It is common knowledge in the Digital Marketing world (or to any search users) how much Google changes – and how important it is to keep up with them.

About a month ago, Google announced the plan for their upcoming algorithm changes – different than the Panda updates of the past.  In this initiative, the search engine stated they would begin to punish websites that are “over-optimized” or “over-SEO’d.” They have since back-pedaled on their statements to push the focus of this campaign to webspam, but nonetheless, “over-optimization” is a component to watch for.

The update, dubbed “Penguin,” officially rolled out on April 24. The Penguin update is looking to penalize websites that utilize some of the following:

• Aggressive keyword targeting (over-optimization)
• Overuse of keyword domains (over-optimization)
• Low quality article marketing (spam)
• Keyword stuffing in links (spam)

Google aims to bring searchers the most natural results they can, first and foremost. This update is aimed toward giving the Google user the most positive experience and most relevant results.

So, what can you do to help your website? Keep things natural and relevant! When writing your landing page content or your blogging content, make sure that your content is driven by topics and information that would be useful to your customers and/or prospects. You can keep your content topic-driven without losing any of your keyword optimization.

For example, if you’re writing a blog post on some updates in health insurance legislature in your area, you can easily integrate any specific health insurance keywords you have without throwing them in the reader’s face – it’s all about natural integration and keeping the post topic-driven. If your post is about a legislative update, make sure you stay on topic and give the reader all of the information needed. If your health insurance keyword only naturally fits one time in the post without sacrificing the message, then so be it. It’s important now, more than ever, that Google and the other search engines see that your content is high quality and useful to the reader – not just a 500-word post stuffed with keywords you want to be found for.

You should use the same principles in your link building as well – keep it natural. For example, if you are writing a guest post on a local community blog and you’re trying to bring visitors to your website for a health insurance term, make sure you can integrate it without sacrificing the content quality or spamming the reader. Make sure your post is relevant to the topic of the keyword and don’t squeeze in numerous links. The best practice with using keywords in links it to keep it simple – post one link back to your website using your term and only if it fits into the content without disrupting the reader. If you have a blog on your website and you’re linking to other pages within the site, use the same principles; keep keyword links minimal, simple, and non-disruptive.

There are already reports of websites seeing negative effects as a result of the Penguin update, as well as sites see positive results, such as higher keyword rankings, better traffic, etc. As long as you are utilizing best practices and ensuring your internet marketing strategies are in line with what Google is looking for in a high quality website, you should eventually see the fruits of your labor. Think of how you feel when you visit a website that spams you, whether it’s through low quality content, excessive links, or obvious keyword stuffing. Enacting a high-quality SEO strategy takes time – these are long-term strategies. But, at the end of the day, you’ll thank your internet marketing team, representatives, or even yourself for sticking it out and taking the “righteous” path in your SEO strategy.

How is your website responding to the Penguin update? Tweet me @astonish_shawna with any Penguin stories or suggestions!

Whether your agency writes onsite blogs, offsite blogs, link building articles or all of the above, you obviously know the importance of having solid content. Content for the web is unlike any other forms because you’re trying to cater to a real audience (people) and also the search engines. While it may not seem like much on the surface, it’s actually a more daunting task than it seems. When contributing content to the web, it’s always important you’re holding yourself to a high standard to improve your insurance marketing website.

In the days of social media, blogging and search engines, quality content is more important than it has ever been. There’s no use in churning out writing that doesn’t live up to a certain level of integrity and style, so here are some tips to help you and your agency keep yourself alive in Google:

• Keep it concise: One of the general rules of thumb of online content is to keep as short as possible while still effectively delivering your message. Now, we’re not saying to write a single paragraph and leave it that, but to also not write a book, either. As an independent agency trying to get its website to show up in the rankings, you need to focus more on multiple posts and articles, not just a long one every so often. So get to the point as quickly as possible and leave out any unnecessary information.

• Use Headings: Naturally, human beings prefer to be directed at what they should be reading instead of just blindly going through content. If you publish a blog post or article that is on the longer side, it may be wise to separate each section with headings and/or subheadings to make it easier on the reader. With headings, readers will be able to skim down the page and read the parts that may be more of interest or value to them.

• Inverted Pyramid: Ever hear of the “Inverted Pyramid”? In journalism, the inverted pyramid refers to the strategy of placing information in any given article. Normally, the most important information will be up top and fill most of the article, followed by secondary information in the middle and any related but not as important information at the bottom. If you want to lower your bounce rate, you’ll want to make sure you have the important stuff at the top so the reader has a chance to take it in before leaving your website.

As an independent insurance agency, you want your website to not only serve as a way for people to sign up for quotes, but to also reel in potential customers through search engine optimization. Your content is the bridge connecting your website to new leads, so take pride in whatever you write. Remember: keep it simple, thoughtful and fun!

So, everyone is talking about “Pinterest” these days. If you haven’t checked it out already and you are a woman – you definitely should. If you are a guy, you should also jump on the bandwagon and upload as many “manly” pins as possible – just to try to balance things out.

People who use Pinterest know that probably 80% of the site ends up dedicated to finger nail polish, hair styles, shoes, and cute baby animals. It is almost the online version of magazines like “First for Women” that my wife buys at the grocery store. It doesn’t have many articles, but there are always weight-loss miracles, hair styles, shoes, and of course those cute baby animals.

The premise is that you have virtual corkboards and when you find things you like on the web, you “pin” them to your board. You organize your boards by topics, and people can then follow what you pin, re-pin your pins, like your pins, and discuss them. You can also search and sort pins by topics, and find gift ideas. It is very easy to use, and easy to set up. The interface is clean and well organized.

Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing websites of all time, and has reached the 10 million monthly visitors milestone faster than Twitter and even Facebook. The unusual aspect to this meteoric growth is that it has been fueled mainly by women. In most cases, internet start-up sites become popular with users who are men under 35. According to comScore, 65% of Pinterest users are women, and these women drive 85% of the traffic on the site. More than half of the women using Pinterest are 35 or older.

Pinterest seems poised to be a huge player in the social media game. As a guy, I find it cool to be able to pin the things I find on the internet and to keep them organized. I do realize that nobody on Pinterest is probably going to follow my psychedelic poster art board, but I like having the collection in one place, and adding to it when I come across more. I don’t have much use for fingernails that look like the solar system, motivational slogans, cute shoes, or wedding ideas – but there are evidently a BUNCH of women who do.

It will be interesting to see how companies embrace Pinterest. I mean if I had a craft or jewelry business, I would be pinning my work all the time, with links to where people can buy my creations. This can also be applied to a larger scale business model. I would think Pinterest will become another tool for businesses, just like Facebook and Twitter.

So guys, head on over to Pinterest and see what the women are up to. Once you get an “invite”, don’t forget to pin your favorite motorcycle, cars, rock and roll music, sports teams, tech toys, grills, and even your favorite BBQ recipes. Of course someone has already come up with “Manteresting.com” where you nail instead of pin, and it’s mostly beer, guns, and lingerie models. Hopefully Pinterest can become a little more balanced and we can all pin what we love together!

After months of anticipation and speculation, Google+ has finally unveiled its pages for brands. Ever since its launch in June, Google+ has been open only to individual users, but this all changed when Google announced the release of “Google+ Pages” on November 7. Now that Google+ is open to the public and to brands, more and more people are continuing to register with the social media platform. While the buzz surrounding Google+ has subsided in recent months, the advent of brand pages and making the platform open to everyone makes it an avenue that should be and will be enticing to businesses. However, the question remains: should your independent insurance agency begin taking advantage of Google’s brand pages? Let’s take a look.

With already tens of millions of users, it’s no secret that Google+ is certainly making its presence known on the web. Frankly, you may be wondering why not to put your agency on Google+. On the week ending November 12, 2011, Google+ received more than 6.8 million total US visits, a 5% increase compared to the week before. Despite the social media platform’s seemingly burgeoning popularity, a look at some statistics show that it still isn’t really close to competing with Facebook. According to BrightEdge, 61% of the top 100 brands in the US have Google+ pages, compared to 93% with Facebook pages. Ford Motor Company, one of the first brands to use Google+, only has a little over 27,000 fans, compared to having over 5 million on Facebook.

As a small agency, it may be best to keep concentrating your efforts on building communities within the two biggest social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook, first. While the brand pages are available, many believe that they are not as optimized as they could be, and interaction on Google+ is still significantly lower than that of Twitter and Facebook. Right now, making these two profiles the best they can be should be your number one priority for social media. Facebook and Twitter stretch further than any platform and this is a case of quality over quantity. \

Beware of watering down your social media efforts, and concentrate in areas where you know you can succeed in building a community.

Following the news that Google has acquired Zagat to bolster local reviews, more attention that ever should be devoted towards asking your clients to review your performance and give you reviews on your local listings.

As a business owner you obviously want multiple five star reviews, all of which declaring you to be the best insurance agency ever, but the somewhat elusive local review is not the easiest to obtain. Also, you may be thinking that you want the review but only if it is going to be positive and five stars. After all, I don’t want BAD reviews all over my Google Places account. After reading this post, you may have a different opinion of the local reviews.

How to Attain Good Reviews?

The first step to good reviews is to always keep customer service in mind when you are interacting with your clients. There will be the occasion where a customer is irate or upset about something that has happened to them. As a business owner, it is your job to do your best to serve them and offer helpful solutions to their problem. Many good reviews can come from experiences that start out negatively and are turned around with exceptional customer service.

Make it as easy as possible for your customers to leave you a positive review with a combined strategy of making the effort to provide the best customer service possible and directing customers to a page with buttons to all of your local listings. From there you simply e-mail, post to Facebook or Tweet out the link to your Local Reviews Page. Now, leaving a great review for your business could not be easier.

When a person posts a review on your Google Places listing, they are taking the time to let you, and the rest of the world know how their experience with your business went. Whether they had a negative experience or an exceptional experience, you will reap the benefits that a review can give your listing.

Granted, if every review you have is a 1-star review with negative comments about you or your employees, you may want to speak about the interactions they are having with clients. But if you have some good and some bad reviews, that is fine. Your company’s reviews are authentic customer accounts from people who have used your services. Remember that your reviews are essentially word of mouth insurance marketing for your agency. These referrals can get people to pick up the phone or drive to your brick and mortar location so they are important to monitor and stay on top of.

What to do with a bad review?

It is a very real possibility that someone could leave a negative review about your business on your listing. So what is the best way to deal with a negative or less than satisfactory review?

Monitor and respond; you may think that a bad review will hurt you more than help you but you should think more about the content of the review. I hear all the time that “I only want positive, 5-star reviews”, the reality is even bad reviews are filled with keyword rich text. Here is an example of a 1 or 2 star review that I have seen;
“I do not recommend anyone to this agency………….them, it speaks for all the representatives……… I was a previous customer………back to get auto insurance with them when I was transferred to ******………to tell me that my auto policy was cancelled due……….and I STRONGLY DONT RECOMMEND anyone to this company unless you wanted to be treated like dirt. They are not the only insurance agency in orange county!!! “
If you look at the review it is pretty harsh but, there are few keywords that a search engine will find that can help return this local listing as a relevant search result for someone searching for insurance in Orange County.

When it comes to reviews, it is a best practice to respond to the less than stellar comments by offering an explanation or helping the customer ultimately find what they are looking for. By responding to the review, you are seen as a proactive business owner that really cares about his customers and that can go a long way for developing future business. You will be seen by the online community as someone that wants to do right by people, find out how to improve for next time or even offer a mends.

Be Proactive:

Give your clients an outlet to express their feelings on your site. Offer your unsatisfied clients a form to vent before they take their frustrations out on your local listings or review sites. This may not catch everything but it gives you the opportunity to respond to a review before it is public.

Once you receive a negative response, follow up with the customer immediately and try to make amends. Customer service should always be paramount in any interactions with customers but now, providing a high level of customer service can lead to an increase in traffic to your site and revenue to your agency.

Your local listings should be a large piece of your overall SEO strategy and can really produce great results when utilized correctly. Taking the time to ask your clients to review you and your agency is very important and will give you valuable feedback on how you can continuously improve the way you serve your clients.

Remember the days when important breaking news had the average American family huddled around a radio or TV as the only source for fresh information?  Yeah, me neither.  But apparently, it happened!  Well those days are long gone, as Americans and news-watchers worldwide are now tethered to their smart phone or within arm’s distance from their laptop.

The first thing that I did when I heard that Osama bin Laden had been killed was head straight to my closest source of unbiased real-time news: Google. Apparently, and not surprisingly, so did you.  And so did your kids — well, on Yahoo!, anyway. Search engines have become the gathering place for our news, and have shaped the way we receive our information.  But few people realize that it works the other way, too: historic news events have shaped the way that search engines function.

Take, for example, the events of 9/11/01 – do you know how much Google’s offering has changed since that event? It is hard to imagine that, in the hours after this terrorist attack, the world’s largest search engine had to use its familiar home page link to cached news services because Google had not yet featured a “news” section in their search results! Now, blended search results in Google are populated with trending news links (in their own section), relevant images, and even social media updates that refresh before your eyes.  Check out a simple Google search for “2011 NHL playoffs”, and you’ll see what I mean.  These new facets of search were not always available, and in some cases, were born out of necessity due to current events that have caused us to run to our favorite search engine.

But what about social media and its place in current events?  Well, you might have read that an IT professional might have been the first person in the world to report the attack on bin Laden’s compound late in the night on Sunday, via Twitter!  With such a huge critical mass of users in the Twitter universe, it has become a source of instant news for users who can’t even wait for an article or blog post to be uploaded to their favorite web site.  The result?  Sunday night’s events provided Twitter its highest sustained activity … ever … with an average “sustained rate of tweets” of 3,440 per second.

So what’s next for the social media giant?  How about capitalizing on current events with text ads? It could happen.

The point here is that two things have changed with regard to how our culture accesses its news information:

The internet is an exceedingly adaptable animal, which is part of its appeal.  As a search engine marketer, watching how the internet adapts to breaking news is almost as interesting as the breaking news itself.

Almost.

You’ve picked your keywords.  These are keywords that match what you sell and people are actually using them in their searches. But what do you do with them? How do you deploy these good keywords so they help drive relevant traffic to your site?

Well, to start, you want to write good content that uses your keywords throughout.  The trick here is not to overuse your keywords and look spammy.  Google is really working to cut the spammy pages from their results.   Try spreading your words out in the content.  Start with having the keyword you’re focusing on in the first sentence of the page.  Hopefully you have enough good content that your keywords can be mentioned a couple of times in the body without looking like spam.    Finally, it is good practice to close with the chosen keyword in the last sentence of the page.  I like to add it in to the call to action whenever possible.

In addition to placing them throughout the content, you should add the keywords to the on page title. This lets the search engines and potential clients know what the page is about.  Also, emphasizing or bolding your particular keywords tells your potential customers and the search engines that these are important and your page has what they want. “Hello! Look over here.  This is the keyword you’re looking for.”

Of course the most important place for your keywords is in the title tag.  The title tag labels your page in the browser, this appears at the very top of your browser window, and is what shows up as the title for your page in the search results. So it is important to write good title tags for both the search engines and the people searching for your specific keywords.  A bad title tag can be just as bad as not having one at all.

You now know that it is important not only to have good keywords, but to strategically place them throughout the pages of your site.  Your keywords will appear important enough to the search engines to rank your site and relevant enough to potential clients who see these results and will click on your page.  But alas, keywords are only one part of the picture. To move your site to the top of the results you still need more. But enough of my blibber blabbering…until next time…have an Astonishing day!

With some of today’s traditional advertising efforts falling short, many companies are in desperate need of some new direction. With a sharp decline in phone book distribution, and increased competition on platforms such as Google and Bing, advertisers have little choice but to look helplessly into the future for the next big thing. Some exciting announcements made today from two of the big names in marketing may prove to be just that.

Google Blimp Ads

Google has been the leader in search marketing for some time now. Since their introduction of the Adwords platform more than ten years ago, they’ve helped countless business owners market online through text, banner, and video ads. More recently, with the addition of services such as Google Places, and Google Boost, the search giant has been helping to meet the needs of all businesses, both large and small.

Today, however, Google announced yet another service, which they’ve unashamedly referred to as “the next generation of advertising.” Google Blimp Ads.
“Imagine this: a baseball stadium, packed with thousands of fans. A home run flies through the air, and as the crowd looks up, they see your ad, bigger than ever, hand-painted on the side of a majestic blimp. Blimp Ads can make this a reality.”
Taken from the Google Adwords Blog, the statement above sums up the approach of this innovative new service. Google announced that they’ve been privately testing Blimp Ads over the past few months, with results that were “better than expected.”

Although the proposed cost is not yet known, Blimp Ads could greatly improve your agency’s marketing efforts, by soaring your business name over the heads of sports fans, soccer moms, and beach-goers alike. These floating billboards are clearly the next step for business owners ready to get serious with their advertisement efforts.

Invisible White Space Links

Google wasn’t the only one to announce a new service today, however. Marketing guru, Seth Godin, also introduced an interesting new platform: Invisible White Space Links.

Godin made the announcement earlier today, stating that users are “tired of being overwhelmed by ads and by pages that are stuffed to the gills with ads.” Proposing this new form of invisible advertisement, Godin suggests that the the invisible links could “double or triple the ad inventory” of your company’s website.

The powerful opportunities put forth by these new invisible advertisements are endless. Imagine having the express ability to subliminally market to proposed customers, who after leaving the page, have no idea that you even exist!

Godin released some information regarding first round funding for his new venture, which would be $11 million to start. “The biggest challenge”, he says, “is that the service only runs one day a year.”

So, What’s Next?

On the heals of such great innovation, one wonders what could be next. Advertisers have long dreamt of interesting new ways to market their content; blimps and invisible text links are by far the most creative yet. However, looking to the near future of the near future, there’s already been talk by excited marketers of a combination of the two: Invisible Blimp Ads.

Hello everyone, this is my first post on IMHQ.  First a little background – I work on the SEM team at Astonish. I also work on all special projects and keep up-to-date on the newest services and advancements in the tech industry to make sure all of you have the most cutting edge internet marketing plan around.  With that being said, I get a little leeway in what I get to write about.  So my post on Friday’s (aka “Free Form Fridays”) I will talk about the newest ideas, businesses and happenings in the internet/tech world as well as current events.  I will also give you links that I think are worth reading and maybe a little blurb about each one. I also like to leave ‘Easter eggs’ in my posts.

Digg is dead.

Digg is a shell of what it once was. Kevin Rose its creator/founder is hardly using it anymore.  Needless to say don’t waste your time utilizing it as part of your social/link strategy.

The Rumors of Google’s Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated.

Google has gotten a bad rap over the last few months; everyone seems to be caught up with Facebook, Groupon, foursquare, twitter… IMO it’s in part because Google competes in so many different arenas. For instance, did you know Google is on its way to becoming the world’s largest phone company? Great article on its past, present and future and in depth information/analysis on its new CEO (and co-founder) Larry Page.

(For those of you who do not know about its telephone efforts, the Google Voice service is phone forwarding system that allows you to have 1 number and lets it ring multiple phones  – home, cell, office – so you always connected. Google.com/voice)

Your Phone = Your Wallet

The mobile wallet is coming, fast. Credit Cards have gotten us to leave the bills behind, now it is time for us to leave the actual wallet behind. The Google Nexus S android phone already has it built in and the new iPhone will have it as well.  What is it? It is a NFC (Near Field Communication) chip which will allow you to tap your phone to a receiver to pay for your purchases.  Remember the Mobile SpeedPass? It’s like that, built into your phone, for everything. Awesome.

Why is this important? Have a password on your smart phone to unlock it you have too much valuable info on there, and there is about to be much more. Also, does your agency have e-insurance cards? Paper is over.

LivingSocial: Group Buying Donations For Japan.

Living Social is offering a $10 donation to Red Cross for Japanese relief for $5. No explanation needed, ends soon, do it.

Without question, Google is the sultan of Internet search, used for roughly 72% of all searches.

In another move towards a smarter Internet, Google recently announced a groundbreaking addition to its search results called Social Search (you will need a Google account to use). Once an account is set up, users create a profile linking all of their social media platforms to the account. Whenever the user is signed in and searches a topic, they receive search results from their social circle alongside the typical results they would normally see.

Why is this so important? Number one, Google is doing it, so it’s important by default. Number two, Social Search was created with the notion that people will trust recommendations from their social circle as much or more than local or SEO-influenced results. If people say nice things about you, your agency or insurance in general, these things will come up when someone in their circle makes a query for insurance. Leads anyone?

Before you go out and create 10 different social media profiles, it’s important to understand how this can also HURT your agency. Social Search also provides image results. This is great if you want to share some photos on Facebook from your recent trip to Australia. This is not so great if someone searches your agency and finds a Facebook picture of your young staffer doing kegstands of Foster’s at a company picnic. Likewise if an employee tends to lament the mundane nature of his or her job or share information that’s better left in private.

So how do you harness social search for good while avoiding the bad? First of all, you create a dynamic, functional insurance website and make sure the office sales culture is positive with healthy work habits.  There’s nothing worse than disarray on display and solid processes and people must be in place before anything goes social.

A social media policy that governs employee usage and settings is the next step. Businesses that benefit most from social media are the ones that clearly define objectives for its use and don’t just let employees spend as much time as they want doing and saying whatever they want. Here is a good checklist for what needs to be in a social media policy.

Once you understand what social media will be used for in your agency, start participating in communities as a peer and gently remind people of your insurance services when appropriate. Run clever promotions through Facebook, share funny anecdotes on your blog, promote other local businesses on Twitter and show you’re an insurance thought leader without directly marketing at people.

These efforts have a humanizing effect and grow your social presence, ultimately making you worth searching for.