5 Ways of Penalized By Google Search

Google has a list of guidelines that they follow to rank websites. If you violate these guidelines, you will get penalized by Google Search.

The penalties are different, but there are five common ways that Google can penalize your website.

1) Unnatural Links: Links from spammy sites or links that include anchor text that doesn’t match the content of the page it’s linking to.
2) Unnatural Keywords: Keywords on your site that don’t match what people search for in Google.
3) Low-Quality Content: Pages with low-quality content and thin content will be penalized by Google Search.
4) Duplicate Content: Copying content from other websites or from within your site is considered duplicate content and will be penalized by Google Search.
5) Buying Reviews: Purchasing fake reviews on Google Search can lead to disastrous consequences that take weeks to resolve.

So, if you want your business to succeed and grow, don’t try to outsmart google because it will only hurt your business in the long run. Google is always watching you!

What is Google RankBrain?

RankBrain is a machine learning system that Google developed. It was designed to help Google understand how the search engine should rank pages. RankBrain is the third most important factor in ranking a page after links and content.

RankBrain has been used since October 2015, but it was only publicly announced in 2016. RankBrain is an artificial intelligence algorithm that helps Google understand what users are searching for and what webpages are about, allowing it to rank webpages better.

The Future of Business Is AI

We are thrilled to introduce our Smart Site Technology; the most intelligent website on the internet. Our team of developers and engineers have created an Artificial Intelligence-powered website that has everything you need to keep your competitors at a safe distance. We’re not just a digital services company; we are Website Store & passionate about the future of Artificial Intelligence for business.

Our Smart Site enhancements include but are not limited to:

  • Gorgeous On Brand Designs
  • Data Analysis, Machine Learning & AI Tools To Improve Data Quality
  • Automating Tasks Such As Invoicing & Contract Validation With AI
  • Real-Time Trend Predictability
  • Analyzing Customer Data 
  • Streamlined Data Structure Processes With AI
  • Creating Copy or SEO In Any Language 
  • AI-Enhanced Search Engine Optimization
  • AI-Enhanced Key Performance Indicators
  • AI-Enhanced Design
  • AI-Enhanced Chatbots
  • AI-Enhanced SaaS Systems

AI is already revolutionizing the way we work and live. Businesses that do not adopt AI will find themselves at a disadvantage in the future. 75% of executives fear going out of business within five years without AI. Ready to get started? Visit Website Store today!

Website Store – Humans & AI Working Together

What are Key Performance Indicators? Why do they Matter to your Business?

Harvard Business School professor Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt coined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs are a set of key measurements that are used to gauge how well an organization is performing.

KPIs help managers understand how their team or organization is doing and where they can improve. They also help to make the company more efficient and profitable by identifying areas that need improvement.

How AI changed the game for good

AI can create content that is more authentic and will be more impactful. AI writing assistants can generate content at scale, which is something that copywriters cannot do. They also help with writer’s block. Reducing the workload means that the selected skill sets in a writer’s toolkit are put to better use. AI is also making it easier for writers to find a good editor by generating relevant emails and publishing them.

The reasons behind the change from human-generated content to AI-generated content vary. Some of these reasons include:- Reduction in cost and efficiency- Creation of more authentic and impactful content with fewer errors- non-plagiarism- More efficient use of resources by using the most appropriate specialists for a given task- Greater popularity and adoption of content with no human-generated elements.

More importantly, these AI systems can also create content people want to consume, making it fun to read.

Goodbye Google My Business – Hello “Google Business Profile”

Google Discontinues The Google My Business App – Palm Beach Sept 2022

If your business services customers in a local area, whether at your location or in their homes or businesses, then there’s no denying that Google impacts how — and if — customers find you. Many consumers of all ages and demographics use online searches as the default way to find products and services. Google is an overwhelming choice for those searches, receiving about 86% of search traffic worldwide as of September 2021.

Luckily, most companies have the opportunity to list specific and detailed business information on Google for free, and a Google My Business (GMB) profile is how they do that. Read on to learn about upcoming changes, what they could mean, and how marketers can stay on top of what matters most in their listings.

What’s New for 2022

In early November 2021, Google announced that significant changes to the Google My Business platform were underway, with more to come in the new year.

• New Name: Google My Business has been renamed “Google Business Profile.” This wasn’t surprising to many, since GMB Help documents began using the term “profile” instead of “listing” months ago. Previously, the platform was known as Google+ and Google Local, names that still appear occasionally, indicating it may be a while before “GMB” falls out of use.

• New Access Options: A more significant change is the decision to retire the GMB app in 2022 and encourage business managers to access their profiles through “an upgraded experience” on Google Search or Google Maps. This option has been available for a while and is done by simply searching for your business’s name or the phrase “my business” if logged in and clicking on the profile that appears. This is possibly a more common way to access your profile for single-location businesses.

• Support Changes: Google’s post also mentioned that the current GMB web portal would “transition to primarily support larger businesses with multiple locations.” This has led to mixed reactions from search optimization and digital marketing professionals. Some speculate that Google is moving away from supporting small and medium-sized businesses. In contrast, others suggest that the impact on most small businesses will be minimal since the desktop platform is already being used primarily by agencies and multi-location companies. Since Google has offered only “more details on these changes in the months ahead,” we’ll all have to wait a bit to see the actual outcome.

What’s Not Changing

Whatever it’s called and however you access it, the importance of having a Google profile with the most accurate and complete information will not change anytime soon. Here are a few points to keep in mind when managing your profile.

• Primary Category Is Key

One of the most critical pieces of information on your profile is your business category, especially your primary category. Google offers over 3,000 categories to choose from and adds new ones regularly. Lists like this one can show you what’s available and will report recently added categories. If you’re unsure of what to use, try searching for terms you want to place well for, and see what categories your competitors in the map section are using. 

For example, if you own a shop that sells and repairs bicycles and related gear and clothing, you might initially call your business a “store.” However, you could receive more inquiries by changing your primary category to “bicycle store” and including additional categories like “bicycle repair shop” and “sporting goods store.”

There are also category-specific features to keep in mind that is only available to businesses in certain categories. For example, if you want to post a menu, Google says you’ll need to be listed as a “food and drink” business.

• Frequent Updates to Attributes

There’s a wide range of other “attributes” businesses can add to their profile to share information with searchers — from details about wheelchair-accessible bathrooms to identifying as “women-owned” or “veteran-owned.” These options are also expanded regularly, so it’s a good idea to check them periodically. During the pandemic, many new attributes related to contactless payment and delivery were added, for example.

• You Don’t Have to Pay (for Now)

The profile is free, although you’ll be given plenty of opportunities to learn about and use paid Google Ads. These ads are undoubtedly highly beneficial for some businesses when targeted correctly. But you can still communicate much about your business on Google without spending a dime — for now. Some experts believe Google may one day attempt to make these listings paid, but there’s no concrete evidence that will happen anytime soon, if ever.

One Prediction You Can Count On: More Changes

Looking ahead always has challenges, but we can make one prediction about Google’s offerings with complete confidence: There will be more changes. The pandemic has had massive and perhaps long-lasting impacts on how customers shop and communicate with businesses. By some estimations, it’s pushed the digital marketing industry ahead worldwide by a global average of six years. This has undoubtedly created mountains of customer data that are still being studied and will be used to implement new strategies soon. And as customer behavior continues to change, so will Google’s response and product offerings.

Whether we like it or not, businesses of all sizes must keep paying attention and change along with the platform to continue reaching new customers.

5 Necessary Skills Every Small Business Owner Needs From Day One

 

1. Delegation 

First-time business owners experience anxiety when turning over duties as the business grows. No leader wants to be perceived as the lazy “idea guy,” but there comes a time when growth is essential. Leadership means focusing on the big picture instead of walking around the office providing nothing. Train yourself to delegate every duty that doesn’t need your authority by spending one hour each month auditing how you spend your time throughout the day. You are not doing your team a favor by backing them up with menial tasks if it means you’re not out there creating new opportunities for them.

2. Basic Communication Skills 

This might sound obvious to anyone, but the most enormous and consistent gap I see between founders and leaders is not having adequate communication skills. A lack of communication can be a massive vulnerability for teams and organizations. As a leader, you should lead by example and help implement a culture that thrives on proactive, open, and honest communication. This should flow in every direction and include gaining feedback from clients, partners, and staff. By not having this skill, negative sentiments can grow and spread within the organization. This will create a domino effect, eventually impact employee morale, then spread to other aspects of a small business. A common misconception is that good communication is a natural skill. While it can be, it can also be taught and learned through experience.

3. Financial Literacy 

Nothing is more critical in a business than understanding the finances. A good business owner knows how much things cost, including labor, sales, advertising, etc. This is important to maximize cash flow and have good planning for the future. Numbers don’t lie; they give you an honest, strong understanding of your business. It also indicates what direction your business is growing in and where it needs more focus. 

4. Digital Marketing 

In today’s society, digital marketing is essential for any business to grow. Many people have access to low-cost internet than ever before, and people rely on search engines to help them find information to buy products. A business owner needs to have a piece of knowledge about social media marketing, online advertising, and more to guide the business’s growth. You can hire knowledgeable people on these aspects, but you still need to be informed enough to lead your team in the direction you are heading for your business. You also should have the ability to track and measure the results of different campaigns.

5. Self-Awareness

Self-aware leaders can perceive others accurately and help them align their team’s strengths to the business—make wise choices about how you will handle a situation. Use your emotional intelligence and empathy to assess how you impact others through your characteristics. Successful leaders already have an understanding of how to harness their inner strength. Self-awareness is the key that enables you to develop an authentic personal brand.

8 Ways Social Media Distorts our Realities

  1. Extreme Emotion Distortion: occurs as users have access to virtually unlimited amounts of personalized, emotional content, any user can find overwhelming evidence for their deeply held beliefs. This situation creates contradicting “evidence-based” views, resulting in animosity and fracturing of our collective sensemaking.
     
  2. The Information Flooding Distortion: happens as algorithms and bots flood or curate the information users see based on their likelihood to engage with it, resulting in users believing that what is popular (e.g., hashtags, comments, trends) is public consensus, when in fact it can also be manipulated distortion.
     
  3. Micro-Targeting Distortion: this happens as advertisers send personalized, emotionally resonant — and sometimes opposing — messages to distinct groups of people, resulting in individualized micro-realities that can generate social conflict.
     
  4. Moral Outrage Distortion: occurs when engagement-maximizing algorithms amplify emotionally charged, moralizing content. This results in polarization, mischaracterizations of “the other side,” and the perception of more moral outrage around us than there really is.
     
  5. Engaging Content Distortion: this happens when social media platforms incentivize competition to create more viral content. This results in more frequent posting, more hyperbolic language, and more posting of extreme views, including conspiracy theories and out-of-context information.
     
  6. Anti-Journalism Distortion: is created as social media platforms force reputable news organizations to compete in an environment that rewards clickbait headlines and polarizing rhetoric resulting in less thoughtful, less nuanced reporting.
     
  7. Disloyalty Distortion: this happens when users on public social media feeds try to understand or express compassion for the “other” side and are attacked by their “own” side for doing so.
     
  8. The Othering Distortion: occurs as algorithms amplify divisive, negative, out-of-context content about particular groups. This incentivizes “othering” content, causing us to dehumanize others and view them as unworthy of our understanding.

Source: https://www.humanetech.com/

Manage Expectations

One of the most critical expectations to manage as a business owner is what marketing costs. The price each industry pays is based on what the companies in the space are willing to pay to be 1st.

For example:

Business x is 1st on google and generates 25,000 hits a month at a total of $6000, not including production costs. The yearly average is 300,000 website hits to remain 1st at all times.

A new company comes online and starts with 0 to 1000 hits in its first month, then scales based on its marketing budget. The question then becomes, will they ever catch up, and in how long?

The answer is never the same for any company; we pride ourselves on creating a short & long-term strategy that gets the job done and looks and feels incredible on your feed.

Source: @website_store_nyc

The Fakest of Followers “Celebrity Edition”

Do celebrities buy Instagram followers? Why should they? As they are already big celebrities and people automatically will follow them. But is it enough for them? No, if their real following had satisfied them, there was no need to buy likes and views to their post. But we all know that celebrities and Instagram influencers, even the industry’s big shots, are into buying fake followers.

What are Bot or Fake Instagram followers?

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for celebrities and influencers. There’s a massive variety of users engaging through these platforms. While using these platforms as a communication network, these influencers and celebrities face a major issue of lack of followers. These social media platforms try to use different strategies to increase their followers. So, sometimes instead of working a little hard, they try to use different methods, and one of them is to buy Instagram followers. So these big celebrities buy Instagram followers to show a huge following on their profiles to boost their fragile egos.

Having a certain amount of suspicious accounts on Instagram is cause for concern, especially for celebrities with large followings. Almost all accounts will have at least a small percentage of followers that are, or at least seem, inauthentic. A few suspicious accounts aren’t always an indicator that a celebrity bought that part of their following. There are many reasons why suspicious accounts could be following someone. For one, accounts might be flagged as suspicious because they’ve been inactive for a long time. Spotting fake followers has never been an exact science, but numbers can give estimates, and we used those estimates to give you a rough idea of who has the most suspicious accounts in their follower list.

One of the most popular talked about social media, Kim Kardashian, was accused of buying fake followers. And to everybody’s surprise, it was not the allegation’s first time. Back in 2015, when Instagram deposed millions of fake accounts, many celebrities lost a huge number of their fake following where. Kim Kardashian lost 1.3 million followers, but unfortunately, it was nothing when compared to Akon, who lost 56% of his following in the first hit.

Top 10 Celebrities who have fake followers-

  1. Ellen DeGeneres — 49% (American chat Show host)
  2. BTS — 47% (Korean Pop-Band)
  3. Taylor Swift — 46% (American Singer)
  4. Ariana Grande — 46% (American Singer and Actress)
  5. Kourtney Kardashian — 46% (American Media Personality)
  6. Miley Cyrus — 45% (American Singer-Songwriter)
  7. Deepika Padukone — 45% (Indian Film Actress)
  8. Katy Perry — 44% (American Singer-Songwriter)
  9. Khloe Kardashian — 43% (American Media Personality)
  10. Priyanka Chopra — 43% (Indian Actress)

And like this, many celebrities were accused of fake followers just to boost their accounts and display their valuable profiles. But then, a majority of them declined this accusation and insisted that the fake followers targeted their profiles without their knowledge.