Google Plus – run circles not rings around your friends

With Google Plus run circles not rings around your friends
When it comes to innovative computer technology, Apple is the acknowledged leader in this field, when it come to innovating on the Internet, Google is the master, well, in most stuff especially search related. When it comes to social media, Facebook is way ahead so it is quite unusual for Google to find itself playing catch up in social media.

When the social media penny finally dropped for Google, the come up with an answer, Google Plus ! . It is mile and mile behind Facebook in terms of membership but then again, Google Plus is not actually launched yet, you cannot even use it unless you are invited but even when its completed and open to the public, it is highly unlikely that it will attract the level of usage Facebook already has. Knowing how powerful Google can be when it come to technology and innovation, they are certainly going to give pricing as many social networking addict from Facebook as possible.

Google are already succeeding in winning converts to Google Plus, it just by the fact that you can separate people you are connected with info what they actually mean to you for example you can create a circle for your friends, a circle for your family etc etc as oppose to Facebook’s definition of anyone and every one you want to network with or who wants to network with you as friends.

If you have not yet been invited to test drive Google Plus, you may want to do so, its quite and interesting new social media platform. Its has a lot of downside which hopefully Google will sort out before it rolled out. Some of the things I find annoying includes its unfriendly url and not so intuitive user interface but over all, its worth giving a go. You will find a link to where you can get invites for Google plus in the paragraph below.

More Google Plus Resources:
Temi’s Google Plus page
Free Google Plus Invites
UK Google Plus Forums
Google’s Discussion Forum

Search Engine Marketing Services in Glasgow – GlasGoWeb Leading the Way

Search Engine Marketing Services in Glasgow

Like most small businesses across the UK, for small businesses in Glasgow, search engine optimisation and marketing is crucial to a successful Internet marketing strategy. Given the fact that small businesses are not the richest companies in the land, being able to market their product and services using cost effective SEO is of utmost importance. If you need SEO Glasgow , there are dozens of ways to achieve high ranking in search engine result pages, three of the most popular ways includes:
* DIY search engine optimisation.
* Out sourcing your search engine optimisation.
* Using your local search engine optimisation consultant.

There are advantages and disadvantages in each of the aforementioned ways of get your website to number one position in leading search engines but using your local search engine optimisation expert is certainly the best option. A brief information about each of the three options will show why small businesses in Glasgow looking to get excellent SERP results need to choose a Glaswegian SEO consultant over say an Indian SEO consultant or indeed a search engine optimisation consultant from London for that matter.

DIY Search Engine Optimisation

You can find an awful lot of information on how to optimise your website online, some of these information are excellent, others are outdated and some are outright dangerous to the success of your website. It is a very bad idea to optimise your site yourself using some of the DIY SEO manuals found online because some optimisation techniques advocated by some SEO experts will actually get your site banned by leading search engines. Optimisation technique such as cloaking, keyword stuffing and other black hat SEO methods which you can easily find information about are not good for your site ranking in search engines.

Outsourcing your Search Engine Optimisation

It is quite popular to outsource SEO this days. India is the most popular outsourcing destination. One of the advantages companies that outsource to India gives as their main reason is cost, it is generally assumed that outsourcing to India is cheaper.
One thing most companies that outsource their SEO do not realise it the dictum that says, if you buy cheap you buy twice. It is trued that most things that needs to be done to get a website ranking well is online, but there is nothing like a local SEO company or consultant with in dept knowledge of the environment and location you are operating to get your online marketing strategy right for you.

Using Local Glasgow SEO Company

The best decision any Glasgow based small business, looking to start or improve its search engine optimisation and search engine marketing reach can do it to use an Internet marketing Glasgow base SEO company or SEO consultant. You will be putting your business in the care of a local expert you cannot only speak to on the phone but one that speaks your language as well. One such company is GlasGoWeb, an Internet marketing Glasgow

GlasGoWeb has been building, optimising and marketing websites in the Glasgow area since 2006. They offers full search engine marketing services including search engine optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click(PPC) account marketing, social media marketing and search engine marketing training. If you are a small business and want to success with your online marketing strategy, you need to speak to the local experts at GlasGoWeb to get you search engine success off to a good start.

Social Media as a new addiction among Internet users

When Television came to its highest peak, the rumors that people started to be TV-addicted begin spreading. Nowadays, a new “menace to society” seems to arise, and that is the so-called social media.
While this is a new method of getting in touch with new persons, growing a business or just having fun, the social media wave also tends to replace spending time with real-life friends and family.

The latest study created by Retrevo Gadgetology – the Retrevo Gadgetology Report – revealed some interesting facts about social media users. They invited users to share their habits when it comes to social media, habits like: how much of their time they spend on websites like Facebook and Twitter, where do they check those websites from and what part of the day is the most “occupied” with verifying news about their social media accounts or emails.

According to this report, people are very preoccupied in checking their social media status whether is day or night, when going to bed. Almost half of them (48%) say they verify Facebook or/and Twitter accounts from bed or as soon as they wake up. More than a half (61%) among users under 25 years old have to login to Facebook every single day.

Here are some other interesting numbers from the report:

18% of people under 25 years old cannot go more than a couple hours without checking in on Facebook
55% of people over 25 have to check in on Facebook at least once a day
16% of people under 25 years old rely on Twitter and/or Facebook for the morning “news”
28% of iPhone users check/update Twitter before they get out of bed
11% of people under 25 years old can be interrupted by an electronic message during sex (The number drops to 6% of people over 25 years old)
24% of people under 25 can be interrupted by an electronic message while in the bathroom. (This number drops to 12% of people over age 25)

Surprisingly as it may seem, 11% of under 25 years old Internet users have no problem being interrupted by an email when having sex. Could emails/social media be better than sex, is there a hidden secret regular people do not know about?

This is not a single study on social media/Internet addiction issue. A couple of years ago, Intel did a study on the “Internet and sex” and Retrevo had another one about Twitter being the new after-sex cigarette.

Yes, you can use LinkedIn and other social media for SEO

Using LinkedIn for SEO

You know that owning a website is only half the job done. The website needs to draw a lot of traffic towards it, which is only possible through search engine optimisation. Sites that can be accessed or crawled by the search engines easily and to the maximum are visible to more number of eyeballs and it is therefore in your interest to seek better tips and ways to make the site worthy of attention from the search engines. This will in turn lead to more traffic visiting the website and you can take full advantage of such visibility as you go along.

You may have made use of many of the popular social networking sites to improve the visibility of your website, but may still be unsure about their impact. One site that can be of great use to you is LinkedIn. This site already enjoys great visibility and its ranking on the search engines is quite high. This will ensure that any association with this site would be of great benefit to your website as well. It is the spin off effect that will do the trick.

If you have already established contact and have a running association with this site, then it is time to make substantial improvements on the SEO front and given below are some tips on how to best make use of LinkedIn for this purpose:

a) Take the benefit of anchor text and links

Though this appears simple and easy to do, it is very crucial for increasing the SEO. The anchor text has to be used such that it provides the link from LinkedIn profile to your site and if you can manage to generate such links to many sites, you stand to gain substantially in terms of back links. Anchor text using appropriate key words is the answer towards making your site more SEO friendly.

The reason is also because important search engines like Google does a lot of checking of the anchor text in ranking sites and if you have managed the right key words relevant to your site, the ranking is improved to a great extent and your site will find favor with many search engines. The trick is to be creative about the key words and not fall prey to common names or terms.

b) Pay close attention to the key words

While composing your profile on LinkedIn, you must ensure that you select the most appropriate key words. The making of the profile would mean that you may have to mention about your hobbies, the type of jobs you have done, what you prefer and other salient features of your personality. You need to pepper your profile with the most relevant key words so that they link back to your site effortlessly.

c) Make sure you add connections

This is another area, which greatly influences the SEO of any site. You need to add sufficient number of connections to add visibility to the site and this will automatically improve the ranking of your site among the search engines.
d) Customise and tailor make the URL

Finally, it is important to really customize and tailor make the URL according to what you have on LinkedIn so that even the LinkedIn members are able to make changes to their own URLs and not be forced to make do with the one available on default. You can select a name that is close to you and can even opt for the name of your own website. This will definitely lend better visibility and will result in the SEO getting boosted further.

You can discuss this article and other search engine marketing related issues at UK Webmaster Forum