Vine a short form video service

What is Vine

Let’s talk about Vine. Vine? If you don't know what it is, it's basically a short form video service that allows you to post six-second clips. Marketers are really grasping on to things like this and Instagram video to create some really interesting content. What makes Vine so interesting is that they recently rolled out their web profile system which allows you to create a web profile using the Vine system and also set a custom URL to direct your followers.

So Vine is a short form video service that allows you to create 6 second videos like stop-motion, short different types of videos that marketers are using to showcase products and services. 

It's a really interesting platform and with the new web interface, it should only continue to grow. 

Remember Vine is Vine.co not Vine.com. Login using your Vine credentials which is usually tied to your Twitter account or signup using your email.

Once you are logged in choose settings. On the Settings page, scroll down to the bottom and look for the Custom URL section. Click that to get your custom URL.  Vine will confirm whether or not that name is available. If it is then you can confirm that address by pressing the confirm button. If you get an error message that says something like, your account is not eligible for a custom URL at this time, Don’t Panic! It’s probably because your account is newer than 30 days. Your account has to be at least 30 days old and you have to have at least two posts online in order to make this work.

So make sure you have two posts. You can create dummy posts to get it started. Once you have the two posts and your account is at least 30 days old you can create a custom URL. Then you can then use vine.co/your-custom-name-goes-here it will take your followers to your page where they can see product infomercials, stop motion videos or whatever you want to show.

Is it right for your business or product, maybe not? All social sharing platforms do not fit all types of businesses. Vine and Instagram and all these short form video services are only going to continue to grow and become bigger platforms for brands and businesses.

You need to go ahead and lock in your name while you still can. So go ahead and log into Vine and set up your custom URL, using the method that I just showed you.

Steve Steinberger

www.klicktwice.com

561-281-8330

Social Media Hastags

How to use hashtags on Social Media

If you use social media marketing you might be wondering about hashtag.  Basically, a hashtag is a word or phrase that you append to your social media posts that allows users to easily search like-minded content and participate in large format discussions on those various networks. They are always prefixed by a pound sign or a number sign and usually appear as a link inside the post that they're attached to. This makes it easy for someone to click on that link and access more information or a thread of conversations about that topic.

Hashtags were first used on Twitter as a way of accessing threads of information and conversations, but have since made their way onto other networks like Facebook and Google+. On Google+, you have the option of tagging your post yourself with hashtags. Or simply letting Google search your content and find relevant keywords and having it append the hashtags to your post for you. If you were to click on any one of the hashtags that are associated with the post it's going to take you to a search page where you can see all of the pages, posts and trending topics related to the hashtag that you clicked on.

Facebook works much the same way that Twitter does. You actually have to manually add the hashtags to your posts in Facebook in order for it to recognize it.

If you were to click on that hashtag it is going to take you to a page where you can see all of the relevant information containing that particular hashtag or posts. It can be from the company or person that it's associated with. 

So why use a hashtag in our social media marketing efforts? Well, by using hashtags, you not only can convey your brand message, but you can also make your brand become part of a larger conversation. This allows you to participate in discussions with your customers in a much different way and also reach other potential customers that might be searching for that hashtag on a given network.

Hashtags also make your content relevant to issues in real time and allow you to be easily found on social media sites. Take some time to study the trending hashtags that relate to your brand, business and the content that you're sharing. And then use that as a way of tagging your post to gain more traction across all of your networks. There are some rules to hashtagging.

Number 1, when you're hashtagging, never use spaces. None, whatsoever. If you need to separate words use capital letters instead of spaces.

That way you can easily identify each individual word. Adding capitalization does not change the search results for any hashtag. Numbers are definitely okay to use, and I would actually encourage you to use them. Punctuation in hashtags is also NOT permitted, ever. That includes periods, exclamation points and semicolons. All of that is off limits inside of hashtags. Special characters are all so a #NO-NO like asterisks, ampersands and all those weird signs you never use anyway.

None of those are allowed inside of hashtags, they just don't work. Hashtags should always be short and sweet and relevant to the post that you're creating. Do NOT write a hashtag just for the sake of writing it. That just makes you look out of touch. Give your hashtag some context. Nobody wants an all hashtag post. They need to know why you're using the hashtags that you're using. So give your content some depth by adding actual text around it and make sure that people understand why you're using it, when you're using it.

Hopefully by now you understand how to use hashtags across all of your social networks and why using them can truly help you expand your reach and maximize your social media marketing efforts. 

Steve Steinberger

www.klicktwice.com

561-281-8330

Local Search Optimization

Optimizing your website for local search

Let's talk about some things specific to local search that can help your local search marketing. First, your contact information is going to be especially important, and there are some specific things you need to put on your Contact Us page.

On the schema.org website you can find specific schema elements that make sense for your type of business and include this markup into your web pages.  Let's say on your contact page you show your name, a description of your business, your address and your phone number... By adding some tags and explicitly defining these items through the markup defined at schema.org, you'll be telling search engines exactly what type of information each piece of text represents.

Local Search Optimization

There are microformats for everything, from your hours of operation, to the payment types you accept, to industry- specific items like menus for restaurants. At a minimum you'll want to make sure to include your business name, address, and phone number, and you should also include things like your business email address, driving directions or a map, and a photo or two with appropriate ALT text.

Your business information should always be in presented on your footer on every page. This is a very common place that users are conditioned to look for contact information and it will ensure that they can find your information quickly from any page of your site.

Modern searchers aren't just searching for you on their desktop PCs anymore they're also searching with mobile devices when they're not at home or in the office. Much of this on-the-go searching is with local intent. Having a site that looks good and functions on mobile devices is something that will not only serves you well with the search engines responding to search queries on mobile devices, but will also ensure that your users have a positive experience with you and your site regardless what device they're using.

If you have resources or programming expertise you can choose to address some of these issues by creating a separate site exclusively for your mobile users on a separate domain or sub-domain. Or better yet, you might choose to use a responsive design that adapts to whatever size of screen your website is being rendered on from a single code base.

The bottom line is that many of your local customers are using mobile devices and if your site doesn't provide the information your mobile visitor needs, or if it crashes their browser you've probably lost a potential customer. Focusing on you're on page- optimization, your contact page, proper schema markup and mobile performance will ensure that you're taking the right steps towards local search visibility with the things that you can control on the pages of your site.

Steve Steinberger

www.klicktwice.com

561-281-8330

Local Search ... its here now

The future of local search

How people use search engines to find places, things and businesses is in a constant state of change. As technology has improved local businesses have gained more and more ways to reach their customers and the pace of change is only going to speed up in the future. Perhaps the most explosive trends these days are social media and mobile device usage. Social media is something that's happening on the go more than ever before and a great example of social media working with mobile devices to deliver local content is Google+ Local Search.

Local Search, the future is now 

From a mobile device that's using GPS or cell tower signals to become location aware, a whole new set of local functionality is unlocked. Users can use their mobile browsers or download iPhone or Android apps that keep them connected to their Google+ account and right from the app they can find local businesses based on their current location and read reviews from other Google+ users or people in their networks. You can also write reviews on the go, share information with your social networks and get directions to a local business from wherever you happen to be, by car, by foot, or by public transportation.

Local search is now integrated right into Google+. The important part is that this isn't something that's coming in the future. All of these features that we've just talked about are already here. This is where things are going. Your online experience is becoming more and more tailored to where you physically are and the lines between local search, social media and the kinds of devices you're using are beginning to disappear. Over and above Google+ people are using micro-blogging services like Twitter on the go and in a variety of devices from a variety of different apps.

People are checking into physical locations on networks like Foursquare, scanning QR codes to redeem coupons or getting more information about something out there in the world and they're maintaining their relationships through networks like Facebook. This nearly-endless stream of content can be overwhelming and new apps and new technologies are popping up every single day. Each and every one of these presents an opportunity, but the key is that you'll need to figure out which ones are applicable to your business and which ones are useful for your customers.

The future of local search is here. Smartphone’s and social media are helping people discover businesses in their own town that they might have otherwise overlooked. The rapid pace at which ideas become reality promises new and innovative things in the future that you'll need to be paying attention to. To further develop your local skills and to stay up-to-date on the things that is happening in local search. Make sure to keep an eye on resources like these and stay connected to your consumer base. Ultimately, they're the ones that will show you whether you're succeeding in local or not.

Steve Steinberger

www.klicktwice.com

561-281-8330

Google Maps – Local Search Ranking

Local Search Ranking

Factors to focus on in the LocalSearch Ranking Factors

1. Physical address in city of search

A physical business location rather than a PO Box was the number #1 recommended factor to focus on and was considered to be very important for Google Maps local search not only on the Place Page but across all Web properties. “No crawlable physical address on website” was also ranked at number 5 as one of the Negative Ranking Factors.

Local Search Ranking | Local SEO

2. Manually owner-verified Place Pages

One of the most important factors was to manually verify each Google Place Page for local SEO rather than doing a bulk upload. This ensures that each address for the location is checked by the owner and confirmed to be correct. This is particular relevant for businesses with more than one location. It is also important to remove duplicate listings.

3. Proper Category Associations

Proper category associations were ranked as the third most important “On Place Page” factor to improve Google Place Pages’ rankings and were considered by some experts to be even more relevant than the business title when following Google’s guidelines. Categories linked to relevant keywords were thought to strongly influence search results.

4. Volume of Traditional Structured Citations

Citations are still considered an important trust point for local search by many SEO experts. There seems to be a consensus that mismatching of NAP (name, address and phone number) across the Web is a negative ranking factor.

5. Crawlable phone number matching Place Page phone number

The local SEO strategists placed a lot of weight on the need for your NAP details to be consistent on your Google Place Page and website but also on other trusted sources across the Web. It was strongly recommended that if information was incorrect on these websites, to ask that the information be corrected.

6. PageRank / Authority of Website Homepage / Highest Ranked Page

A strong consensus amongst the Google Maps optimization experts was that optimizing your website with ‘location+product/service terms’ plays a much larger role in blended Place Search rankings. Domain authority and strength ie PageRank was also suggested to play a large part in driving up your Google Place’s Pages ranking.

7. Quality of inbound links to website

Again, the local search professionals agree that SEO best practices still apply for your traditional website and a website with a strong and natural link-building profile will continue to rank highly in blended search results. The same SEO rules apply and back links must be from websites that are trusted, credible and have high authority.

8. Crawlable Phone Number Matching Place Page Phone Number

As with factor number #1, the local SEO experts agree that the phone number of the business must be the same across the Web whether it is your Google Places Page, your website or other online properties. Ideally you should have a local business number. As aforementioned, inconsistency of phone numbers is a strong negative ranking factor.

9. Local Area Code on Place Page

There is also a strong emphasis by the local search specialists on having a local number listed on your Google Place Page to help Google recognize that the Web references are referring to a local listing. It is also mentioned in Google guidelines for Google Places to “Use a local phone number instead of a call centre number whenever possible.”

10. City, State in Places Landing Page Title

The keyword of the report is ‘consistency’. For optimum local SEO, the Google Places’ landing page should have the matching city and state in the page title. This again should match the city and state listed on the Places Page, on your website and on other Web references.

Steve Steinberger

www.klicktwice.com

561-281-8330

Local Search

Understanding local search

If you're a brick-and-mortar business or if you have a local presence then it's important that you know that your potential customers are using search engines to look for local products and services. The search engines are getting pretty good at giving users exactly what they want with some very specific local types of search results. Let's say you're in West Palm Beach with a toothache that needs some immediate attention. These days the first thing you're likely to do is head do a search engine and start typing "dentist west palm beach" and looking at the current market share data you're more likely to do it on Google, than anywhere else.

Local Seach |Results

In the search results you'll see a list of businesses in the West Palm Beach area matching your search. You'll see some special listings with location markers and a map that shows you where all those businesses are located. When you click on that marker you end up in a Google Maps interface showing a map of the area surrounding the business, and plenty of information and reviews. For each business listing that you see you can either click the link to the website or head over to that particular business' Google+ Local page, where you can find reviews, photos and even see who in your social circles has had anything to say about that business.

The bottom line is that if you're a dentist in West Palm Beach and you don't have this kind of local listing on the search engines your phone isn't very likely to be ringing. So how do you position yourself to have your business featured in these special local search results when people type in search queries with a local intent? Well, there are a few things that you can do. First off you're going to need to have a Google+ Local page. If you're not on Google+ yet now is a good time to start. The process of setting up a Google+ account and a Google+ Local page for your business is non complicated.

If you had a Google Places account, it's already been migrated to Google+Local for you. You can simply log in and make any updates or changes to leverage the new format.  Don't forget to ask your happy customers for reviews on your Google+ page. The more reviews and the more positive they are, the more likely Google is to return your pages above the competition. Next, we'll need to understand the concept of citations. Each and every mention that search engines find around the web of the name, address, or phone number of your business is considered a citation and the more citations a business gets from quality sources the more the search engines trust that this is a business searchers are looking for and the higher it can rank in local search results.

Next, your website is a critical piece of your local marketing strategy. You'll want to make sure that you have separate pages on your website for each service or category of products that you offer and you'll want to make sure that your business' name, address, and phone number are clearly identified on your website. Of course, remember your content strategy and make sure that you have relevant keywords in your copy to ensure optimal search performance. Focusing on creating, maintaining and growing your Google+ Local page, building consistent and quality citations of your name, address, and phone number around the web and focusing on the content of your website are the key ingredients that you'll need for local search success.

Steve Steinberger

www.klicktwice.com

561-281-8330

Understanding Google+ Local

Google+ Local, which used to be Google Places is a place where businesses can get themselves a robust and feature-rich online listing for free. When you create a business listing on Google+ Local, you'll have the opportunity to provide basic information about your business, photos, and more. Users will be able to leave reviews for you and as an administrator you'll also get to see statistics about your visitors and the searches that they've done to bring them to your page. But all of this is only going to be seen if your visitors can find the page and there are essentially three factors that influence rankings on Google+ Local: relevance, distance, and prominence.

Google + Local

Relevance is all about how well your business listing matches a user's search term. In most cases the more complete and accurate a business listing is the easier it is for Google to properly understand your business and return its listing in the search results. Also, the more relevant your business is to the search term the more relevant it is to the searcher which is more likely to provide a quality experience that the search engines want and get you the click. The second factor is distance. Local searches are by definition bound to a geographic location and Google uses what it knows about where a searcher is physically located including location terms in the search query.

It then attempts to return the most relevant result based on listings in that specific area. In many cases larger metropolitan areas are divided into smaller parts so you'll need to consider how you choose to list your business in Google+ Local. For example, cities like Newark, Jersey City, and Elizabeth are all considered part of a broader New York metro area but if you lived in any of those places you wouldn't be searching for a business using New York in your search query. As a business owner you want to think about how locals will be typing in their queries and mimic that as best you can.

If you have multiple locations you should create separate listings for each, to maximize your exposure on the search results and make sure that your closest location is the one that the user sees. Finally, the prominence of the listing has an effect on how well it will rank. Prominence is a measure of how well-known your business is across the web and much like regular content pages it looks for evidence around the web that others are talking about you. Things like links, reviews, articles, blogs, directory listings, and any other mentions about your business are all considered and generally the more positive these mentions of your business are, the better.

To maximize your chances of ranking well in local search results, just remember these three things: make sure that your listing is as complete, accurate and relevant to your local searches as possible. Make sure that you define your distance from searchers by defining the exact area or areas that your business serves. And just like you do with your general SEO strategy work on building your brand, customer relationships, and loyalty to earn prominence around the web.

Steve Steinberger

www.klicktwice.com

561-281-8330