Five Things You Didn’t Know About Google+ for Business

Since its beginnings, Google+ has had the unfortunate label of being like a step child in the social media family. Social network titans like Facebook and Twitter have always been more popular in the past for individuals and businesses alike.

But for anyone with an online business who wants their presence made online, Google+ has actually become a necessity for online marketing.

So, if you are running a new business and are overlooking your Google+ account, it’s probably because you assume that little to no value can come of it. But that’s the furthest from the truth; Google+ can make a big difference in your overall Google rankings, as well how you engage your target customers.

1) Creating a business page can improve your search appearance:

Have you ever looked up a business you were curious in, and saw the large rich snippet image appearing to the right of the screen? This is all tied to how Google finds your business, which can be easily modified when you create a Places for Businesses page.

Google will favor your business when you have a well-established Google+ page (alongside a Places page)— allowing more accurate search results when people search for your business.

In Google’s eyes, trusted businesses will have their image icon appear within search results; making a good impression on anyone searching for you.

Give your target market the chance to read reviews of your business, and learn more about your products and services.

2) The +1 Button:

Ah yes, the mysterious “+1” button from Google. Believe it or not, it’s actually more straightforward than you think. Users clicking the +1 button, indirectly impact your business.

It’s doesn’t affect direct SEO; instead, it shows how users are likely to interact. Users are more likely to trust businesses who interact on Google+, and have a +1 business or product.

Having user-relevant content on Google+ will improve a business’ SEO rankings; attracting more clicks and +1 shares.

3) Google+ profiles are treated like regular sites:

According to a recent article in Social Media Today, Google doesn’t give special treatment to Google+ profiles; they are ranked with the same factors of any other website.

Individual Google+ pages even have their own PageRank. Providing some extra care to your Google+ profile (including your own interaction, links, as well as user interaction), could mean better rankings for your sites.

Find a way how to monitor employees Google+ interactions; evaluate your findings and plan a strategy to make the most of it.

4) Google Hangouts are more effective than you think:

Plenty of us have used live stream services for meetings and such through Skype and GoToMeeting. These help drive internal matters of your business, but have you thought about what you can do with Google+ Hangouts?

One of the most significant aspects of Hangouts is how you can live stream your sessions with the public, even if they aren’t involved with the Hangout. Take the opportunity to conduct a live interview, webinar — anything you want on camera for your target customers to view and understand.

Nothing beats letting your audience see the faces behind your project. The live streams can be viewed by an unlimited amount of people; so it’s a great tool.

5) Google+ has more users than you think:

Everyone likes to thumb their nose at Google+, believing “no one is on it”; but guess again. This past June, Google+ had more than half a billion active users, with numbers steadily growing.

If you’re looking to reach out to an audience beyond just Facebook and Twitter, it’s time to put Google+ in full gear.

Author Bio:

Andrea Fisher is a published journalist as well as a content writer for ADT Home Security. She has an English degree and political science minor from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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NSA: Best Mobile Phone Trackers Around

During 2005 the NSA began its warrantless wiretap program to look into international emails and calls. It’s come a long way from being an organization that was created to spy on foreign agencies. No one would have predicted that it would one day be deploying mobile phone trackers against citizens of the United States. The NSA folks are so skilled that they even cracked the Blackberry code! Blackberry has boasted of the most secure system around, and even they couldn’t fight the NSA off. Companies like Verizon are routinely handed over customer data to the NSA. Do you think the NSA is going a bit too far?

Infographic By: Mobistealth

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Cool Slideshow Maker for Windows - Make Slideshow for PC, DVD, and the Web!

Photo Slideshow makers are really a great tool when it comes to making a story with your precious photos. These Slideshow making software's allows you to easily design and create high quality Slideshows and convert them to videos by adding background music to it, Allowing you to create a story with your photographs. One such software that allows you to create story with your photos & that we are about to discuss in detail on this article is SMARTSHOW (Smart Slideshow Maker).

With this Cool Slideshow Maker you can create and share your life's memorable moments in a new Unforgettable way. SmartSHOW slideshow maker turns still pictures into thrilling photo movies with music and beautiful transition effects. Let's have a look at it's features...

Features:

Smartshow has a lot of features to add variety of effects to your Slideshows. Let's explore them,

Templates:

It has a wide range of Readymade templates to use for your project. These templates includes Basic, Vintage, Wedding, Travel, Children, etc.. with sub-branches within them to choose from. After selecting a template, you can add photos for your slideshow and carry on with your project.

Transition Effects:

This Cool Slideshow Maker is integrated with 100+ transition effects to choose from. Transition effects are categorized as Standard, Gradients & Double. Standard has about 45 effects, Gradients has about 44 and Double has about 44 transition effects. Each and every effect is unique.

Music Options:

You can add a number of sound tracks as background music to your slideshow and make it alive. Smartshow accepts musics of all formats and allows you to cut audio track, sync it to the slideshow, set faders and more.

Output Formats:

Smartshow offers 4 types of output formats as follows,

1) Video Slideshow:

Video slideshow option allows to export the slideshow created by you in popular video formats such as AVI and MP4. It also has some more options for Creating HD Video, Video for mobile devices, Video for the Internet & Other types of videos.

2) DVD Slideshow:

DVD Slideshow option allows you to burn the slideshow which you created to a DVD. It first offers you to choose a template for your DVD and allows you to Burn it to a disc or Create a ISO Image of it.

3) Create Screensaver:

It simply converts your slideshow into an animated screensaver for your desktop.

4) Create EXE Slideshow:

This is one of the very best option that converts your slideshow into a .exe file and allows it to play on any system without the need of any video players/installation of any special software.

Sample:

Here is a sample "Christmas Images slideshow" made with SmartSHOW.

For more Samples, Have a look at their Samples page here: Samples.

Compatibility:

SmartSHOW is compatible with Windows xp, vista, 7 & 8.

Get it now:

You can Download and try SmartSHOW by going to: http://slideshow-maker.com

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How Can You Improve Your SEO Performance with Webmaster Tools

The best SEO company says that SEO experts should be familiar with different statistics that can help them enhance and optimize their strategies. One thing that can assist them in this regard is Webmaster Tools, a powerful set of tools especially meant for SEO specialists.

The greatest advantage of Webmaster Tools is that it allows you to view one or more sites from the Google angle.

It is necessary if you want a strong SEO impact. With the toolset, you can view your site in a way Google does. It gives you insights into the indexed pages of your site, the various links that are pointing to it, the most popular keywords etc.

Hence, a site that is active in Webmaster Tools has much better chances of being fully indexed and rank well as compared to the ones that are inactive in the toolset. You can also get other deeper insights from the tool set, which can be leveraged to get the best Search Engine Optimization benefits.

If you are not yet active in Google Webmaster Tools, let me tell you that it’s pretty simple. All you need to do is sign up for an account, login to the dashboard of Google Webmaster Tools and from there, add your website. You will then be asked to prove that the domain is yours. On the basis of your host, Google may offer to do the needful through an uncomplicated pop-up process that allows you to login and verify in a few steps.

The other options include getting a Google-provided meta tag to your homepage, followed by an HTML file upload to the root folder of your site, or confirming your ownership with the help of Google Analytics, if that is already installed in your website. It generally starts populating data within 24 to 48 hours.

Google Webmaster Tools Features:

The best SEO Company India says that once you are done with the site set up, its time to log in and make yourself familiar with the interface. The toolset, at its core, is all about metrics i.e. what’s getting indexed, linked and traffic.

The data you get should then be broken down in different ways to use it to formulate a plan regarding the steps you need to take to get your SEO campaign going.

The various Webmaster Tools metrics are:

Search queries:

It shows four metrics:

Impressions: It indicates the number of times a website is visited through a particular keyword. It, thus, helps you renew your web content with keywords of greater value.
Clicks: This shows the number of people who have taken action and clicked on your site in the search result.
CTR: This shows the number of users who have clicked on your website from the search results. If you find your number to be dissatisfactory, you can change your meta description to attract more traffic.
Middle position: This tells your exact rank for each keyword that you use. It helps you determine your performance and the impact you have on your traffic.

Keywords:

In order to understand how your keywords are performing, you need to click on the terms while being on the search query section. Studying the data for individual keywords informs you about the pages that are ranking for those keywords. This way, you not only understand your overall SEO achievements but also get to know about the different elements of your content campaign. 

Top Pages:

Within “Search Queries”, you get the opportunity to view “top pages”. This indicates content that gets the maximum number of impressions and clicks. It, thus, offers low hanging fruit opportunities you can easily capitalize on.

Page Level Strategy:

A site is structured in a way, so that each keyword points to a section of the website. Webmaster Tools enables you to identify ideal keywords for each of the sections. Once you get your keywords mapped, use them to rank tracking tool to find out extra data like competition and traffic.

Author statistics:

It allows you to tie in guest posts on other websites by linking to your Google + account. It can be easily accomplished by the “rel=author’ tag that is embedded as a link in particular write-ups. Your picture appears next to your content; and readers find it easier to read your other write-ups.

The best SEO company will always suggest you to use Google Webmaster Tools when developing an SEO strategy, as it offers you better opportunities and the perfect medium to determine the performance of your site.

Author Bio:

Sarmista Aun writes for a professional digital marketing company. She tries to guide all new online advertisers through her writings.

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What is a DDoS Attack?

A DDoS attack is designed to compromise the integrity of a website, allowing hackers to gain access to sensitive material such as banking, financial, and personal information. DDoS attacks are orchestrated by hackers who rely on vast networks of computer botnets which simultaneously attack a website. These attacks are hard to identify simply because of the sheer volume of information that passes through a website on any given day. Botnets mingle in with those information streams and keep attacking the website until they make a breach in its defenses. Most times a DDoS attack is not even recognized until it is too late to stop it. Often, the first sign of a DDoS attack is a slowdown in website speed and functionality, and by then the damage will already have been done. DDoS attacks are a serious problem that can cost companies millions of dollars and devastate a business’ customer base. However, with the help of a professional DDoS protection company, it is possible to guard your online business from such vicious attacks.

Created by the team at Prolexic Technologies.

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7 Shocking Stats & Trends About The Internet

Below is an Infographic on "7 Shocking Stats & Trends About The Internet"

Infographic By: Staff.com

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Work at Home Opportunities

We all want to live financially secure which is why we tend to get more jobs than the usual. Sometimes, we have an 8 hour job and take up another shift at another job. But, there are other ways for you to earn money. These options are far less complicated and far better for your health than working 16 hours a day. The internet is a vast landscape full of opportunities. These opportunities come in varied sizes and shapes. One can even become a company owner by just working over the internet. Here are some of the home revenue opportunities you can get by working over the internet.

1. Web Marketer:

More and more businesses now use the internet to sell their products. This is the right time for you to brush up on your marketing skills and take this job to make more sales over the internet. The best thing about it is that you do not have to face the person in real time. You only persuade the person through chat or email which erases the complications brought by first impressions or physical attributes. Gone are the days when you feel awkward at talking in front of people. Aside from that, you are also compensated handsomely if you tend to reach your quota either on a weekly or monthly basis.

2. Blogging:

Another way of earning money with the use of the internet is through blogging. If you love to write about different things, then you need to set up your own blog site and start blogging. Publish your blogs and make sure that it is at the front page so that people can actually notice it. The more blogs you posts, the more people will read it. The more people reading your blogs, the more traffic it drives hence you get more money out of it since online ads will happily pay you for advertising their products. Just make sure that you have readable and high quality content. Never try to copy from anyone from the web.

Have a look at: 6 simple ways to earn money from home!

3. Home Based Business:

This may be the best option for you to earn more cash. Set up a home based business and start promoting it through the use of social networking sites. There are no restrictions to home based business. You save a hefty amount of money by putting up a website rather than establishing a store down the street. You also save even more money since you do not have to hire employees to work for you. You can sell different items or put them up for auction on different websites. The thing about home based business is that it needs to have proper attention and visibility. People need to know that you are in the business which is why marketing and promotion is the key factor to a successful home based business.

4. Online Job:

More and more people are catching up to the current trend of working online. There are millions of businesses and offices out there that outsource their workload to talented people all over the world. If you have the right skills for the job, take the opportunity to earn extra cash by improving your skills and dominate the marketplace for this type of workforce. It may seem competitive at first but if you have the right set of skills and the right amount of attitude, you can easily fly above the competition and earn more than a thousand dollars a month. You can even start your own team and get even more projects to work on and you get all the profits as the team leader. The best thing about it is that you only work at the comforts of your own home.

Image Credit: artur84

Author Bio:

Alice McLean is a writer at bestessays.com with background in history, sociology and internet marketing. Now she is writing her first book on internet marketing.

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