Unfortunately, as with all Google updates, there has been some collateral damage and some company websites have seen their rankings decrease. How do you prevent your pages from becoming bystanders caught in the crossfire? Three words: high quality content. With enough quality signals, accidental minor offences are much more likely to be overlooked. Here are some tips for sending strong quality content signals to Google:

1) Don’t Force A Keyword

If you’re building a page for “plumbing supply denver”, don’t try to stuff that awkward phrase into every other sentence. If you sell plumbing supplies, and your site makes it clear that you’re located in Denver, Google will figure it out.

2) Make Your Content Social

Make sure your content is easy to share and encourage its shareability. This means you should have clearly labeled social share buttons, but it also means that you need to write engaging content that helps readers start a discussion around it.

3) Have A Content Plan

The best way to avoid duplicate content and produce high-quality pages is to have a plan. Build an editorial calendar and have an idea AT LEAST a month in advance of what you’ll be publishing and when it will roll out.

4) Create Content With Readers In Mind

There are plenty of content ideas that seem great from a “ranking on Google” perspective that end up translating poorly to being read, or aren’t very helpful to most users. These include things like setting up categories based on Google search results, not based on how users really use your site and what they’re looking for. Always put the site user first.

5) Get Semantic

Don’t bend over backwards writing for every high-volume keyword. Use semantic search and semantic association to figure out which keywords are most likely to lead to a conversion and focus on those. It’ll make it easier to rank, and ranking will have more impact on your bottom line.

Lately with the recent Google Places issues that some businesses are having. Specifically, when businesses are having reviews posted, their reviews are sometimes disappearing – both from the
business’s listing page and from the review poster’s page.

This is alarming for small businesses since many SMBs rely heavily on word-of-mouth marketing through online channels (ie reviews) to generate more business. Especially brick and mortar stores, suchas restaurants, boutiques and other types of shops that benefit from local search queries done on smartphones. Before Google had made an official statement about these missing reviews, we had pontificated on why this was happening.

Here are a few conclusions that we drew from taking a look at the overarching problem:

1. Google is Cracking Down on Fake Reviews.

Google’s algorithms get smarter and stronger every month. This is noticeable with SEO linking practices and Google has been increasingly cracking down on spam content from fake blogs and link building schemes that create multiple fake websites to link back to a user’s main website in order to increase search engine visibility. It’s possible that the same thing could be happening with Google Places reviews. Google has always been a strong opponent of fake content, and have made it known that they value real and honest content. This could be a result of testing out ways to weed out and remove fake reviews from individual pages. Unfortunately, if that’s the case, some legitimate reviews might be accidentally removed.

2. General Google Places Updates and Integration.
Whenever Google updates algorithms and tests out new user functionality, things always tend to go south for a while. It looks like Google has been pushing integration between Google Places pages and Google+, so it’s also possible that updates have caused random bouts of user reviews to go missing – if not for good, then for a few weeks at a time. A few forums have had commenters mentioning that reviews were going missing for 4-6 weeks and then re-appearing randomly. This could just be a small glitch that’s temporarily removing reviews, and might not be a huge issue to worry about. The new news, though, is that according to Google’s forums, they are aware of the problem and are looking to find a long-term solution to the missing reviews. The problem again? They seem to have no idea why this is happening.

From their forums:
“There’s no way currently to quickly, easily and absolutely get your reviews back on to your listing. If we dropped them during a reconciliation process, you’ll see them reappear after a few days. Other than that, there’s not much our support team can do to ensure they get reinstated. Fixing this is a priority for us, and we’re working on long-term solutions to resolve most of these cases.” Unfortunately, it looks like Google is still in the dark on what’s causing these reviews to disappear. While it’s still not certain what the exact issues are, you can rest assured that we here at Localizeit are on top of the latest news for Google Places and will continue to monitor these issues.

- Transparency in management fees. Some companies/vendors will say that margin or mark up should not come into play if you are getting good results. However, Google themselves have stated on many occasions that one of the most important things they themselves look for in a reseller is transparency in fees. Average PPC management fees can range from 15% of total monthly PPC budget to over 50%. This means if a ‘click’ at the publisher level costs $1.00, you will end up paying $1.15 to over $1.50 for that visit. An ‘above the line’ PPc vendor will disclose their management fees upfront and show the value in the add ons they are offering included in these fees. Add ons such as call tracking, monthly reporting, consistent optimization, and regular review calls to go over the results of your campaign.

- Focus on ‘post click’ behavior. What is ‘post click’ behavior you ask? ‘Post click’ behavior is the interaction a potential customer has with your website after clicking on a PPC advertisement. A visit alone carries a tremendous amount of value for your business, but visits often don’t equate to REVENUE. An expert PPC vendor will track and report the movements and behavior a potential customer displays once hitting your page. The company should assign ‘transactional values’ to each interaction with your site a visitor displays. Interactions such as a phone call, or a form submission should be assigned a high transactional value so that the keyword search that led them to your site can be validated. Once a keyword is validated, the company should raise bids and increase the exposure for said keyword to drive more visits for a a term that has historically proven to drive contact. The same can be said for keywords that over time, are not producing any ‘post click’ interaction with your site. These keyword bids should be lowered as they historically do not produce conversions.

- Detailed Reporting. When choosing a PPC vendor ask to view their live reporting dashboard and be sure that it displays detailed information regarding the performance of your PPC campaign. You should be able to access tracked and recorded phone calls, accurate PPC spend to date, and detailed reports highlighting cost per visit, click through rate, average page rank, and cost per customer contact.

These are just a few of the detailed qualifications you should find when choosing a partner to manage your search engine marketing. There are many more questions that should be asked and red flags to watch for (such as long term contracts, or guarantees of immediate results), but if you take a pragmatic approach and follow these few simple steps you can be on your way to increasing your relevant website traffic and producing numerous leads in no time.

“JCP’s new CEO was most recently with Apple, but prior to that was VP of Merchandising for Target. He recently brought over Target’s Chief Marketing Officer to be JCP’s new President. So essentially both the CEO and President of JCP were top Target Execs. I know this because I work for Target….best company ever, they were fools to leave! “

There’s actually 2 points I’d like to make. The first is that Target’s branding is so well done that even when it’s copied by jcp and used by jcp, I still thought of Target. Target should thank jcp for the free advertising. Just goes to show the power of branding done well. Secondly, I’d like to point out that I used social media, specifically Facebook to do research and in moments I had a direct quote from an actual Target employee. Just goes to show the power of social media done at all….

P.S. I did end up doing a search on google for “jcp and target”. Here are the top 5 results:

Stock:J.C. Penney (JCP)
www.wikinvest.com/stock/J.C._Penney_(JCP)
J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) is a leading department store retailer of apparel, … ( WMT) and Target (TGT) at the expense of department stores such as J.C. Penney …
Will J.C. Penney Be the Next Target? – DailyFinance
www.dailyfinance.com/2011/10/…/will-j-c-penney-be-the-next-target…
Oct 12, 2011 – Two of the men most responsible for making Target a cool, hip shopping option will soon be leading J.C. Penney’s, which means bold changes …
J.C. Penney Appoints Top Target Executive as President (JCP, TGT)
www.beaconequity.com/…/J-C-Penney-Appoints-Top-Target-Executi…
Oct 3, 2011 – J.C. Penney Company Inc. ( NYSE: JCP ) has hired Target Corporation’s ( NYSE: TGT ) top marketing executive as its new President.
JC Penney Unveils New Target-esque $800 Million Revamp …
fashionista.com/…/jc-penney-unveils-new-target-esque-800-million-r…
Jan 28, 2012 – Like Target, JCP’s roster of designer collabs is growing. Joining MNG, Nicole by Nicole Miller, I Heart Ronson and Olsenboye, will be “L’amour …
J.C. Penney Company, Inc. : JC Penney Layoffs Target Some …
www.4-traders.com › Shares
Jan 23, 2012 – DOW JONES NEWSWIRES In addition to its expected layoffs of thousands of seasonal workers, J.C. Penney Co. will make cuts to its …

I don’t get a newspaper anymore. My news comes online and it’s based on my interests. A great deal of my news comes from Facebook. For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to use USA Today and local newspapers as examples. USA Today is a national newspaper that gives readers a broad idea of what’s going on in the nation and the world and your local newspaper gives you a broad idea of what’s going on in your county, city and local area. Their websites, of course, do the same. Is this what people truly care about though? Of course. On some level, we all care about what’s going on in the world, in our cities and in our towns.

What do we care about most, however? We care about our family and friends most. When you ask most people to list their priorities the top three will likely be their family and friends, their job and their religion or spirituality in no particular order. So where do we all go to get news on our family and friends??? Why, Facebook of course. My new Sunday morning routine isn’t reading the “funnies”, Sports section and Entertainment section of the local newspaper anymore. It’s getting a cup of coffee, opening my laptop or iPad and seeing what my family and friends did this weekend. Who had babies? Who lost a loved one? Who had a great time in Las Vegas? That’s what I care about most. I know that’s what I care about most because that’s the first thing I “research”. Then I’ll go to my favorite news outlets and look up how the my favorite teams performed last night and of course see what’s going on in the nation and the world.

What’s the point? What am I getting at here? Well, another thing that I can choose on Facebook is what “advertisers” I allow to appear on my news feed. I can’t choose that at all with a printed newspaper. Websites, especially Facebook, are getting a lot smarter and very sophisticated with the targeted advertising they feed me, but to be honest, it’s never really what I want to see. I mean, how many times can they suggest I like “Mayhem” on Facebook before I can make it go away. I can’t. I can control that I “LIKE” Pepsi and I can see what Pepsi is posting on Facebook in my newsfeed. I chose that. So did 4.5 Million other Facebook users. 31.5 Million users chose to allow Coca~Cola to advertise on their newsfeed.

This is the equivalent of telling USA Today or the Detroit News what advertising you want printed in the paper they deliver to your doorstep. Pretty powerful when you think about it. So if you don’t have a fan page on Facebook, I suggest you get one now. If you do have a fan page, but you really don’t have a strategy, I suggest you work on it. You need to create enough interest on Facebook that people choose to allow you to advertise to them.

If you have not developed a strategy for Facebook yet, it’s definitely not too late and it is worth doing as long as you are willing to do it right and invest the time and effort and staff into ensuring your page is worth visiting. Here are three quick tips to get you started:

1. Check out your competition.
See what your competitors are doing on Facebook. I would never recommend copying them directly, but there will be inherent similarities in the way you conduct your page. You can choose to do the same or try something completely different. It’s up to you, but it should be consistent with the rest of your marketing and advertising.

2. Meet with an “expert”.
I always say there is no such thing as a social media expert because how can someone be an expert at something that changes every single day. The point is, meet with someone who knows what they are doing and get their input so you can lay a solid social media foundation.

3. Make a Social Media team.
If your staff is too busy focusing on their day-to-day jobs to assign this to one individual, make it a team effort. This way the load is shared and it becomes a collaboration of different departments. This will also keep your content interesting and diverse, but will also be representative of your organization.

We recently ran a promotion for a customer that had surprisingly brilliant and unexpected results as well. The promotion was a “slot machine” game on Facebook where if the fan of the page got 5 logos to appear across the top of their page, they won a prize.

It took about ten days for people to figure out how to make it happen, which was what we wanted. We didn’t want the promotion to only last a day. The unexpected result, however was that the people who ended up winning the contest ended up promoting our client on their own personal Facebook pages. The winners of our contest had over 1,200 friends combined. Each of those friends had the opportunity to be introduced to our client on Facebook in a way we never anticipated.

Tebow’s results aren’t in and neither are ours at this point, but by experimenting and not being afraid to try new things, we discovered a great new way to promote our clients without spending hard dollars on advertising. The only true failure of an experiment is not realizing and appreciating the unexpected results.

So how do you do it then? You need to make sure that you are promoting it in EVERYTHING. Promote it in your company newsletter, emails, business cards, swag give-aways, letterhead, TV commercials, print advertisements and any other way possible.

I recently attended a college football game at the largest stadium in the United States. There were over 113,000 people in attendance. There was a one minute promotion of the home team’s Facebook page that ran on their new scoreboards. It was brilliant. I couldn’t get a picture of the ad when it was running, but I will make an effort to do so at the next game.

The point is, they get it. They have a captured audience and used the opportunity to promote their Facebook page in an undeniable way. What undeniable way will you come up with to promote your Facebook page?

If you’re like me, you’d likely purchase them from the third website. Image is everything, especially online. The first two are clearly templates that were home made, much like their cupcakes. The Cupcake Girls website looks as though it was professionally built. This also gives the sense that the Cupcake Girls are better at what they do and take it more seriously or they are just too busy baking yummy cupcakes to build a website.

This message transcends cupcakes and is really true for any business. If you’re not a programmer or web designer, focus on what you do best and leave the heavy lifting to the experts. It will pay off in so many ways including credibility, image, branding, SEO and more than likely, sales!

Just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be a new Social Media platform, along comes Tout! Tout allows users to post 15-second videos directly from their smart-phones. Here’s how Tout describes it:

“Tout, the network for real-time video Status Updates (Touts).

Tout enables people to quickly and easily update their Facebook friends and Twitter followers with real- time short video Video Status Updates, captured from smart phones. Find and follow friends, family and people who interest you at Tout.com and get real-time notifications as they “Tout” new moments from their lives.

Tout delivers a rich social sharing experience that delivers “Life as it Happens” in full color, sound and motion… as opposed to “Life as it’s Written” in 140 characters of text.

Some things just can’t be described in 140 characters of text… Life is what you see, Tout it!”

Learning from Twitter and Facebook success, Tout already has athletes, actors, socialites and politicians using their platform and is rapidly growing their user base.

How Tout can work for you depends on your products and services. Essentially, if you can summarize anything about your company and what it has to offer in 15 seconds or less… TOUT IT! 15 second demonstrations, tips, advice or a series of them can be fun and entertaining. This platform will force you to “land the plane” and be direct and to the point. Many consumers will appreciate this.