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Google is usually pretty vague when it comes to giving out any kind of SEO advice, but when it comes to their fledgling social media platform, Google+, they’re willing to do just about anything to garner some popularity. Recently, I received an email from Google which detailed some methods for getting the most out of your Google+ page. Since many of you still haven’t adapted to this new social media platform, I thought I’d share them here to help you get started.

“Keep your content fresh”

This first one speaks for itself. Make sure you’re posting content as often as possible. Do you have a new promotion, event or update for your business? Make sure you share it here.

“Post at the right time”

Google actually gives some detail about the best time to schedule an update for Google+. According to Google, the best time to schedule an update is between 10 AM, and 2 PM on weekdays. This is when Google+ usually sees the most traffic on weekdays, so your audience will be larger if your posts are scheduled during this window of time.

“Share great content, share it publicly”

Google recommends posting high quality photos in order to gain your audience’s attention. We use this practice when we post content for our clients as well, but Google+ really puts a strong emphasis on high quality images with its new cover photos.

“Record a behind-the-scenes tour”

Here, Google suggests posting videos about the inner workings of your company or group in Google Hangouts. This is a smart idea, and could be a great way to utilize webinars, or online video seminars.

“Respond to your followers”

As we’ve preached before, social media isn’t a one-way street, and it certainly shouldn’t be used like an outdated example of outbound marketing. Make sure you respond to your followers, and try to think of your posts as more of a dialogue, rather than a monologue.

Now that you have some context, feel free to use these as a guide to run your own Google+ page. And if you don’t have a Google+ page yet, then what are you waiting for?

Have you noticed a recent drop in your website’s traffic? This could be the result of Google’s latest update, Penguin 2.0. Chances are, if you were affected by Penguin 1.0, you were also hit by Penguin 2.0. This latest update targets websites that have employed “black hat” link building techniques.

There are a number of reasons for websites to be penalized by Penguin 2.0. Here are a few of the key examples that we’ve seen so far:

• SEO “gurus” who have farmed out their clients’ link building work internationally
• Companies that built their link profile too quickly
• Overuse of certain keywords in the anchor text of links
• Websites that have a number of links from directories

Luckily, there is a cure. First, take a look at your existing link profile. Look for any domains that have a high number of outbound links. These websites are known as “link farms”. Link farms were a popular tool for webmasters who were looking to build links easily. They can sometimes have as many as thousands of links on a page. These sites are essentially considered spam. Unfortunately, whether you created the link to your website or not, you will be penalized.

This is where the disavow tool comes in handy. The disavow tool can be found in Google’s Webmaster Tools, and will remove the link from your profile. Be careful before removing any links, and confirm that they are spam first. Removing helpful links can permanently damage your domain authority.

Another way to recover from Penguin 2.0 is to pace yourself when building links. Recent evidence has suggested that Google can penalize a site if they see a spike in the number of links indexed. So, if you’re doing something like blog commenting, make sure you aren’t doing too much at once. Don’t copy and paste your link to a hundred websites in a day. Read a few blogs each day, and make interesting, and insightful comments when posting a link. Also, be sure to vary the keywords you use in your anchor text, in order to avoid overuse.

So what’s the most effective way to recover from Penguin 2.0, and build more positive links? As Google always suggests, make sure you’re constantly creating good content. Including your link in blog comments can increase your link profile, but this pales in comparison to getting a link in the body text. The only way to accomplish this is to write enough helpful content that other websites will link to in their own content. This isn’t the quickest method, but it’s certainly the most effective, and ensures that you’ll never feel the wrath of Google Penguin again.

Developing a good keyword strategy is one of the most important aspects of SEO. We often get asked by potential clients, “how do you find your keywords?’. Here at Digital Firefly Marketing, we understand the importance of implementing the right keyword strategy, so we’ve developed a more advanced approach.

There’s a common misconception amongst some website owners that there is one magic keyword that they can apply to their entire site, which can get them to the top of Google’s page rank, and increase their traffic. That couldn’t be further from the truth. A good keyword strategy breaks down all the aspects of a site, and utilizes several, low-competition, high-search-volume keywords for each aspect.

Let’s take, for example, Digital Firefly Marketing. When it comes to a business website, the aspects that you want to target are usually the products or services. Obviously, we’re an internet marketing company, so the aspects of our website that we need to focus on are our key services; search engine optimization, social media marketing, reputation management, and web services. Using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, we’ll input each of these services individually, and receive a list of as many as 800 keyword ideas. From there, we select a handful of the best keyword ideas based on competition, and local search volume, and apply them to our site.

Typically, we’ll take a close look at this group of keyword ideas, and choose the best one for applying to the page title, URL, H1 tag, meta description, etc. Then, this keyword, as well as the others, will be used in the content wherever they might be applicable. Keep in mind that Google discourages writing content for SEO purposes, and prefers that content is good-quality. What does this mean? It means that you shouldn’t insert keywords too often simply because using these keywords will help increase your page rank. This practice is known as over-optimizing, or keyword stuffing. We like to tell people to write their content for humans, rather than SEO purposes. Simply put, write your content, and use keywords in a way that it would make sense for someone else to read, and avoid writing content for the purpose of ranking higher in Google search results.

Below is an example of keyword stuffing, as well as an example of good keyword strategy- where the keyword is “SEO company”.

• Keyword stuffing: “Are you looking for a SEO company? Digital Firefly Marketing is a SEO company, which helps clients with their various SEO needs.”

• Good keyword strategy: “Are you looking for search engine optimization? Digital Firefly Marketing is a Princeton SEO company, which helps clients with their SEO strategy.”

Did you notice the keywords that were italicized? These are other keywords that are commonly associated with the term, “SEO company”. Google recognizes that when the term, “SEO company”, is used, these other keywords appear quite often. This tells Google that they must be related, so Google associates these keywords in search results.

Do you have one keyword which is very effective, yet broad enough that it fits multiple pages on your site? You might be at risk of over-optimizing for one keyword if you use it too often. Luckily, you can use keyword qualifiers in order to keep Google from penalizing your site. Keyword qualifiers are words that specify your keywords, and also define intent. So they can help improve the quality of your website visitors, while also giving your keywords some uniqueness, and variety. Qualifiers can be anything, including time & date, adjectives, and location.

Once again, we’ll use the keyword, “SEO company”, as an example. In our case, some keyword qualifiers that we can use with this term include, Princeton (location), or best (adjective). Not only do these qualifiers keep Google from penalizing our website for over-optimizing, they also define our location, and give some context of our quality.

Remember that keyword strategy can be a work in progress. Try not to get discouraged if some of your keywords aren’t increasing your page rank. In that event, don’t be afraid to search for new keywords to implement on your website. Sometimes, finding the right keywords for your site can be an art form on its own.