Is there Something in the new Google+ for You?

Last month, Google released a major upgrade to it’s Google+ Social platform. While Google has struggled to make Google+ the premier social destination (they claim to have more than 170 million users at this time), they have been unable to garner the following of Facebook or even Twitter for that matter. Of course, they want to change all that. With a slew of new features, and more on the way, does it stand a chance?

New Navigation – the Way You Want It

Gone is the almost-hidden navigation bar across the top. Now, users get a customizable ribbon, complete with hoverable quick-actions, that runs down the left hand side that can reorganize and change as you see fit

Conversation Cards with Big Photos

As you interact on Google+, your conversations turn into large, colorful activity streams with big photos and videos that enhance the experience. You can also keep an eye on “Trending on Google+” (taken from Twitter), and join other conversation on topics that interest you.

Hangouts – The Killer Feature

What really separates Google+ from Facebook is it’s Hangouts feature. Hangouts let you have real-time video chats with people in your circles, at any time. In addition, you can look for other public Hangouts across Google+ that have topies that interest you, sometimes occasionally hosted by celebrities. Developers can even develop Hangout-compatible apps to take advantage of the platform and come up with some pretty cool custom uses for it, such as real-time collaboration.

Where’s The Wall?

I have played with Google+ for a while, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to interact with a person in my circle without having to comments on a post they made. On Facebook, you click on your friend’s name, and righta t the top of their Timeline is a box for you to “write on their wall”. But on Google+, this capability is missing. I would have to find your last post, and comment on it in order to communicate with you. Perhaps the ability is there and I haven’t found it (I’ll be the first to admit I an new to Google+), and I understand their desire to be “different” from Facebook. But isn’t the Facebook “wall ” concept the quintessential feature of Facebook that has made it so popular? Shouldn’t there be some similar functionality on Google+, which is the ability to start up a public conversation with someone in your circle?

Are you a Facebook user who has tried to make the jump to Google+ and use some of it’s exciting new features? We’d love to hear your thoughts on how it stacks up to the leader.

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Google’s Penquin Update

Google recently did yet any upgrade or as I call it another never ending tweak to its search engine.  This update specifically targets Webspam or the Black Hat techniques some people employ to artificially inflate their rankings.  Some common Black Hat practices are keyword spamming, cloaking, hidden text, or link manipulation.

Matt Cutts, an engineer at Google was quoted saying; “The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end we’ve launched Panda changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results. And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”

This change is suppose to decrease rankings for sites that Google believes are violating their existing quality guidelines. So they hope to reward webmasters that employ white hat techniques by using quality content, improving the usability of the site, making sites more compelling and interesting.

Matt also went on to say; “While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”

While this update sounds perfect  Internet Marketer James Schramko fears that this update seems to be targeting on-page anchor text spamming. “So if you have too many instances of a keyword, if it’s in your page title, your first headline, sprinkled throughout the article, and then you link to that page with the same keyphrase over and over again, you’ve probably been hit by Penguin,” he avers. According to him, it is necessary now more than ever for website owners to “de-tune” their keywords.

He also goes onto to say that 20% of your SEO optimization should be geared towards Social Media so make sure you have those social sharing widgets on your website. He also goes on to say that 50% should be geared towards backlinks with the remainging 30% targeted towards on-page SEO.

So while Google’s new Penquin update on the surface seems to be very helpful, the reality is they may still need to do some further tweaks.

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REALTOR® Safety Widgets for Your Website or Blog

The National Association of REALTORS® is always posting great information for REALTORS® about new technology and upcoming trends. I’ve done a bit of research and found these great REALTOR® Safety Widgets to embed into your website or blog. Simply give one of these codes to your web master and they can implement it into your website.

1. Dynamic Widget (safety tip changes each Tuesday) Embed Code: <script language=”javascript” id=narsafetytwitterwidgetscript src=http://www.realtor.org/ro/widget/safetytwitter.js type=text/javascript></script>
   <noscript>http://ahref=</noscript>
2. Static Widget Option 1:<script language=”javascript” id=narsafetywidgetscript1 src=http://www.realtor.org/ro/widget/staticpromo.js?promo=safety1 type=text/javascript></script>
   <noscript> <a href=”http://www.realtor.org/about_nar/safety?wt.mc_id=rs0001″><img src=”http://www.realtor.org/ro/images/widget_safety_v1.jpg” border=”0″/></a> </noscript>
3. Static widget Option 2: <script language=”javascript” id=narsafetywidgetscript2 src=http://www.realtor.org/ro/widget/staticpromo.js?promo=safety2 type=text/javascript></script>
   <noscript> <a href=”http://www.realtor.org/about_nar/safety?wt.mc_id=rs0001″><img src=”http://www.realtor.org/ro/images/widget_safety_v2.jpg” border=”0″/></a> </noscript>

You can also get these codes and more on their website!

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