Unofficial Google+ statistician, Paul Allen, has forecast that Google’s first foray in the world of social networking sites will reach 100 million users at some point this week, according to an article published by ITWeb.

Allen’s prediction follows an official announcement made by Google’s CEO Larry Page in mid-January; Page revealed that Google+ had 90 million users at that point.

The ancestry.com founder has also forecast that Google+, which is expected to become a popular platform for social media marketing initiatives, will have a user base of 400 million people – almost half the size of rival, Facebook – by the end of 2012.

He said: “If that rate holds steady, Google+ will end the year with 345 million users. But as I have said before, Google has many dials and levers to use this year to increase sign-ups and usage, including its Android 4.0 roll-out. I stand by my prediction of at least 400 million users by the end of 2012.”

According to unofficial statistics, Google+ is currently growing at a rate of 750,000 new users per day.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.

A recent study has revealed that not only is Facebook the most popular social networking site in general, but it’s also the social network of choice for marketing and advertising executives, according to an article published by BtoB Magazine.

Conducted by California-based firm, the Creative Group, the study asked: “If you had to limit yourself to only one social media platform, which of the following would it be?”

Just over half (56 per cent) of the 500 marketing and advertising professionals interviewed for the study chose Facebook; while LinkedIn came in second with 12 per cent; Google+ rounded out the top three with 4 per cent stating that they would limit themselves to the search engine giant’s first social media offering.

The participants were also asked what they thought was the most common mistake made by creative professionals when using social media sites.

Responses ranged from not updating their profile enough (29 per cent) to providing inappropriate information (24 per cent).

The release of the study results follow Facebook’s – a platform popular amongst social media marketing professionals – decision to file an IPO (initial public offering) application.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.

The resulting photos after a shoot are stitched together using panoramic technology to create a 360 image which allows zoom, pan, tilt etc and hence permits website visitors to get a great experience of how it will be to visit your business. This is not only suitable for retail outlets, museums, gyms and salons, but also for restaurants, cafes, hotels, B and Bs – infact, nearly every business could benefit from this.

The photos are stitched together – you can do this yourself with apps such as Photosynth – and can then be used on your own website, as well as on Google properties such as Google Places etc. You can also upload your own 360 photos to Google Places etc if you wish, and embed these photos elsewhere with a small HTML snippet.

There would seem to be a likelihood that Google is looking to add an extra dimension to Streetview by allowing users of SV to virtually enter businesses with these photos, which would be an interesting development, and make a useful marketing addition to SV for businesses.

AdWords Express vouchers are being offered to the first who take up this offer, but the vouchers expire on 31st March 2012 so you need to act fast.

Some of the United Kingdom’s biggest brands are taking part in a beta trial group for Twitter’s new brand profile pages, according to an article published by New Media Age.

Unveiled in December, the pages offer businesses a greater amount of freedom to customise their page – allowing the chance to display a banner, customise greetings  and a select a top tweet.

Chocolate manufacturer, Cadbury, Asda, Sky HD and EA Sports Fifa are currently the only UK brands to have access to an enhanced page on the micro-blogging site – popular with social media marketing professionals.

UK sales director at Twitter, Bruce Daisley, stated: “Brands want to be able to customise what they are doing on Twitter and personalise their profile. When we first announced the new profile pages in December we had huge interest from UK brands.

“One of the key features is the opportunity to show off a tweet,” Daisley added. “It means that when people come to the page, brands have the opportunity to make sure their brand message is on top.”

News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.

To coincide with the build-up to Valentine’s Day, Heineken has unveiled a new themed app, according to an article published by New Media Age.

Titled the Serenade app, it will allow fans of the brand on Facebook to select one song from a total of 640 (in 20 different languages) to send to their Valentine; each of these songs is performed by Paul “Kiss” Kissaun  - who previously appeared in the company’s The Date advert which aired on TV last May.

Heineken has also revealed that it is looking to move towards social media marketing campaigns based around events that their target audience – young men – can relate to.

Senior director for the global Heineken brand, Cyril Charzat, stated: “We want our Facebook profile to be the hub of all our conversations with our consumers and are using events like Valentine’s Day, as well as last month’s Australian Open final and the Champion League final later in the year, to generate tactical content to target young adults around the world.”

News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.

Lily Bowron, SEO Executive at ClickThrough, explains why TDKs are an important part of on-page optimisation.

Lily Bowron, SEO Executive at ClickThrough, explains why Titles, Keywords and Descriptions are an important part of on-page SEO optimisation.

Writing the best Meta Titles and optimising Meta Descriptions has been a constant struggle for many websites since the dawn of SEO. With Google continuously moving the goal posts, and high competition for specific keywords, making the most out of the display space offered by a Google search has never been more important.

When it comes to optimising a web page, the first port to call for most is TDKs:

• Meta Title
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords

For years, ‘guidelines’ have circulated the Internet, providing glints of hope and some kind of direction as to how many characters to use for a description, in order to maximise conversions. Sadly, it’s often the case that people are left grasping at straws looking for authoritative sites to show them the way, so their descriptions don’t get cut off half-way through, and end with the dreaded ‘…’

Anyone else confused? Still looking for an answer? Here are some examples of previous guidance:

Guidance 1

65 characters for Meta Titles

Google displays about 150 to 160 characters for Meta Descriptions

Guidance 2

70 characters is the maximum for Meta Titles

Roughly 155 Characters for Meta Descriptions

Guidance 3

“Google shows 69 Characters (including spaces) for Page Title.

Google shows 156 Characters (including spaces) for Meta Description.”

Well, the answer is … drum roll, please! …Well, the answer actually depends on the letters you use.

Don’t get more confused. It’s quite a simple premise. When it comes to choosing your letters, some obviously take up more ‘font space’ than others. For instance, ‘M’ and ‘W’ are much wider characters than ‘I’ or ‘J’. Therefore, descriptions or titles with space-hogging letters or characters will provide much less space to display your targeted keywords than descriptions using thinner characters.

Writing a word like ‘Woolworths’, for example, would take up considerably more space than other, more svelte ten-letter words, such as ‘Illiterate’:

Now, knowing this, you may look at your wording choices a little differently in future. You could  use alternative words, which may have the same number of characters, but use letters with less width. This will allow you to show more keywords for both searchers and Google robots, especially for words that are not a priority, or wide conjunctive words which are necessary to help the flow of your sentences.

For example:

Call instead of Ring

Note instead of Memo

Female instead of Women

Heater instead of Warmer

Cupboard instead of Wardrobe

Exclude instead of Without

This month, I will be researching the text shown by Google for a variety of search terms, then comparing the displayed number of characters depending on the use of thin and wide letters.

This, I hope, will provide a better indication as to how many characters will be shown on Google searches, depending on the specific letters used.

Follow this blog to find the ‘Perfect Size’ for Meta Titles and Descriptions, rather than the ‘Magic Number’, and it could help you get the most out of your Meta Titles and Descriptions.

In my next post I’ll be looking at title tags in more detail.

Lily Bowron, SEO Executive at ClickThrough shares some thoughts on optimising title tags

Lily Bowron, SEO Executive at ClickThrough, offers up some thoughts on changes affecting page title tag optimisation for search engines.

You may have noticed recently that Google seems to be altering title tags for branded pages – or rather, it is altering the way that a title tag is displayed, depending on the user’s search query relating to brand searches. This is frustrating when SEOs like us spend a long time writing and optimising TDK’s (Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords) to improve search rankings and maximise clickthrough rate.

For example, let’s say that your client sells unicorns (let’s keep it simple), and their page title is a simple, straightforward brand name:

Unicorn Corp

When users search for this brand, the page title would be displayed ‘verbatim’ – using exactly the same text as the search query.

Let’s suppose that your strategy is to show that your client’s website specialises in other mythical creatures, as well as unicorns, and you want to attract a user’s attention with additional title information. In this case, if Google decides to display the text in a different way to your carefully optimised, keyword-rich title, it would be very frustrating. For example, Google may not display the title below as originally optimised:

Unicorns Corp | High Quality Mythical Creatures | Fairy Tale Animals

The question therefore is, to what level do we spend time deliberating over our titles, if Google then decides to veto titles for the best interests of its users relating to brand names? In some cases, I can understand how it could be beneficial if the user was looking for something very specific such as:

Rangemaster Toledo 110 Duel Fuel Stainless Steel Chrome

In this instance, displaying exactly what the user had typed could increase clickthrough rate. But at what point does Google decide to change the Meta Title of a site? If the top 3 search results are all similar selling the same brand or product, would it display the same ‘Google-edited’ title for each of them?

At the moment Google seems to be experimenting with this idea of ‘Title Tailoring’, stating that changes are more common with sites that have left their titles blank – or pages with the title ‘Home Page’, which is not descriptive or useful to the user.

But does this present an unfair advantage to those sites that have not taken the time to optimise specific titles to specific page… ?

Will Google now add search-query influenced titles to these pages if the title tag is left blank… ?

Will this increase the popularity of these sites and result in competitive disadvantages to those sites that have taken the time to submit their own TDK’s…?

THEREFORE… Should we all delete our TDK’s relating to our brands and let Google do the hard work for us…?

Unfortunately – for the moment, at least – there seems to be no clear guide as to if and when Google may change Titles. Despite the efforts of many bloggers, the lack of clear information means that we’re in a ‘blind leading the blind’ situation. In our opinion, Google is experimenting with title tailoring to examine the change in clickthrough rate (CTR) if a branded page’s title tag is changed.

It would, after all, be a logical experiment to examine the CTR of a brand-only title for a home page, versus a title tag edited by Google. We just wish Google would make it clear when it is altering site search results in this way, so we could also measure it too. Otherwise Google is affecting our CTR without informing us, leaving us faltering in the dark, trying to justify any unusual activity. We can only hope that Google’s testing is reaping interesting CTR results, and that – hopefully – they will share these Title-editing gems with us in future.

We will keep you posted on how this testing should alter your search engine optimisation strategy…

NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski has launched a new social media marketing initiative in the run up to the start of the new season, according to an article published by Fox Sports.

Keselowski – who drives for the Penske Racing team – is offering 5,000 of his Twitter followers the opportunity to have their names inscribed on the tray of his Dodge truck in time for the season opener at the Daytona International Speedway.

In order to enter the contest, users must follow the accounts of Cequent’s Reese Towpower (@ReeseTowpower), Cooper Standard (@CooperStandard) and Keselowski’s personal account (@Keselowski).

Each of the lucky winners will also receive an autographed photo of Keselowski with his Dodge truck. Ten more names are also to be drawn from the list of 5,000; these winners will get their names inscribed in a larger size.

Commenting on the contest, Keselowski, said: “During the off-season, I have been putting a lot of thought into how to further engage with the fans. Social media, and Twitter in particular is an important tool for NASCAR, for the drivers, and for the sponsors. This contest is designed to bring all three of these elements together in a way that can uniquely reward the fans.

“It will be cool to, in a way, carry all of the prize winners with me in the race,” he added.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.

Many businesses, when conducting social media marketing campaigns spread across various social channels, use a Twitter client – which allows them to post once for all channels, rather than individually for each.

Neal Schaffer, writing for Business 2 Community, has, with the help of Cibo, highlighted the top 20 Twitter clients being used in 2012.

Unsurprisingly HootSuite is the most popular; web-based, HootSuite makes it possible for users to publish multiple posts on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – there are also plans to support Google+ in the pipeline.

Importantly HootSuite also offers data that can be used by businesses to improve their brand awareness, demographic data and follower growth.

Twitter ranked second and is still considered to be a simple way to tweet your message if your business is operating just one account; however, if you operate more than one account, Schaffer recommends using something else.

Tweetdeck, which was purchased by Twitter, rounds out the top three and is still considered a good option, particularly with mobile devices – such as those operating Android, as well as iPhones and iPads.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.

Chris Johnson from Google UK takes ClickThrough staff through the latest in AdWords PPC, YouTube advertising and Google Analytics best practice

Amy Bott, Head of Paid Search and Affiliates shares some of the latest changes affecting AdWords, including Mobile PPC, YouTube advertising and some important match type changes.

Anyone involved with running successful search engine optimisation and pay per click marketing campaigns knows the importance of staying up to date with the latest search engine changes.

SEO and PPC aren’t “one size fits all” services – every campaign needs to be devised afresh. Just because something worked before, doesn’t mean it will again.

For a start, the world of search is constantly evolving.  All the major search engines make regular updates to their algorithms, to return more accurate results, weed out the ‘good’ pages from the bad, or give due weight to ‘trustworthy’ sources.

These kinds of changes – such as the recent Google Panda update – have a huge impact on our work as a search marketing company. Because the success of our online marketing services hinges entirely on our ability to master the available tools for managing both search engine marketing and pay per click services, we must ensure our staff are always equipped with the latest insider know-how and training.

ClickThrough Marketing’s own Digital Academy helps keep staff on their toes: we run regular training courses to test and develop our experts’ knowledge. We also make sure our SEO and PPC experts have the latest qualifications – such as Google AdWords or Analytics certification.

Our staff expertise is passed onto our clients, so continual development is crucial to help us build winning online PR and PPC management services. ClickThrough’s commitment to nurturing our staff skills means we’re able to deliver the cracking results we achieve for clients like Peugeot, Nectar and Halfords Autocentres.

Whenever possible, we take the opportunity to learn directly from those who affect our work. Last week, this took the form of a highly informative and interesting talk with Chris Johnson from Google UK.

Even the most technologically ignorant amongst us will be aware of Google – it’s the world’s biggest search engine, handles unimaginable volumes of search traffic every day, and, as a result of its market dominance, is the main focal point for most SEO and PPC campaigns.

We decided to invite Chris over to ClickThrough HQ in Lichfield to discuss recent changes in Google’s products, including a run-down of new reporting tools and services available to help us manage client accounts. This involved talking about some of the new AdWords beta tests, and we even got a sneak preview of the latest Analytics interface.

This visit was very worthwhile, with all the members of our SEO and PPC teams getting the chance to hear from Chris, and ask questions.

As head of paid search and affiliates, I was particularly interested in the latest changes to affect PPC – and we all came away from the day having learned a few new tricks.

Here are just five things we learnt from Chris that will benefit our SEO and PPC strategies in future:

• Streamlining Match Type: This is a big change for PPC. When we set up a PPC account currently, we have to populate it with potential deviations from our core search terms. In laymen’s speak, that means making sure that plurals and potential typos and misspellings are included on our PPC phrase list. Thankfully, this is set to change. Modifiers to ‘exact’ and ‘phrase match’ terms are currently in beta, which will include plurals and misspellings inherently. This will be a huge time-saver for our PPC team, allowing us to invest more time into overall account optimisation and development.

• Mobile matters: There are tools available to allow you to target internet users based on the operating system used on their mobile. With mobile now accounting for the vast majority of searches, this is an incredibly valuable tool. It’s especially useful for promoting a client’s app on a mobile-by-mobile basis – and will also ensure end users get the right version for their phone.

• Targeted YouTube Ads: YouTube’s search volume is second only to Google. Considering Google owns both, that’s some achievement. This change means that, if someone watches five seconds or more of your instream ad within a YouTube video, they will get a remarketing cookie pointing them in the direction of similar goods or services. Remarketing allows advertisers to stay in the minds of internet users, based on their browsing behaviour. Adding remarketing cookies to YouTube will help all manner of clients to boost their overall online conversions.

• Google Analytics data in AdWords: Google provides some really useful tools for monitoring SEO and PPC campaign performance. The latest changes will see Google Analytics data included in the Google AdWords tool. Previously, Analytics data – which relates to a user’s activity after they’ve clicked your PPC ad, was reported in separate tools to AdWords data, which reported on behavior prior to clicking a PPC ad. This change will see all this data presented in one piece of software – allowing PPC managers to get a far deeper and wider understanding of their accounts.

• Think Local: Bid management by location is an incredibly effective tool for PPC. This change will allow PPC managers to focus on searches within a specified location, even allowing them to dynamically insert relevant location information into adtext. This will help ensure ads are targeted properly, and should mean ads work more efficiently as a result. This will be especially useful for mobile campaigns.