1. Delete inappropriate pictures

Let your friends know not to tag you in pictures that might embarrass you or show you in a negative light and don’t be afraid to un-tag yourself. Find a respected friend, preferably someone already in the industry you’re looking to get in to, to go through your pictures and give an unbiased opinion on what pictures should stay and what pictures should go. In my last semester at college, I had my boss go through my pictures and it made me feel comfortable knowing that someone who once threw out a resume because of their profile picture thought my collection of college-era photos was appropriate for employers to view.

2. No negative posts

Absolutely, positively NO negative posts especially about your job! In fact, don’t even post anything about your job (past, present or future) unless you are singing the praise of your boss and/or team. Anything that could be seen as negative will greatly hurt your chances at getting or keeping a job. When writing a post (this goes for Twitter too) think to yourself: “Is this business appropriate” and “Would I tell my boss this?” If the answer to both are no, then you should think again about posting. It can get quite annoying to read negative posts from friends or people you follow (most people will actually stop following your or de-friend you… ouch). Rather than bringing down news feeds or timelines, post a positive quote that makes you feel better and helps you forget about whatever shitty thing just happened.

3. Change privacy settings

There are so many privacy setting options on Facebook now that you can customize groups and share certain information with certain groups. You can, of course, hide yourself from being searched for by just anyone and make your profile ‘friend-able’ through mutual friends only. You should definitely take advantage of the group settings. I have several different groups for close friends, colleagues and family (yes I’m friends with Mom, Dad, several aunts and uncles and too many cousins to count). Here are some tips to control your privacy settings:

To get started managing your privacy settings click on drop down arrow in the upper right hand corner and click privacy settings.

This is on the main Privacy Settings page. If you select ‘Friends’ then only your friends can view your entire profile, but if you select ‘Public’ then anyone can view your profile. To customize your settings click ‘Custom’ and this window will appear

4. If you’re desperate, change your name

I know there are some of you reading this saying ‘I can’t be seen on Facebook at all’ which is unfortunate, but if you’re in a position such as teaching you take the risk of Facebook. Many of my teaching friends have changed their last name to their middle name to prevent students or their employer from finding or friend-ing them on Facebook. Along with changing your name, set your privacy settings on high just to be cautious. To make name changes click on the drop down arrow in the upper right hand corner and select ‘Account Settings’, click edit next to Name and you can change your last name to your middle.

I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface for privacy settings on Facebook. Take 30 minutes out of your day to assess your current settings and make them fit your needs now. If there are any questions about privacy settings I didn’t cover, visit the Facebook Privacy Help Center.

Hunting down log in credentials is the bane to every developers’ and SEOs’ existence. Usernames and passwords are passed through many hands and are often not kept in one secure place.  With that said, I encourage all site owners to identify the account information referrenced below and understand why each are vital to the maintenance of your site.

1. Google Anlaytics

What Is It?

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that provides detailed metrics about your site. Metrics include how visitors are finding and using your site- what search engines they’re using, the keywords they’re searching, the pages they’re landing on, how long they’re staying on site, how many pages they’re viewing per visit…you get the picture.

Why Do I Need Access?

You need access to your account so that you can put the data it provides to good use! Knowing how your visitors interact with your site will help you make strategic decisions to improve the overall user experience.

Where Can I Find It?

Retrieving the log in credentials for Google Analytics can actually be a bit of a challenge. The biggest issue is waiting for their support team to get back to you if neither your username nor password is available. I’ve waited up to two weeks for a response for one of my client’s account information. Some options you have are:

 →  Access the Account Recovery page and enter your information

2. Google/Bing Webmaster Tools

Photo©Flicker/creativecommons/BrentDPayne

In honor of our brand-spanking new website, we thought it might be a good time for a contest! Hit us up with a comment for a chance to win two free tickets to the Sixth Man Jam on Monday December 19^th. The event takes place at the United Center from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

We are all about Chicago teams at The Ocean Agency, and when the lockout ended, we had a mini-celebration. The Bulls already have the reigning MVP, now it’s time to get back to the finals.

If you are like us, then the Sixth Man Jam is right up your alley.

You’ll have the opportunity to:

• Take photos on the court, team benches and with the 6 NBA championship trophies.
• Shoot some hoops on the United Center court.
• Meet Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Carlos Boozer, Luol Deng and the rest of the Bulls, as well as John Paxson, Gar Forman, Tom Thibodeau, Bob Love, Stacey King, Bill Wennington, Sidney Green and Randy Brown.
• Hang out with Benny the Bull and the Luvabulls.

Post your name, email and your favorite Bulls moment in the comment box below. It’s pretty simple.

Winners will be randomly selected and notified by email on December 18th.

Submission Deadline: December 17th at Midnight

HTML5 in a sentence.
You can’t describe HTML 5 in a sentence because there’s too much going on with it. Which is why this is a post. Not a Tweet.

I didn’t know there was an HTML 4.
Neither did I. That’s because the last iteration of HTML – to HTML4 was last century, around 1997. Given the speed of Internet development, that’s like two ice ages ago.  For web-designers, the change will be akin to the change to table-less CSS. Massive, all encompassing, you-must-know-this-or-you-don’t-have-a-job-anymore kind of change.

Is Flash is Dead?

Yes, thank God. Around about the time Steve Jobs ruled Flash out of the I-pad, there was a debate about the future of Flash. Most sat on the fence. If you still really don’t believe Flash is dead, go ask a recruiter how many phone calls she’s getting from clients wanting Flash developers.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

- Steve Jobs
April, 2010

What’s HTML 5 in a sentence again?
HTML 5 introduces a whole set of new elements that makes it much easier to structure web pages.

How will HTML 5 affect SEO?
Because HTML 5 introduces elements that dissects or structure pages, this will effect search engines, and thus effect SEO.  For instance, currently <div> elements have been used everywhere to structure and order web pages; in HTML 5 an array of new, vastly simplified elements will describe navigation, text sections, articles and headers.

For example:
At present, there is no way to tell search engines how to segment a page. But this will change with HTML 5.

Current (Old)

HTML 5

Additionally, there’s:

• A new <article> tag. The new <article> tag is probably the best addition from a SEO point of view. The <article> tag allows to mark separate entries in an online publication, such as a blog or a magazine.

• A new <header> tag. The new <header> tag (which is different from the head element) gives a lot of flexibility. The <header> tag is very similar to the <H1> tag but the difference is that it can contain a lot of stuff, such as H1, H2, H3 elements, whole paragraphs of text, hard–coded links (and this is really precious for SEO), and any other kind of info you feel relevant to include.

• A new <footer> tag. The <footer> tag might not be as useful as the <header> one but still it allows to include important information there and it can be used for SEO purposes as well. The <header> and <footer> tags can be used many times on one page – i.e. you can have a separate header/footer for each section and this gives really a lot of flexibility.

• A new <nav> tag. Navigation is one of the important factors for SEO and everything that eases navigation is welcome. The new <nav> tag can be used to identify a collection of links to other pages.

Change we can believe in.
New changes and the new concepts behind HTML 5 will impact Web developers and designers much more than SEO experts. But this does not mean HTML 5 will not mean changes in organic SEO. Make no mistake, HTML 5 is the future. Let’s just say that the kid’s left high-school and is showing substantial promise at Harvard. But he’ll soon get bored and drop out, go out on his own, and in the process change the World. What we can expect is that when more pages become HTML 5–compliant, search engines will pay more attention to HTML 5. It’s a Chicken and Egg kind of deal. And only then it will be possible to know how exactly search engines will treat HTML 5 pages.

Change we can believe in, pt 2
How fast will this happen? Predicting the future is stupid and belongs to witches cooking stew. Okay so in the future everyone will live on the moon (discovered to be actually made of cheese) and drive hovercrafts to their space-mining jobs …  The way people used the Internet in last decade is vastly different form how they are using it now and guess what – they will use it differently in the future. What’s happing in a nutshell right now though is that people are using – and expecting – websites to behave like native apps. Think Youtube, think instant messaging inside of Facebook, think Google Maps. Google specifically developed and built Chrome from the ground up with these large scale usage changes in mind.  Add to this the development of mobile capable devices and a large scale language iteration such as HTML 5 is not difficult to understand.

Web technologies in the past have taken a long time to become widely used. AJAX (which powers Google instant search for example) wasn’t widely adopted for years. Now it’s everywhere. I believe the two major elements of HTML 5 that will really push HTML 5 adoption are SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and Browser database caching. I won’t go into details of these, but suffice to say that guess what these two technologies really do for the end-user: they make a webpage behave like a native app.

Resources:

Enable HTML 5 capable video on Youtube

You probably have to be a developer to get the most out to these but have a look anyway:

http://html5demos.com/

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/

http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

Why you need a Corporate Culture?

Well, this is good question. I think many business owners feel they have to create a corporate culture that follows the type of guidelines and all the perks that a culture similar to one like Google or Southwest. But, this is not true. Every office has a corporate culture you just have to define and understand what your company’s is.

Yes, your staff should feel needed, wanted, and appreciated.

This might sound like you have to give your staff the world but you really don’t. Your staff just wants to feel like they have value and they matter. Doing something as simple as holding a staff meeting each month empowers your employees with a voice and gives them a chance to make suggestions. This can actually make a huge difference. I read in one article that an owner lets his employees write down something that was good or bad that happened that month and they get to throw the paper at him. It may sound strange but it’s definitely an ice breaker and starts the conversation.

Business owners should always be transparent with their clients and the same goes for your employees.  Communicate with your employees about company goals, good or bad. Together, create a future map somewhere in the office as what you are aspiring to be as a company.

Create rewards for your employees! No, you don’t have to spend a ton of money doing so. Plan companies outings each season, organize monthly happy hours, play games in the office, incorporate summer hours (there have been statistics that this increases work productivity during the week), or even just bring in bagels or donuts on Fridays.

The office environment is also very important. Get rid of cubicles and create pods or group work spaces instead. This can create motivation and a more relaxed vibe, as well as better communication between co-workers when working on projects. Add a relaxation area where your employees can go to eat lunch or just to get away from their desk for a few minutes. Use bright colors, magazines or books, or even add a TV to the area. If employees enjoy their office environment they won’t be ready to drop everything and hurry to get out at 5pm on the dot.

Benefits

Yep, benefits are a part of a company’s corporate culture. Anything that an employer provide to their employees such as health and dental insurance, vacation days, employee of the month or bonuses, transportation discounts, etc can all be incorporated into your corporate culture plan.

The little things

I think it’s important that you gain respect from your employees but can be on their level. Play by the same rules as they do. Just because you’re the boss doesn’t mean you should be walking in a noon every day. Recognize and reward your employees when it’s called for. This also shouldn’t always be monetary. I read in one article that an owner creates fun and different titles for each employee such as “Director of First Impressions” which are more personal and can better describe the person. “Director of First Impressions” would be a great title for a Director of New Business Development or for someone with my job since I’m the Office Coordinator. Encourage bonding among staff and yourself. Let them get to know you and you them. Ask a few employees how their weekend was or about their family. It’s really the little things that make them feel important.

Your mission statement

Every company should a mission statement. It’s what you do and who you are as a company. If you don’t have one, this is an exercise that you can do with your employees.

Here are a few examples of mission statements or motto’s from Fortune 500 companies.

The right employees

To build a good culture you need the right employees and dependable employees. This starts with the hiring process. You don’t always need the most experienced person you need the person with the right attitude, passion, and work ethic. For more on this please read this blog, The 5 key characteristics of every new hire.

I hope by reading this post you can better understand the importance of corporate culture and how you can start incorporating some of these beliefs and values into your office.

I want to end this post with this quote “Don’t create employees, create teams who pitch in, come together and complete together what needs to be done. Create an organization that rewards innovation through pay, play, praise, promotion, and recognition.”

Share with me, I would love to hear how you or how you will incorporate a corporate culture into your office.

10. Easy access to your website

The most important reason you should have a mobile site in addition to your website is because your users will actually be able to access and read your content clearly. Many website don’t work on mobile browsers and with ads, banners, and small text, it makes it almost impossible to read. It personally drives me nuts when I go to read some of my favorite blogs or look up something on someone’s site and I’m unable to access their information.

9. Increase traffic to your site

According to a report by The Neilson Company, 83 million people globally are mobile phone web users. That is potentially a lot of traffic that is not able to visit your site if it’s not easily accessible. Studies show that your website traffic increases the more mobile friendly it is. Its user loyalty, they appreciate being able to access your website whenever they need.

8. Devices people are using to access the web

Mobile phones aren’t the only way consumers are accessing the web, electronic devices such as web-enabled tablets, Kindles, GPS systems, video games, and wireless home appliances all have internet access. It’s not only being mobile friendly but being electronic friendly. The possibilities of driving traffic to your website are endless.

Homepage view of the popular social media news website www.mashable.com

7. Desktop Internet vs. mobile Internet

A report by Morgan Stanley stated that mobile web use will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015. So, you do have a few years to make your website mobile friendly but your competitors might be already in the works in developing a mobile friendly site.

6. How people are using their mobile device

The average iPhone user only spends 45% of their time making voice calls. Which means that 55% of their time is spent doing others things such as checking email, using apps, and using the mobile web.

5. Go, go, go

Nowadays everyone is on the go and it’s all about instant access. If someone has to sit down at a desktop to look at your website they are probably going to be turned off by your site. Did you know that last year mobile use increased by over 100% and is continuing to grow in 2011.

Home page view of a popular travel website.

Same travel website, homepage view on a mobile browser (not mobile friendly).

4. What this means for e-commerce sites

20% of sales and purchases were made by people buying music, movies, tickets, and clothing all through mobile web in 2010. Does 20% seem small to you? That’s actually $1.6 billion in purchases! If your website is an e-commerce website you could be losing money on a big portion of sales as well as consumers.

3. Applications vs. mobile sites

Being mobile friendly is better than having an application for your site. Apps are great and really cool, but the simple truth is you have to go through steps to download the app, then an app can’t do everything your website can do. When thinking about investing in your company and making the choice between developing an app for your site or a mobile website. Go with mobile, it’s instant access for your users without limitations.

2. Google’s mobile index

Google has a separate index for mobile browsers which is still relatively small compared to Google.com. Getting your site mobile friendly now will put you ahead of the game as far as SEO for mobile search. Building a mobile presence will help you rank higher than competitors now, and in the future you will have better chance of ranking high with mobile browsers because of the authority you have already built.

1. Huge increase in mobile advertising

Ads for the mobile web will surpass $6.5 billion by 2012. If advertisers are investing that much cash into their marketing budgets for mobile web, there’s obviously a good reason to do so.

Wondering what your website looks like on a mobile web browser you can test is here.

Looking to make your website mobile friendly, we can help with that! Please click here to contact us for more information.

Thanks for reading! I would love to hear your thoughts, send me a tweet! @theoceanagency

On Tuesday June 9th, Apple announced updates to their mobile operating system iOS which will update all of Apple’s mobile devices (iPad, iPhone, & iPod Touch) with over 200 new features. This announcement will completely change how users share and receive digital content. In addition, over the past year, search engines have made it clear that quality digital content cannot be ignored when considering a SEO campaign.

As business owners looking for fresh approaches to market your business, you face even more challenges when it comes to planning marketing budgets. With varying opinions on whether or not your marketing strategy needs to include Social Media Experts, Apple’s decision to include Twitter into their operating system sets a precedent for social media’s long term staying power.

Tweet This

Of the 200 new features, one feature really stands out for digital marketers: Twitter will now be fully integrated within iOS. Through virtually any application on your device, you can share content directly to your Twitter account without using a Twitter application. Although there are already a number of Twitter applications available for iOS devices, full integration within the operating system could encourage more users to share more content online. According to a recent comScore study, Portal websites such as Search Engines are steadily becoming less popular with Social Media activity growing rapidly over the past year. Although Facebook is still the social media leader, its rapid growth over the past year is a sign of the times as it has moved into the #1 website people spend time online.

Recent data on online usage suggests that users are becoming more interested in engaging collaboratively with others online and less interested in browsing content autonomously. Social media sites and online marketers face unique challenges as they struggle with staying relevant in a constantly changing market.

Don’t Tweet This

With seamless integration – comes greater responsibility. As our lives become more social online, businesses need to be sensitive to what is being tweeted from their business accounts and public employee accounts. Take for example a Chrysler Social Media Expert who accidentally posted his opinion about Detroit drivers to the official Chrysler Twitter account, a comment that was meant for his personal account. In more recent news, Rep. Anthony Weiner’s reputation and career was tarnished because of one spelling error in a Twitter post when he mistakenly posted a provocative photograph to his public Twitter feed. Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation.com, says that this type of mistake happens “millions of times a day,” – suggesting that these types of mistakes are common.

To maintain a positive reputation on Twitter, clear-cut social media guidelines should be developed for all employees, including employees outside of the social media department. In the early days of Social Media, websites like Myspace were used for personal expression but as more businesses take advantage of Social Media, the methodology is changing. In Social Media Marketing, you need to balance marketing messages with a personal touch as your followers won’t find value in your tweets if they feel like that are being sold to.

Twitters Impact On SEO

Google and Bing conceded that they use signals from Twitter when displaying Twitter posts and web pages in search engine result pages (SERPs). Both search engines try to calculate a Twitter handle’s authority based on followers and mentions. Like traditional link building, the higher the linking Twitter handle’s authority is, the more authoritative the link is considered to search engines. In turn, this means that content in a highly competitive search space has another opportunity for ranking well in SERPs through Twitter. To take advantage of all that Twitter can offer for your SEO campaign, your strategy should include creating resourceful content and promotion.

When creating a new piece of content, always think about why a user would want to read or watch this. What are they getting out of the content? Would they share this content with a friend or colleague? If you cannot answer these questions, then it probably does not belong on your website. If you content is resourceful and helpful to your online community, then Twitter is a method for letting everyone know about it. By adding a link to your Twitter account on your website, you can let people who are already interesting in you know how to stay in touch with you as you grow but what about people who don’t already know about you?

Social Media is all about connecting to like-minded people. Depending on your interests, you may find a large community of users talking about and sharing information you are interested in, it’s just a matter of finding them and connecting. The same can be said for promoting your content – there may be a number of users looking for the content you have but don’t know who you are. Researching and cultivating interest in your brand and content online is one way businesses can utilize Social Media Experts.

How Facebook Fan Pages rank in Facebook Search

Search within Facebook follows different rules than search within a search engine in two main ways:

•  Facebook search is based upon exact match
•  Facebook search is populated based upon a user’s connections.

The Facebook search algorithm operates on the exact match method, meaning only results containing the exact phrase a user types into the Facebook search bar are going to show up.

Facebook search is also populated based upon a user’s connections, meaning Facebook will show different search results to different users based upon how ‘connected’ they are to a Fan Page. The more friends a user has who have ‘Liked’ or commented on the Fan Page, the more likely that Fan Page is to show up at the top of their search results. While this helps expose your Fan Page to an already mildly interested audience, it also means that Facebook search can never be predicted.

How Facebook Fan Pages rank in Search Engines

There is no confirmed method for  increasing your Facebook Fan Page’s rankings within search engines, however the more popular and dynamic an item is on Facebook the better chance it has of appearing in the SERP’s. Both Google and Bing have the ability to crawl and index certain parts of all FanPages, including the Wall, About Us section, Page Info and any additional HTML added to the Fan Page by an Admin.

Both Google and Bing then take this information, along with a variety of other signals, and assign each Fan Page an authority score. The more authority your Fan Page has the more likely it is to show up on Page One of the SERPs.

Optimization Tips for your Facebook Fan Page

As mentioned above, neither Facebook nor search engines have confirmed exactly what factors they use to rank Fan Pages but these tips below increase your exposure to both Facebook users and search engine spiders.

Select the right Page Name
Since Facebook search operates on exact match, the phrase users type into the Facebook search bar must be present in all part or part of your Fan Page name for your Fan Page to appear in the search results. Think like a user. When someone is searching for your Fan Page what search term would they use? Since popularity determines a Fan Page’s rank within Facebook, the more users who connect with your Fan Page the higher you appear in the search rankings. Your Fan Page’s title also appears as your title tag in search engines. Make sure this title tag clearly describes to users what your Fan Page is about when it appears in the SERP’s.

Grab a vanity URL
Once you have 25 people who have ‘Liked’ your Fan Page you can go to www.facebook.com/username and choose a vanity URL. Once you select a vanity URL it is permanent, so make sure it’s one you want to stick with forever. Statistics show that shorter, branded URLs are shared more frequently. Have you built up a strong presence under original URL Facebook assigned your Fan Page? Don’t worry, Facebook places a permanent 301 redirect on your original URL, meaning your original PageRank and link juice will carry over to your new vanity URL.

Use keywords in your Fan Page’s description
While Facebook internal search only shows results based upon a Fan Page’s name, search engines have the ability to crawl and index a Fan Page’s Info section, About Us section and Page’s Notes. Make sure to include keywords in these sections so search engines accurately understand the content on your Fan Page. However, use key words sparingly and naturally as search engines recognize and penalize keyword stuffing.

Choose the right Page Category
When Fan Page results show up within Facebook search their page category appears right below the Page Title. Make sure the category you select will accurately describe to users what your Facebook Fan Page is about.

Get people talking
Not only do you want users to ‘Like’ your Fan Page but you want them to talk about it. Facebook recently allowed users to filter search results from the past 30 days by both ‘Posts by Friends’ and ‘Posts by everyone’. Anytime a user shares content from your Fan Page, or tags your Fan Page in a status or comment, your Fan Page will show up under these search filters.

Create an Event
Facebook internal search also features an event filter where events featuring a user’s search terms their title will show up. While your brand’s Fan Page will not show up in the initial search box, when a user clicks-through to the event page they will see your Fan Page listed as the creator.

Never let content go ‘Stale’
Fully optimizing your Facebook Fan Page for search is only the first step to being found, keeping your Fan Page alive with fresh and resourceful content is the second. Google has admitted that ‘stale content’, or content that has “not been updated for a period of time and, thus, contain[s] stale data”, is penalized in the SERPs, so make sure the content on your Fan Page is never stale. On the other hand make sure you’re not continually pushing out irrelevant content or content that is not resourceful as this is viewed by both users and search engines to be overcrowding and spam. A recent Hubspot webinar cites every other day as the optimum frequency to update your Facebook Fan Page, but the best rule of thumb is to update your content only when it is resourceful to your users.

Interact with other pages
Two months ago Facebook introduced an extensive update to Fan Pages. One of the best features in this update is the ability for users to interact on Facebook as their Fan Page. In the eyes of Facebook, commenting on other relevant Fan Pages will connect you with that Fan Page and their users. This increases the amount of connections you have with other users and thus increases your chances of appearing within Facebook search.

Invest in Facebook PPC
Facebook PPC is fast becoming one of the best ways to be found within Facebook. In a recent webinar Hubspot claims Facebook PPC is the most cost-effective PPC program, with ROI from Facebook PPC being on average 50% higher than any anywhere else on the Web. Unlike other PPC programs, with Facebook PPC you don’t target keywords, but specific users with certain interests, and friends who have already ‘Liked’ your Fan Page. These tools allow you to target an audience with an existing connections to your Fan Page and usually leads to higher conversion rates.

The biggest improvement with the new interface is the digital face-lift it received. Now all of your interactions within Google Analytics are a lot more interactive seamless. No more opening new screens to create custom segments or reports. Welcome to data reporting in Web 2.0.

Site Speed

One of the more exciting features added to the new version of Analytics is the report that measures site speed. This is a significant advancement for Google Analytics and we are excited to see it added. Last year, Google confirmed that site speed and load times factor into how a website is ranked and although there are tools that allow you to see how your site it preforming, this is the first time we are seeing tools that will measure it over time. This new report does require a slight change in your Analytics tracking code so you have to change the code snippet to see the report.

Report Labeling and Groupings

In the new Analytics, reports are broken up and labeled to be more intuitive to every day users. For example, if you don’t know what a bounce rate is, why would you look at a report called bounce rate? With the new labeling syntax, everyday users can see reports based on what they are actually interested in understanding. Unfortunately to seasoned Analytics users, this is a major departure to what we are used to using. Knowing that the existing users of Analytics would switch back to the old version if they couldn’t find what they needed, Google has provided a nifty Report Finder.

Holy Data Filtering Batman

With the new Analytics, Data filtering is a lot more user friendly. Filtering options are now higher up on the report page (right above the data chart) and they are labeled better. In addition, there are now preset Date ranges to choose from. There are also improvements with Advanced Segments including the ability to turn off the “All Visits” segment when selecting more than two segments to analysis and on-the-fly Custom Advanced Segment creation.

Pivoting Data

Advanced Data Filtering

Event Tracking now Available with Goals

Previously, you could not track events with goals. Goals were limited before to URLs, time on site, and pages per visit but now you can track actions that your users do on your site.  The difference may seem arbitrary but for a lot of webmasters, it isn’t. Say, you want to track how many people watched a video or download a PDF. You can now create Goals and track these events.

The New Help Center

Along with the new interface, Google has revamped their Help center. Most notably, the new Google Analytics Help center has been integrated into the new Analytics with Context based anchor text and the ability to search the help center within the Analytics sidebar.

Multiple Custom Dashboards

Creating Custom Dashboard isn’t new to analytics but now you can create more than one dashboard. The old dashboard did allow you add the reports you were most interested in but there was a limit on how many widgets you can add. Now you can really segment the types of data you are most interested in looking at once you get to Analytics. Say I’m really interested in what keywords people are using to get to my site in my target markets. I can create a custom dashboard that lists the cities I am targeting and have it all display on one dashboard.

Report Quick Links from the Homepage

When you log in to you account, you can simply click one of the quick navigation buttons and go straight to a report.

Searching For Accounts and Profiles

For users who manage a lot of accounts and profiles, you can now search for a profile or account no matter what account you are currently viewing.

With the rise of social networking sites, search engines have began looking to Social Media signals from a user’s social network to better determine who they were, and how to better serve them relevant content in organic search results. Although their complex ranking algorithm is kept under-wraps, Google has confirmed that signals from Social Media networks are becoming an increasing factor in how they rank websites in their organic search results. Today, users who are logged in to Google can register their social networking sites, filtering the organic search results they see based on various Social signals.

While Google uses over 200 factors in their complex search algorithm, the search engine giant has made it clear that cues from Social Media sites factor into this equation. Google has identified sites such as Twitter, Quora, StumbleUpon and LinkedIn as Social Media networks they look to for social indicators. Most notably absent from this list is Facebook. While Google has the ability to index comments, status updates and shared links from Facebook Fan Pages it does not take Facebook ‘Likes’ into account when determining page rankings.

How social media affects non logged-in users

Twitter is currently the fastest growing social network and the volume of publicly accessible information on the network makes it the obvious choice for search engines to gather their social signals from.

Of all the social signals Google receives from Twitter, the number of Tweets and Retweets a link garners is among the top social influencers on organic search rankings. “Yes, we do use it as a signal,” confirms a Google representative, when asked about the quantity of Tweets containing a specific link. “We use as a signal in our organic and news rankings.”

Since Google views global link popularity as an indicator of quality, this incorporation of Twitter makes sense. But what about the author who Tweets the link, is there any consideration given to who they are? Google has confirmed that each individual Twitter user has a personalized score based upon their online authority, but a user’s authority on Twitter only influences non logged-in search rankings in rare cases.

How social media affects logged-in users

Google collects social signals across dozens of social networking sites, so when do users see the bulk of this information? When they search Google while logged-in to their Google account. Google uses both global data from social networking sites and data from any personal social networking accounts that a user has linked to their Google account.

So which of these social signals carry the most weight for logged-in users? The author authority of a Twitter user or Facebook Fan Page who posts a link. Google assigns an individual author authority score to every Twitter user and Facebook Fan Page. When selecting which links to display under the ‘Top Links’ section in Google Realtime Search Google places a lot of weight on the authority of the Twitter user or Facebook Fan Page who shared the link.

Google is also testing a feature where users can link their Twitter accounts to Google News and see News content from just their network.

Google +1

As of Wednesday Google unveiled it’s latest attempt at becoming more social, the ‘+1 Button’. Currently, the +1 Button is available to English users who are logged into their Google account and have activated the feature under Google Labs. The +1 Button appears next to search listings and Ad Words advertisements acting as a stamp of approval. If a user finds value in a search listing or advertisement they can click the +1 button and their vote will be added to running tally for that specific piece of content and their endorsement and link will appear in a scrolling feed on their Google profile. “The primary benefit is that search gets better,” says Matt Cutts, the figurehead of Google’s spam fighting team. “It gets better in the user interface immediately, and we’ll look at it as a potential signal to improve search quality as well.”

When a user is logged-in to Google they will be able to see which links people in their network have +1’d for a specific search query. Who makes up your network?

• People you follow in Google Reader or Google Buzz
• Contacts in your Gmail chat list
• Contacts in your Google Talk chat list
• Everyone from your ‘My Contacts’ group in Google Contacts

But what happens if no one in your network has +1’d any links for a certain search query? For the most popular links Google will display the global number of +1’s that link has received.

Since the announcement on Wednesday search users and Website owners alike have been asking the same question, Will the number of +1’s a page listing receives affect that listing’s ranking? While there has been no official confirmation from Google, Matt Cutts was quoted as saying, “When someone recommends something, that’s a pretty good indicator of quality. We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings.”

What to Expect Next

For online marketers Social Media is already a popular form of linkbuilding, offering an affordable way to establish online credibility and organically build inbound links for content. A recent study from SEOMoz shows that a strong Social Media presence has a positive correlation with high rankings:

The recent addition of Google +1 and comments from both Google and Bing hint that Social Media will play an increasingly important role in how well a Web Page ranks.

While the confirmed direct impact of Social Media signals on SERP’s is still somewhat minimal expect to see Social Media become integral part of attaining page one rankings in the near future.