Today, Facebook dominates the social landscape, and has infiltrated popular culture to the point that the brand, like Google, peppers people’s speech as a verb:

“I need to find a car hire company, I’ll Google it”

“I don’t have her number, I’ll just Facebook her”.

The growth of Facebook has been well documented, and recent figures now suggest that the social network could hit the 1 billion user mark this year. Local big players in countries around the world are being usurped one by one, from Hyves in the Netherlands and StudiVZ in Germany to Orkut in India. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation now has unparalleled global reach, and that makes it an incredibly attractive platform for advertisers. Facebook controls approximately half of all social media traffic in the UK.

But this figure indicates that Facebook is in decline here. Recent figures are suggesting that Facebook’s share has fallen by more than 7% in the last year, and analysts are suggesting it has reached saturation point. Social media users in the UK are gaining a reputation for being a fickle bunch; MySpace’s dominance a few short years ago was shaken by Bebo, which then stepped aside for Facebook. Now, Twitter, YouTube and even Yahoo! Answers are showing considerable growth. Meanwhile, Google+ isn’t in the top 10 social networks in the UK yet, but it is growing incredibly quickly.

So how do you keep social media users in the UK interested in your online social media presence?

The important thing is to watch and engage with the movers and shakers on the social media landscape. The popularity of niche social networks and forums like Moneysavingexpert and Pinterest, and even local social networks such as KILTR, make social networking in the UK a different experience. Make sure your business establishes a presence in these networks before your friends start to explore them as well. It’s a lot of work, but there are big rewards for those who invest in this kind of brand awareness.

Micrositez Digital is a Social Media Agency.

As an example, Search Engine Land used the search term “music” to measure the impact of the nee social integration. The search as done using the chrome browser in incognito mode, meaning that Google had no access to personal data when amalgamating the search results. These results turned out to be quite interesting. The results area on the right hand side immediately listed the most popular musicians on Google+, Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg and Mariah Carey. Despite this being a people and places recommendation there was no mention of any of their Twitter accounts. And what about other musicians? Katy Perry has broken many Billboard chart records in the last year, and has a huge loyal online fanbase (over 40 million fans on Facebook alone), but her absence from Google+ means an absence from Google’s people and pages results.

A search on the top music suggestion – Britney Spears – immediately prompts the user to select her Google+ profile. Ignoring the suggestion still prompted at least two Google+ links on the front page, and four links to Google-owned YouTube. Her twitter account languishes in 10th place, and her Facebook (with over 16 million fans) isn’t even on the front page.

Feeling a little mischievous, they searched for Facebook. The top people and pages result is Mark Zuckerberg; but it is his Google+ account. This account has never been updated, and this raises some questions on the relevancy algorithm of this feature.

Today, some tech news sites and blogs are speculating that Google could face antitrust legislation over the changes, but it remains to be seen whether this will come to pass.

What this indicates, is that having a Google+ account is more relevant and essential than ever for businesses who want to succeed online. In order to be noticed, companies will not just want their website to appear near the top of Google search results, but to attract users with a Google+ page link. Remember, if your business isn’t considering a Google+ presence, your competitor probably is.

Micrositez Digital is a Social Media Agency.

Google announced that their latest step in the direction of social search would transform; “Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.”

The changes, which come in the form of three new features;

• Personal results
• Profiles in search
• People and pages

Will, according to Google enrich users’ experience.

What does this mean for users?

It means that when you’ve signed into Google+ and search for information on a particular individual Google will help you by drawing out relevant information from Google+ pages, and display them for you in the first few pages.

The response seemed positive, at least for a few short hours. Twitter was among the first to raise its angry feathers making the following statement;

“As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users.”

Search strategist, Rishi Lakhani, shared his views on the news in a recent report by Econsultancy; “I think it’s a desperate attempt to make a rather poor product become mainstream. Google has the largest universal audience base, but not the largest social network. So what they are doing is to try and compete with the powerhouses that are Twitter and Facebook, by using the one super strong property they have, search.”

The changes will only be available for users in the US via their Google account.

A service is being held in his honor today, here on the SEOmoz blog to bid farewell to our good pal. Please feel free to say a little something in the comments, and let Marketplace know just how much you cared.

Wait… What?

When it comes to our Marketplace, let’s be honest, we haven’t put our best foot forward lately. When it made its first appearance back in 2007 it was a great addition to our site and for our community. As we have grown, the Marketplace always seemed to be one area of our website that was neglected and as you can see from the screenshots below it’s a few design revisions behind. Today we are announcing that the Marketplace will be closing its doors next week.

But don’t fret! We will be keeping our Recommend List (the most visited page in the Marketplace) and will give it a brand new look and feel. Over the past few weeks we’ve worked on puttiing together a comprehensive list of companies we recommend. There is some amazing talent out there! More details about getting on the recommend list will be included when the new list is released.

A Look Back

Over the years, the Marketplace did its job (hehe get it.. job.. ok nevermind) well but recently it has fallen into despair a bit. Not only is the design old, but it has put a strain on other systems, causing the site to slow down. The current Marketplace wasn’t built to scale with the growth we have seen in the past couple years, and we’re feeling the strain now. For example, there are pages that do not paginate, pages that don’t cache, database queries that are not optimized, and additional pages that open our website to attacks. Take a peek at the amazing transormation it has seen in the past 4-5 years (aka none).

Enhancing Your Web Presence

Many companies develop websites without concern for techniques like search engine optimisation. A poorly optimised site is unlikely to achieve first-page rankings in popular search engines. Search engine marketing consulting helps entrepreneurs design their web pages to attract the attention of the algorithms used by services like Google and Bing. When employed during the design of a company’s website, SEO consulting saves money by amplifying the effectiveness of future pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Understanding the Costs of Various Internet Marketing Services

The usefulness of different marketing techniques fluctuates based on a wide range of factors. Online marketing consulting firms remain aware of the changing costs involved in each type of advertising. The objective of the process is to reach the highest possible number of relevant consumers without overspending. With professional help, you can easily determine the best way to allocate marketing funds.

Internet business consulting assists companies in streamlining their efforts. This reduces the cost of doing business, and these savings are passed on to the consumer. Ultimately, successful brands gain notoriety by satisfying the needs of the community in a fiscally responsible manner.

Unleashing the Power of Information Technology

On the internet, grassroots movements rise to prominence at blinding speeds. Social media users enjoy expressing their opinions about various products and service providers in status updates and blogs. By pursuing an efficient online marketing strategy, your company can reach a tech-savvy audience that enjoys sharing consumer information.

However, such initiatives present challenges to entrepreneurs with little time to become an expert at online marketing. Internet consulting firms have already committed the time and energy necessary to develop a viable set of best practices. This expertise can be put to work for your company at any time.

Realize Additional Revenues While Saving Time and Money

The online community hungers for information. Search engines connect interested web searchers with useful products and services. Internet consulting empowers businesses to maximize the utility of marketing expenses. With advice on SEO techniques, your company can achieve those first-page rankings in search engines.

Consultants often monitor bounce rates to assist with conversion rate optimisation. They can provide cost-benefit analysis regarding the many available forms of online advertising. Internet marketing consulting firms make these techniques accessible to businesses of all sizes.

With the help of a consultant, your company can increase revenues and save money on marketing.

Comments

Many companies employ the services of a SEM or search engine marketing consulting firm to increase their site’s visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs). These firms are also sometimes referred to as internet marketing consulting companies.

A search engine marketing expert will normally begin by assessing the present standing of the client’s site, the competitive atmosphere of their niche and the marketing budget to be allocated to the project.

Based upon their findings, they will construct a strategy for promotion of the site, using contextual advertising, paid placement and paid inclusion, in concert with the search engine optimization efforts.

What is a search engine marketing strategy?

This is the strategy for implementation of the selected techniques for site promotion, in accordance with the budget allowed. It may include buying space in paid inclusions or placements, purchasing contextual advertising. PPC (pay per click) is a very common SEM technique.

The search engine marketing expert will analyze the competition within the site’s niche, and formulate a plan which will most cost-effectively exploit the market possibilities within that niche. The program which he develops will have a very clear purpose.

The most obvious goal may seem to be to bring more traffic to the site. However, that’s not the case. The true goal is to better qualify the traffic that will visit. This is referred to as targeted marketing… bringing the traffic to your site that is most focused upon what you have to offer.

What can it gain?

Better targeted traffic can result in substantially higher sales, even in the face of reduced total traffic. The effect that can have on your ROI (return on investment) is dramatic! That is what an effective search engine marketing strategy can do for your profits.

Effective search engine marketing services are essential to any company that does an appreciable amount of its business online, in order to allow them to compete effectively. Trying to sell a product or service to someone that doesn’t feel they have a need is usually a wasted effort.

In at least one regard, marketing for an online business is no different than for a “brick and mortar” business of many years ago: it’s easier to sell food to a hungry man. The key is to target your marketing to attract only hungry man.

Comments

WPI ChangeLog.  Modifications by the WPI pit crew!
===============================================================================

v6.3 Updates – Released November 30th, 2007
——————————————————————————-
* Added code that will count the number of commands (and rega/regb) for
all programs. This way the progress bar will be fairly more accurate as
it updates per command instead of per program. (Zorphnog)

* Changed Taskkill to Tskill for a wider audience.
Usage = Tskill [program] Don’t add the .exe, only add the tasks name.
i.e. “Tskill explorer”

* Major advances in implementing the run entries for WPI You now can have the
option of it running AFTER the desktop loads (Thanks ricktendo64)!

===============================================================================

v6.2 Updates – Released August 10th, 2007
——————————————————————————-
* Fixed all of the issues with the extra 4 commandlines

* Sadly the Double quotes on regentries bug has returned so please
remember to remove the quotes from the regafter and regbefore lines…

===============================================================================

v6.1 Updates – Released July 27th, 2007
——————————————————————————-

* WPI will now automatically trim the paths to %wpipath%\Install\Blah.exe

* Added 4 more Commandlines.

* Turned the volume down a bit on the embeded media player.

* Fixed the reboot issues (zorphnog)

* Fixed the api error upon finalizing after a reboot (Zorphnog)

===============================================================================

v6 Updates – Released June 20, 2007
——————————————————————————-

* Fixed the double quotes bug on Registry Before\After!

* Moved hotkeys back to alt+

* Added Punjabi Language and updated several of the other languages.

* Added function of getfileversion.

* Added identifiers for Vista os disk.

* Compiled a whole new system for making the runonce & MCE theme entries for WPI
through RunWPI.exe to be used in cmdlines.txt

* Added the new official theme for WPI.

* Added check for Vista, getOSver()==”Vista”. (mritter)

===============================================================================

v5.6 Updates – Released November 19, 2006
——————————————————————————-

* Lawrenca wrote a script to use 7-Zip to extract archives via a new command
call %extract%.
%extract% z:\archive.rar t:\

* Added combo boxes before all Command lines to add paths and DOS commands
easier.  All paths/commands will appended at the end.

* The Config wizard will now auto-size itself to maximum width available to
use all available real-estate.

* Added combo boxes before Condition and Grayed Condition to make adding
condition checks easier.  All new coditions will be appended at the end.

* Lawrenca wrote code for Config wizard for combo boxes for Dependent Of and
Excludes to make selecting values easier.

* Fixed a bug in Options wizard.  Check On Load was never being set to proper
value.

* Added a default image button in Config wizard next to the picture file
gadget for entries without an image.
Default: Graphics\InstallPackage.png

* Fixed a bug in Add entry in config wizard.

* Added FILEMOVE and DELDIR to Config wizard.

* Tweaked the Config wizard to handle name changes and Clone entries better.

* Added a button next to Unique ID to generate a new id manually/automatically.

* Moved hotkeys from Alt+ to Ctrl+.

* Fixed a huge bug dealing with displaying the category name in the install
window.  It was not honoring the sort order, just alphabetizing every time.

* Fixed a bug dealing with the loading of the tool tip style.

* Added class ftxt (force text color) to wpi.css.  Default is red so know what
items are under a Forced condition.

* Reduced the time required to create the Navigation panel by 50%.

* Updated the look of the manual interface.  Added ‘Expand All’ and
‘Collapse All’ at the bottom.