, it spread like wildfire because we all talked about it, we all bought into it, and we all praised it. So we are now a coupon, deal seeking nation and that cannot fare well for the economy, unless the economy is Groupons bank account, since did I mention they take up to 50% of the income. So if you sell a Groupon for $20 gets you $40, the customer money is split between you and Groupon, so you make $10 to give $40 in product or service. I am curious what Facebook offers in their deals, as they are one of the new breed of coupon deals spawned by the Groupon coupon phenomena.

If you would like to talk social media marketing, SEO or reputation repair I would love to help you out, so don’t hesitate to contact The Social Sponge.

Posted in Social Media Advertising, The Social Sponge | Tagged groupon, online coupons, social media, Social Media Advertising, the social sponge | 2 Comments

Google + hits the 25 million user mark

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Gavin Linde - The Social Sponge SEO/Social Media Consultant

Hmm not sure what to make of todays article on Mashable about Google + hitting 25 million user and the pace it is growing.

“This rate of growth is much faster than that of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace over the same time period, though Lipsman was careful to note that the other three networks still have much bigger audiences than Google+. ”

Is it not obvious to others why the growth is there? I can’t think of anyone who has an active database bigger then gmail out there, and its not a e-mail collector its peoples actual emails that they use. They estimate that gmail had 193 million users at the end of 2010. Please note I used the word active above, because believe it or not hotmail and AOL actually have more email accounts, but they have been around longer.

So I have a google + account, if you want to find me its my name at gmail.com. I started playing around with it and it just does not excite me. I have had my facebook account for 3 years now probably and maybe once have I received a friend request from someone I did not know, in google + in 3 weeks I have had over 10 random people add me to their circle. I just wish Google would focus on their search engine, its really frustrating me now.

I wrote about a project I was working on with Google Adwords for my San Diego real estate blog and you can read more about it here. I called it Project Google Adwords, and I was really excited about it. Well the results are terrible and I have had to pause the program because the amount of money being wasted is ridiculous.

To me it just seems like Google is always playing catch up out there and should just stick with its core business and refine it, I think PANDA was a step in the right direction because the SPAM SEO consultants out there were wasting all of our time with fabricated results. That to me was the first move they have done in many years to clean up the bullshit sites in their search engine.

As far as Google + it will grow quickly because everyone and their mother on gmail will take a look at it, as opposed to the other social media sites that you can had to go find and create, and I am quite happy with my Facebook and Linkedin account. Thats enough social media for now, so lets see what happens with Google + I really don’t see myself jumping all over it. If anything Facebook will take all the good people are talking about Google + and add it into Facebook, like hint hint the seperate circles would be great in facebook.

If you are not involved in social media for your business you really are missing out, I would love to sit down and see how we can increase your business exposure and turn that into profits for you. If that interests you please feel free to contact me for a free social media marketing quote, we are also offering Online Reputation Managament. With the creation of so many review sites often times your bad press can out weigh your good press in the Google search engine, our service can help move that bad press further down the search results page.

Posted in Google, The Social Sponge | Tagged google + | Leave a comment

What Google Panda Update can mean to your web site

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Gavin Linde - The Social Sponge SEO/Social Media Consultant

For many years now I have been reading articles from the folks at SiteProNews and their latest article about the Google panda update was very insightful for all of us social media/SEO consultants and marketers.

I am actually excited that Google has stepped up and done this since their search engine was being greatly devalued the last few years, hence why I have been pushing for people to use Facebook more for their searches. The reason for this was the ongoing proliferation of copy cat web sites and their ability to manipulate the top page results with their SEO.

First off we are back to the basics now with Panda, relevancy matter more than anything and if you are the owner of a relevant high quality site you will be rewarded with more PR over the fakers.

Quality is key, you have to write quality posts not quantity, they would rather you write less then overwhelm your pages with copy cat drivvle, just stick to the truth and write intelligent posts.

The Article directories that I am guilty of using are getting lower ratings because everyone and their mother is submitting articles so the quality is border line crap. If you want to write articles which I highly suggest, keep writing them and publish them as content on your own web site.

If you have a great site, trade links with other great sites, this will show Panda that you are an authority site and others endorse you. This is not done through link trading web sites this is from sites that you know or you have contacted to do a trade. Google is tired of link farms of a bunch of generic shit all over your pages.

Google is liking social media more and more and your twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts do matter to them, so if you are not utilizing Social Media, contact The Social Sponge, let’s talk.

Google is penalizing the ad spider web sites with a ton of advertisements all over them which is has become very popular lately with the SEO Spam services. We have all visited that site that has a million ads loading all over it, so let’s wave bye bye to these guys

Google loves videos, honestly I did not see that one coming. I will now start incorporating more videos in my sites since it appears that is good SEO food for Panda.

Lastly Panda is tightening up the short bloggers and putting them at the back of the bus. You have to write high quality posts if you are going to blog, they want lengthier content and I am going to start incorporating that for my clients immediately.

So let’s see what happens, by the way Panda is rolling out around 550 improvents to its algorithm over the next year, so if you have a great site with great content you will see your results improve for sure.

I personally am excited about this because I work with a number of clients on their SEO/Social Media campaigns, and Google ranking is very important since it is such a powerful search engine. I preach creating clean sites, that are relevant and content rich, and Panda is confirming that is important.

If you own a web site and need some help cleaning it up, some direction, advise, social media exposure, or you just want to get back on track, contact me, I would love to help. Our rates are very affordable, and we have packages to fit all needs. If you are on Facebook we would love to be friends with you too.

I just got sent this great link on how Panda works, I recommend you all read it, its really interesting and will help you understand more about Googles algorithms.

Posted in Google, Search Engines Optimization | Tagged google, PANDA, search engine optimization | Leave a comment

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