Google Flight Search Touches Down in Europe

After a long delay, Google Flight Search, its airline flight comparison service that has been available in the U.S. since September 2011, has finally arrived in Europe.
The service is a bit limited. A blog post from Noam Ben Haim, senior product manager for travel at Google, said that it is only available, or applicable, for people in the UK, France, Italy, Spain or the Netherlands. If that is you, then the world is your oyster, or at least almost.
"Starting today, you can use Flight Search to quickly find, compare and book flights originating from each of these countries to any airport in the world. You'll also be able to search for flights from airports in these countries and see prices in your local currency," Haim said.
Searches can be conducted in eight languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Basque, Catalan, Galician and Dutch.
Haim said Flight Search will let users quickly compare live prices for tickets and check for the lowest fare icon "to see which dates will get you the lowest fare".
However, there are some big names missing, and they happen to be some of the more budget airlines, something that could harm the appeal of Google Flight Search. Haim said that these are coming.
"Sometimes we are not able to show results for every single airline and we will make that clear. We are working to expand our relationship with other airlines, and bring Flight Search to more countries and in more languages," he said.
We checked prices for a flight to Paris this week. Although search returned a lot of options, prices for Easyjet, one obvious low cost airline, are not available. A disclaimer on the flight search page explains, "Some airlines are not available on Google". These being Ryanair, Lufthansa, Easyjet, Thomas Cook, and Aer Lingus.
Haim said that it will let you find flights quickly, work out what times are cheapest to fly, and discover your location on Google Maps. Other benefits include the ability to see what flights are WiFi enabled.

Reference:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2256413/Google-Flight-Search-Touches-Down-in-Europe

EBRIKS INFOTECH:- 
SEO FIRMS INDIA

Quality Score Insights From Microsoft's Ping Jen

There must be 101 misconceptions about quality score on blogs and discussion forums right now. Ultimately, quality score is a useful tool with which you can prioritize opportunities and optimizations. It is a topic I'm often talking about, and next week, at SES New York, I'll being covering a few quality score optimization techniques I've picked up using Excel.
To keep up to the minute on this frequently used metric, I regularly sit down with Ping Jen for key takeaways on quality score. Jen helped design Bing Ads' quality score, and I've picked out some of his insights I think you might find interesting. Having worked at both major search platforms (Bing Ads and Google AdWords), I've found the more I understand about one system, the more I understand about the other.

Bing Ads vs. Google AdWords Quality Score

Quality score is similar, but not the same thing on both platforms.
"Google uses it as a factor to calculate your rank score in its auction and your AdWords ad rank is your max CPC x quality score," Jen points out. "Because Bing Ads' quality score is established after the fact, it isn't used directly to determine your bid and your ad rank. We generate quality score to help advertisers identify improvement opportunities."
After your keyword goes through the auction, Bing Ads documents its performance and gives you an idea of your marketplace performance relative to your competitors. Jen emphasizes "Quality score is not the end of your campaign management – it is where optimizations start."
Jen also outlined this great heuristic to think about Bing Ads' quality score:

Recent Performance vs. Historical Performance

Many people don't realize that historical account data is also a factor in your quality score, according to Jen. It is considered with, but not weighted as highly as, recent performance to help you assess the marketplace dynamic.
A keyword that meets relevance and quality requirements will start at a quality score of 6. If that keyword is more competitive than the marketplace average for the same term, its quality score will be higher than 6.
Bing Ads publishes quality score once a day. If your keyword's quality score is trending up it could mean your ad is getting more competitive, or that your competitors' ads are losing strength.

Tips: Aggregated Quality Score & Using Exact Match as Your Baseline

Jen had some tips for advertisers trying to read their quality score, too.
"Bing Ads provides aggregated quality scores at the campaign and ad group levels to help you prioritize what optimization works," he said. "Campaigns and ad groups that have a lower aggregated quality score incur a higher cost-to-serve. Advertisers should use campaigns or ad groups' historical quality score to closely monitor their strength. "
Another tip Jen shared is to look at your exact match first because that's your baseline. If your score is low then you have to ask yourself whether these are the right keywords to bid on.

Landing Page Relevance

Many people think that landing page relevance is between your keyword and your landing page. It's actually based on the search query your keywords trigger.
Your keywords can trigger one query with exact match or even thousands broad match. Bing Ads checks to see if your landing page can engage with the intent of each triggered search query individually.
If you have low landing page relevance, he suggests negative keywords and broad match modified keywords are "your best friends." And landing page relevance is not relative to your competitors, but keyword relevance is relative to your competitors.
Additional campaign optimization tips from Jen are available at Bing Ads Community Site. If you have questions or comments we'd love your feedback.
We will both be at SES New York talking about a wide range of topics including quality score, reporting, and multi-channel attribution so, if you're going, we'll see you in the Big Apple!

Reference:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2256405/Quality-Score-Insights-From-Microsofts-Ping-Jen

EBRIKS INFOTECH:- 
SEO COMPANY

The Truth About Bounce Rate: Why Context Matters

Do you measure bounces or a bounce rate for visitors to your website? Do you consider the metric good or bad? Your answer should truthfully be, "it depends."

What is a Bounce? What is Bounce Rate?

A bounce, by definition, is a visitor who arrives on your site, views one page, and immediately exits. By that definition, the bounce rate is the total number of visits with only one page view divided by the total number of visits to your site.

Total One-Page Visits
Total Visits

Is a Bounce Bad?

If you have a high bounce rate, do you panic?
Consider that not everyone who comes to your website is there to make a purchase or convert whatever on-site macro goal you have.
Also consider that with universal results and good SEO, a visitor who performed a specific query may have landed directly on the page they needed. They may have gotten the phone number they needed or that nugget of tech support. Perhaps they even downloaded a PDF from your site.
The point is, you need to apply context to your bounce rate.
For example, in a previous position I was in charge of a college website. Students would often search for a professor's name with the phrase [office hours]. Invariably, they would land on that professor's bio page, which listed office location, phone number, and hours. They'd then leave. While that's a bounce, the website provided the perfect answer on the landing page.
Students have an incredibly short attention span. Getting them in and out of the site with the right information meant they had been provided a valuable service.
Our site had several audience groups: current students, future students (graduate and undergraduate) and businesses (for internships and grants), just to name a few. For the current students, this bounce was actually a good thing. For a future student, it would likely not be.
However, consider the source. The source was a search for a specific professor and action. Couple this information with the landing page and you have a profile of a visitor who wasn't looking to enroll in a new program, come to an open house, or sponsor a research project.
However, let's take another bounce from a group of potential students. These students already registered for an open house. Yet they came back to the open house landing page I used in an email campaign to them.
We typically noticed a high spike and bounce rate to the landing pages the day before and the day of an open house. Typically, these future students would save the email in their inbox and use it as a link to remember the time, room number, and to get directions.
Do all these bounces mean my marketing campaign failed? Not in the slightest.

Segmentation is Your Friend!

You've likely heard it before – it's meaningless to measure data of aggregate groups.

• Why count all visitors, regardless of intent? 
• Do I really need to count the visitor groups in the above two examples as bounces? 
• What does bounce mean to our overall objectives?

Essentially, I want to make sure all visitors convert some goal. Shouldn't the real intent of a measured bounce rate change based on the audience?
Action should be taken on those visitors who don't complete a goal. Whether you remarket, hit them with a survey, or let them wander off to the competition is up to you. However you need to be aware of them first.
Regardless of the analytics software you use, segments are the key to understanding visitor behaviors and intent.
In the above examples, I wasn't concerned with how many of those visitors bounced. They had specific intents and both converted a micro goal. Why continue to count them?
Instead, lose the "bounce rate" moniker. Set up a report to count visits without a conversion who viewed one page. Segment all visitors who have completed micro conversions. Segment to exclude them.
What you'll have left should be a more accurate measurement of people who had an intent but left prematurely for some reason. Call it a "Premature Segmentation."

Reference:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2256384/The-Truth-About-Bounce-Rate-Why-Context-Matters

EBRIKS INFOTECH:-
SEO INDIA

A Guide On Computers & Communication Industry Digital Marketing

EBRIKS INFOTECH DIGITAL MARKETING COMPANY INDIA Share About The Computer and communication services are used for enhancing the use of technology and networks. Those who give computer and communication services have knack understanding of fixing hardware and software systems while interacting with information fields associated with the technology. Specialists of this area either work as independent contractors or work as small and large businesses, which in turn make it one of the most diversified industries.

In recent times, the field of information technology has witnessed some continuous changes and innovation, which in turn making the competition tough and fierce. You can create the name for yourself in the industry by showcasing cutting edge solutions with specialized information that matches with your customer's demand. If you will succeed in doing so, you will be able to develop a stronger base of customers who are interested in the latest trends of technology.

Different ways to use EBriks software-

There are some different ways through which you can use the software-

• Newsletters for highlighting your innovations- Computer and communication fields are continuously witnessing changes with new trends and technology. Keep your customers updated with latest patents & trends and define your professional services ahead of your rivals. Make use of easy-to-format system in order to give more appealing look to your professional look.
• Do surveys to meet specific requirements- The growing trends and changes with computers and communication have made it important to survey the most common trends with products and services in order to understand the needs of potential customers. You can use the survey results for adding extra promotions and features that are highlighted with your trade.

There are varied other available exciting features also will help you to grow with the computer & communication industry and will give you a chance to stay connected with your potential customers by using specialized software.

EBRIKS INFOTECH:- 

SEO COMPANY INDIA

Bing Adds Site Move Tool to Webmaster Tools

A new tool in Bing Webmaster Tools will help webmasters performing site moves. Whether you're moving URL structure around internally or changing your whole site address, the Site Move tool in Bing Webmaster Tools wants to help your site survive the move.
Similar to a 301 redirect, the new Site Move tool is used to tell Bing that you have permanently changed URLs from one location to another. You can find it under the Diagnostic & Tools area of Bing Webmaster Tools.

When using the tool, you must first select whether you're changing your site architecture by moving URLs from one folder or file name within your current site or whether you're changing your entire site address.
If you're changing the entire site, you should first set up that new site in Bing Webmaster Tools. Then you can choose to move from one verified site to another quite easily. Bing provides step-by-step documentation for how the tool works.
The Site Move tool doesn't replace the need for 301 redirects on your server or for canonical tags in your documents. Visitors coming to your old URLs from any source will still need redirects in place to get them to the new location.
This tool simply redirects BingBot and helps Bing's Webmaster tools keep your site URLs straight. Over time, Bing will know the new location of the URLs and return them in the results.
The jury is out on what happens to link juice or other page authority signals Bing keeps track of.
According to a comment from Duane Forrester on the Bing blog, you're also still responsible for managing your own canonical URLs.
"We do not automatically track canonicals and remap," he said. "But if your canonical remains the same, and you redirect the main page, the canonical should still remain valid."
There are restrictions to the tool. Before using the Site Move tool, you must set up proper redirects on your URLs. Bing will check the validity of the redirects to make sure they can be resolved at the new location. Additionally, once you use the tool to move a site, you will not be able to move the new URL locations for at least six months.
Have you had an issue redesigning a site where you fell off the search engines results? Would this tool help you in the future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Reference:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255595/Bing-Adds-Site-Move-Tool-to-Webmaster-Tools

EBRIKS INFOTECH:- 
DIGITAL MARKETING COMPANY INDIA

77% of Mobile Searches Happen at Home or Work [Study]

Google and Nielsen recently teamed to understand when and why people turn to mobile search, and the actions they take as a result.
For its "Mobile Search Moments" report, Google and Nielsen asked 426 consumers to log their mobile searches over two weeks in a diary smartphone app, followed up each mobile search with an email asking for the results of that search, and then conducted an exit survey at the end of the study.

77% of Mobile Searches Were Conducted From Home or Work

Mobile devices may be replacing desktops as the preferred search tool: 77 percent of mobile searches taking place during the study period took place at home or at work. Respondents seemed to find it easier to pick up the phone for a search than to sit down at a desktop or even fire up a tablet.
Nevertheless, 59 percent of mobile searches occurred after 3 p.m., with 22 percent taking place from 8 p.m. to midnight, when people are more likely to be at home or on the go.

55% of Mobile Search Conversions Happen Within 1 Hour

Consumers were more likely to notice ads when in a store - and they found them useful. At the same time, searchers were 55 percent more likely to notice ads while in a store and to find them useful. Anecdotally, people in the study noticed that ads loaded faster than search results and provided relevant information.
Although the context for mobile searches was not usually when people were out shopping or looking for businesses, three out of four mobile searches did trigger additional actions:

• Additional research (36 percent).
• A website visit (25 percent).
• A store visit (17 percent).
• A purchase (17 percent).
• A phone call (7 percent).

Marketers have limited time to capitalize on mobile searches, according to Google and Nielsen, with 55 percent of conversions happening within one hour and 63 percent of all follow-up actions, including conducting more research or sharing information from a search.
The next window of opportunity for marketers is within five hours, the study found. Within that period, 81 percent of conversions and 84 percent of all follow-up actions take place.
Forty-five percent of mobile searches were conducted to help make a decision, and that proportion rose to two-thirds when people were in a store. Not surprisingly, shopping searches were twice as likely to be done in-store, according to Google and Nielsen.

B2B Mobile Search Grows 143%

Meanwhile, mobile searches are rising in the B2B sector, according to a separate study from BizBuySell.com, an online business-for-sale marketplace. Prospective buyers are increasingly browsing for-sale opportunities via mobile devices, the report found.
Unique mobile visits to the site increased 143 percent year-over-year, now accounting for 28 percent of total unique visitors. While tablet traffic grew 155 percent in that time period, smartphone traffic still accounts for more than half of all mobile unique visitors.

Reference:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255624/77-of-Mobile-Searches-Happen-at-Home-or-Work-Study

EBRIKS INFOTECH:- 
SEO INDIA

EBriks Social Media Marketing Approach

Ebriks SEO FIRMS INDIA is a young and leading IT company dealing in SEO services, web designing, web hosting and system development.  Established 4 years back, the company is striving to offer quality and dedicated services to its customers. With subject matter experts in various areas, the company has been successful in dominating the market with its unique strategies. Likewise, Ebriks follows remarkable social media marketing approach to achieve predefined goals with dexterity.

There are numerous of tools available in social media marketing, but there is a need of solid strategy to back them up in order to have the best outcome. With the belief that smart strategy is the foundation of successful marketing campaigns, Ebriks explores a wealth of new perspectives in designing comprehensive strategy to deliver results. They design in road map to give its customers the solid direction on all critical issues. 

This road map can be designed to establish objectives. Here, the professional look into the target audience, target goals and the way to be adopted to reach them. Understanding the needs of the client’s business as well as audiences’ demand, the strategic foundation would be lot helpful in spreading brand awareness and achieving the designed goals. The experts are hired to identify the audience and their needs and then, with the expertise, the social web is created to communicate with them. Once the target customers are recognized, the strategy is designed to meet their areas of interest. Engaging influencer, energizing brand advocates and creating demand with value-added content are all taken into consideration. 

Along with designing strategies, the company also keeps a check on the resources required to handle the implementation and the ongoing support of strategy. One can also get services for monitoring and moderating customer comments and customer services, if required. You can also get 360 degree look at the working of your plan. Ebirks also looks into the new marketing tools that would be required to cater to advanced technologies. With the help of these tools, the company experts would effectively monitor, communicate and create social content to help you achieve the needed publicity. 

 With regular updates to the customer, the company keeps check at the growth and success. Measuring the ongoing success and updating social media program accordingly is also given equal importance. The clients are regularly made aware about their project, taking the needed approvals and feedback. So, now attain your business objective with advanced social media marketing approach with Ebriks Infotech.  

EBRIKS INFOTECH:-

SEO COMPANY

3 Reasons You Shouldn't Turn Off Paid Search

What I like most about digital marketing, and PPC specifically, is the constant evolution of the product and the amount of studies that are completed on the topic.
This week the office was buzzing about eBay’s study on the effectiveness of PPC for their business. The story in the Harvard Business Review was titled, "Did eBay Just Prove That Paid Search Ads Don't Work?"
This sparked a lot of debate, and inbound questions from our clients. Our summary, much like a weight loss ad: “Not typical results, your results may differ.”
Here are three reasons why you shouldn't stop running a paid search campaign.

1. Brand Awareness

Do you know another site, or business, like eBay? Almost everyone knows eBay and what they do. Can you say that for your business? Unless you can, paid search still has a place for you.
Also, think about this quote from Avinash Kaushik’s blog from 2012:

Recently I saw a TV ad by eBay for designer jeans. I typed designer jeans into Google (for that is what people do when they watch TV). The first ad was for Amazon. No eBay PPC ad or SEO listing showed up. Clever Amazon tying its online advertising with a competitor's offline advertising. Now I search for "amazon designer jeans." :)

This is becoming more and more important with the convergence of second screen, or even local advertising, as people shop on the go. You need your ad to be discovered at the time of the consumers need whenever and wherever the context might be.

2. Execution

EBay sells a million different things – from shoes to concert tickets ¬ and their inventory is constantly changing. This leads to an incredibly complex paid search campaign that has historically led to some pretty poor paid search ads. Their use of dynamic keyword insertion has given us classics such as:

These experiences can make it tough to make a positive return on investment if for no other reason than a poor quality score. You must run effective and scalable campaigns in order to truly feel value from a paid search campaign.

3. Promotion Messaging

There aren’t a lot of sales, or messages that eBay needs to communicate in a timely fashion. Many retail or CPG businesses need to be able to constantly update their ad copy to reflect promotions, launches, or even the appropriate landing page for the given ad. There is no better source for real-time testing and optimization than paid search.

Reference:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255608/3-Reasons-You-Shouldnt-Turn-Off-Paid-Search

EBRIKS INFOTECH:-
SEO FIRMS INDIA

2 Deceiving Facebook Insights Metrics

If you're like many Facebook Page administrators, you check Facebook Insights for your Page on a regular basis.
A lot of insightful data is contained within the Facebook Insights user interface (UI) and even richer data if you make use of the API or a robust social analytics tool.
There are also, however, a variety of metrics in the Facebook Insights UI that can be misleading unless you know what the data represents. These metrics relate to Reach and Talking About This and are found within the corresponding tabs in Insights.
The reason why these metrics can be misleading is because they are unique metrics, which means daily totals can't be summed to get the total for a week, month, or any other time period.
For example, you could have exactly 1,000 people talking about your Page each day in February. That doesn't mean you had 28,000 people talking about your page for the month. Those 28,000 stories in February may have come from just 5,000 unique people.
The same is true for the various Reach metrics. Reach is defined by Facebook as the unique number of people who have seen any content associated with your Page.
The challenge is that it takes a significant amount of computing power to be able to calculate these types of metrics on the fly for any date range that a Facebook Insights user defines.
So how does Facebook deal with these types of metrics? It restricts the time increments that you can view to either daily, 7-day or 28-day periods.
In the Facebook Insights UI, your view is restricted to rolling 7-day periods. This is not evident when looking at a chart such as Reach where, based on the x-axis, it appears to be showing daily values.
Hover over any point in the chart, however, and you will see it is actually showing the total for the previous 7-day period. Exporting the data or using the API will allow you to also get at the daily and 28-day values
While fairly useful when used in conjunction with a frequency distribution, or even looked at in relation to impressions, the non-unique equivalent metric, it isn't very useful if you're trying to create monthly, quarterly, or any other report that isn't based on daily, 7-day, or 28-day periods.
What are you supposed to do if these metrics are important to you and your reporting period does not align with those that Facebook provides? There are a few options, none of which are ideal. For this purpose, I will assume the desired time period is monthly.

Option 1

Use the 28-day value from the last day of the month. For March, you would have the correct value for March 4-31, but would be missing March 1-3.
It's pretty clear how this doesn't provide a complete picture and can be quite inaccurate, especially if the first three days of the month were strong days. It does, however, provide a uniform method with accurate data, albeit not monthly data.

Option 2

Use the 28-day value from the last day of the month and then try to create a sophisticated calculation that attempts to estimate the two to three days that aren't included in the 28-day value.
You should be able to get to a point where you have values that are closer to the true full month values than with the previous option. The obvious downside is that you're introducing estimated data points that are known to be incorrect.

Option 3

Only use non-unique metrics when reporting at the Page level. In this case, Impressions would replace Reach and Stories would replace People Talking About This.
If you also report at the Post level, you could still report the unique metrics since Facebook only provides lifetime values for Post level metrics. This method would ensure that all your data is accurate and representative of the full month, but it would mean that there are no Page level metrics related to Reach or People Talking About This.

Option 4

Sum all the daily values for the month with a giant asterisk indicating that the values for Reach and People Talking About This related metrics are wildly inaccurate (please don't use this option!).

Summary

There really isn't an ideal solution here. Instead, you have to pick an option that works best for your needs or come up with an alternative solution that works.
As long as you know that the look of some charts in Facebook Insights can be deceiving, you can at least explain the data to other stakeholders and, if necessary, modify how the data gets reported to meet your organizations needs.

Reference :-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255600/2-Deceiving-Facebook-Insights-Metrics

EBRIKS INFOTECH:-

SEO COMPANY INDIA

Google+: A Quick Start Guide

Google+ is the future of search. Believe it.
If you aren’t on Google+, you're on the path to irrelevance. As Search Engine Watch recently reported, Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt writes the following in his upcoming book, "The Digital Age":

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

This is a big deal and a game changer. The verified online profile that Schmidt is referring to is Google+.
If you've been sitting on the sidelines expecting Google+ to fade away, forget it. No serious marketer can afford to ignore the implications of Google Plus and authorship.
In Guy Kawasaki’s book, "What the Plus", he asserts “…Google+ is to Facebook and Twitter what Macintosh is to Windows: better, but fewer people use it...” I guess that depends on how you define better.
Google+ does have a more robust set of features than Facebook or Twitter. On the flip side, there is nothing “Mac like” in its design or usability.
The following is a quick start guide to help you navigate the often confusing landscape that is Google+

Set up a Google+ Profile

It all starts here: https://plus.google.com.

Your image is your brand – choose it wisely.
Cyrus Shepherd did some fascinating research on the effects of profile pictures on click-through rate (CTR). In the end, he determined there was no magic formula for the perfect picture, but after testing a series of images, he was able to improve CTR by 35 percent. That is impressive.
Ann Smarty took a different approach, by using heat map testing in her quest for the perfect profile picture. The thing that struck me about her research is “you look where they look”. Rich Brooks’ profile picture is a great example of applying this concept.

Bottom line: test a series of images and track your CTR to determine the best one

Link to Your Content

Google lets you link to other profiles, public pages, and websites you contribute to. Find the Links section on your Google+ profile and click Edit:

Link Your Content to Google

Google explains how to add author information in search results.

You have three options for linking content to your Google+ profile. You can:

• Use a verified email address.

• Create a link from your webpage.

• Take the easy way out – use a plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast. 

Guest blogger tip: When you guest blog, make sure that you give the host blog the proper HTML with a link to your Google+ profile and rel="author" in the link. If the blog doesn’t add the markup, you don’t get the credit. Remember to complete the circuit by adding a link to the guest blog post itself in your “Contributor to” links.
Tip for becoming irrelevant: If you don't want your authorship information to appear in search results, edit your profile. Under Setting, uncheck the profile discovery option “Help others discover my profile in search results”.
Once everything is linked up, use the Structured Data Testing Tool to verify that it's working.

Benefits of authorship:

• Personal branding: The key benefit for an author is visibility within the SERPs, which helps with branding. A specialist who writes frequently on a topic will appear in multiple searches related to that topic. This builds brand awareness, familiarity, credibility, and trust.

• Increased CTR on search results: Ranking number one isn’t what it used to be. Profile images now play a significant role in determining CTR

A note on increased CTR: These higher CTRs come with a shelf life. The more sites and authors that implement authorship markup, the less distinguishing the authorship markup will become. Over time, this advantage will diminish and then disappear.

Can a Company Get Authorship?

No, but you can link your Google+ Page (Business Page) to your website using the rel=publisher markup. Again, you have three options for doing this:

• Webmaster linking.

• Direct linking.

• Plugin: There are plugins to simplify the process. The latest version of the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin features an option to add the URL of your Google+ business page.

Benefits of using rel="publisher"

• Your Google+ page will be recognized as the "official" page for your brand and give it search preference over scrapers.
• Searchers using Google+ Direct Connect can quickly navigate to your Google+ page when using Google search.
• An increase in +1's. All +1s done on the site, on the Google+ page, in search results, and on AdWords ads will be aggregated.
• Build relevance and trust for the brand. Your web content, Google+ activities and other social media activity will all be associated with your Google+ page.

Authorship: The First Step Toward Building Author Rank

Authorship is the first step in establishing author rank.
In theory, Author Rank will provide a reliable signal for predicting the quality of new content. After all, past performance is the best predictor of future performance.
The ultimate goal is to have content written by authoritative authors’ rank better than content that is written by less authoritative authors.
Author Rank will likely be determined by metrics like the number of shares, pluses, comments, citations, and authority on Google+.
Benefits of building author rank:

• Authors now get recognition and credit for being an authority. Whether you're a doctor, lawyer, dentist, or chef, you want to be known as the expert in your field. Author Rank builds this authority with every piece of content you create.
• In the past, creating great content was a benefit for the website or blog that it was published on – that's where it ended. With authorship, not only will that website benefit, but you as an individual author will also benefit.
• Authorship provides portability of your expertise. If you leave an employer, you take it with you!

Monitor Your Content’s Performance

When you login to Google Webmaster Tools with the account associated with your Google+ profile, you will find search stats for all of the pages for which you are the verified author.

It’ll show you which pages are shown in the search results, how many times, how many clicks they received, which CTR the result has and the average position.

Identify Authors With Authority

Interact with opinion leaders and give them a reason to follow you. This will boost your own authority.

Trace Your Posts With Ripples

Ripples shows you who is sharing and re-sharing your posts most often.
Ripples visualizes sharing interaction data for your posts over time. This makes it easy to follow key influencers and learn what content is most compelling to your audience.

Ripples provides a visual guide to who has publicly shared a post or URL and the comments they’ve made. Use it to spot trends and track the spread of posts over time, or see how a post was shared and in which languages. Try out Ripples.

Author Rank Takeaways

Once you’ve established authorship, you need to start working on your authority. That starts with publishing high quality, sharable content.
Other ways to increase authority include:

• Getting published on authoritative websites
• Stimulating conversation about your posts on Google+
• Bringing your posts to the attention of other authoritative authors
• Inviting authoritative authors to publish on your site
• Increasing activity and connecting to authors on Google+
• The key to building Author rank lies in usage of Google+ and interacting with other sites and authors.

At minimum, you need to establish authorship and start building author rank, now. Unlike many of the cryptic messages that come out of Google, this one is very clear and direct. There is no excuse for getting left behind.

Reference:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255270/Google-A-Quick-Start-Guide

EBRIKS INFOTECH:- 
SEO COMPANY INDIA

Flu Shots & Symptoms: The Winter 2013 Outbreak of PPC Spending

It's about that time; we're beginning to move out of the dreaded winter season and into warmer weather and actual daylight after 5 p.m. We all know that the winter can be a challenging time, especially when it comes to suffering from ailments such as the dreaded cold and flu. Even Rihanna recently cancelled two of her gigs due to the flu; now that's a shame.
Around the beginning of the winter season and New Year, companies should really be looking deep into their PPC campaigns, although it can sometimes be a time when PPC concerns may be thrown to the wayside despite potential. Winter is prime time to start effective campaigns and to be sure that they are going to remain that way for the duration of the year.
So, just because you might be under the weather (literally) and it might be pretty cold outside doesn't mean that your PPC campaign should follow suit.
Some retailers, specifically pharmacies, have been benefitting from the sickness that surrounds the wintertime with their clinics and flu shots. Searches for keywords relating to cold and flu season are prevalent during the winter months each year.
A few years back, the swine flu was the newsworthy virus that everyone was fearful of contracting; but it seems to have been taken over by the standard "flu" this year, and even the city of Boston was under a state of emergency in January due to the number of deaths and cases.
Flu shots even became sparse if not non-existent in Boston and other areas, so this fact resulted in panic amidst the public. This was a positive fact for some pharmacies such as CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid who were offering free flu shots and benefitted from this dire need for the influenza vaccine.

CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid all gradually increased their number of keywords as the winter season approached, in probable preparation for cold and flu season. Walgreens has been employing the most keywords of the three for a long time and has a much higher budget for their PPC marketing, although both they and CVS seemed to increase gradually around the same timeframes. Rite Aid was overall rather stagnant in their keywords.

Pharmacy in-House Clinics: Who is Most Popular?

Pharmacies now have clinics that are meant for individuals who can't or don't want to try to get a doctor appointment and need immediate assistance. While these are available year-round, they are busiest during the winter.
This year, CVS was really pushing their minute clinic services, with the keyword "cvs minute clinic" being searched about 40,500 times per month as of February 2013 and generating 467,000 results. Consumers are also already in the pharmacy when they are being diagnosed, so this is a benefit for sales as well.
Rite Aid's version is called the "NowClinic" and produces almost double the results but searches are minimal. For Walgreens, the "Take Care Clinic" is searched 9,900 times per month and generates 120 million results. So as far as searches go, CVS' Minute Clinic is deemed the winner as a go-to emergency health provider.
Both Walgreens and Rite Aid are currently bidding on keywords that are advertising their own flu shots:

Walgreens is even including misspellings of their pharmacy such as "wallgreens flu shots", although for the most part these keywords don't receive a significant search volume and have a decent CPC. Rite Aid is using a similar strategy to advertise their flu shots, but is using a more geographic focus:

While flu-related keywords for Rite Aid also contain their store name, they have placed a larger focus on geographic locations, bidding on keywords such as "flu shots san diego", "flu shots sacramento", and "flu shots seattle".
Bloomberg and the Center for Disease Control give insight into why Pennsylvania-based Rite Aid decided to focus their PPC more on the West Coast; occurrences of the flu began to rise in January, so Rite Aid took that into consideration and modified their PPC campaign accordingly.
CVS, meanwhile, hasn't been bidding on any cold or flu-related keywords.

Flu Symptoms, 2012 vs. 2013

The public also tends to search for specific symptoms that they may have. When a sore throat rears its ugly head, body aches surface, or a sniffle starts, many rely on themselves to try to interpret whether what they have could be the all-consuming influenza virus, perhaps rather than visiting a doctor.
Could it be the flu? Maybe searching for "flu symptoms" can confirm or deny.

In January 2012, the keyword "flu symptoms" was searched about 74,000 times per month and had approximately 5.8 million results, and the majority of CPC distribution was within the United States.
In February 2012, "flu symptoms " was searched for equally, but results made an extreme jump to 46.6 million, and trends were contained mostly within the winter months of December, January, and February. As historical data shows, there was a big increase in information and results related to the flu between January and February of last year.

A year later, things changed. In January of this year, the flu was a large concern with 70.2 million results (this was the month that the city of Boston declared a state of emergency, so that likely added to the results).
By February, searches were still around 60,500 per month with results dropping to 49.6 million – so interest and social push took a bit of a dive within a month's time. In addition, although overall results increased since last year, they didn't make such a significant jump between January and February.
One difference that can be seen is that CPC distribution has a bit more of a global reach than it did in 2012. Oh, and apparently the actor Burt Reynolds might be related to flu symptoms in some manner; he's searched for almost as much.
Nonetheless, symptoms of and relating to the flu are of concern to the public and the world year after year, winter after winter.

Symptom Checker

In relation to the "flu symptoms" keyword, have you ever tried typing your symptoms into a search bar? Most of us have, and these checkers can be used no matter what time of the year it is, but for understandable reasons receive a bit more use during the winter months. Searching for this term mostly leads to websites such as WebMD and Mayo Clinic.
Between January and February of this year, a significant change took place for the keyword "symptom checker":

While CPC distribution was a bit higher in Australia and the United Kingdom in January than in February, the number of results had a massive increase between the 2 months, going from 13 million to almost 400 million. Now that's an upsurge!
There has been a drastic increase in the talk about symptom checkers as a whole, as so many people use them and more have begun to be launched, such as a dental symptom checker by the American Dental Association. Trends also display that they are used consistently throughout the year, with a bit of a rise in the winter months.

Flu Shot Ads

Ads for the keyword "flu shot" are present for quite a few different websites over the course of the year.
In December 2012, Ask ran an ad that was promoting a service to locate flu shots. Other websites such as the Center for Disease Control have been running an ad that directs clickers to a section of your website that is meant to educate the public on the influenza virus as well as the preventative measure of the flu shot. Other bidders included breastcancer.org, Triaminic, and fluF.A.C.T.S.; all of which promoted flu shots.
The "flu shot" keyword seems to have a bit more of an educational purpose and following than anything. Once again, it can be seen that pharmacies and other retailers who offer flu shots aren't making use of the keyword but are utilizing other methods to advertise their services.

Summary

Winter is on its way out, and so is talk of the flu, colds, and chilly weather (finally). As spring gets underway, it will be interesting to see just how pharmacies alter their PPC and advertising habits; will they create more focus on spring and summer allergies?
In the winter of 2013, pharmacies made impressive use of the flu outbreak that took place, the public attempted to diagnose themselves whether it was for the flu or otherwise, and 12 months made a huge difference in the amount of results encompassing winter-related illnesses.
With April around the corner, will the public begin to increase their searches for springtime conditions? Wednesday, March 20 marks the official start of spring, and with that will unquestionably come variations in PPC, market-wide. What changes do you think it will bring along?

Reference:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255286/Flu-Shots-Symptoms-The-Winter-2013-Outbreak-of-PPC-Spending

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