It’s been roughly a month since the much anticipated Apple iPhone 5 came out to the masses, finally giving Apple users several features that have been available on other smart phones for months. Even so, while most reviews have been great, the flaws, notably their new Apple Maps software, have left many pretty disappointed.

With a lack of details currently present on the popular Google Maps platform, and a bug-ridden GPS that appears to give wrong driving directions to several early adopters, the impact of the iPhone on the search marketing industry has been put into question.

However, regardless of the issues that may be widely discussed online, over 5 million people (including the Motoza guys) got their hands on an iPhone 5 withing the first 3 days of release. Several Apple Analysts predict that over 8 million iPhones may be sold by the end of the year! Add the fact that over 60% of iPhone/iPad/iPod users have upgraded to iOS6 (which also features Apple Maps), and you now have several million users on Apple’s new map system. It appears that even its faults aren’t going to get in the way of the iPhone continuing to be a serious contender in the mobile space, as a recent survey by ChangeWave Research suggests that the majority of users have had no significant issues with Apple Maps.

So what does this mean for small businesses? Plenty!

For one, Apple Maps uses a different system to pull up business information and location than the previous Google Maps platform. Whereas Google Maps is based on Google’s local search platform (which pulls information from a variety of sources online), Apple Maps uses the Tom Tom GPS system and Yelp.com to provide location, information, and user reviews for local businesses. Powered by the voice-activated Siri, Apple Maps likely shows different information for a particular business that also appears in Google Maps. While this may be inconvenient from a marketing perspective, small businesses need to be prepared to optimize their sites so that they appear when a few of those new million iPhone and iPad users search for their services.

Apple Maps obviously has its flaws, and while we’ve been assured that their development team is working steadily to greatly improve it’s functionality, small businesses risk losing far too much business in the meantime. So what can you do to ensure that you’re being properly displayed on Apple Maps? First, assume you’re not on there!

The first thing you need to do is get your hands on an iPhone or iPad that has iOS6 installed. Once you have the Maps app open, search for your business name and address (be as specific as possible). If your business does not appear, you may not be properly entered into the system (or not in all together). There are three things you can do to help Apple include your business:

• Report the issue to Apple Maps – Here’s a great tutorial on how to do so from iOS6.
• Add your business listing to Tom Tom’s GPS service – Go here to start the process
• Make sure your business is listed on Yelp – Apple uses Yelp’s business information and reviews to display results, if Yelp doesn’t have you listed, there a chance Apple won’t find you. If you are listed, make sure to enhance your Yelp profile and interact with your reviewers.

Apple Maps SEO is a new arena that marketers are quickly researching and tweaking (including us!) As more surveys are released, and user data analyzed, we’ll surely get more information on the various sources that are used to improve business result rankings and reviews. Until then, take the necessary steps we’ve highlighted, or contact us to optimize your entire mobile presence.

To combat this, Google has recently announced a major algorithm change to their search spiders, which is aimed at combatting ‘over-optimized’ websites that modify their content and links to manipulate search engine results. Without getting into the discussion of what Google has recommended in the past (for responsible SEO) versus what they now consider ‘over-optimization’, it’s fair to say that Google’s efforts are noble. It’s a hard, almost impossible task to clean up the web of spam, but they have to do it to maintain their quality searches.

However, does their new algorithm go too far? Numerous reports are flying around the web about ridiculous search results, that contradict everything that Google is aiming to do with this release. Basically, any site that has typical ‘cheap’ SEO tactics, such as keyword stuffing, SEO content, or over-optimized link building, are set to be punished. However, labeling a bad guy is not as easy as simply detecting suspicious links and reading a few paragraphs on a person’s site. Here are my concerns:

• Penalizing people for something they didn’t do. As far as we know, link building can’t be traced to an individual or company. Recent evidence shows that websites with suspicious back links, ex. Links from spammy sites with exact keyword text, or tons of links built in a small amount of time, can be used punished using the new algorithm. If it doesn’t look ‘natural’, it’s suspicious. However, ANYONE can link to any site they deem fit. The company or website has no control over who links to them. So this brings in the rise of Negative SEO. Black Hat SEOs now have the chance to use malicious, irresponsible link building techniques on their competitors sites, causing Google to potentially punish those sites, clearing the way for the SEO’s money site to rise. Essentially, anyone has the potential to ‘frame’ another site. If the news is true, then we might be in for a very dirty time in the SEO industry.
• Google sets unrealistic expectations. There’s no doubt that the best tactic for a website or business is to write great content, build great online relationships, and spread their brand across the web. This builds natural, high quality and relevant links which will eventually reward the website with great rankings. However, when the SEO world is already so integrated with powerful domains, with amazing reach, or years of natural (and unnatural) link building, how are newcomers supposed to compete? The fact is, that for years, Google has recommended an action plan that’s less effective (for most people) than the conventional SEO method of gaining a large mix of both low and high quality links. Whether Google has liked it or not, it’s works. To see clients spend months trying to build naturally, while their competitors use less natural method of linking but reap the rewards of high rankings (and higher sales) is frustrating to see. I haven’t seen any evidence to show that the new algorithms are helping the ‘little guys’, if anything, it’s seeing a rise in rankings for large corporations, who have massive sites and tons of links. How is the small business supposed to compete with that?
• Black Hat SEO will always outsmart the Algorithm. From a pessimistic point of view, those that develop the ‘black-hat’ methods of link building that Google despises will always be one step ahead of the algorithm. In the end, it’s a computer attempting to distinguish what’s relevant for humans. Once a certain type of link building is deemed ineffective, SEOs will find ways to appear natural to Search Engines, and continue to dominate in rankings. By giving more arsenal to the bad guys (by punishing ‘bad’ link building), Google may be heading into a period of odd, strange rankings dominated by clever spam artists and major corporations.

I’m by no means against Google’s move to combat the SEO villains. However, I’m concerned that this latest move is a bit too harsh, too aggressive, and may be punishing the wrong people. Google has a very very hard task ahead of them, I just hope they tackle it responsibly before they cause the complete opposite of what they want.

What do you think Google should be doing to help clean up our search engines?

1. It’s not All about Just Translation -Localization, the process of turning your website or product accessible to a certain country/language, stems deeper than simply changing the language. While there are many automated systems out there (ex. Google Translate), the results are usually very poor and can hurt your marketing strategy. Straight translation can often cause confusing content in other languages, not to mention the variety of different cultural influences that go into languages. Spanish websites directed towards south americans may have completely different meanings, sayings, and even grammar, versus those directed towards the Spain.

2. Social Media still Works Overseas – Don’t just restrict your social media usage to your main country, Europeans and Asians have been shown to be very interactive when it comes to social media. In addition, by interacting with consumers in different countries, you’re engaging in highly valuable market research. The feedback your social media team can get out of these interactions can allows you to customize each localized campaign in order to improve your business globally.

3. Use TLDs - Buying up specific TLDs for your country, like .co.uk, .es, and .fr allows you to better protect your brand and presence in that country. As soon as you break into a different market and gain some sort of traction, you can be almost guaranteed that someone else will buy your domain name and use it to their advantage. Buy them before they can. If you plan to use the domains separately and hosted individually on servers, make sure to assign geo-targetting via Google webmaster tools in order to tell Google where the site is intended to be seen in the google ‘universe’.

4. Research Website Layouts for Each Culture – Make sure to research the browsing tendencies of each country before designing landing pages and websites for them. For example, it’s been shown that the Japanese market actually enjoys reading more information before engaging in a service or website. This is in contrast to American browsing habits, where bullet points, headlines and small paragraphs are shown to convert better.

5. Use Specific Country Folder and Redirect Accordingly – It may be too expensive for some businesses to have multiple domains and websites hosted across multiple servers around the world, so a good option to fix duplicate content and multiple localized sites is to create sub-folders on your domain for each country (ex. /uk, /espana) and have your localized TLDs remap to those sub-folders. Within the domain, you may be able to use canonical tags for any duplicate content you’re using across same language countries. It will also allow you to share the appropriate link juice across your domain and country sites, helping you rank better.

Flash Websites (http://www.macromedia.com) were (and still are) a popular choice for website developers due to their ability to provide cool-looking and flashy (hah!) web sites. A flash website can be as interactive as you’d like, allowing you to add animated menus, clever interfaces and videos throughout your site.

However, over the past few years, the use of flash has decreased due to several problems related to performance, difficulty to maintain and update, and Search Engine Optimization issues.

Flash has been around for quite some time, and while it has been implemented by several applications, small and large, its support has dwindled a bit over the years. Flash is harder to work with than general HTML and CSS web authoring, and it also requires users to download plugins to use and use up more memory when navigating the site. As a result, users with slower, less updated computers may have trouble using website in Flash. As a result, media giants such as Apple, have dropped their support for Flash and gone with newer, faster programming languages such as HTML5. As a result, Flash websites are not supported or visible on mobile products such as iPads, iPhones and older mobile devices.

Flash websites are different from traditional websites in that Flash is like one big animation file that runs on your web server. It ‘reacts’ to certain actions done by users and animates accordingly. Therefore, in order to modify any content on a traditional flash website, a developer needs to open up the animation file, and re-arrange/compile the information in order to add new content. This makes it harder for non-developers to add content, which can be a huge program for SEO. Traditional websites based on a Content Management System such as Drupal or WordPress make adding content as easy as possible.

One of the most concerning problems associated with Flash is the fact that search engine spiders have a really hard time navigating the sites. This should be a huge warning sign for anyone wanting to rank high in Google. Since Flash is one big animation file (rather than a collection of web-pages linked together in HTML) Google only sees one big file. While Google’s current algorithm let it ‘peek’ into a flash website and determine what it’s about, it will likely miss a lot of the context of your website and therefore not rank your individual pages accordingly. For example, Google will likely not know that you have a ‘services’ page on your website, and an ‘about’ page, all it sees is one big animation file on your homepage. If Google doesn’t see new content, and can’t read what the content is about, your site will never rank.

Flash is a great tool for interactive websites that require no rankings and is ok with some older computers and mobile products (iPhones, iPads, iPods and older smart phones) not being able to access it. However, for those wanting to get online exposure, which is 99% of businesses out there, it would be best to stick to a traditional HTML/CSS website or look into HTML5 development.

Several years ago when I first stepped into the internet marketing world, SEO started becoming a hot topic and while there were companies and individuals who offered their services, it was nowhere near the number I see now. These days, it seems anyone who picks up and reads a book on SEO immediately thinks they are an expert, which causes a lot of credibility issues and problems for the SEO industry. It’s like saying, “I just changed the oil and oil filter in my car, I’m an auto mechanic now!” Unfortunately, because the internet world is still a mystic unknown environment for the majority of the population, the list of terrible SEOs continue to expand and charge for poor services. Below are just a few of the popular scams and frauds that continue to exist today:

1. ” Front page of Google within 48 hours!” – For business owners unfamiliar with how placements work in Google, the allure of grabbing that front page spot in Google within a short period of time seems appealing, especially when an “expert” is helping them out. The problem with this phrase is that it is vague and doesn’t let the client know that anyone can get to the front page of Google using their pay-per-click Adwords system and bid high enough.

1. “We work directly with Google.” Again, another vague term and should set off some warning bells. Anyone can grab a pay-per-click Adwords account and say they are working with Google since it would technically be true (they pay Google money to display ads). But the phrase is most commonly used by scammers to describe a special bond with them and Google and how they have access to all the secrets. Now wait a minute…Google spends millions and millions of dollars on their search engine…why would they want to risk giving that secret away?

1. “Guaranteed Google front page rankings for # keywords!” – Let’s get one thing straight, nobody can guarantee rankings and guaranteed rankings does not mean anything if you’re not getting any targeted traffic for those ranked keywords. To satisfy their claim, these shady SEO so-called-experts will rank you for your own business name, which is generally easy and usually ranked for in Google, or they rank you for obscure keywords that no one will ever search for. For example, if you owned a flower shop in Austin, TX, they would try to rank you for long terms like “exquisite flower shop in downtown Austin Texas” or “Austin TX Jane Doe’s floral arrangements”.

In general, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If you come across situations like these in your inbox and don’t know what to believe, contact Motoza support and we’ll help you uncover the truth!

It’s hard to control how Google decides to rank your website. While there are proven strategies put in place, it’s impossible to tell how and when Google will rank you on the first or tenth page in their rankings. As SEO has evolved, it’s become more clear that the more ‘natural’ a website seems in terms of popularity, the better (or more safely) you’ll perform on Google’s rankings.

Search engines want to reward sites that naturally attract people to their websites. Simply having all your traffic coming from one source (ex. direct traffic or search engines) doesn’t seem all that natural if you exclude email, RSS feeds and social media. Since the internet is quickly becoming a social-focused medium, with the growth of sites like Yelp, Facebook, YouTube, LivingSocial and Quora, more emphasis is being placed in gaining traffic through social platforms. By tapping into these platforms early, you gain momentum and attention from Google.

Another benefit of diversifying your traffic sources is that you lower your associated risk. No one traffic source is 100% safe. Social Media rules may change, your profiles may be hacked, or your rankings may be suddenly dropped for whatever reason. By diversifying your ‘traffic portfolio’, you minimize the risk of losing all your traffic at once.

By thinking outside the box, and attempting to gain traffic from new websites and sources, you may also discover new ways to interact with your clients, and learn a little bit more about your business. For example, you may have never considered interacting on Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers or Quora, which could not only be a great source of traffic, but a good place to showcase your expertise and improve your reputation.

Much like SEO itself, diversifying your links is not an overnight project. It takes time, dedication and a lot of brainstorming in order to make the most of your website. This is a great benefit that you get from hiring an internet marketing agency to help you. In the same way you hiring financial advisers to help manage your financial portfolio, an agency can help you gain the appropriate traffic sources and maximize the amount of business you make from each one.

Do you go with traditional yellow pages, TV spots and Radio ads? Or do you try something modern, ‘techie’ and online?

Even when a business does decide on going online, there are so many avenues and services available that it can be almost impossible to know where to go.

For the majority of small businesses online, Local Search Engine Optimization, also known as Local SEO, is very likely the best route to take.

Unlike full SEO, Local SEO is designed to help businesses gain visibility in

search engine maps and local business searches.  The basic purpose is still the same, in where a business can be found in Google when someone searches for a specif keyword. However, the method of appearing, and the way it’s displayed, differs from regular SEO.

For one thing, Google Local optimized websites only appear for certain, local based keyword. For Example, “Georgetown Massage Therapist” will show local-based businesses (Local SEO) in the area before general Massage Therapist websites (General SEO). In addition, Local SEO allows businesses to be found in Maps, which are heavily used on mobile devices such as iPhones and other smartphones.

The way Local SEO works is different from regular SEO. Many factors, including changes to the website and the link popularity of the website, are non-factors in Local SEO. That is, you can rank high in Google and be well optimized for general SEO, but you may not be appearing in local based searches and maps.

Local SEO uses a variety of local directory, sources, and business information to determine which businesses are most relevant for specific searches. The process is usually less complicated and robust (for now), and therefore requires less resources. As a result, Local SEO is usually lower in price and easier to manage.

It’s very important for all business, small and large, to employ Local SEO if they do business locally. All that is needed is a business address and phone number, and a team to manage the optimization.

Nowadays, search engine rankings are determined by a large number of variables found both on a business’s website and its outer network.

While we could likely write a whole book on the external forces that affect rankings, an important, and often overlooked, tactic that can affect your whole website’s SEO importance is called “Link Sculpting”.

Just like you can have links going to your website from another website, you have internal links all over the INSIDE of your website. For example, the connection between your homepage and your ‘about’ page is an internal link. On this site, ff you were to click the “services” item in our menu, that would be an internal link on the Motoza website.

Link Sculpting, also known as PageRank Sculpting, is the process of sculpting your website’s internal link architecture so that tells Google which pages are most important on your website. Much like the diagram shown above, Google gives a website a certain amount of ‘Page Rank” (pictured as water). Your Homepage, being the center and most visited page on your site, usually gets the bulk of this page rank (PR). The PR then flows through your website via the internal links you have present. If you have “100%” page rank on your homepage, and two pages linked to your homepage, each connected page would get “50%” PR.

However, imagine one of those pages is very important to your ranking (a product page, a service page, or a content rich article) and the 2nd page is less important to rankings, such as a Privacy Policy, contact page, or a links page. Since your more important page is more relevant to your business and contains more value for the visitor, you should direct more PR to that page. You do this by adding a ‘nofollow’ element to the links pointing to less important pages.

A ‘nofollow’ essentially tells Google not to go to that link. As a result, no Page Rank is sent to through that link, so the remaining Page Rank flows to your more important page.

It’s important to do this to all websites, regardless of the size or complexity. Not only does it make your site look more efficient to Google, it’s telling Google to consider your more important pages for rankings of their own.

Take some time to go through your site. Distinguish pages that you believe are important to your customers and those that provide very little value. By simply adding nofollows to those links, you’ve successfully “Sculpting” your website!

However, it’s very important to see that there is a distinct difference in paid search, also known as PPC or Pay-Per-Click, versus Search Engine Optimization, also know as SEO.

Paid Search

Paid Search, a method of paying for your online advertisement or for your website listing to be visible in search engines, is a valid and very popular method of internet marketing. Google Adwords, the system that spearheaded the popularity of paid search, employs the standard method of paid advertising, known as pay-per-click (PPC). Literally, advertisers pay Google for every click an advertisement or paid listing receives. Due to the ease and success of this platform, other search engines, such as Yahoo! and Bing, have taken the same PPC system for their own advertisements.

PPC is organized as an auction-style system that has advertisers bidding for certain ‘key phrases’ they want to come up for in the search engines. For example, if someone wants to appear as a paid listing when a person searches for “business pens”, they would ‘bid’ on the cost of each click received for that term. The average cost-per-click (CPC) for “business pens” is $23.61. Due to several competitive and quality factors, an advertiser may pay a bit less or a bit more than that average. Since PPC is only focused on clicks, you may receive many clicks with no sales. As you can see, PPC can get very expensive if you get several clicks. In addition, since you’re paying for every click, once you stop paying, your listing is no longer visible.

Paid search works well for businesses that either have a big budget to compete against bigger companies, or are in niche markets where their respective ‘key phrases’ may be cheaper. For example, “Parker Pens” (a brand of pens) have an average CPC of $1.57. It’s a great ‘instant’ and ‘short-term’ method of getting targeted (and possibly expensive) traffic.

For many other businesses with a more conservative monthly budget, search engine optimization is a more viable and longterm option.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, also know as SEO, is a method of having your business listed in Google, Yahoo or Bing without paying for every click. An important point to make with SEO is that you don’t, and CAN’T pay Google for SEO.

You can’t pay Google for SEO. Any company promoting SEO by you paying Google is referring to PPC, not SEO.

The main point with SEO is that you list in search engines ‘organically’. Search Engines use their extensive databases to find the most relevant websites based on what a visitor searched. Consider it a free encyclopedia to the internet. In order to be included in Google, you do not have to pay. You are ‘organically’ appearing in Google because Google feels you are a relevant website.

The purpose of SEO is to tell Google that your site is relevant to certain topics or keywords. For the most part, when you pay for SEO, you’re paying a company to perform external changes and actions in order to send that message across to Google.

While the cost may range from low to very expensive, the end result from a proper SEO campaign is your website being listed on the top of Google within the ‘organic results’ pictured above. Unlike PPC, once you’re up in the top of the search engines, you will remain up there by paying a flat maintenance fee to your SEO company. You DO NOT have to pay PER-CLICK. Therefore, you can see that a well-ranked SEO’d website can gain similar exposure to someone paying for PPC, however the cost is likely to be a lot lower (if you consider keywords such as ‘business pens’ at $23/click).

SEO is suitable for companies of all sizes looking to get exposure on the web. However, SEO is not an overnight procedure. It can take anywhere from 6-18 months to begin seeing viable results in Google. However, for many, the results after those few months is well worth it over paid search.

‘Links’ is a word thats thrown around a lot in web development and internet marketing. A ‘Link’ is a connection, or a ‘road’ connecting one web page (or website) to another web page (or website). So for example, when I say that Google is a Search Engine, the word ‘Search Engine’ is a ‘link’ to www.google.com (If you were to click on it, it would take you to Google, so it’s a link to that site). In many cases, a ‘link’ is formatted differently on a website, classically being blue text with an underline.

There are essentially three types of links. There are ‘External Outbound’ and ‘External Inbound’ links and ‘Internal Links’.

External links are links that direct to a webpage or website outside of the domain the link is present on. So for example, the “Search Engine” link to Google I posted above is considered an External OUTBOUND Link because it’s pointing outside of www.motoza.com. If Google were to have a link to www.motoza.com from their website, then that link would be considered an External INBOUND link.

An internal link is any connection between between web pages within your site. So if I said our Internet Marketing Blog is fantastic, that link is internal since the connection is still within the Motoza website.

Now that a link is defined, it’s important to see how it relates to search engine optimization. When Google visits a website, it uses these ‘links’ to determine the subject matter and trustworthiness of a website.  So for example, if you have a website dedicated to the side effects of Penicillin, Google will look at the source of any external inbound links to determine how trustworthy your information is. If they notice a prominent link coming from www.webmd.com, it holds a lot more weight than if it came from an unknown personal medical research blog. The more relevant, quality inbound links you have, the better chances of Google perceiving your site as relevant and trustworthy.

SEO works very similar to a popularity election. In general, websites that have more inbound links (votes) will usually be considered higher quality and more relevant. www.wedmd.com has over 14 million inbound links (people linking to them), if you compare that you a personal medical blog that might have…50 links, you can see why Google would prefer WebMD over the blog.

However, as I noted above, the quality of the source of those links plays a big part. Almost anytime you have an inbound link, you gain a bit more ‘power’. In the SEO industry this is referred to as ‘link juice’. The amount of ‘link juice’ you get from one source differs from another based on the quality of the site, the placement of your link and how many links that website is sending out. Link Juice gained from WebMD would be much greater than that from an unrelevant medical blog. However, if your link portfolio is made up of 20 WebMD-style links, and your competitor has over 500 lower-quality links, the ‘link juice’ might be around the same. It’s quantity versus quality.

In a proper SEO campaign, it’s important to find a good balance between many links, and a few great links. By concentrating on building good relationships with strong websites, and also using approved tactics to spread your name (and link) to as many relevant websites as possible, you will eventually achieve this goal.

Advanced link building analysis can get fairly complicated. However, to summarize, it all comes down to one thing: More Link Juice = Higher Search Engine Results.