Are you ready to spend even more time social networking?

How much of your marketing budget and/or time goes to Social Networking? Most businesses have some sort of presence on at least Facebook and LinkedIn. And maybe Twitter and YouTube.

Google + personal profiles have been out for a while but it was another month before business pages were launched. It’s going to take some time before we can tell what kind of social networking/marketing share this new service is going take from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but it’s Google so we can’t ignore it. A piece of advice I read recently in an article at Marketing Magazine UK is to not rush into building a Google+  Business Page until you have a clear strategy. Makes sense… So of course we did the opposite and just went ahead. For us, it’s okay not to have a strategy because the whole point is to learn more.  We do agree with the advice though and suggest you set up personal profile first to familiarize yourself with how it works.

There are plenty of resources about Google+ out there if you search. Many of the articles are great but technical or long.  We decided to begin our exploration of Google+ by comparing one of their new sharing features to Facebook’s. We were curious about these and thought it might be something you  be interested in. What I am talking about is the new +1 icons and g+ icons. We have them on our website home page sidebar if you would like to try them . And the Google Plus button below in this post works too.

There are similarities and differences. The Google +1 buttons that now appear around the Internet on Google searches and on websites are pretty similar to Facebook like buttons. If you click on one they behave the same way. If you are not logged into your Google account, Gmail for example, you will first be prompted do that and then your ‘like’, or ‘plus’ in this case is recorded for that web page.

The new buttons, like the one at the left, are called Google + Direct Connect buttons. When you click on one, you will be taken to the owner’s Google+ Page. You can view their feed, share, ‘+1′  and ‘follow’ the same as you would a Facebook feed. So it’s similar to having a Facebook icon on your site that connects to your Facebook profile. Our feeling is this is going to help your SEO efforts for being found in Google searches (maybe only in a small way but every little bit helps). It connects you directly to Google so it can’t hurt. Here’s an excerpt from a Web Pro Newsletter:

“Google+ has introduced a whole new realm of SEO possibilities based on getting found via Google’s own properties.

For one, Google ranks Google+ posts in search results, and they often appear on the first page.

The +1 button obviously helps your search visibility cause. Google made it clear from the beginning that this would be a search signal. If enough people like your content enough to give it a +1, it must be good right? Why not bump it up in the rankings. ”

The more of their tools you use and interconnect, the more visible and easier to find you will be in Google searches. Searchers will be able to find your + business page by using the + added to their search term. Here is how they explain it on their Direct Connect info page:

“Google+ Direct Connect lets you quickly navigate to a Google+ page (and even add that page to your circles) when using Google Search. For example, if you searched for the query ‘+youtube’ or ‘+pepsi,’ you could be immediately taken to the YouTube Google+ page, or the Pepsi Google+ page, and given the option to add the page to your circles.”

So having a Google+ Business Page is another way for folks to find you and follow you. Start thinking about it now, planning for it soon, and it’s very important, we feel, to begin considering what to name your Google + business page.

1. The font is not licensed for web use.
2. Its a font that many people don’t have on their computer
3. We feel it is ill suited from a design point of view, for projecting the professional image required for their successfully marketing their site.

Reason one is often a shock to people who assume any font they have on their computer is free to use for whatever they want. Not necessarily so.

Reason three is based on our experience and knowledge of what works but in the end, we defer to a clients wishes. It is, after all, their site.

Reason two is the one we most often encounter and the hardest to explain. The fonts we have on our computer are different depending on whether we are on a PC, Mac or Linux operating system. Also they can differ depending on which software we have. For example, after we upgraded our version of Microsoft Word, we found we had a bunch of cool new fonts installed.

For a person to see a font used on a web page, it has to be installed on their computer or it is replaced by a generic computer font or the same type, Serif, Sans-Serif, etc. So if we use it on a web page, you will see the page fine, another visitor may not.

What a pain!

This font issue became a thorn in the side of web designers wishing to be more creative on their pages as well a please clients, so workarounds were used. One such workaround is instead of text for a headline, a graphic depiction of the text was used instead. There are downsides to this, the biggest being the extra expense of creating a graphic. Another workaround was to try and force visitors to download the font when they visit the site. This has downsides as well, such as disconcerting people with a download prompt when they arrive and degraded site performance. Intellectual property /licensing violations was another potential problem with this workaround.

Over the years was very little progress in finding a solution that satisfied font designers, who deserve recognition for their creations and that worked without impacting the website user experience or load time in some manner. So we have been stuck with the same old safe fonts. The tried and true like Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, Tahoma, Geneva and Georgia. There have been additions to the ‘safe to use’ list of fonts but no good solutions to the problem itself.

Things are finally improving…

Over the past few years, hosted font services have emerged and are providing a much needed dash of flair to the web by overcoming the issues I have outlined here. Depending on the service, you need to register and pay a fee but most have a limited free level or some fonts that have no licensing fee. Here is a list of few of these services:

http://www.typekit.com/

http://www.webtype.com/

http://www.fontdeck.com/

http://kernest.com/

The best news for last…

There are many more and new services coming online all the time… But the one that is making a big splash right now is from…

Drum roll… You love me, you hate em, you can’t live without em… Google. Yes, they now have a great new font hosting service. It’s easy to use [for us tech savvy web developers] and all the fonts are free. Some restrictions may apply such as limiting use to only the web with print projects not allowed. It’s best to check each one.

You still might not be able to have the exact font you want on your web site, but at least now there are some jazzier options to pick from that you know are safe/legal to use. What we recommend is, if they want something a little different on your site, hop on over to Google Web Fonts at http://www.google.com/webfonts and pick a few.

We suggest you test them using the paragraph option tab as well as the sentence option. You want to see how they will look in different situations. The selection isn’t huge yet but will likely grow over time and as I mentioned, the service is free. Pick out a few choices and send your web team [us hopefully] the names and we’ll know what to do with them. It’s best to keep the final choices for the site  at two, but no harm in sending more to pick the two from.

What they say:

“Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type. ”

You can read more here:
http://www.google.com/instant/#utm_campaign=launch&utm_medium=van&utm_source=instant

Want to see what happens with Google Instant?

Try it here:
http://www.google.com/
Yep just put in a first letter — like F — surprise, it comes up with Facebook. If your business starts with an F do you think you will be found EVEN IF someone was looking through search?

Thanks to Danny Sullivan for this link from Twitter:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/39068673#39068673

In my opinion this is not a matter of speed, it is a matter of killing off searches for services or businesses that people may actually be looking for.

<sigh>

If you find this quickly and deal with it, there is minimal impact to your site. But if you don’t discover it quickly, you could end up on Google’s ‘Attack Site’ list and they will block visitors from visiting your site.

Curious about your site’s health status? Google has a tool for checking to see if there are any problems with your site. Replace the last part of this link with your domain they will show you a report:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=yoursiteurl.com

Right now we’re going back to our topic for this post… How to submit your site to Google after you have cleaned up following a malware attack.

First thing you are going to need is an account at Google Webmaster Tools.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Once you have an account set up, you will need to add a website. There’s a button for this prominently displayed on the index page. Click on it and you will be offered a field to enter your site url. I usually have this on my clip board ready to paste in.

Next they will require you verify ownership the site. There are several different methods offered. You can add a meta tag they provide or download an html file, which you then upload to your site. This fast and easy as long as you have an FTP program or web site authoring tool with file transfer set up. Explaining how to use these is beyond the scope of this post and if you don’t how to do this, you are someone who should have professional help.

Once you have uploaded the google html file or inserted the meta tag into your home page header, go back to the Google Webmaster tools page [still open I hope!] and hit the ‘verify site’ button.

There are various things you can look at in Webmaster Tools but we in there for a particular reason at the moment. We want to get our site pronounced healthy and open to visitors again. To do this, look for the ‘diagnostics’ link on the left side bar. Clicking will expand the menu. The ‘malware’ link take you to a page with an alert that your site is blocked. Here is where you will be able to submit your site and add a little message about what you have done to clean out the malware.

That’s all there is to it. It’s not hard but then we do this for a living. If you need help with this or something else on your site that is beyond your technical comfort level. Contact us!

Happy Trails,

Billy

PS -  Next post we’ll talk about a few plug-ins to help with security.

So a question, where are folks getting the information that is posted on Twitter and Facebook before Google, Yahoo, Bling, etc. have it listed.  If it is on the TV, radio, then how does it hit in social media first before the news wires pick it up and have it posted — OR — is it all related to search?

So are we the reporters now, and if so, can we trust what is being reported?  I know / I know… but think about it.  It’s not just the top news stories, it is also what is being reported for the latest issues with SEO, search engine updates, and so much more.

So my question, do we trust what is being reported in social media or do we trust what we eventually see in news reports through search engine searches?

Jan