Apple designer, Andy Hertzfield, was employed by Google to head up the design (I think we can all appreciate Apple’s insight into design); immediately you notice that the Google+ interface is totally different to those of other Google products out there. However, my one criticism is that there seems to be a lot of wasted white space between content streams on their wall. Although I have no doubt the Google designers will get this right.

Considering when I think back to how Facebook’s design layout looked upon first launch, its a far cry to what it is now. The ease of synchronising Google+ with Gmail, docs, calendar, chat are just a few areas, but still far beyond what Facebook has been able to achieve (FYI, Facebook has just signed an agreement with Skype to compete against Google Chat – I fear they may have missed the boat on this one, maybe they’ll prove me wrong..).

Now for the first time, we potentially have a platform that can manage our lives all in one area, hallelujah! I personally have never used Gmail as much as I have since joining Google+, I’ve even started using Google Calendar and am seriously thinking of moving away from my Outlook and plugging all my pop email accounts into Gmail.

So what does this mean for business?
This does not mean you can now create a profile for your business within Google+ ! Google have already announced that they will be launching a product for businesses shortly. According to Googler, Christian Oestlien, because of the demand for business profiles within Google+ they will be launching this product offering even sooner than originally planned. Both Ford and Sesame Street have had their profiles deleted by Google and have warned the community that migrating your ‘individual’ profiles to your new business profile will become messy.

My prediction for Google+ Business is that it will tie in nicely with Google Places. By using Google Places, which are already approved business listings within Google (thanks to cell phone/landline confirmation as well as Google Street View, adding a touch of verification to the business). They could potentially bring in Google+ streams into Google Places, which will be a sounding board for businesses. Google Places could also potentially display the followers a company has, like Facebook and Twitter. They already display testimonials but now it could even be further enhanced by the activity on the page, this will become a great CRM (Customer Relations Management) tool for businesses! Maybe this is something Hellopeter might have to aggregate??

I also believe that Google+ Business could be an eventual Twitter Killer. I say this because of the use of Circles, now thankfully, I don’t have to know that Joe Soap is scratching his back in Camps Bay. The Google + circles allows you to push content out to relevant people (or ‘Circles’) so your messages become a lot more personal, targeted and private. If Google can achieve a user base of 75 million plus they might even have the critical mass to conquer the giant known as Facebook. They have already 10 million users in their first month and are still on ‘invites only’.

I never even got to mention how Google+ will synchronise with search.. but lets wait until Google+ Business has been launched so we can see raw data!!

Previous videos:
Project SEO – Week 1

The goal for every Company is to be the leader within their respective industry, to do this though company websites need to be conscious of the fact that Google loves fresh original content. To be seen as a leader within your industry you need to be creating your own content and doing your own research. When you provide your readers with high quality research and stats it is bound to gain momentum and receive a few incoming links which will strengthen your blog as a whole.

If you are using WordPress as your content management system for your blog, here is a really cool plugin which creates a news sitemap for you. Download Google News Sitemap Generator.

This is how the Google News Sitemap Generator will generate your post:

<url>
<loc>

http://www.webgrowth.biz/googler-gives-tips-on-news-search/

</loc>
<news:news>
<news:publication_date>2009-09-03T12:29:20Z</news:publication_date>
<news:keywords>
Google Optimisation, Copywriting, Google Optimisation, Copywriting, Google News
</news:keywords>
</news:news>
</url>

Note the publication date <news:publication_date>, this is important for Google to understand what time it was generated. The Keywords <news:keywords> will be used by Google to understand which categories it should insert the news article into.

Examples of Bad Canonical Optimisation

http://www.mydomain.com

http://mydomain.com

http://www.mydomain.com/index.html

http://mydomain.com/index.html

Example of Good Canonical Optimisation

http://www.mydomain.com

Thanks to the guys at Search Engine Round Table, here are a few ways to fix these Canonical Issues:

• Canonicalize the domain (e.g. redirect non-www and IP address to www)
• Canonicalize my index pages (redirect “/index.html” to “/”)
• Remove multiple slashes in the URL
• Remove spurious query strings (my sites’ pages are mostly ‘static’ with a few exceptions)
• Fix-up common typos in type-in URLs
• Fix-up invalid inbound links caused by bad HTML mark-up
• Fix-up URLs resulting from bad copy-and-pastes
• Fix-up outdated or otherwise incorrect query strings
• Suppress the fix-up redirect if the resulting URL does not resolve to an existing file
• Suppress the fix-up if the link is on my own site (In this case, I want to see the 404 error)
• Suppress the fix-up if the remote user is me or a site tester (Again, we want to see the 404 error)
• Avoid recursion in mod_rewrite running in a per-directory .htaccess context
• Avoid the nasty mod_rewrite bug in Apache 1.3.x
• Do all of the above using a single 301-Moved Permanently redirect

To set a geographic target:

1. Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
2. Click the URL for the site you want.
3. Click Settings.
4. Under Geographic target, select the geographic region you want to target.

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