How to Easily Opt Out of Google Ads Name, Photo and Product Review Features in 6 Steps

If you have just heard that google will soon be using your personal information such as photo, name and history of your online reviews in their latest google ads update never fear, the following 5 steps will allow you to disable this ability.

1. Go to google.com using google chrome
2. Sign-in to your google account
3. Click on your profile image which will then display "privacy" - click on this
4. On the right hand column under terms of service - find and click on "our summary of changes" (small text)
5. Find and click "the Shared Endorsements setting" link under How your Profile name and photo may appear (including in reviews and advertising)
6. Scroll to the Bottom of the page and untick the box "Based upon my activity, Google may show my name and profile photo in shared endorsements that appear in ads"

Once you have unticked the box - google will give you the following notification - "your friends will be less likely to benefit from your recommendations"

This means you have now opted out of this advanced personalized Google ads feature.

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Mastering LinkedIn

With more than 175 million users, LinkedIn is the most popular social network for professionals as well as one of the top social networks overall.


Are you using it to its fullest potential? While Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest have been monopolizing the buzz in the social media marketing world lately, LinkedIn is a powerful platform that often gets underutilized or put on the back burner.

But the truth is, LinkedIn can be extremely useful -- especially when you're aware of all the little hidden tricks that don't get nearly enough exposure as they deserve.

To help you master LinkedIn, below is our ultimate list of 35 awesome tricks you may have been overlooking.

We've divided these tips into three main categories -- optimizing your LinkedIn presence, using LinkedIn for professional networking, and using LinkedIn for business and marketing.

OPTIMIZING YOUR LINKEDIN PRESENCE

1) Claim your vanity URL.

Make your profile look more professional and easier to share by claiming your LinkedIn vanity URL. Instead of a URL with a million confusing numbers at the end, it will look nice and clean like this: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pamelavaughan. Do so by going here and clicking "customize your public profile URL" down on the right-hand side.

2) Create a profile badge for your personal website.

If you have your own personal website or blog, you can promote your personal LinkedIn presence and help grow your professional network by adding a Profile Badge that links to your public LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn has a few different badge designs to select from, and you can configure your own here.

3) Make your blog/website links sexier.

Instead of using the default "My Website"-type anchor text links in your LinkedIn profile, you can change the anchor text to make those links more appealing to people who view your profile. So if you want to increase clicks on the website links you can display on your profile, change the link's anchor text to something more attention-grabbing than the standard options LinkedIn provides. 

For example, if you want to include a link to your blog, rather than choosing LinkedIn's standard "Blog" anchor text, customize it to include keywords that indicate what your blog is about, like "Internet Marketing Blog." Each profile can display up to 3 website links like this, and they can be customized by editing your profile, clicking edit on your website links, and selecting "Other" in the drop-down menu to customize the anchor text.

4) Search engine optimize your profile.

You can also optimize your profile to get found by people searching LinkedIn for key terms with which you want to be associated. Add these keywords to various sections of your profile such as your headline or summary.

5) Install applications.

Did you know that LinkedIn provides a variety of different applications you can use to improve your LinkedIn profile? Browse the Application Directory, and consider adding the SlideShare application or linking your blog to showcase your presentations and blog articles on your profile. The Events application is also a great way to see what events your connections are attending and find other popular industry events to attend.

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How to Develop a Website Redesign Strategy That Guarantees Results

So ... you want to redesign your website. A redesign can be a huge success -- or a total flop. It can also be a long and tedious undertaking, which is why every redesign needs to start with a clear vision and/or problem to solve. And the better you are at defining that vision at the very beginning, the more successful your redesign will be -- and the smoother the entire process will be as well.

That's why we set out to create a helpful guide and worksheet that any inbound marketer can use to plan a successful website redesign. Whether you’re working with an agency or redesigning your site in house, our guide will help you strategize your website redesign, and the accompanying tracking worksheet will enable you to track your progress as you move beyond strategy and into each stage of your redesign.

We've identified seven steps of website redesign: strategy, plan, design, build, optimize, launch, and analyze. But none of the latter six stages will be effective without putting a lot of focus on that first stage: strategy. Let's go into detail about what you should consider at the strategy stage so you can embark on a website redesign that turns out to be a huge success -- not a total flop. And don't forget to download your website redesign planning kit so you can follow along in the worksheet! 

STEP 1: BENCHMARK YOUR CURRENT METRICS

Before you begin planning your redesign, document your current performance metrics. Start by analyzing your existing site over its history in areas such as:

• Number of visits/visitors/unique visitors (monthly average)
• Bounce rate (monthly average)
• Time on site (monthly average)
• Top-performing keywords (in terms of rank, traffic, and lead generation)
• Number of inbound linking domains
• Total number of new leads/form submissions (per month)
• Total amount of sales generated (per month)
• Total number of pages indexed
• Total number of pages that receive traffic

If you don’t have access to this information, then I absolutely recommend adding tools like Google Analytics and HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics for better tracking and visibility into your website's performance.

Furthermore, make note of which tools you used to identify each of these particular benchmarks. Ideally, you’ll want to use those same exact tools when collecting post-design metrics. Otherwise, you’ll be comparing apples to oranges!

STEP 2: DETERMINE YOUR WEBSITE REDESIGN GOALS

When considering a redesign, there should always be a good reason behind it. We speak with a lot of marketers at HubSpot, and we often hear flimsy reasoning like “it’s been a while since we’ve done one,” or "my competitor just did a redesign." These reasons just aren't good enough. Remember: It’s not just about how your site looks, but rather how it works. Be really clear about why you’re doing the redesign in the first place, and tie those goals to measureable results. Then communicate your goals with your team, designer, or agency. Consider the following data-driven objectives for your own website:

• Increasing number of visits/visitors
• Reducing bounce rate
• Increasing time on site
• Improving domain authority
• Increasing number of new leads/form submissions
• Increasing total amount of sales generated
• Enhancing current SEO rankings for important keywords

Many of these metrics-driving goals are dependent on one other. For example, in order to generate more conversions, you may also need to increase traffic while decreasing your site's bounce rate.

STEP 3: DEFINE YOUR BRANDING & MESSAGING

Before you begin crafting your new website design and content, you need to be crystal clear about your desired branding, messaging, and your unique value proposition so it’s consistent across your entire website. A new visitor should immediately understand what you do, how it relates to them, and why they should stay on your site and not flee to your competitors'.

Think about whether you plan to change your branding and/or messaging, of if it will stay the same? If you plan to change it, what about it needs to change? Answer these questions within your website redesign planning worksheet so you can keep these changes top of mind while you embark on the rest of your redesign.

As you're developing your messaging, use clear, concise language, and avoid using industry jargon (AKA gobbledygook) that makes you sound more like a business babbling robot than a human. Consider the following example of how we could describe HubSpot in a gobbledygook way:

HubSpot helps companies across multiple countries reduce churn by backfilling the sales pipeline with highly qualified traffic that generates leads that convert into customers with high lifetime value. We achieve this by providing leading-edge software that integrates all marketing channels for a synergistic view of the data that determines and prioritizes high-value marketing activities.

Say what? Let’s translate that into the way people actually speak:

HubSpot’s all-in-one marketing software helps more than 6,000 businesses in 45 countries attract leads and convert them into customers. A pioneer in inbound marketing, HubSpot aims to help its customers make marketing that people actually love.

Ahh yes ... much clearer!

STEP 4: DEFINE YOUR BUYER PERSONA(S)

Your website is not just about you. And when your visitors land on your website, they're asking themselves, “What’s in it for me?” Speak to them in their language by strategizing your design and content around your business' buyer personas. A buyer persona is a theoretical manifestation of your business' ideal customers. They are fictional representations based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.

For instance, if you're a marketing manager at a hotel who is looking to bring in new business, you might target five different buyer personas: an independent business traveler, a corporate travel manager, an event planner, a vacationing family, and a couple planning their wedding reception.

Make sure you clearly identify your buyer personas so you can shape your website redesign strategy around the website visitors that matter most to you. For help with this, check out our handy buyer personas template -- and accompanying blog post -- to help you research and create detailed buyer personas.

Is your target audience changing as part of your website redesign? Does your branding and content align with this audience? Answer these questions as you're strategizing your redesign.

Then check out our comprehensive article about how to design a persona-centric website experience for more on the subject.

STEP 5: PROTECT YOUR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED PAGES

Getting found online is essential to improving the rest of your site's metrics. If no one is coming to your site, how can you increase new leads, reconversions, or sales? Here are some tips to designing your new website with SEO in mind:

Document your most search-valued pages.

Use your marketing analytics to figure out which pages receive the most traffic and inbound links, convert the most leads, and ultimately cover the most influential topics in your industry. If you plan to move any of these highly valuable pages, make sure you create the proper 301 redirects.

Create a 301 redirect strategy.

Speaking of 301 redirects, this is extremely important in terms of retaining the traffic and link value associated with a given page. Create a spreadsheet to record and map out your 301 redirects (old URLs vs. new URLs). Then hand this document over to someone technical for proper implementation.

Do your keyword research.

For every page on your newly designed site, pick one keyword/topic that the page will focus on. Once you determine the keyword(s), use on-page SEO best practices (use this on-page SEO template to help!) to optimize the pages on your website. Furthermore, consider adding new content and pages to your website that address those particular keywords and topics that are neglected on your current site.

STEP 6: ANALYZE THE COMPETITION

While we don’t recommend obsessing over your competitors, it can help to know how you compare. Run your website through HubSpot's free Marketing Grader tool to generate a report card of how your website and marketing is performing. (Or, if you're already a HubSpot customer, use our Competitors tool.) Use these diagnostic tools to evaluate your competitors' websites as well, so you're aware of their strengths and weaknesses.

Next, take a look at your competitors' websites, and take note of what you like -- and what you don’t. This is not meant to make you a copycat, but rather to help you realize what you can do better. Once you conduct your analysis, put together a list of action items highlighting some areas for improvement and what you can do differently than your competitors. For more information, check out our comprehensive blog post about how to conduct a competitive analysis.

STEP 7: TAKE INVENTORY OF YOUR HIGH-PERFORMING ASSETS

While a redesign is a great way to improve the performance of your website, unfortunately, there are also countless ways in which it can hurt you. Your existing website likely contains many high-performing assets that you've already built up, and losing their effectiveness because of a redesign can severely damage your marketing results. For instance, such assets might include your:

• Most shared or viewed content
• High-trafficked pages
• Best performing/ranking keywords and associated pages
• Number of inbound links to individual pages

For example, if you end up removing a page from your site that has accumulated a high number of inbound links, you could potentially lose a lot of SEO credit, which will make it increasingly difficult for you to get found in search. Keep in mind that many web designers don’t consider this step because they are neither marketers nor SEO specialists. Don’t hesitate to remind them about this step, and help them along by auditing your site and providing them with a list and strategy for maintaining or updating critical pages on your site.

Once you've completed the strategy stage, you'll be much better prepared for a successful website redesign. Now you're ready to plan, design, build, optimize, launch, and analyze your new website -- with the help of our worksheet of course ;-)

Some Small Businesses Have Social Media Budgets Over $100,000

How does your social media budget compare with other small businesses?

If you’re like 5% of the small businesses that have a social media strategy, then you have a social media budget over $100,000 annually.

But what if you’re not part of the $100K club for social media budgets?  Well, the fact is, most of your peers that are already using social media have much lower budgets.  The median budget for social media among those small businesses is far smaller – between $1,000 and $2,499 per year, as this week’s chart demonstrates:

The data is from the 2012 Small and Medium Social Business Study conducted by the SMB Group in mid-2012.  That study surveyed small businesses with under 100 employees.  The numbers do NOT include the cost of internal staff, although the numbers DO include outside consultants. The data covers just those small businesses that already use social media.

A few key points are worth pointing out:

(1) Non-strategic users of of social media are less likely to have a budget for social media. No surprise there.
(2) But what is a surprise, is how many small businesses say they use social media strategically — yet have no budget or report a minuscule budget of $500 or less. You’d think that strategic users would be more deliberate in allocating specific funds for social media. But it’s possible that their biggest expenditure is internal staff dedicated to social media — staff costs are not reflected in these numbers.

(3) Some small businesses are jumping on the social media bandwagon without thinking it through.  They may be wasting money, leading to disappointment later.  Look at the percentages of small businesses with no strategy that are spending $25,000, $50,000, even $100,000.  If they don’t know what their strategy is, how can they know whether all that money is being well spent?

Here is what you should do:

If you operate or work in a small business, this shows what your peers are budgeting for social media.  As you can see, aside from internal staffing costs, social media need not cost a lot out of pocket, especially at the start.  The median external expense is under $2,500 annually (around $200 a month or less). Most small businesses can afford that. 

Perhaps the biggest challenge will be to allocate staff internally, as the staffing costs are not captured here — and social media is time-consuming to carry out.  Also, be sure to first develop a social strategy to avoid disappointment and waste.  It’s not bad to spend — just bad to spend unwisely.

For consultants, marketing agencies and technology companies, consider that small business budgets are all over the ballpark.  Some appear willing to spend freely (even without a strategy!) yet others do not.  That suggests you should offer a variety of different price points, starting with free limited offerings, and offering a migration path up to higher-priced, more full-featured offerings.

As small businesses see wins from free advice and or low-cost tools, the smart ones will be more inclined to invest in higher-level solutions and consulting to drive better results. “Help small businesses develop a social media strategy driven by their business goals to get value from social media,” adds Sanjeev Aggarwal of the SMB Group.

Is the Marketing Campaign Dead?

For years, I've believed that the notion of a marketing 'campaign' is dead. And I’m not the only one who thinks it. In the words of Joseph Jaffe, “Marketing is not a campaign, it's a commitment.” And Eric Wheeler wrote in the AdAge article "Ad Campaigns Are Dead," “Power has shifted away from brands to consumers ... Suddenly, it's no longer about the campaign.”

Paul Dunay has written, "there is no campaign in social media," while Joe Pulizzi said in a video interview that "content marketing is not a campaign, it is a promise to our customers." Even Bill Lee, in his Harvard Business Review article, "Marketing Is Dead," said, "Traditional marketing may be dead, but the new possibilities of peer influence-based, community-oriented marketing ..." (which some of us might call 'inbound marketing' ... wink wink) “... hold much greater promise for creating sustained growth through authentic customer relationships.”

Finally, three years ago, Brian Halligan wrote in his 2010 marketing wish list, "My blood curdles every time I hear someone talk about doing a 'social media campaign' or 'blog campaign.' Blogs and social media behave like compound interest, so if you treat them like 'campaigns,' you lose all the benefits. Marketers should be permanently creating, optimizing, promoting, converting, and analyzing."

So, if the marketing campaign is dead, why is it dead, and what do we do now? Let’s start off with some of the reasons why it's dead ...

Campaigns are temporary, but today, the internet is forever.

Traditionally, ads would last as long as you paid for them to be aired on TV or printed in a newspaper or magazine. Now, people can read your blog posts from 2006 and watch your music videos from 2007. So what exactly does this mean? Well, it means that you might not want to use an animated lizard in a campaign for six months, and then use a spotted dog in some ads for the next three months ... and then use a talking baby in some ads for the next four months. Consistency and commitment to your brand, message, and voice is increasingly important when all the content you've ever created is completely accessible to anyone at any time. If you're all about the talking babies campaign now but what pops up for people in Google is lizard videos, are you really promoting the campaign you think you are?

Campaigns are about you, but today, (inbound) marketing is about the customer.

Marketing used to involve a company deciding what they wanted to brainwash their potential buyers with, and then programming that message into advertisements they would force feed to people because they had no choice. Now, the consumer is in control. Consumers have more and more technologies like DVRs, caller ID, and spam blockers that enable them to avoid unwanted advertising and messages. This means that, in order to get their attention, you have to earn their permission. As a result, your marketing needs to be about them, not you -- at least until they trust you enough to want to know more about you and your products. If your campaigns are about what your company wants to tell people, then you’re doing inbound marketing backwards.

Campaigns are planned and slow, but today, conversation is dynamic and responsive.

In the old world of marketing, you could run a campaign of ads that promoted your product, and then you could turn off all of your marketing for a while. You could stop and start on a whim. Today, once you start engaging with people, they expect you to be there in the future. And when you do inbound marketing right, you become a publisher or a media company for your industry. Imagine if you started publishing a business blog, or engaging with potential customers on Facebook, and then one day you just stopped showing up? In today’s inbound world, that would be akin to a TV network going off the air one day just because they got lazy. Sure, you can do it -- but it is not a great idea. People expect responses when they contact you on your website or blog or in social media, and when they subscribe to something you publish, they expect to get regular updates on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis -- whatever you promised them. Joseph Jaffe is right. "Marketing is a commitment."

What next? Where do I go from here?  

Start by making a commitment to inbound marketing. Stop the madness of coming up with an entirely new theme and creative concept every three months. Start having a long-term view of your brand, message, and voice -- and what value your company can add to your industry. Stop blasting and interrupting people with advertisements about you. Start being helpful and interesting. Start listening. Start communicating. Start publishing. Stop advertising. Start marketing.

What do you think? Is the marketing campaign dead?

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Social Media Continues to Grow, Exits 'Infancy'

According to the Nielsen and NM Incite's 2012 Social Media Report, social networking is no longer a considered a passing trend as consumers are spending more time on social networks than on any other category of sites.

Social media is no longer in its "infancy," the study stated. Nielsen found that consumers spent 30 percent of their total online time on their mobile devices accessing social media sites, while on PCs, social media sites accounted for 20 percent of their browsing.

"The recent proliferation of mobile devices and connectivity helped fuel the continued growth of social media. While the computer remains as the predominant device for social media access, consumers' time spent with social media on mobile apps and the mobile web has increased 63 percent in 2012, compared to the same period last year."

Facebook remained the most-visited social network in the United States, with most U.S. members of the social network continuing to access the site via PC— 152.2 million visitors. Mobile visitors, meanwhile, accounted for 78.4 million members through native Facebook apps, while 74.3 million users visited through mobile browsers. Content sharing service Pinterest produced the largest year-over-year increase in both unique audience, as well as time spent on any social network on PCs, mobile web and apps.

The rise of social media during the past few years has been well-documented. Facebook announced in October that the social network exceeded one billion "active" members, with over 600 million users utilizing the service on mobile devices. Twitter is now publishing 1 billion tweets every 2.5 days.

Google+'s VP of product, meanwhile, had recently stressed that the former is a "social network of the past", with its intrusive advertisements "pissing off users." It's quite a statement for a company who has seen its own social network, Google+, being branded a ghost town since its inception. Although it boasts 400 million registered users, Google+ been criticized due to said users hardly ever logging in. Still, Google has stressed it's the best social service available so it must be, right? ...Right?

This Little Box – The Death of Hotel SEO? Dream On

The basis of these claims is that by squeezing in the Google Hotel Finder paid search box into the initial results page, Google has pushed all organic hotel or OTA listings ‘below the fold’: ie everything the consumer immediately sees, has to be paid for by advertisers.

But Georg Ruebensal, Managing Director of Expedia Australia, said: “We have not seen an impact on SEO at this stage, either for domestic or international searches. Travel SEO has been pronounced dead a couple of times before but it hasn’t happened. There’s still a lot of opportunity to invest in SEO.”

Mr Ruebensal says the most likely impact will be to increase paid search rates because Google has reduced the number of paid ads at the top of the page from three or four to just two to make room for Hotel Finder.

“The top spots are the place to be from an SEM perspective and (reducing inventory) simply increases competition and drives up the cost per click,” he says.

Kate Gamble, Kate Gamble, Director of SEO, Social Media and Digital Content Strategy at Bruce Clay Australia, which oversees search for the Toga Hospitality and Best Western accommodation brands, says has seen no impact on SEO conversion at this early stage of the Google Hotel Finder rollout.

“It’s not really going to change SEO,” she says. “I think evidence from previous Google changes tells us that, for a period of time, some users get distracted but then revert back to their original behavior.” By that she means scrolling down the first page of results to find a natural result that suits their search.

And the reality is that the days when natural results appeared well above the fold are ancient history in web terms. In fact, there are now more natural results on the first Google results page than ever before – up to 29 or 30 for some searches, with paid accounting for roughly 60% and paid 40% – plus a map.

In the golden olden days, it was all text and there may have been 10 organic listings. But it was easier to get seen because there was so much less competition. Search was only being seriously deployed by a savvy few. The rest were yet to catch on.

Now everyone is doing and the competition is cut-throat. The web isn’t fun anymore – just a very expensive necessity.