As the lines between search engine optimization and social media continue to blur and form one synergistic effort, it is critical that both small and large companies stay up to date with new opportunities for spreading brand awareness and connecting directly with their audiences. When Google makes a move in the social space, it’s important to pay attention to, understand, and identify how the offering can and should be leveraged for your business.

With the recent announcement of Google+ brand pages, many people may be saying “My business is already active on Facebook and Twitter, why should I bother with yet another social media channel?” This is a valid question due to the amount of time and resources that are required to effectively manage each social media channel. At the surface, Google+ brand pages may seem like just another Facebook with a fraction of the user base. However, these are a few unique elements that you should consider before writing it off:

Smaller User Base

While it’s true that Google+ does have a much smaller user base than Facebook (estimated at 40 million vs. 800 million), it doesn’t necessarily mean you should ignore it and focus all of your efforts on Facebook. With fewer users, come less noise and more focus in the space. Facebook is packed full of updates from the recent integration of services like Spotify and The Washington Post, as well as games, “happy birthdays,” and pictures of friends and family. Google+, on the other hand, seems to be driven more by content of a professional, informational, and industry-specific manner. Because of this, brands may be able to create a much more direct and personal relationship with their audiences.

Unique Functionality

Google+ offers very unique functionality with its ability to host “Hangouts,” or live audio/video chats, between itself and its audience. Hangouts provide an opportunity to directly engage in discussions, receive immediate feedback, and/or provide exclusive content. One example of a brand already using Hangouts is The Black Eyed Peas, where they hosted a session backstage prior to one of their concerts. The Hangout allowed them to connect with their fans, give some inside information on the band, and thank their fans for their support (watch the full recording here).

Another creative use of Hangouts can be seen with Dell. Michael Dell mentioned the possibility that the company may soon leverage Hangouts as a place for face-to-face customer support and sales rather than requiring customers to call in.

Future Integration With Other Google Offerings

As Google continues its recent effort to unify its products and offerings, Google+ is ripe for deeper integration with services such as Google Places and Maps, Web and Image Search, and YouTube. Google has already begun this process in several ways. One of the most recent is the addition of Google +1s into Image Search.

This could become beneficial to increasing a brand’s visibility, socially and via organic/image search, where the brand frequently post images to their Google+ brand page (such as artists or photographers who sell a product or service), and have an audience that is likely to share that content.

Ultimately, whether or not using Google+ brand pages is right for your business depends on your target audience and your level of creativity to use the service to its full potential. In most cases, businesses must fully understand what types of audiences they have, where they are spending their time online, and what types of content they want to consume from each service. Finding the right balance of social interaction and commercial promotion is critical in creating that connection, positively affecting other marketing initiatives such as SEO, and ultimately generating the next sale.

Are you using Google+ for your brand? If so, in what ways are you engaging your audience? And if not, why did you decide against it?

This article originally published at ClickZ here.

SEO is a web pages’ key strength. Any website requires search engine optimisation keyword research to reach its full potential. As a first step, you must work hard to identify the most appropriate wording to meet your business objectives and ensure better web coverage in comparison to your competitiors. It is necessary to do extensive research on keywords, don’t just try to make a guess at what keywords might work and what won’t.

Although SEO is very much a process of trial and error, there are ways you can reduce the risk of having a stab in the dark and come up with a successfully optimised site. By doing the homework in defining your keywords, implementing them correctly throughout your site along with building a strong linking infrastructure, you stand every chance of featuring highly in search rankings.

Once you are obtain high rankings for your chosen keywords, the next thing is keep yourself there. Too many companies sit back and think the hard work is done. Search engine rankings are highly competitive, with competitors looking to out rank each other. The important thing is to understand where your site is succeeding and areas for improvement. How can this be done? The only way to truly keep on top of the competition is through Analytics.

Google Analytics is a tool to analyse the performance of your websites through a real time data stream of statisical data. This allows the immediate determination of the drop in traffic, words people use search to find your site and where they navigate to after landing on your start page. This information can then be used to hep refine and adapt the your website.

Google Analytics can help you identify areas of sites that are in need of development. It may be that the website receives a large amount of traffic, but has a high bounce rate of 80% for example. This is where you can go to search and find exactly what it is that is causing your visitors to leave. Sometimes it is something as simple as a bad link, while in other cases, there may be copy or design problems. Google Anayltics can help you identify such problems and get you back on track.

Basically, use your SEO Analytics problems as the troubleshooter. Starting search engine optimisation can be good, but will become obsolete in no time if you do not seek to develop and improve through time. Analytics’ job is to ensure that minor errors are found and resolved to ensure your website performs as it should.

Just like updates to SEO, the analysis must be regular and potential issues resolved. A few days worth of missed traffic can cause serious problems even for small sites. Take advantage of analytics to ensure your site is fully optimised throughout.

Chocolate Lime provide Google Analytic Reporting with all website design packages.

One of easiest things a new or existing business can do to help promote themselves and obtain some free publicity, is add themselves to Google’s Local Listings.

This is particularly useful for businesses with a new website that is starting out in the world of search engine rankings.

1. Visit https://www.google.com/local/add/login
2. Login with your existing Google account, or create a new one
3. Complete the form and submit information to Google including your logo
4. Choose to confirm the listing by SMS (quickest) or postal address
5. Look forward to additional visitors to your business website