Although the January 2012 Google updates are less noteworthy than the initial introduction of Panda, they provide evidence that the search engine giant continues to focus on providing results that are faster, more timely and more accurate.
Finding Only the Freshest Results
Minor improvements were made to the freshness update that Google implemented in November. “Freshness” refers to search results with an element of timeliness, such as hot topics or recent events. The latest change in this area involves an improvement in Google’s date detection method, which determines the age of a document on the Web. To take advantage of this focus on timeliness, an effective website strategy should include information that will be posted and updated frequently, such as blogs and news items.
Google Panda and the Evolution of Indexing
Google also announced that they have improved the way Panda interacts with its indexing and ranking systems, which will integrate Panda more effectively into Google’s pipelines. This closer connection between Panda and ranking is good news for sites with a website strategy that weathered earlier Panda-related updates in good shape. For those sites that have been impacted negatively by Panda, it may provide additional motivation to make changes and serve as a wake up call to upload fresh, innovative content to the Web.
Date Detection, Auto Complete and Spell Check
Google provides auto complete as a way of speeding up searches. As of January, the search engine notifies users whenever a search result reflects a corrected spelling for a query (auto correct, with less of the ‘auto’). This change may prove beneficial to sites with search terms that are often misspelled, as Google will now convert them to the correct spelling during the search process.
While these recent Google updates may not have a direct impact on Internet marketing or website design services, they point to trends for consideration when planning content and presentation. This will continue to evolve because, well, Google is Google after all; but putting out groundbreaking and fresh content on the Web will not only help with your Search Engine Optimization campaigns, it will also show your target market that you are a leader and really do know what you’re doing and talking about.
Social media has always been a big part of the job interview process, even before the rise of the Internet. Your professional resume is a form of professional media, but with the rise of the LinkedIn profile, there is definitely another route to take if you are looking for a job.
Even though you can place yourself online in 1000 different places, a professional CV will never lose its relevance. Even if you put your CV online, you have much more control over that then you would over a public media profile. You can easily update your online CV, and you can also direct different job opportunities towards different versions of your CVs online (to fit the exact position(s) that you are looking for).
However, not to use LinkedIn would be remiss of anyone who is seriously looking for a job. As the network is dedicated to business social networking, it instantly connects you with people in your industry and people from your past that might be able to help you.
This does not mean that your LinkedIn profile will be the end-all be-all of your job search and that you can simply put up a resume there and forget about the rest of the work. As LinkedIn is a B2B website (for the most part, especially in terms of job networking), most of the people who are there are looking for work or networking. It is actually quite hard to find an employer, so imagine how difficult it must be for them to find you.
However, your chances go up if you use both online venues to promote yourself and combine that with the legwork that will never go out of style no matter how many different online formats the world can come up with for self-promotion.
There are number of reasons why anyone doing online promotion or marketing needs to have Google+ as part of their Internet strategy. It takes a business from the shadows and gives it maximum visibility. For example, businesses conducting Internet marketing in Orange County can be seen by Google+ and regular Google users around the world.
Search rankings are everything when it comes to Internet marketing. If a company is not ranking high in search results, it is not being seen and losing a substantial amount of business. Google+ can increase search rankings by allowing optimization right on the company’s Google+ Business Page itself. A description can have just enough keywords and it can contain SEO friendly links taking people straight to their website if they click through.
Another way that Google+ can make search engines find you is that Google+ profiles and Shares are now showing up in Google searches. If a friend Shares your page, which share will pop up in their friends’ relevant Google searches. If you Share a page, your profile will show up in your friends’ relevant searches along with the Share.
A business’ website strategy is only as good as its ability to promote its website. Google+ is of immense help here. The website can be shared directly on the Google+ page. In this way, it increases both the search ability of the website and that of the Google+ page by creating SEO friendly links. It also gives both more index able content so your relevant pages show up in searches instead of other irrelevant pages that happen to have your company’s name on them.
As a social network, Google+ is free and quick to use. There is no reason any company should not take advantage of this as part of their Internet strategy. If you want to save the time and effort and are already running a Facebook Page, use your Facebook posts on Google as well. Because they are in the same format and Facebook cannot be crawled by Google, it will not be seen as duplicate content and the good ol Google Panda won’t come a-knockin’.
From a pure SEO and SMO (Social Media Optimization) perspective, you should’ve created a Google+ Business Page two months ago. If you haven’t get on it. If you have, what have you done to optimize it? There are keywords you are optimizing for in your Info section, right? Those keywords are linked, right? The title and headers contain keywords I’m assuming..? And your photos are geo-tagged and contain keywords and your company’s keywords. Wow! Excellent. Great job!
If you have yet to do this, please please please do it right now. Like right now. If not, you are missing out on big search engine possibilities as you read this. And I completely understand if you don’t have the time to focus on your social media presence or rankings in search results, and it’s no worries. Because that’s where we come in.
Knowing what images to use can be quite beneficial to a website designer. Essentially, anyone can put together a basic website with words on it. However, knowing what images to use and where can improve the flow of a website and entice visitors to return.
The Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, was widely popular in the beginning stages of internet strategy. With its lossless data compression, these images can be animated with 256 colors per frame. These images made a profound impact on the earlier website strategy for the file size was fairly small.
A portable Network Graphics image, or PNG, was designed later on to replace the GIF. PNG images are far superior to GIF because they can handle more than 256 colors and can be placed without a background. With a PNG, a background doesn’t exist giving the image versatility.
The JPG image, or JPEG, is quite common for its scalability. While saving the image, one can trade off image quality for storage size. This means they can be as clear as you need, or take up as little space as possible.
The Bitmap images, or BMP, are images that can store data independently of your video device. Operating systems use these quite extensively because it will only need to be loaded into the memory once. WBMP images are essentially bitmap images made in monochrome for mobile devices.
With Tagged Image File Format, or TIFF, one could store the image and return to edit it later without the loss of image quality. The TIFF images have not changed much since the early 90s, and are used mostly by graphic designers.
Depending on ones website strategy, there are many types to choose from. There is no right or wrong way, just efficiency for visitors to view the images.
