Being CEO of the internet has its perks: it allows Google - the most popular search engine in the world – to give away some very useful features for practically nothing. Most people,however, are either unaware of Google’s added value or simply don’t know how to use the endless features it offers. That’s why we gathered some of the most useful but least known Google tricks into this list – to turn your Google use into an informed and fun experience.  

1.       Check No One is Spying on You

Think you Gmail account might have been hacked? Click the ‘Details’ link at the very bottom of your Gmail page and see when, where and how your Gmail account was last accessed. The last 10 logins are listed.

2.     Add Customized Google Search to your Website

 Google’s Custom Search Engine  enables you to add a customized Google search to your website / blog. This means you can have your visitors use a customized topical search engine that only searches your website/s.  

3.       See What the World is Searching for

Many of us are already familiar with Google Trends, a tool that helps users discover the hottest searches on Google.  Google insights is a similar yet powered up version of Google Trends since it allows you to see what terms are being searched for in given countries or on specific time frames.You can search across specific regions (Australia vs. Europe), categories (health, finance, and sport), time frames (last 30 days) and properties.

4.       Read your RSS Feeds like Email Messages

Great for any content curator or just anybody, frankly, who spends more than 30 minutes per day on their Google Reader. The problem stems from the fact that the default view in Google Reader is expanded, which makes a quick scan-and-drop quite hard to do.To remedy that, change the view from expanded to list on the right hand side of your screen. Now, you have a nice Gmail-looking RSS feed in your hands.

5.       Find Local Time for Any City in the World

Need to know the current local time in Paris, Beijing or Addis Ababa? Find the local time for any city in the world by searching the word ‘time’ followed by name of the city (example: “time London”).

Today we introduce three terrific tools that will help you monitor your website’s activity. Keeping track of stats is a burdensome task, but it is absolutely essential. By understanding the graphs and numbers, you can evaluate success, analyze failures and strategize your next moves.

The following tools provide a clear image of website statistics and will get you familiar with what goes on “behind the scenes” of your site.

 Alexa

Many Online marketing professionals make no business decision before consulting Alexa’s ranking service. Alexa rates websites according to their popularity (Google is ranked #1, Facebook #2), and provides a comparison between similar websites.

Though some people dispute its accuracy, Alexa rankings are still highly regarded in the industry. That’s why keeping track of your website’s Alexa ranking is important. It also provides information about search terms that lead to your site, a daily visitors count, important demographic data about your visitors and plenty more.

 Google Analytics

The most popular tool for website activity stats. Site owners who use Google Analytics start seeing their website in a different light. Analytics helps you understand who is your audience, how did they find your site, what did they do while visiting, and what you can do to guarantee their return.

Frankly, not a day goes by that we don’t check our own Analytics reports to see how we did in the previous day. The data in this tool is so extensive and helpful that it’s almost hard to believe it’s given for free.

 WooRank

WooRank analyzes how well your site is communicating with search engines. In a world where a website’s fate is determined by its rank on Google, understanding your site’s SEO is critical.

After entering your URL, this tool will provide a report about your site’s SEO, as well as a short list of practical things you can do to improve it.

Some information provided by WooRank may sound like gibberish, but they provide a clear explanation for everything. Extremely useful is the ability to see how many links to your site appear on the web and where (good to know – Wix has 323 backlinks from Wikipedia!).

Follow our Twitter list for more great business tools!

Google+: The Basics

You may remember “Google Buzz”, Google’s recent failed attempt to create a social network. Google+ seems to compensate for its predecessor’s shortcomings: for starters, it’s already enjoying more of a “buzz” than poor “Buzz” ever did.

Since its release about 2 weeks ago, Google+ is invite only. You need to be asked by someone already inside to join one of their “Circles”. Splendid! We love exclusivity. And so do thousands of other people. Bummer.

For the time being, Google+ profiles are supposed to be for people and not businesses. Google is attempting to keep its social network old-school-style: a place for real people to share real news, without being chased by marketers and companies trying to sell things. There will be Google+ profiles for businesses in the future, but for now it’s as clean as Switzerland.

Who’s Popular on Google+?

So ho’s Got the Most Google+ Followers?

Google+ Statistics is a nice little site set up by Google that allows you to track the top 50 most followed Google+ profiles. Here’s the score at the time of writing:

1. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder): 98,608 followers
2. Larry Page (Google co-founder & CEO): 54,948 followers
3. Sergey Brin (Google co-founder & ): 42,077 followers
4. Robert Scoble (tech enthusiast): 29,814
5. Vic Gundotra (Google Senior VP): 28,952
6. Leo Laporte (tech journalist): 27,211
7. Kevin Rose (entrepreneur): 23,244
8. Matt Cutts (Google engineer): 22,322

Lots of Google guys are on this list. But Facebook forefather Mark Zuckerberg reigns supreme. A great real-life example of “irony” for fifth graders.

A Social Network and a Button

Both Google and Google+1 have to do with sharing web content through online social connections.

Google+1 is the button. Google+ is the social network. Repeat until understood.

Google believes you’re more likely to look at content that was already “filtered” by people you know. If a friend or colleague of yours has already visited and likes a website, it’s more likely that you’ll also get something out of it. The concept spares you the trouble of sifting through endless ****  and points you straight to the meat.

The Button:

Many +1 buttons can already be seen online. You can spot them on blog posts next to Facebook “Like” buttons, when logged into your Gmail account, and more. When you clicking on one, it turns blue to signify you have “recommended” something (see below example).

Adding a Google+1 Button to Your Website:

1. From the website builder go to Add > Widgets > HTML
2. Click on the “Google Plus1” button
3. Click “Settings” and follow the instructions here to set size and language preferences.

How +1 Can Boost Site Traffic

+1 buttons stand out in search results. We’re more interested in results that people have already visited and recommended for us, right? This can lead to a traffic increase for sites bearing +1 buttons, with more visitors clicking and entering them through organic searches.

You can even check how Google+1 has affected your site’s traffic using the latest version of Google Analytics. Go to the “Visitors” section and click Social > Action. From here you can see how many visitors interacted with your +1 button and other social media.

Impact on Site Traffic

As with all things social media these days, the impact on site traffic is not cut and dry. There’s the new social data in Analytics, and Google’s Site Statistics breakdown. But search guru Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand sums it up quite nicely:

Each site’s own traffic will vary, of course. Google+ might turn out to be great for one; not so much for another. The same can already be true of Twitter and Facebook.

Spring’s here, and it’s a great opportunity for a quick SEO refresh for your website. Take a break from cleaning out your closet and add some water + sunshine to your site’s SEO. By the time summer rolls around, you could be reeling in a fresh new stream of traffic!

Optimize Your Site Settings

When building a new free website with Wix, default text is populated into the site’s SEO settings. If you don’t customize the Title and Description of your website, you miss out on the most effective (and easiest) way to present your website to online visitors and search engines.

From the top menu of the website builder: click Settings > Site Optimization.

1. Site Title

Below is what a website’s title looks like, in a search for “spring dresses”:

> Enter a straightforward title with your name and basic description of what you offer. If you’re a local business, include your city, or “regional” location.

2. Site Description

This text is referred by Google as a “snippet”. It is the text that appears below a site title in a search result:

> Enter in 1-2 sentences that describe your services or product. Use simple, catchy languages that appeals to visitors and makes them want to click.

3. Allow search engines to see your site

There’s an option that allows website owners to block search engines from site. It’s a good tool for sites under construction or website owners experimenting with different versions of a site before selecting the winner.

> Make sure the box “Let search engines find my website” is checked. Be sure to Save!

Optimize Content

The meat of your site is the on-page content. All the text that explains or promotes what you offer is hugely important. The goal is to offer quality and relevant information that provides one thing: value.

4. Refresh your on-page text

Show that a real flesh-and-blood person is behind your website.

> Do a quick sweep over your on-page content.

> Make sure dates are updated to 2011

> Offer updates about about new products or industry-relevant changes

> Fix any grammar or spelling mistakes

5. No spam

It’s easy for search engines (and human visitors) to detect spam content and to leave your site as soon as they enter. Google is getting better and better at spotting spammers.

> Make sure all content is original. Do not “hide” text or links by making them the same color as the background. This is a cheap trick that search engines have been able to detect for years.

6. Use keywords smartly

“Keywords” are words describing your site, that visitors are likely to type into a search.

> Use keywords organically, so it doesn’t seem you’re “packing” them in.

> Check out the free Google AdWords Keyword Tool for new trends or words to consider using.

> Use them in both Site Settings AND on-page text.

Reinvent Your Link-building Campaign

Getting other websites to link back to yours is still the most powerful way to get higher rankings in search engines. However, it’s also one of the toughest parts of SEO since it’s not directly under your control.

7.  Content is king. Add unique, quality content to your site and give people a genuine reason to want to link to you!

8.  Tap into your online community. Find sites, blogs, forums, etc. in your field/industry, and build a name for yourself by offering comments, answering questions.

9.  E-mail or call people. Networking on the web is similar to the real-world model it’s based on. Organize partnerships, joint events, cooperative promotions, etc.

10. Customize your social media profiles. Make it as easy as possible for others to find you by linking your site to Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks. Check out this earlier post on top 5 Facebook apps for businesses (Wix’ new free app is # 1!)

Spring is upon us – welcome it with an SEO refresh!

What is Site Architecture?

Your site’s architecture can have a significant effect on the way your site is perceived by visitors – and search engines. Site architecture is the structure of your website, or how the pages connect to one another.

The easier it is for visitors to find your content, the longer they’ll spend inside your site – and the more likely they are to take action. Filling out a contact form, making a purchase or clicking a Facebook Like button are all actions made by happy visitors…not lost, confused or frustrated visitors who are more likely to press the Back button on their browser.

So, just like the boy in the 1970′s commercials for Tootsie Roll asked Mr. Owl: “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?” you should be asking yourself:

“How many clicks does it take to get to the center of my website?”

Tootsie Roll's Mr. Owl

(Rule of thumb: it should take a visitor no more than 3 clicks to access your deepest content!)

Here are some ways to improve the way your site is built:

1. There’s No Place like Home

Is your homepage really a “homepage?” Or is it the 1st page your visitors land on, never to return to again once they dive into your actual content?

If you’re creating a free website from scratch, or are customizing your page/menu options, make sure your visitors can arrive home in 1 click from any page.

2. Link your Logo

This is a neat little trick that taps into something site visitors naturally expect. Clicking a website’s logo should immediately transport a visitor to the homepage. Whether your company logo is an image file, your name in bold text, animated clip art, or a mixed bag – it’s easy to link any item in your website to your homepage.

3. Cross-link Pages

Visitors shouldn’t have to “dig” to reach your deepest content. Linking related pages to one another opens up the navigation flow – for your users and search engines.

Cross-links for Photography / Artist Portfolios:

• Most popular photos
• Recently added galleries
• About this Gallery

For eCommerce Sites:

• Top products
• Promotional packages linked from HP
• Customers who bought THIS also bought THESE
• Recently reviewed items

For blogs / Personal / Article Websites:

• Similar posts
• Most popular posts
• Latest posts

4. Text Works Best

For your menu buttons and page navigation, try to use text-based links as much as possible, over images / icons / animations, etc. It’s cute to use a funky CD player icon to link to your music page, but guess what? It means squat to Googlebot. Search engine crawlers cannot “read” anything but text, so elements that are crucial to your site’s architecture should be expressed with words:

5. Save the Personal Expression for your Content

We see too many portfolios with impressive artwork that takes too long to find. We know Wix’ free website editor makes it tempting to express your creativity. But when it comes to providing online visitors with content – don’t be a unique rebel.

Instead, treat your visitors to a headache-free experience with:

• Easy-to-spot links
• Good old-fashioned fonts like Arial and Times New Roman
• Link colors in high-contrast with background colors

A Few Final Words

Most of Wix’ free website templates are pre-built with user-friendly navigation. There is usually a homepage and a menu set up and linked to four or five other pages. If you are using several master pages, it’s especially important to make sure people and search engines can get around easily! Go over these 5 steps.

Make your website is easy to get around, and everyone goes home happy…even robots.

A few months ago, a news story broke out about a company that took a different approach to attracting Google’s attention. DecorMyEyes.com is an online seller of designer eyeglasses, whose owner – Vitaly Borker – harrassed and bullied his customers in an attempt to improve his company’s online visibility.

“Organic Link-Building” on a New Level

As angry customers posted furious comments about their DecorMyEyes experience on forums, blogs and consumer review sites, more and more backlinks to the company’s site were created. This type of activity attracted Googlebot…and new orders were placed from uninformed consumers conducting online searches for designer eyeglasses.

This was precisely the result anticipated by Borker, who himself posted a response on one of the forums stating:

“I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.”

Unreal, right??

Art Imitates Web

The whole sleazy scam was actually reenacted in a single scene of a recent episode of Law & Order, SVU. From his hospital bed — after getting shot by an angry customer!–, the owner of a fictitious leather goods company explained his actions to Detectives Benson and Stabler.

Here’s the excerpt from the episode (titled “Bully”), summarized on the show’s website:

Alvarez shows no remorse about his tactics, explaining that the more comments his site generates, positive or negative, the higher his Google ranking and the more traffic to his website. Stabler determines that while Alvarez is a terrible, remorseless person, he has an alibi for the time of Ellen’s murder, as he was harassing yet another customer.

Being a Bully Doesn’t Pay Off

The real-life creep who pulled this stunt, Vitaly Borker, was arrested in December 2010 for fraud and harassment. As of this post, he awaits sentencing. He can face up to 20 years in prison.

A few weeks before the arrest, Google posted “Being bad to your customers is bad for business” on its blog. The post was a response to the DecorMyEyes scandal. Google announced that it had made a slight change to its algorithm in order to detect merchants who provide “an extremely poor user experience,” to avoid a repeat-offense.

Word to the wise: you can’t fool Google in the long-run.

We recommend instead that you play nice, don’t stalk or threaten your customers, and practice organic, civilized link-building.  :-)

While many people still don’t associatively link between social media and SEO, fact is most professional web SEO agencies are integrating social media into their SEO strategies.

The Merging of Social Media and SEO

So when and how did social media become symbiotic with SEO? Here’s a little timeline showing the main events:

• 2009: Google Social Search is added to Google’s algorithm, as a feature that finds “relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results.” When you search for something, you may find content written by someone you know, at the bottom of your search results with relevant links to Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blogs, etc.

For example, when planning a trip to the south of France, my friend Brittany’s Flickr album pops up at the bottom of my search results:

• Dec. 2, 2010: Google and Bing both confirm that links from Twitter and Facebook can affect SEO. (Check it out in this article from SEOMoz.)

• Feb. 17, 2011: Google made a tune-up to Social Search, lifting social content so it appears higher on a page, mixed in with organic search results.

• Feb. 17, 2011: Bing released the Bing Bar – a tool that lets you access Facebook from inside Bing. Users can check their news feeds, notifications, update their statuses, and more. This was a sort-of “power move” by Bing, as Google Social Search does not include Facebook content.

What This All Means or Google vs. Facebook

Let’s face it: many of us learn about breaking-news and current events from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. By combining social web content with organic search results, Google and Bing are trying to get people back into the search box, and away from the “time-suck” of pure social media.

This merging of worlds could bring us more quality, comprehensive search results than we would receive from using only social media, or only search. The implications are huge. We could turn into more informed consumers, world-citizens. We may even find ourselves connecting to people in interesting new ways. Or we might just crack open a Bud and stare aimlessly.

How to Maximize Your Visibility on the New Social Web

1. Customize your social media for the web. Wix recently released a great app for fully customized Facebook fan pages. Use it.
2. Become an “authority” on social media sites. When someone you know searches for something you mention or offer inside your website, now you can boost the chances of appearing inside results. Post a relevant video on YouTube, a photo album on Flickr, maintain a blog, a Tweet-schedule and a Facebook campaign. Link all of these back to your website.
3. Continue practicing SEO. If people wind up spending more time searching the web and less time stalking their Facebook friends, that means more search volume inside Google and Bing.

Chuck the SEO Rapper

There’s been a recent buzz around his “Page Rank” video which started with an article in the New York Times earlier this week featuring the clip. Although the video was originally released on YouTube around a year and a half ago, its message remains highly relevant today – and its popularity is actually growing.

A likely reason is this: As it becomes easier and easier to make your own website, people are getting more and more interested in getting their sites noticed.

The SEO Rapper fits perfectly into this trend of simplifying things for the average consumer. He makes something with a reputation of being “complicated” and “technical” (i.e. Google’s PageRank) into something fun that people can enjoy:

Who is “The SEO Rapper”?

Chuck Lewis, or the “SEO Rapper”, is a web savvy MC who has carved out quite a niche for himself. A professional online strategist by trade, Lewis has worked at several online marketing agencies where he honed his knowledge and inspiration for the videos. He combined his interests in hip-hop and internet marketing, and recorded a series of rap videos released on YouTube, with lyrics that tackle different areas of web-marketing. Popular titles include “Social Media Marketing”, (Oct. 2010), “Page Rank” (Sept. 2009), “Design Coding” (March 2008) and the first track recorded, “Link Building 101″ (Feb. 2007).

Words to Live By

Each rap is as hilarious as it is educational.

Here are some of our favorite snippets by The SEO Rapper. You may want to hum these pearls of wisdom to yourself while you work on optimizing your Wix website:

“your links should always be adding not subtracting”

- from Page Rank

“the internet changed its all about sharing, web 2.0 / on the road or at home / mac book or on my phone”

– from Social Media Marketing

“make friends with who you’re targeting / get a buzz and it goes viral / social media marketing”

– from Social Media Marketing

Check out the rest of the beats by The SEO Rapper on his own site, theseorapper.com, or his YouTube channel.

1.  Go to the Source

If you really want to optimize your Wix website, get acquainted with your site’s HTML code. This is what Google sees, and where Google will look for your keywords. The website builder by Wix translates the Flash on your website (what users see) into HTML (what search engines see).

To view the HTML version of your site, visit your site in a browser. Hit CTRL + U on your keyboard.

You’ll see something like this, but with your content:

HTML Source Code of www.wix.com

2. Set Your Title Tag

Near the top of the HTML code you’re viewing, you’ll notice a <Title> tag. This is the name of your website. It’s the first thing search engines (and visitors) use to figure out what your site is about.

To change your site’s title in the website builder, click the Settings button at the top and go into Site Settings.

• Titles should be no longer than 70 characters.
• Include a brief description of you or your company, and what type of website or company you are.
• 1 or 2 of your keywords

The <Title> Tag in Search Results Tag in Search Results

3. Use <H> Tags

<H> tags, or “header” tags, are like on-page headlines in your site. Google loves headers, so you should take advantage of this element. To add an <h> tag to your Wix website, go to Add > Text > Title.

Sidenote: There are 2 very different uses of the word “Title” when talking about your site and SEO. Let’s clarify these right now:

<Title> tag : the name of your website that sits at the top of your site’s HTML code. This is the linked text in your site’s listing on a result page in Google.

Title texts : When adding text to your website in the website builder, you can choose “Titles” or “Paragraphs”.

Every time you add a “Title” instead of a “Paragraph”, you’re actually adding an <h> tag.

Tips on Adding <H> Tags:

• Think of “Title” texts as the headlines of your website
• Use “Paragraph” text for the other 95% of your text
• Titles should be short – no more than 1 sentence or fragment of a sentence
• Use keywords in your titles
• There should only be one <h1> tag per web page. Check your source code and see how many <h1> tags you have.

Title Text on a Wix Website

For more info on <H> tags in Wix, check out this post.

Otherwise, congrats! You should now have a better understanding of the way search engines view your Wix website. Use this knowledge to tweak your site accordingly.

Gaining links to your website is a challenging task. No nicer way to put it. This also happens to be the key to getting Google to find and index your site.

Search Engines Crawl on Links

Visitors will only discover your site through Google, Bing and the other search engines if those search engines already know about your site in advance. Search engines send “crawlers” all around the web to locate and retrieve data about new sites. This data is used to match a user’s query in a search, in order to provide him or her with the most relevant results.

Getting a new site noticed by the search engines can take time. Submitting your site to the search engines directly can help speed up the process. But this method pales in comparison to the power of link-building. “Link-bait” is the most powerful way to attract search engines.

4 Ways to Gain Links:

1.       Submit Site URL to Directories

Directories are like online libraries of sites. They are themselves websites that categorize and list other sites, based on topic. Getting listed in a directory can boost your site’s visibility with a valuable backlink. DMoz is the web’s largest and most popular directory. It’s somewhat of a challenge to get listed, and there are specific instructions on the DMoz site. Smaller, niche-based directories can be powerful as well. For instance, if you’re an art gallery, try searching the web for art-based directories.

2.       Submit Content to Article Databases

Article databases like EzineArticles.com and Squidoo.com have loads of articles written on a variety of topics. Write a few quality articles relating to your website’s niche, and include some backlinks to your website. Try to use keywords as the anchor text for your links. Here’s a list of the Top 50 article directories.

3.       Write and Release Press Releases

Same concept as the article submissions, only the content must be announcing something news-worthy related to your website, or industry. A product release, a special event or promotion, a new partnership, etc. are all great fodder for press releases. Include backlinks to your website. PRWeb and 24-7 Press Release are great PR sites to use. They cost money, but can lead to valuable links.

4.       Social Networking

Getting involved in an online community related to your niche can lead to many link-building opportunities. Blogs, forums and social media sites are full of people interested in the same topics as you, looking to connect and form business relationships. Join as many of these groups as you can, and make yourself known as someone offering value to the community. Guest blogging and affiliate marketing are two great ways to gain back-links to your Flash website.

Check out this post for more tips and advice on link-building strategies, including how to check the amount of back-links your Wix site has.