Hello!
Welcome to this ‘Part 2′ newsletter (I sent out a note before the weekend, since I was going to be out of town for a few days – this is the actual newsletter).
As mentioned, we will be sending out at least one newsletter per week, and promise you to keep it mostly, if not all, informational.
Today we’re going to look at some extremely significant Google changes – yep, more Google changes… – and what it means. We’ll also talk about some new, updated guidelines you can use with your various sites and ranking efforts. Finally, I’ll update you on ‘R100k’, and out efforts at a consulting offer.
“Search Plus Your World” – Personalized Search
Last week (Jan. 10), Google announced something they call “Search, plus Your World”. Active when you are logged into a Google account, it should be fully rolled-out over the next few days.
(Here’s an excellent slide show / tutorial from The Washington Post explaining it: http://wapo.st/weaCwL
“Search, plus Your World” is an effort to combine ‘regular’ search, with things that are part of your ‘circles’ and social connections. This means, among other things, that you may see search results that include items that have been shared with you personally, or are prominent through your social connections, rather than simply because they ranked for your search.
One ‘side effect’ – and the main point of this post – is the further implementation of “personalized search”. With increasingly personalized search, efforts at ranking – and in fact the whole notion of “ranking” requires some re-thinking.
It used to be that we could do a search, see who the top ranking pages are, and target ranking efforts at getting those top spots. But what if there is no “top spot”? Increasingly, a “top spot” might be different for me than it is for you – in other words, my “Page 1 ranking” may not be a “Page 1 ranking” for everyone. The sites on Page 1 may be different for you than they are for me, or for someone else. This creates a dilemma – how do I get a “top ranking” when some entries are there because someone in my social circle was interested in them, rather than on their “ranking strength”?
The answer is, we do much the same as we’ve done before – with the newer awareness of the importance of “social signals”, and building our “social engagement”.
Going forward into this new “Internet Marketing 2.0″ world means, among other things, that we have to put some significant time, effort, and resources into understanding and building “social engagement”.
“Social Signals”
The term “social signals” refers to the ‘social factors’ are being used (not just by Google, and in fact not just search engines) to give us ranking, authority, reputation, etc. These include things like Facebook “likes”, Google Plus “+1′s”, Twitter mentions, and numerous types of “citations
“.
(In this context, “citations” are ‘mentions’. These can be reviews posted somewhere that mention our page, comments left somewhere such as on an IYP – “Internet Yellow Pages” – site, local or Google Places listing, etc. In other words, a mention of our page or site somewhere on the internet.)
In many respects, these “social signals” are becoming the “new backlinks”, meaning they are increasingly becoming the ‘votes’ that backlinks used to be for giving us ranking & authority.
And so we want to begin building our “social engagement” in order to increase & boost these “social signals” for ourselves.
How do we do this specifically? We can begin by insuring we have entries on Facebook, Google Pages, and a Twitter account. Other ‘social media’ sites can increase our ‘social engagement’ as well – sites such as linkedin.com. We can build out this base by seeing where others, particularly our competitors, are. Twitter makes it easy to see who is ‘following’ whom, who is mentioning whom, etc. We can similarly ‘backtrack’ through Facebook, Linkedin, etc.
We also need to promote social engagement with our readers/subscribers/etc. This means, if you haven’t already, putting ‘badges’ at least for the top social engagement sites on our sites. Facebook ‘like’ button, Google ‘+1′ badge, Twitter ‘tweet’ button, etc.
IMPORTANT: Google’s whole ‘social engagement / social media’ effort is becoming more and more central to all-things-Google. If you haven’t created a Google+ page, create one, and if your website’s pages don’t have G+ buttons, add them.
It’s free, easy, and you should have already had one anyway. In fact, you can set one up for each primary business/website (not for every site, but every specific rank-building or monetizing site effort – which you should also be doing with Facebook, Twitter, etc).
A good, free ‘social share’ plugin that will integrate those ‘core’ important social media sites for you can be had here:
This will generate badges/buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, and integrate them into your blog.
We can take this a step further by actively pursuing social engagement – asking for ‘likes’, ‘tweets’, etc., even incentivizing them. A commonly used and effective tactic is to simply include in all of our posts & articles something to the effect of “Please share/like/+1 this article”, or offering an incentive such as a download, discount, or exclusive in return for a ‘like’ or ‘tweet’.
As search – and the rest of the internet – evolves into this “2.0″ world, we will never again have as direct ‘control’ over some things as we’ve been accustomed to i.e. creating backlinks. It’s harder to gain these ‘soft’ votes or points, and harder to measure them. But this is where things are going, and quickly. On the plus side, we have opportunities to move forward faster than many others simply by recognizing, and acting on, these changes now, before the rest of the world ‘catches up’.
New Guidelines That You Want To Use!
We get many questions on the forum to the effect of “with all the changes going on, Panda, etc., should we still ‘xxxxx’?” You can substitute that ‘xxxxx’ for ‘still use this backlinking strategy, still use this content strategy, etc.
We’re working on some updated guidelines that we’ll be sending out to you, but in the meantime here are a few specifics to work with now:
Backlinking. As mentioned in A100k V2 and T100k, the most important backlinking tactic today is guest blogging. This is simply finding good, relevant sites, contacting them, and offering to create articles for them in return for a link in the article.
We posted an excellent guest blogging resource; this can get you guest blogging gigs if you don’t want to do the research yourself:
Here is a post from problogger.net on some do’s, don’t's, and general tips:
There were some questions such as “Do we consider UAW (or BMR, etc) as guest blogging?
The answer is, no. Though some of those article distribution services end up getting you something very similar, with guest blogging you are (ideally) sending an article to a blog or site that doesn’t have a ton of sometimes-questionable articles on it already.
Content. Can’t stress this one enough: do NOT use copied, scraped, unmodified PLR, or poorly-spun content on your sites. Just say no. Not only won’t it help you at all, it very well may hurt you. And since more and more page problems generate site-wide hits, you don’t want to do this anywhere on your site.
Those of you who are spinning, make sure you spin to at least 50% ‘uniqueness’, and that the resulting articles READ WELL, meaning they don’t sound or feel like machine-generated, spun content. The resulting articles should sound like well-written, quality articles. If you’re spinning well and carefully, and still not getting good results, re-consider the source you’re starting with.
Look & Feel / Layout. Be careful with ‘over-monetized’ sites. Particularly if you’re using something other than our Adsense themes, DO NOT have a lot of monetization – ads, affiliate links, or offers – above the fold (the visible part of your site when you first land on it). The homepage, particularly above the fold, should be look and feel like a content site first and foremost.
Consulting Offers
If you’ve seen the ‘mock-up’ page we have (http://bit.ly/w3Abat), you’ve seen the basics of a consulting offer we’re putting together. Though there will be some minor changes, it’s pretty close to what we’ll be offering, and expect to open it up on a limited basis within the next few weeks.
Separately, I have been considering re-opening a “consulting / coaching” offer that I do on occasion for corp. clients, and occasionally for individuals.
What I had been doing intermittently – mostly between course/book projects – is to take on a very limited number of coaching / consulting agreements. I divide these between corp. clients, and individuals. Unfortunately, I’m usually pretty maxed out with corp. clients, but mid-2010 made a commitment to try and set aside more time for individuals.
In the past, I’ve had the most success with individuals using a goal-oriented consulting/coaching plan. The basic plan is a 10-12 week arrangement that includes an initial consultation where we go over the ‘where you’re at, what your objectives are’, etc., then come up with a specific plan & set of objectives. I then put together a preliminary ‘action plan’ outline to get from point a – where you’re at – to point b – your objectives/goals. We go over that, then set out on a 10-12 week initiative to build the foundation, and get everything in place to reach the stated goals, including the first couple of months of implementation. Over those weeks, we get together once or twice each week to discuss where things are at, learn, answer questions, etc., while progressing along with the ‘action plan’. At the end, I put together a ‘going forward action plan’ for continuing towards your goals. I’m available throughout the initial term, and pretty much anytime afterwards for questions, issues & obstacles, etc. The cost is $1500, and I limit myself to 4 gigs at a time – two individual efforts, and two corp. clients (those have a much different pricing arrangement). Price-wise, I figure it out to be approx. $35-50/hr. for the time I put in between the one-on-one time, ‘action plan’ particulars, tracking, ‘trouble-shooting’, etc, which is not a price point I try to do anything else at 
I’ll probably take on 2-3 personal clients shortly; let me know if this is something you’d like to discuss further. I have a list of interested parties, and it’s generally on a first-come basis once I make slots available.
“Reference $100k Blueprint”
As I’m sure you’ve realized, it’s taking us a bit longer than originally anticipated to get this out the door. Part of the reason is that there have been so many significant changes happening, and we wanted to insure the initial guide is as current and useful as possible. We’ve already created the ‘cut-off’, and will include newer info and changes into the first of the monthly updates. As a result, we’ve been able to get to the final editing/proofing stage. I expect to have the initial pre-launch draft available to you before next week.
I promise you it will be worth the wait!
Sincerely,
Michael & Adam
[...]01-17-12 Newsleter: Google Changes, Social Engagement, R100k, and Consulting Offer [...]