Google enraged the masses last week by changing their privacy policy  - mainly because it reminded everyone that Google had a privacy policy. The company who was formerly a poster child for open source, flipped from serving the 99% to acting like the dreaded 1%. Just before that, Google changed their search algorithm to promote their own social networks (Google+, YouTube) over Twitter and Facebook. The public outcry was so intense that it culminated into bookmarklet called Don’t Be Evil.

Don’t Be Evil uses Google’s very own search results to prove that they are altering their own search results. Confused? This video might help clear it up.

Altering search results? This seems bad, like voter fraud bad. Gerrymandering comes to mind.

Google just recently went “black” alongside Wikipedia, Reddit and other popular companies to protest a government bill aimed at suppressing information, and now it seems they’re trying to do it themselves? Are we going to let them get away with this?

The short answer is: probably. The internet may seem like an ethical place when it takes on Washington, but DC is the outsider. Google is the internet’s Capitol and we can’t afford to fight a war on two fronts.

So what does this mean for you? If you want to continue to get results from SEO, you’d better brush off that Google+ account.

This is really frustrating because most of us have too many social networks. Fortunately, there are several ways to bundle all those social platforms into one seamless action. Here are a few resources:

• Wordpress to Twitter to Facebook
• Update Facebook from the Google
• Facebook to Twitter
• Facebook to Tumblr

One clever way is by using Google+ to email your Facebook status, Facebook then sends that to Twitter, Twitter to Tumblr, Tumblr to Wordpress. (Of course by that point, who knows what you’re actually publishing.) But check out If This Then That - it is incredibly easy.

If you’re wondering more about what to post than how to post, we’ll be covering that topic soon.

2012 is certain to come with a lot of changes in the way that search engines work. More importantly, we’re going to see a lot of changes to the way that search results that show up. I’ve collected a few things that I think we’ll see (or in some cases, see more of) in 2012:

Search algorithms will continue moving toward personalized results.

Last April, Google rolled out their “Panda” update that made significant changes to their search algorithm in an attempt to “provide better rankings for high-quality sites —sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” Suddenly, news and social networking websites rose toward the top of the search results, oftentimes pushing content farms off of the first page.

Google’s releasing of ‘Search Plus Your World’ last week was a giant leap in the way that search engines work – although I’m not entirely sure if this was a leap forward or a leap backward (post your opinion in the comments section – I’d love to hear what you think). Regardless, Google is becoming more and more personal with each algorithm adjustment, and they’re showing no signs of stopping. People are the new authority.

The takeaway: Google believes that social + timeliness = relevance. If you want to rank high on Google search, now may be a good time to dust off that Google+ profile.

Quality, not quantity.

This is one of those things that should have been at the core of search engines upon conception, alas … Over a decade later, search engines are finally starting to understand that just because a site has a lot of pages, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality of those pages are very high (we’re looking at you, content farms).

The takeaway: If you want to rank high in search results, then you need to take the time to create fresh, high-quality content for your site on a regular basis.

Mobile search will soon be in the driver’s seat.

The fact is that about 35% of Americans own smartphones and if you’ve ever bought one of those, you know that you’re required to pick up a data plan as well. So, aside from playing an obscene amount of Angry Birds, what are people doing with their phones?

The short answer: searching. Mobile search is increasing, and it’s increasing rapidly. With the advent of Siri and other voice-based mobile searching, it won’t be long before mobile search overtakes all other mediums. I’d put money on it happening before the year’s end, unless of course, the Mayan’s end of the world prediction proves to be true.

The takeaway: Start thinking about the way people search on mobile vs. computers and leverage this. Browse your analytics and look at the keywords that came from mobile devices. Use this data to optimize your paid search campaigns. In order to maximize conversions, make sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices.

What do you think the biggest changes in search are going to be? Sound off in the comments section below!

by Daniel Hadaway

If you’re planning to begin marketing your business online, there’s a chance you’ve got a plan laid out for all the different types of marketing you’d like to utilize. It’s important to note, however, that while most businesses will see success from all online marketing channels, different types of online marketing lend themselves more favorably to specific vertical markets.

Remember, that at the end of the day, the purpose of marketing is (most of the time) to generate sales for your business. The best way to do that is by finding users who may be already prepared to buy your product or service. With this in mind, we can look at how the behavior of consumers in specific verticals is uniquely influenced by online marketing and popular website formats.

Mashable recently posted an infographic called How to Influence Purchasing Decisions on the Web, which outlines how consumer behavior is affected by different online channels. For example, we can see that the top influencer in the automotive category is brand websites, followed by search results. So, if you’re an auto dealer you might want to consider focusing your initial efforts on creating an awesome website, optimizing it for SEO, and investing in paid search ads. The influence for baby products is much more social, with the top influencers being forum comments, Facebook, and blog posts. So if you’re ready to launch a new line of baby pacifiers, you might want to invest in reputation management, off-page SEO (inbound links, etc.), and Facebook advertising.

Your business category may not be listed in the infographic, but it’s important to start your marketing efforts armed with some knowledge of the buying behavior of your target audience. The best source for such knowledge will be an experienced digital marketing company (hint hint!) who is willing to help educate you based on their past experience in your vertical market.

Starting out your marketing efforts with thorough knowledge of your target audience, and then acting based on that knowledge is the best method to ensure success from your digital marketing efforts!

by Daniel Hadaway

In September, Google announced a new factor for landing page quality score that they will be considering when serving up paid search ads. This new factor is whether or not the website for the advertiser is mobile-optimized.

If your website is mobile-optimized, Google is more likely to show your ad higher up in the paid search listings. Google will be determining the quality of your site’s mobile experience based on several factors including:

• Basic Site Navigability
• Prioritization on Content
• Minimal Flash
• Simple Layout
• Mobile-specific Features
• Touch-specific Features
• Landing Page Load Time

The thinking behind this change is that a poor mobile experience will negatively affect a user’s opinion of a brand or company. According to Google, 61% of users are unlikely to return to a website (on a computer or phone!) if they have a poor experience with the site on their mobile phone.

If your website isn’t mobile optimized, and you’re running paid search ads, you may want to consider hiring a professional team to optimize your site. It will lead to more conversions for your business, and a lower cost-per-lead over time!

TechCrunch has an interesting article (and accompanying video) about some of the behind-the scenes info from Google on what goes into providing search results and constantly revising the algorithms to make results more relevant.

You should definitely take four minutes and check out the video, but here are a few key takeaways:

Google changes things constantly. Early in the video it is mentioned that last year alone, Google made over 500 changes to its search algorithm. Some changes were major, and many were minor; but staying abreast of all the latest changes Google is making- and knowing how those changes will affect your search engine ranking is a very important part of maintaining your digital presence.

Google doesn’t arbitrarily change its code. Somewhat conversely from the previous point, Google spends many hours researching every change and its potential impact on users and results. So rest assured, that your page’s ranking isn’t resting on the whims of a corporate giant (well at least not a volatile one). In the last minute or so of the video at TechCrunch, Google explains an anecdote of how one change is monitored and refined. They definitely do their homework!

Lastly, Google does control your fate. The bottom line is that Google does have ultimate control over your ranking within its search engine. They don’t answer to a higher authority than their share holders, as any business would. The whole point of this video being posted is to show the public how responsible and trustworthy Google is with all of this power. But still, it’s not a good idea to place all of your eggs in Google’s basket.

Try dedicating some resources to decidedly non-Google-controlled marketing means like Display, Paid Search (still owned by Google, but you’re paying them so you know you’ll get results!), Social Media, or even a Website designed to convert.

It should be remembered that Google does still control what happens on their search engine, even though it reached critical mass a long time ago. But, be reassured: it does seem like for the time being they are dedicated to constantly improving search results for users, and providing clear concepts on how to rank higher in its results!

David Berkowitz recently posted an article on Social Media Insider that, in exactly 906 words, called Google+ dead in the water. While his perspectives are interesting (and at times, entertaining), they’re flawed. This service has yet to be fully released to the public. Calling this platform irrelevant and bereft of life is premature, at best.

Let’s be honest, adding another social media platform into the mix may be a bit overwhelming for some. Managing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, etc. can be exhausting, and initially I too questioned the demand for another major hitter to enter the game. I was wrong. Everywhere I turned, there was someone pleading for an invite.

This begs the question: Why is everyone so eager to hop on the Google+ bandwagon? Well, it depends. However, here are a few common reasons:

• Remaining relevant by keeping up with social media as it evolves.
• The desire to be a social/digital pioneer. It’s human nature to want to be first.
• The social media reboot. Sometimes it’s healthy to want to leave all of your former high school classmates behind and start over.

Whatever the reason may be, the end result is the same. People WANT this service and they’re flocking in droves to get there.

Berkowitz’s main flaw is that he’s stuck in an old mentality that is deeply rooted in the principles of abandonment. This made perfect sense during the infancy of social media. People left LiveJournal and Friendster and flocked to MySpace. After a couple really good years for MySpace, everybody migrated over to Facebook.

Fast-forward to the present. The Age of Abandonment is now over. Integration is the new black. Generally, people are not leaving Facebook for Twitter and people are not leaving Twitter for LinkedIn, or FourSquare. Instead, we’re bringing all of these different tools together and are leveraging their power collectively to tell a more complete story about who we are.

I don’t believe that Google+ was developed to be a replacement to any one of the aforementioned services. Rather, it’s meant to be a compliment to what we already have. I say let’s give this thing a chance.

Don’t call it dead before it’s born.

While most companies would love to show up higher in search-engines, can you imagine a situation where showing up first on Google is a bad thing?

This blog has an interesting article about a client that had this exact issue. Google was suggesting the company’s brand name + the word ’scam’ in their suggested results.

How would you feel about a company if when you typed in their name, the word ’scam’ was added to the brand name and suggested by Google?

While this function of Google is certainly useful for finding companies that truly ARE scams (and avoiding them), what happens when Google gets it wrong? Or more importantly: why is Google getting it wrong in the first place?

Let’s get this out of the way first: no one has a definitive answer about why Google gets it wrong sometimes. Google is very secretive about the algorithms and methods it employs to serve up search results, as well as suggested searches. However, there are two ideas floating about among search-intellectuals that may provide some insight:

1. There aren’t that many people searching for “brand name + scam” at first- but maybe just enough are searching for that term to make it appear low in the suggested results. Once it appears, people’s curiosity gets the better of them and they click just to see what’s out there. The user thinks “If Google is suggesting it’s a scam, I should at least check it out.”
2. Another, much-less fleshed-out hypothesis, is that Google is simply biased to serve up “scam”-related suggestions.

Neither of these seem to fully explain what’s going on, but that’s okay, because there is a simple solution.

While you can’t do much to remove any negative content on the web about your brand, you can make sure there’s plenty of positive content that is easily found by search engines. In fact, Google recommends this method for dealing with negative search results about a brand. It may not be immediate, but publishing positive content about your brand across the web, and then using SEO best-practices is a great way to push the negative search results further down the list, and keep your new positive article at the top of the list (and the top of your customers’ minds).

Consider implementing an online reputation management strategy, or at least a basic content strategy for your brand. Even if you aren’t experiencing any negative press or search-engine-woes, consistently publishing well-written, positive, and relevant content to the web is a great way to improve your off-page SEO. And if Google ever does suggest a negative term related to your brand, you’ll be ready!

Google recently added the ability to search by location to its ever-growing list of search-sorting options. This will be a groundbreaking shift for local business owners taking part in paid-search.

Consider the following scenario:

You’re a dry-cleaner serving a metropolitan city and its surrounding areas, including suburbs, 2 or 3 counties, and countless incorporated town names. If you wanted to only advertise to people living in those areas who are searching for the term “dry-cleaner”, you’d have to guess what else they might type in (as it relates to their location). If your shop is in the city limits, and your customers are j

ust across the county line, they may not see your paid-search advertising.

But thanks to the change Google recently made, it won’t matter anymore.

Now, Google knows where someone is (via their IP address) when they submit a search and can return results based on their location, even if they didn’t type a location as part of their search. So someone searching for “dry-cleaner” can see results local to them whether they typed in a city name, or not.

Studies consistently show that the more custom-tailored an ad is to a searcher’s specific situation, the higher the click-through rate. Which means better results for you and your business.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on location-based search and the exciting opportunities it brings with it.

Read on to find out how…

In the early days of digital marketing, online display advertising was virtually the only kind of advertising being used on the internet. As time went on, many sizes and formats have provided additional creative opportunities for advertisers looking to create awareness, build brand and generate response.  The problem for most small and medium sized businesses is that buying advertising on any one website provides minimal opportunity to reach their best prospects.

People spend enormous amounts of time on the Internet, but there isn’t one website they spend a majority of their time on.  This is a problem for online display advertising because space for such ads is generally sold by the individual websites. If you’re an advertiser, you simply don’t have the time to go to multiple websites and make deals to place ads individually on each one. And then of course, there is the need to design and develop compelling creative. This is where South Central Media provides a solution.

In addition to developing effective creative, South Central Media simplifies the media buying process by forging relationships with the largest advertising networks powered by Google and Yahoo in order to reach over one million websites that collectively reach 90% of all Internet users. Through a real-time auction process, online publishers bid to accept advertising from South Central Media clients. Layer on top of that the ability to target advertising based on user interests within a geographic area and you’ve got the most cost efficient way to buy online display advertising.