Whether you’re a mom and pop store or a Fortune 500 brand, we highly suggest getting one now (and do it quick before your competitors find out about it!)

Here are the Top 6 Reasons to Get Google Plus for Business Now:

1.   Reach – Let’s face it, Google rules the web. With over 1 billion unique visitors a month, it would just be silly not to have your business showcased here. People are searching for businesses like yours right now, why not stand out above the rest?

2. SEO Purposes – Having a Google+ business page dramatically increases your chance to dominate the first page of search engines. How? Well, because a Google+ page is Google’s! Google has announced that they will be giving greater authority to these Plus pages in their search results, so you can pretty much bet that having one will help your business listing skyrocket towards the top.

3. Target Like Never Before. Different people are interested in different parts of your business, right? With Circles in Google Plus, you can separate people into unique groups based on their interests, ages, gender, location, etc. Send targeted messages specifically to 22-35 aged females in Toronto. Or only to males in Florida that are Gator fans. You get the idea.

4. Clean Design, Easy and Free!  The page has a clean design with only four tabs, and it’s very simple to use. Best of all, it’s free advertising. And who doesn’t like free?

5. Measure. With Google+, you can easily measure your site statistics. Using a cool new feature called Ripples, you can visually see how your posts travel across Google+. See who’s sharing and re-sharing your content, and who your biggest  ambassador is.

5. Interact With Your Customers. With Google+ Pages you can have real conversation with the people interested in your business.  Hangouts let you set up one-click video conversations with your customers. Why not get face to face feedback from your customers and see how you can improve your business? See business owner Zen hangout with his customers on his Google+ Page here.

6. Get +1′s For Your Business – It’s common sense – people trust what their friends and family recommend. Businesses or websites that have been “plus +1ed” will show up higher on search engine result pages, and will be shown on your Google Plus For Business Page.

FUN FACT TIPS

• Using Direct Connect, simply put a + and then the business name you want to find a Plus page for, and if exists – Google will direct you to it.
• Use Google Plus pages to get your links out there and provide value to your connections.
• Find people on Google Plus that might be interested in your business at www.findpeopleonplus.com

Consider it one more avenue to get additional exposure and traffic to your website, and brand. Sign up for Google Plus for Businesses now. Want help? Our experts at Mannix Marketing can create a fully optimized, eye catching profile for you. Contact us today!

As an example, we looked a little closer at AmericanTowns.com on Quantcast. Traffic has fallen drastically in the last week:

By the way, not one of Mannix Marketing’s websites have been affected. For quality Internet marketing services, contact us today: 1-800-928-9154.

As the story goes, JCPenney  was dominating the top of Google’s search results. They were occupying the #1 position for keywords such as “dresses”, “furniture”, “area rugs”, “skinny jeans” and a myriad of others. The question came up about how they are accomplishing this amazing feat! Through some investigative reporting by Doug Pierce, it was determined that JCPenney’s SEO company was utilizing Black Hat SEO techniques described as “the most ambitious attempt to game Google’s search results that he has ever seen”.

The results of this investigation yielded 2,015 pages that held links to the JCPenney website, with anchor text such as casual dresses, evening dresses, little black dress, cocktail dress. Clicking on any of these phrases would direct you to the main dress page on the JCPenney website. This gave Google a false impression that the JCPenney website was satisfying one of Google’s algorithms with flying colors, thus launching them to the top of the natural results. This type of linking is a known no-no, a form of exploitation, deceptive and clearly Black Hat SEO, punishable by either being black listed from Google or at the very best, watching your placements sink into oblivion.

The NY Times sent Google all the evidence that they had collected and Google took prompt action against the offender.

At 7pm On February 9, 2011, JCPenney was #1 for keyword “samsonite carry on luggage”. Two hours later it was #71. Also at 7pm, it was #1 for keyword “living room furniture”; Two hours later it was #68.

“In other words, one moment Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country. The next it was essentially buried.”

Read the full article here

It’s not unusual for a prospective client to call all upset that they have lost all their positions with another company that promised the world. I’ll never forget “Tom” who had a top three position for a highly competitive home industry term. He was actually screaming and frantic on the phone. I assured him that what his last SEO Firm had done was called “Black Hat SEO” and though it worked for a while, they got caught and he was now reaping the wrath of Google. This was five years ago, and we weren’t sure how long it would take to fix the problem. But we “undid” the damage and within three months, “Tom” was back in the top five for the very keyword phrase that he desired. Although it’s tempting to take the short cut, it’s rarely worth it in the long run.

If you are suffering the consequences of Black Hat SEO, or are looking for a White Hat SEO Firm, call Mannix Marketing! We assure all our clients that the search engine optimization elements that we apply to your website will not harm your efforts to increase your online visibility.

With the introduction and boom of social media, there has been a shift from whoever can “buy” the most incoming links to those who can earn the most “likes”. So, what would attract somebody to “like” your website? The answer is CONTENT. If your website is providing the information that will satisfy a searcher, chances are they will “like” your page.

Now more than ever, it is important to have a high quality website with pertinent information. Take some time over the next few weeks, perhaps in preparation for the New Year, and analyze your site. Do some quality control and really make note of whether or not your navigation includes pages that relate to your topic. Don’t skimp on the information! Think of ways to increase and improve what you already have. Build on your website base and don’t stop until you have a “like-worthy” website.

Mannix Marketing can certainly help with an analysis of your website. We also provide copywriting services, seo services, press release services and social media marketing. We’ve got all you need for a well rounded internet marketing campaign.

Let me introduce to you Google Instant! You’ve probably noticed that as you type a search word in Google, the results are appearing and changing as you continue typing. You don’t have to finish typing. You don’t have to press ‘search’. Google is making a prediction for you, resulting in faster results.

Take a look at the premise for this new search enhancement:

“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.”

The benefits to Google Instant as written by Google itself:
Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Let us know what you will be doing with the time Google has saved you!

As a searcher it means that the results you receive from Google should be delivered quicker, and they should be more relevant to your search query. Very good things.

As a website owner, it means that your website updates should be seen by Google much faster than before, so your new products and services have the ability to show up on results pages much sooner. Hooray! But this also means that your competitors have that same ability as well. Ouch. And Google will be looking at more web pages than ever before, possibly increasing the competition. Double Ouch!

What should you do? Successful website owners and managers should continue to do what they have always done. Build a website with great content. Make it search engine friendly from development through design through content. Make it user friendly. Optimize it. These basics haven’t really changed. It’s the pace at which you may have to do some of these things that will change.

One element to keep in mind is page load speed. This has been a factor in search engine rankings in the past – it’s just that now the bar has been set a bit higher. The faster you can get your page to load the more highly Google will think of it (and your site visitors will be appreciative as well). Minimizing image size, removing unused elements from the code, combine external files (CSS and JavaScript) and streamlining code are just a few ways to decrease page load speed.

One piece of advice, at least for a while, would be to check your site analytics more frequently than you normally do, and check your rankings (manually of course) more often as well. The truth is that even though we have an idea of what Google Caffeine means to us, no one can really predict what exactly will happen to any particular website. If you stay on top of how your website and traffic changes with the update, you’ll be well ahead of the game.

So have you noticed any major changes to your website’s rankings or traffic over the past week? I know I’ve seen a handful of jumps, but considering we work with hundreds of sites and thousands of phrases, that doesn’t sound like too many. How about you?

Google’s research has proven that a faster site contributes positively to the user experience. In addition, Google’s internal research has shown that users spend more time on a faster site and tend to exit a slower site sooner. This is good information to take into consideration when developing, redesigning or optimizing your website!

Mannix Marketing has been optimizing websites for 14 years and since the very beginning we have included this in our optimization techniques! From our viewpoint, we’ve seen Google respond more favorably to fast loading sites for many, many years!

Here are a few ways that Mannix has been optimizing for fast site speed:

A. Make sure to optimize your images! Large graphics or photos can take up a lot of space and slow down your site speed and limit your site performance.

B. Make sure to host your site close to the backbone of the internet. If your site is hosted in a foreign country, for example, then it has to go through several “hops” before it gets to the backbone. These hops take time and slow down the speed of your site. Do some research on your host company before making a decision or call Mannix Marketing for hosting. We have done this research and chosen a hosting company that is very close to the backbone for this very reason!

C. Make sure your server is not overloaded. Test server speed!

D. Simple is best. Our motto since the day we opened our doors has been to “keep it simple”. When flash was all the rage, we were advising against it. When new database driven sites were the best way to keep a large site updated, we insisted on keeping static pages. When shopping carts were blooming, we were only using search engine friendly carts. To this day, to “keep it simple” is still part of our recommendation!

Google estimates that only 1% of sites will be affected. In addition, this only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com only. If you’ve been affected, please let us know. Again, we’re sure they have been utilizing this all along!

To find out if your site may have an issue with site speed, visit the following links:

Website Goodies – Website Speed Test.

WebPageTest – Shows your page load performance as well as a comparison against an optimization checklist.

YSlow – A Firefox Addon. Free from Yahoo.

Evaluating and improving on your site speed is not only going to satisfy a signal in Google’s algorithm (whether new or old!), but it will also improve the functionality of your website. Converting users into customers starts with their first glimpse of you or your company through the vehicle of your website. Make it the best you can!

If you’ve been a client of Mannix Marketing, we’ve had your back on this issue!