Bill Hartzer – Weekly Update October 27, 2014

Google Penguin Refresh last weekend, and Google adds Inbox by Gmail, which is useful for reading email on your phone.

We have a few updates this week, and the major one was the Penguin refresh (a refresh, not an update. We also had the launch of Inbox by Gmail, which is pretty good, as I’ve tested it out already. And oh yeah, there’s a new Share button added this week to Google’s header.

Google Penguin Refresh

Last weekend, there was a “refresh” of the Google Penguin algorithm. It’s important to note that this was actually a refresh, and not an update of their Google Penguin algorithm. It was a refresh of the data, using the link signals that they used for last year’s update. So, if you cleaned up your site’s links since last October, then most likely you are seeing some increased rankings. You may not be seeing additional traffic, but if you check your search engine rankings, your site may have jumped a lot of places–I’m seeing some sites where they were nowhere to be found (ranked #100 or #150 or so) and now they’re on the 2nd pages of search results. That’s a big jump. So, don’t be discouraged if you are not seeing a jump in traffic. That may happen really soon.

I’m also seeing some sites that were nowhere to be found but now they’re actually #1 or #3 for their primary keywords. Some of these sites are locally-based, so the keywords are something like “cityname + keyword” rather than just “keyword” or “keyword keyword”.

Turns out that we had some try to take advantage of the Penguin refresh last weekend, and even last weekend I saw “SEO experts” posting about how to recover. Well, c’mon, there’s no way to tell how to recover from the update that just happened the night before. It’s still way to early in the game, even after a week into it. According to Google, it’s going to take weeks for this refresh to be be complete.

I wrote about one so-called expert who jumped the gun on this one. Totally irresponsible, even for Forbes.com to publish something like this.

https://www.billhartzer.com/pages/penguin-3-0-one-can-recommend-recover-yet/

Inbox by Gmail
Google has come up with Inbox by Gmail, which transforms how we see and interact with Gmail. We also get our calendar, social, and email all in one place now. I’ve installed it on my iPhone, and am using it for a personal gmail account. You see, it’s doesn’t work with Google Apps, so if your company uses Gmail, then you cannot use Inbox by Gmail. Kind of disappointing, if you ask me.

https://www.billhartzer.com/pages/inbox-gmail-doesnt-work-google-apps/

Google Adds Share Button Header
Google added the Share button (a new button to share stuff on Google Plus) to their Google header where they have links to other Google services when you’re logged in. This is actually pretty significant, I think. Here’s why.

https://www.billhartzer.com/pages/google-adds-google-plus-sharing-button-header/

SocialCentive Twitter Marketing Software Free Trial
SocialCentiv is some new Twitter marketing software (it’s really a dashboard) that feeds you Tweets by people. You give it a list of keywords (and a location if you want) and anyone talking about that particular keyword from that location pops up on your dashboard. You can then easily reply to them.

Let’s take, for example, a car dealership. If they entered “new car” or “new car dealer” and “Dallas, Texas”, they’d see people talking about new cars. And if someone tweeted to their friends, asking them who they recommend, that tweet would come up. Then, the new car dealer could respond to them, giving them, let’s say, an offer code for $1,000 off a new car.

As you continue to use SocialCentiv, it learns what you like and what you don’t like— and gives you more tweets of what you like so you can respond to those people. Cool part of this is that it’s $49 a month for all-you-can-use of it.

I’ve arranged for a free trail, as a reader of my weekly updates. No commitment, you can cancel at any time. Here’s a link to try it out:

https://www.billhartzer.com/socialcentiv

and here’s the post that I wrote about it:
https://www.billhartzer.com/pages/using-socialcentiv-twitter-marketing-software-lead-generation/

That’s it for this week. I usually send an update weekly, unless there is some sort of “big news” or issue that comes up that warrants an update.