Google frequently tweaks its algorithm to target sites with low-quality content, particularly those that scrape content.

Google calls these updates “Panda.” The first one came out in February 2011 and the latest kicked into gear on April 19, 2012. Google says, “We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the over 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.”

According to data from Experian Marketing Services, Facebook had 7 billion visits (not unique visitors) in March; Twitter, 182 million; and LinkedIn, 86 million. Newcomer, Pinterest, kicked LinkedIn out of its third place spot in March with 104 million visits.

You simply cannot ignore those numbers. Participating in social media is a must for every business if only because your customers and prospects are spending a lot of time there! In addition to massive numbers of visits, social media sites are taking steps to give businesses more opportunities to engage with their customers and prospects.

All Facebook brand pages have transitioned to the new timeline format. Facebook is also improving its self-service ad feature to make setting up ad campaigns easier and more tailored to achieving specific marketing objectives. Twitter has launched self-service ads for small businesses, but release is currently limited to cardmembers and merchants using American Express. LinkedIn has announced a new program that lets brands embed a “follow company” button from the social network on their homepages; followers will receive automatic updates from the brand in their LinkedIn feeds.

It’s no longer so simple to set up and manage a social media campaign. More advertising and marketing opportunities mean more time strategizing, implementing, updating and communicating. Once you have a social media page, you must monitor and respond to messages to be effective at community building. We’ll take care of all of those details–call us and we’ll get your social media campaign rolling. We can help you figure out where you should concentrate your efforts to best suit your budget.

Blogging frequently  is a great way to keep having fresh content on your website but more importantly, blogs can be a search engine traffic magnet! Your long-tail keyword-rich blog has the potential to rank highly for many  long-tail keyword phrases that are relevant to your industry.

Many marketers are inclined to target head terms, which are high volume keywords consisting of a few words (1 or 2). Example ‘attorney’ or ‘tax attorney.’ But head terms are too competitive and there’s small chance they’ll improve your position on search engines. The best strategy is to use long-tail keywords. Example, ‘tax attorney specializing in small business.’ Yes, there are far fewer searches on longer keywords BUT, a recent study demonstrated that using these long keywords can help a website move up in the search rankings more rapidly than head (short) terms. And, long-tail terms converted (visitors clicked on them) two and a half times more than head terms. Long-tail keywords might bring smaller traffic  to your site but chances are, it will be the most profitable kind of traffic!

Need even more proof that targeting long keywords can be good for your search results? Last December, Google announced that it would be doing more comprehensive indexing, making long-tail documents available in its search results. That means that your blog that contains long keywords is now more likely to rank for relevant queries!

There’s a lot of  people that throw a blog post up every day without worrying too much about keywords or quality. IBIS Studio advice: concentrate on using long-tail keywords in your blog and make sure the content you write is useful to your readers.

“On the grounds that Google is the lord of search applications and administers a ton of movement within the web based world, Google+ is determined to play a great part in that.”

Google+ is exceptionally better than alternate social networks since it was assembled by the ruler of search applications, Google. You need to be an early adopter of Google+ for the reason that it will play a come in social face to face time going advance.

Since you do nothing else with Google+ at this time, go in and set up your profile. Individuals with profiles are heading up in Google looks. You ought to in addition augment the portrayal you would be able to join beneath your name.

Utilizing Google+ for Market Research

“Unequivocally in usual, at this very moment the engagement level is higher on Google+.”

As of this moment is a fantastic chance to make inquiries on Google+ on the grounds that the most unbelievably engaged users are there. As time passes, Google+ will inch toward getting diluted with individuals (like Twitter and Facebook), and the engagement can be more level.

The Hangouts emphasize on Google+ is a great apparatus to utilize as well. It’s a gameplan to film visit with little gathers of individuals casually. You would unquestionably be able to do examination and instructive things utilizing it.

What amount Time Should I Spend on Google+?

“You don’t need to spend a great deal of time on Google+, is what I spot.”

With any brand new social media apparatus, its imperative not to forsake transport too early. Consistency is imperative. You need to do it for some time. Put the time into Google+, but don’t dispose of your fan pages or leave your Twitter record.

Since you have a private mark, or if you’re the social media spokesperson for your community, you might as well move toward getting involved and set up your profile. Utilize the right channels to channel to your homepage. The most unbelievably foremost thing as of this moment is in the process of setting it like a pro accurately, even if you’re not giving a mess of chance to it at this very moment.

In the event that you hold the time and assets and it fits into your procedure, you might as well be on numerous social media locales developing your grid.

Since you don’t have the assets to always administer all things, begin with Facebook, and manufacture an exceptional cooperative there. In any case likewise make sure to get your profiles on the alternate locales to secure your mark.

Should You Wait to Sign Up for Google+?

“From an expense profit dissection, and a truly harsh expense profit examination, it will take you like 20 seconds or less to set up a profile. Do it.”

It won’t sit down for a bit. It’s unlimited to do. The demanding thing won’t be getting adherents now. It could be upholding devotees as we push ahead. (As of now, you cannot make a business profile on Google+, but as per a Google spokesperson, this headliner will be good to go in a few months.)

The Reasoning Behind Circles in Google+
“You could probably make different scaled down-social lattices within Google+ then after that portion things with them in particular. You could probably describe what you have a desire to share to every bunch and administer those associations specially. Facebook moreover permits you to do this with records. I actually think Google+ is a part more instinctive to do this.”

Google’s thought prepare behind this is that individuals exist their lives in layers. We have a layer of pro associates. We have a layer of end companions. We have a bundle of offbeat layers. Google+ spared you the time to make offbeat rings and share things to particular folks dependent upon your association and by relocating them into a loop.

Moreover, individuals don’t know precisely which round you put them in. They’re unequivocally told that you put them in a ring in all encompassing.

The Google +1 Button

“Google’s gotten a considerable measure of flack as time marches onward in terms of the value of its seek comes about. They’re a brilliant group. They know this. So the just approach to blatantly alter this is to make pursuit more brilliant. But also you make it more astute by making it applicable, and you make it significant by letting folks ‘in addition to one’ it.”

Google has united the Google +1 Button. By putting it on your destination, it permits guests to “in addition to one” it, in this manner suggesting it as an exceptional piece, page, and so on. This is determined to make pursuit more social and play a part in how Google ranks sites.

Social Media can be very useful for getting your message out but you have to put some thought and effort into it.

If you create a Facebook page for your business and don’t actively promote it, it’s pretty useless. But if you put a “follow us on Facebook” button on your website and encourage your customers to “like” your Facebook page, you’ll start to build an online community of customers.

You have to remember, Facebook is the world’s largest social site and that means that many of your customers and prospects use Facebook (most of them spend more time there than they’re willing to admit). There’s no cost to set up an account.

Another free and simple way to communicate with customers and prospects is Twitter. But again, you have to work it—add the Twitter button to your website and give customers an incentive to follow you.

Pay close attention to mentions of your business on social sites. If people do a search for your business, social mentions often show up at the top of the search results. You can’t stop people from writing a negative review or comment but you can take actions to help push them down on the search results page. If you need help monitoring and managing your social media mentions or advertising on social media, we can point you in the right direction. Just ask!

For more information about Social Media or SEO in Coral Gables, visit: Ibisstudio.com

In a nutshell, Google has been attempting to crack down on sites that are considered “content farms.”

These are sites that are low quality, not very useful to searchers, have little or no original content or use any combination of tactics to trick Google into bumping up their site in the search rankings. Poor quality sites that appear high in the search results create a poor user experience which will certainly cause searchers to migrate to other engines. And when search traffic deteriorates, advertisers look for other places to spend their money. Google will not let this happen! Contrary to reports, this is not the first time Google has pushed out the low quality sites that are a threat to their business model.

What does this mean for your website? If you’ve got good quality original content, it’s actually great news. The “Google Farmer Update” eliminated many of the sites that don’t really deserve a high ranking so that opens the door for other sites to move up in the rankings. Most sites that achieve top rankings use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies. If you have questions about SEO services give us a call! or Contact us

Not so long ago, you’d look around and see people with their cell phone attached to their ear, engrossed in conversation.

No more. We’re using our Smartphones and other mobile devices to do so much more than talk. It shouldn’t really be a surprise that according to recent reports, mobile search now accounts for 5% of paid search spending.

If the current trend continues, that number could be 10% by year’s end. Google still rules paid search and that includes mobile search. “Clearly, this is the future of search in the Internet,” said Google Senior Vice President of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg during the company’s third quarter 2010 earnings call in October. “Our mobile search queries have grown five times over the past couple of years, and of course, a lot more of those queries are now coming from Android phones.”

The top Google mobile search query is for restaurants 29.6%, followed by automotive related 16.8%, consumer electronics 15.5%, finance and insurance 15.4% and beauty/personal 14.9%. If you’re running a pay-per-click campaign, you may want to consider experimenting with mobile ads but keep in mind that the average cost-per-click for mobile ads tends to be higher than that for PC ads.

People searching for a business on their iPhone or Android mobile device can use the new Google filter “Show Businesses Open Now.” A business that has claimed their Google Places listing and reported their hours of operation may get a little boost in the mobile search results when this feature is activated. If you haven’t taken advantage of Google Places listings, we recommend you do it now and be sure to include your business hours. After all, it’s free.

For more information on Mobile Search visit: Ibisstudio.com

In past articles, we’ve talked about advertising on Facebook. Twitter, the other social media giant, recently announced their version of PPC called “Promoted Tweets.” The format is currently in beta testing with a select group of advertisers.

To start, you write a tweet for your Twitter followers, and then you “promote” that tweet. When people search on one of the keywords that you’ve attached to your Promoted Tweet, it appears as content in the search results on Twitter. Advertisers pay for what Twitter is calling “cost-per-engagement;” you pay only when a user retweets, replies to, clicks on or favorites your Promoted Tweet. Twitter is experimenting with syndication of the Promoted Tweets to their partners, including HootSuite and TweetDeck. Traditional PPC this is not — but Twitter’s Promoted Tweets program is yet another example of a social media platform making a play for your advertising dollars.

For more information about Social Media Marketing visit: www.ibisstudio.com

Reportedly, Bing has been caught “stealing” the results that appear on Google’s search page.

They’ve used these results in their own algorithm to essentially copy what Google is doing. Google is still the Big Dog and light years ahead of the other search engines. Bing knows and admits as much. And, they don’t deny they’ve copied some (but not all) of Google’s search results, because…they can’t! Google planted several fabricated nonsensical search results deep in their huge database. If the fabricated results could be duplicated on Bing’s search engine, there could be no denying that Bing was scraping Google’s search results. And that’s exactly what happened.

It will be interesting to see if Google pursues any action against Bing. Regardless, we continue to recommend focusing all SEO efforts on Google. Even after the Bing/Yahoo search results merger, Google still accounts for 85% of search. The SEO results you achieve with Google will more than likely be mimicked in Yahoo and Bing.

For more information about Search Engine Optimization services in Miami, FL visit www.ibisstudio.com

Have you ever gone to a website, looked at a product, left the site and then noticed ads for the product following you on other sites?

That’s retargeting! An invisible pixel is placed on select pages of a website so a person that has spent time on that website can be shown customized ads while they surf the web. Think of these consumers as “prequalified shoppers” that could be enticed to come back, perhaps by showing them an ad with a reduced price on the item they researched on the site.

About 95% of visitors to websites leave without converting; retargeting can help to recapture those lost leads. But if a visitor comes to your site via a paid search campaign, you’ve already paid once for that visitor. With a retargeting campaign, you’re paying a premium to drive that same person back to your site. Our advice: carefully track the average cost-per-click of your retargeting campaign and factor in the cost of the clicks that originally drove visitors to your site to be sure you’re not paying too high a price for your conversions.

Many third-party services offer retargeting and they make their money by marking up the cost-per-click. The vast majority of advertising inventory used by these third-party services is the Google Network. If you’re already advertising with Google Adwords, retargeting can be set up through your existing campaign and there is no need to pay for a third-party service.

Some very large well-known retailers use retargeting. Zappos is one of them and they’re getting some negative publicity for not being smart with their tactics. They bombard consumers with ads for the products they had been viewing on their site, even after they make a purchase. We highly recommend placing a frequency cap on impressions for retargeted ads, and removing users from retargeting campaigns after they make a purchase.

For more information about E-commerce design in Miami, FL visit: www.ibisstudio.com