Google’s ranking algorithm – the formula it uses to determine where a website or page should appear in search engine results –has now begun to include a factor called AuthorRank.

AuthorRank is Google’s way of identifying individual creators of content and tying that content to each author. The more quality content an author produces and the more relationships that author has online, the higher the individual AuthorRank.

In turn, the content produced by highly rated authors is going to be ranked higher in Google's search results than similar content by authors with lower AuthorRank – because they have higher authority, in the same way that pages with more inbound links are given more weight.

Although AuthorRank clearly has benefits to individual writers, it has implications for publishers, too. If your business’s marketing strategy includes content marketing, such as a blog, it benefits the company blog if the individual contributors have a strong AuthorRank.

Let’s say you have been outranking your competitor’s blog by a combination of link-building, commenting and other promotional tactics. But your competitor takes steps to increase the AuthorRank of the contributors to its blog. By doing nothing else, your competitor may now begin to outrank you.

How Can Businesses Maintain or Increase Their SEO in an AuthorRank World

First, don’t take your foot off the gas with your regular SEO efforts. Those factors still apply.

But now is the time to start building up the AuthorRank factor for the authors of your business’s content, whether it’s on a company blog or the company website.

Ways Authors Can Increase AuthorRank:

• Claim authorship of content. The first step is to have a Google Profile—which is now the same thing as a Google+ Profile.
• Same domain. Ensure that either your work or personal email address is from the domain where you're claiming content.
• Link up. Add a link from this profile to the company blog under the "Contributor to" section.
• Follow the rules. On the blog (or other content), there are a few specific criteria: each post must have a byline, and you should have an identifiable photo. The easiest way to accomplish this is with a contributor page where you can create the necessary author tag.  Insert the tag <rel=”author” link=”your-googlplus-url” /> (replacing the link URL with the URL to that person’s Google+ Profile).
• Create shareable content. Volume of content isn’t sufficient to raise an author’s AuthorRank. Quality is much more important, and Google seems to define quality by shareability: likes, shares, +1’s. Although shares across the web will help, it’s a safe assumption that shares within Google+ will be weighted more.
• Grow Google+ followers. Quality content is one part of the puzzle in AuthorRank. Quality following is the other. The greater an author’s network, the greater the author’s influence, especially if the author interacts with high AuthorRank profiles. Think of it like Google’s version of Klout.
• Check your stats. See your progress in WebMaster Tools under Labs-Author Stats where you can see information about pages for which you are the verified author.

Have you noticed that Google’s own social network, Google+, plays a big part in AuthorRank? It’s no surprise. The impact of Google+ on overall search rankings on Google continues to grow, as we first noted last January.

It’s rapidly moving from optional to mandatory as a part of a social media marketing strategy—as Google no doubt intended all along.

Learn More

• Content Verve: Understanding Google's Author Rank in Content Marketing
• SEOMoz: How to Prepare for AuthorRank and Get the Jump on Google
• Raven Tools: Ultimate List of Rel=Author Resources
• Search Engine Journal: The Rising Influence of AuthorRank

Most businesses are too busy growing to be experts at social media marketing and SEO, too. That’s why we’re here. Instantly expand your marketing expertise with a consultation from CDG Interactive. We’ll cut through the buzzwords and tell you what to do next—and why. Contact us today.

Personal New Year’s resolutions are notorious for failing within a mere month or two into the new year, only to be recycled again the following January.

We’re recycling our resolutions, too, but not because they don’t work—because they do. These are optimization steps to take every year, not just once.

This year we’ll be adding to them, not replacing them, based on the experience we’ve gained and the ever-changing digital landscape.

So in addition to these resolutions, we’re adding a few more. Here's are some resolutions that will help you make the most of your digital presence in 2013:

• Use event tracking (if you’re using Google Analytics) to collect more granular data about what and where your users are clicking.
• Claim your site in Webmaster Tools and connect it to your Analytics account for additional information on search queries and landing pages.

• Review the keywords people are using most to find your site, what pages they are going to and which pages they are bouncing from; use this information to re-optimize your site.
• Revisit your title tags and meta descriptions to ensure what your potential visitors see in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is reflective of what they will find when they arrive on the page.
• Ensure that your inbound links come from a variety of domains; multiple links from one highly trusted domain aren’t as valuable as links from several different domains.

• Do a content audit: identify “dead weight” pages that aren’t being viewed & remove or repurpose them.
• Create an editorial calendar for all of your digital environments (website, blogs, etc.).
• Prepare for the content trends that will shape 2013.

• Review your dashboards from the past year and look for what worked and what didn’t; revise your efforts accordingly.
• Consider expanding onto additional platforms, like Pinterest or Tumblr.
• Sign up for the 8-week social media 101 email course at PowerUp Social.

• Create a segment or filter for visits with conversions; identify how these users’ behavior differs from those who don’t convert. Use this information to target them more effectively.

Tumblr, the microblogging platform, is getting increasingly prominent in the social media landscape, and for businesses, that's a reason to give thanks.

First launched in 2007 as a quick and easy microblogging platform, Tumblr has now grown to over 64.7 million blogs and 26.9 million unique visitors.

Along the way it has expanded beyond its initial notoriety as a platform for one-concept theme blogs (Feminist Ryan Gosling, anyone?) to one ideally suited for supplementing traditional blogging with more focused content curation.

And that means it’s time for businesses to take another look at using Tumblr for content marketing and promotion.

Here are 3 reasons to use Tumblr for business marketing and promotion:

1. Content Curation. The currency of Tumblr is reposting the content of others, called “reblogging.” Many businesses use their Tumblr blogs for this purpose while publishing longer original content on their traditional blogs.
2. SEO. All of those reblogged posts generate links back to their original sources, providing some nice link juice and a little SEO boost. And of course the Tumblr content itself is indexed, giving your business one more way to be found in search (ComScore calls this strategy the “Digital Shelf”).
3. Younger Demographics. Overall, Tumblr users are younger (and slightly more female), making it an ideal option for reaching this demo, whether it’s your current target market or one you want to expand into.

Intrigued and want to learn more? Our self-guided social media training site, PowerUp Social, has more detailed information on Tumblr for blogging and small business promotion, including the marketing tactics described here and examples of organizations and businesses using Tumblr right.

Or Contact CDG to review your digital strategy and determine whether Tumblr—and any other social media platform—should be a part of it.

When it comes to choosing a social media platform to use for your business marketing, one of the considerations to make is its demographic profile. Does its audience match your target audience? After all, you want to spend your time & resources talking to your target audience, not a random group of folks on, say, Google+. It pays to take some time to investigate who is hanging out where in the socail media landscape.

And even after you’ve done the initial research, be sure to review those demographics periodically because the numbers are always changing. Where you find your audience today may not be where it is tomorrow—and your target market may have changed, too.

Here are 5 social media demographic stats for the U.S. you should know:

1. You can reach more women on Facebook than on Pinterest. Although Pinterest’s users are more disproportionately female, the total audience on Facebook is greater: 70% of all female online users, according to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report.
2. Older men love Google+. The user base of Google Plus is 71% male and half of them are over 45.
3. Most Instagram users are under 29. The photo sharing service is used by 27% of internet users aged 18-29, but only 8% of those who are 30-49.
4. More adults use LinkedIn than Twitter. Professional networking site LinkedIn has an audience of 20% of U.S. online adults; Twitter’s is 16%.
5. The majority of YouTube’s global audience is female. Out of a total audience base of 800 million (that’s a lot of people watching “Gangnam Style”), 55% are female.

These numbers are just a portion of the social media demographic data that’s available, of course. To really dig in for the information that’s most relevant to your business, try these sources:

• “Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, Sept. 13, 2012
• “Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online: Additional Material and Demographics,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, Sept. 13, 2012
• “Pew Internet: Social Networking,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, Sept. 17, 2012
• http://www.checkfacebook.com/
• “Report: Social Network Demographics in 2012,” Royal Pingdom Blog, August 21, 2012
• Online MBA Infographic: “A Case Study in Social Media Demographics,” March 8, 2012
• “2012 Social Network Analysis Report – Demographic, Geographic and Search Data Revealed,” Ignite Social Media Blog, July 31, 2012
• “The Beast With a Billion Eyes,” Time Magazine, Jan. 30, 2012
• “Flickr,” Yahoo! Advertising Solutions, retrieved Oct. 19, 2012

Still not sure which social media platforms are right for you? Review our information and tools at PowerUp Social, www.powerupsocial.com, or Contact CDG to craft a custom social media strategy plan for your business.

Nearly a year after launching Google+ pages for brands and businesses, the search giant continues to roll out changes to the way these pages work.

Two of the changes announced recently fulfill a long-standing request from brands—custom URLs—and a prediction we and others have made previously—merging of Google+ pages for local businesses with their Google Places listings.

Here’s what you need to know about these 2 changes to Google+ pages for your business.

Google+ Page Custom URLs

Currently, all Google+ pages (and profiles) have lengthy, impossible-to-remember URLs, such as this: https://plus.google.com/b/100984478133254575364/100984478133254575364/posts. (That’s the CDG Interactive Google+ page—circle us, won’t you?)

But Google has announced--in a post on its Plus page, appropriately—that it is beginning to roll out the ability for brand pages to select custom URLs, similar to the functionality currently available for Facebook pages.

However, in order to have access to this functionality when it’s made available to everyone, your Google+ page must first be verified.

There are two ways to do this.

First, you can request verification for a Google+ page via this form.

One major criteria to take note of: When you use this process, Google requires a “substantial” number of followers (i.e. people who have circled your page), although it does not define what that number is. Even if you meet all of the other criteria for a verified page, the verification request will be denied if your follower count is too low.

Alternately, if your page was created in the category of Local Business, you will see an Unverified marker at the top of your page. When you hover over that, you should see a Verify Now button. Click that to begin the verification process. (Full instructions for verifying a Local Business Google+ Page.)

(Not sure if your Google+ page is a Local page? Go to your page and click on the About tab. Local pages have addresses at the top of the information and a small Google Map of the location on the right side of the page.

Google+ Page and Places Merging

This brings us to the second change, the merging of Google+ Pages for local business (which Google calls Google+ Local) with their Google Maps Place listings, which began back in May.

According to Google, when the verification process described above is completed, “Existing listing information on Google Maps will now be merged with your new Google+ Local listing.”

Even if you don’t go through the verification process, if you have a Google Place, it will be converted to a  Google+ Local page automatically at some point this year.

Now what if you already have a Google+ Business Page but it isn’t a Google+ Local Page? (How’s that for confusing?) As of right now, there’s no way to join a non-Local page and Place together, but we expect this may change in the future as Google clearly wants to eliminate Places altogether.

Also unclear at the moment is what happens when a business has both a non-local Google+ Business Page and a Google+ Place. The Place listing will get converted to a Google+ Local page, but will that leave you with two Google+ Pages for your business, one local and one not?

Since this applies to us, we’ll be keeping an eye out for additional information on this particular scenario.

Help With Google+ Pages for Businesses

If you have any problems during the verification process or other functionality with Google+, try asking questions on the Google and Your Business product forum; they’re often answered by Google employees or other highly knowledgeable users.

Our social media for small business site, PowerUp Social, also has several articles on using Google+ to promote your business.

Update April 10, 2013: Google is rolling out a completely updated dashboard for Places that better integrates management of merged Google+ Local pages. The following articles provide additional detail:

• 10 Things SEOs SMBs Should Know About the New Google Places Dashboard
• Google Upgrades Google Places Dashboard
• Google Places Dashboard Update
• Visual Guide to the New Places for Business Dashboard

For custom consulting on creating and using a Google+ Page or any other social media platform, Contact Us to find out how we can help you today.

The recent severe thunderstorm event (aka the derecho) that raced through a large swath of the Midwest and Northeast on June 29 left millions without power--and very unhappy about it. Many of them took to social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, to express their displeasure with their utility companies. (Just check the accounts for @pepcoconnect or @domvapower for a sampling of customer sentiment.)

Responding to unhappy customers on social media is always challenging, but that challenge is magnified in a crisis or other severe event. Even if you’re not a major utility responding in times of natural disaster, any business would do well to be prepared to respond if a crisis hits. That’s why you need a crisis communications plan for your social media accounts.

Here are 5 tips for using social media platforms as part of a crisis communications plan.

1. Respond quickly. If you wait too long after someone mentions you on Twitter or posts on your Facebook page, it looks like you aren’t paying attention or don’t care. No, you can’t spend 24 hours a day monitoring your account, but respond quickly when you are, and let followers know when the account will be unmonitored.
2. Be authentic. Don’t just give the same canned response to negative comments; vary it so your account doesn’t seem like an unfeeling robot.
3. Be polite. This can be a tough one, especially if thousands of people are venting virtual invective at you, but as with ordinary customer service, responding in kind will only escalate the communication. Keep it simple and keep it calm. “We understand you’re frustrated and we’re working quickly to resolve the situation.”
4. Be transparent. Give us much detail as you can, as soon as you can. Once followers realize you aren’t trying to keep information from them, they’ll be more understanding.
5. Have an end game. How will you continue communicating after the crisis passes? What will you share with customers to let them know how everything was resolved and what you plan to do to prevent or mitigate such an event in the future?

Remember, too, that your social media universe doesn’t just consist of Twitter and Facebook. If you have a YouTube channel, check for comments there. Ditto for other profiles your company has, such as on LinkedIn or Yelp. Don’t be afraid to call for help, either. If the level of response becomes too much for you or your team, augment your resources with a communications professional who can not only provide additional people power, but the experience to respond appropriately and quickly.

If you don’t know how you’d respond to a crisis, or who would be on your incident team, you need a social media crisis management plan. CDG Interactive can guide your brand through the process, from pre-incident preparation to response management and coordination to post-incident conclusion. Contact us today.