Unless you’ve spent the last week hiking in the Yukon, and your smart phone was eaten by a polar bear, you’ve probably heard Google+ is here. Aside from joining and spending considerable time organizing my circles, I’ve noticed some shortcomings with the site. Luckily, others have noticed these too, and created Chrome extensions to fix them. Here is a list of extensions I’ve found most useful in fixing these shortfalls.

Shortfall: No easy way to share a Google+ post on Facebook or Twitter.

Solution: Extended Share for Google Plus

One of my top picks, the Extended Share for Google Plus Chrome extension inserts a block of code to your Google+ feed allowing you to quickly share a G+ post on Facebook or Twitter.

[download & install]

Shortfall: I have to click on a post to see the picture in full-size.

Solution: +Photo Zoom

Very simple, and a great time-saver. If you’ve used the FB Photo Zoom extension for Facebook, you’ll know exactly what +Photo Zoom does. With this extension, any time you mouse over a picture in Google+, a zoomed image of that picture will pop up. It saves you from clicking through the post to see the full-size picture.

[download & install]

Shortfall: I have to be on the Google+ page in my browser to see my notification count.

Solution: Notification Count for Google Plus™

This one is similar to the Google Voice extension. It displays how many unread notifications you have in a bookmark or URL tab. When clicked, it takes you to your Google+ notifications page.

[download & install]

Feature Request: This extension is useful, but I wish it would also give you a dropdown box with your notifications, just like the button on your Google+ page. So, Developer, if you’re listening, maybe that could come in a future update?

Shortfall: Too many replies on a post consumes my whole feed view.

Solution: +Comment Toggle

Tired of having one popular post take up your entire screen with everyone putting in their two cents? The +Comment Toggle extension will hide those comments for you. To show the comments on a particular post, simply click on the toggle button (down arrow). This is very simple and very useful.

[download & install]

Shortfall: I’m too lazy to use the ‘+’ button.

Solution: Replies and more for Google+

Gives you a ‘Reply to Author’ link on every post and comment. Clicking it will simply start your response with a ‘+’ sign and the Author’s name, making it act like the ‘@’ symbol with Twitter. It’s especially useful when you want to reply to just one person’s comment in a long stream of comments.

[download & install]

Shortfall: Very few pages have a +1 button for me to add it to my list in Google+.

Solution: +1 Button

As you may know, +1 is the Google version of Facebook’s ‘Like’ feature. The problem is most pages have not yet added a +1 button for you to click. This extension puts a +1 button at the end of the URL address bar allowing you to simply click to +1 the current page. The button is a toggle button and will show as dark blue if you visit a page that you’ve already +1’d, or clear if you have not +1’d that page.

[download & install]

Shortfall: I want to add someone to my circles, but they speak a different language.

Solution: Helper for Google+

Google Translate is awesome. Google+ is awesome. Why not put them together? Well, that’s just what this extension does. It actually adds a ‘Translate’ button to the bottom of each post which, when pressed, will copy that post (or comment) over to Google Translate where you can choose the language to translate it to. It also adds a ‘Tweet’ button, but if that’s all you’re looking for, it’s covered in the ‘Extended Share for Google Plus’ extension at the top of this post.

[download & install]

My Request

I wish I could tell you of many more extensions for Google+, but the options are sparse right now. So to conclude I would like to start a list of additional Google+ shortfalls that could conceivably be fixed with an extension. Who knows, maybe some merciful developer will stumble across this post and create them for us.

Shortfall: I can’t share or comment on a URL from my +1 list in Google+.

Suggested Solution: Make it easy to +1 a page and then share a comment on it in your feed. Right now, it just goes in to your +1 list and sits there. Boo, -1. What I’d like is to be able to +1 a couple of articles while doing my blog reading, then go to my list afterward on Google+ and click a button to share it in my feed with a comment. Hopefully we’ll see this as an added feature in G+, or at least as an extension in the near future.

What shortfalls do you see with +1 or Google+?

Seven Chrome Extensions (and One Request) for Google Plus is a post by SEO expert Joe Bergevin. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

There are several ways to obtain links on the Internet, through numerous different types of web pages. Some techniques to increase page ranking are difficult, while others are very simple. I would like to review a method for obtaining links that I would say is somewhere in the middle on the toughness scale, but if done right, can be very effective in increasing your search engine results page (SERPS) results.

Articles and blog posts make up much of the content on the Internet. However, the crazy thing about online articles is that you hardly ever know the source. Some articles are from every day bloggers, some from various types of researchers and some are from paid writing sources and other freelancing services. Nevertheless, whatever the source, it is still content. As long as it is not duplicate content, chances are Google will index it. Along with the content, if you can include some good anchor-text links that tell what the article is focusing on, it often helps Google in the indexing process.

Once you have your article, now it is a question of where to post it. There are several different ways for submitting articles on the Internet. There are blogs, directories, free website services (weebly.com, wordpress.com, blogger.com, yola.com), and even some services that specifically take article submissions (ezinearticles.com and squidoo.com, just to name a couple). Each has their different pros and cons.

A major factor to consider when choosing where to post your article is whether you want to go for quality or quantity. I have had an ezinearticles.com article get a PR2 rank after getting just a few outside links to it; which led me to believe that Google looks at these articles on ezinearticles.com as higher quality.

Whether you decide to go for quality, quantity, paid or free services, articles can be a great source for obtaining links all over the web. Give them a shot! It could be a nice break from the tedious task of requesting links for link building.

Using Articles for Link Building is a post by SEO expert Joe Bergevin. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Banned from Google? Ouch. Anyone who’s been banned from Google before knows that it’s not a fun ordeal. As of June 22, 2009, a report shows that google.com is used for around 90% of all searches done on the internet (worldwide). And with the next closest search engines in the running being 85 points away (yahoo.com at 5.5% and the new bing.com at about 4.5%) that’s a pretty big chunk of your traffic being cut out when Google decides to ban your site.

How to Know if you are Banned from Google

Sometimes it’s not so easy to know if you are banned from Google. So I’ve started a “You Might be Banned from Google if…” list. Feel free to add to the list in the comments.

• If yesterday you were ranking on the first page of Google and today your site is nowhere to be found in the SERPS, you might be banned from Google.
• If you do a site search (site:yoursite.com) on Google, and it brings up no results, you might be banned from Google.
• If yesterday your page rank was 5 and today it is 0, you might be banned from Google.

Common ways of getting banned from Google.

Now, of course, if you’ve been banned, you probably already know why it happened. But just in case you’re still in a daze, here are some common ways to get your site banned from the ever powerful Google search engine:

• Hidden text or hidden links – when you think about how this is done (making the color of the text the same color as the background that it’s placed over, how hard would this really be for Google to detect with a small piece of code in their algorithm?
• Use of cloaking or sneaky redirects – and yes, Google calls them “sneaky.”
• Loading pages with irrelevant keywords – aka keyword stuffing.
• Creating multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other mal-ware.
• Producing “Doorway” pages created just for search engines with little or no original content. The key to this is “little or no original content.” If you’re actually adding new content to the web then this shouldn’t be a problem.

There are also some “back-door” ways of getting your site banned from Google, such as including several links to sites that are known for spamming, thus causing Google to draw the conclusion that you’re affiliated with them.

Should you feel the urge to read more on this topic, visit google.com for a few more tips on creating a “Google-friendly” site.

If anyone knows of any other sure-fire ways of getting banned from Google, let me know in the comments!

So what if you do get banned? Then what?

How to remove a ban from Google
The thing to remember with a Google ban is that it is not always permanent. In fact, most of the time, you can just change whatever it was that got you banned and then submit a reconsideration request. To resubmit to Google, visit this link, which will take you to a page within the Google Webmaster Tools. From there they will walk you through the process which can also include sending an email to Google regarding what you have changed and why you feel you should be included in the search engine once again. Remember when you compose this email that there will be a real person reading it on the other end. Be kind and business-like in your request and you will have much more of a chance of getting the ban lifted and once again being indexed in the largest and most used search engine on the web.

Removing a Ban from Google is a post by SEO expert Joe Bergevin. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

“My density has popped me to you.” How true that is. This misspoken statement by George McFly in may have had more meaning than he ever knew. But the question is how much influence does keyword density really have in the search results that are “popped” to you?

I think we can all agree that proper keyword usage on a site plays a key role in how your site ranks for those keywords. But what is the best placement for these keywords? And how much is too much? When does it become keyword stuffing?

We’ll address these and other questions…after the break.

Just kidding, we’ll do it now.

What is the best placement for keywords on your site or article? Well, let me answer that by asking you this: What do you remember most when you read an article? The first and last paragraph, right? At least that’s how it is for me – and for Google, apparently. So when you’re wondering where to place your keywords, of course you want to have them spread throughout the content. But if you can, do something to make the first and last paragraph stand out. The h1, h2 and h3 headers are always dependable for this, as well as internal linking (if possible) or even just using bold type. That way you can use the keyword in several other places, but the places that stand out the most will basically be highlighted for Google.

How much keyword density is too much? That is actually a great question that it seems no one really knows for sure. The word on the street is that it can be as low as 3% and as high as 12%, with Yahoo and MSN being more tolerant of keyword stuffing than Google. I also found sites that were majorly stuffed with keywords (www.halloween.com, which was rightfully mentioned in the SEO Fail Blog for having over 21% keyword density for the keyword “Halloween”), but were not banned by Google. I guess they may still be penalized in their rankings, but that’s very hard to tell from the outside looking in. One thing I couldn’t find though is some good examples of pages getting banned from Google for keyword stuffing. In fact, I actually found one keyword stuffing experiment where keyword stuffing of up to 51% had no perceived effect on the PR of the page or the ranking for the tested keyword. So I thought I’d open that up in the comments section of this post. Got any good examples of keyword stuffing getting a page banned?

Bottom line: despite the vagueness of the limits on keyword density vs. keyword stuffing, I think it’s safe to say it’s always a matter of good practice. As long as your article or page flows naturally and is readable to the human eye, you’ll make friends with your readers as well as Google.

Oh, and just for your information, I have posted the keyword density for a couple of the keywords in this post just below:

Keyword: Keyword Density (1.13%)
Keyword: Keyword Stuffing (1.32%)
Keyword: Keyword (4.73%)

My Keyword Density Has Popped Me To You is a post by SEO expert Joe Bergevin. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

A recent episode of “30 Rock” actually inspired this blog post. In this particular episode, Kenneth (a character centered on the innocence of a child, working at a big corporation) is talking with Jack Donaghy (the boss) about different birthday presents they received throughout their life. Jack says “Kenneth, I wonder what it’s like seeing the world through your eyes.”

“I don’t know,” Kenneth says. “I think I see the world pretty much the same as everyone else.”

“Really?” says Jack, as we are then favored with a special musical number from Muppet-like puppets, which, apparently is how Kenneth sees the world. Very funny.

So, how do you see the world? And the bigger question is, how does Google see your world? More specifically, how does Google see your website?

A website has all kinds of different indicators that come together to tell Google how to see your site. H1 and H2 tags are very important, as are the Meta Titles and the Meta Descriptions; and beyond that–content. All that lovely content you spend hours writing is then indexed by the spiders that Google sends out to the web. Then the only thing left is for them to sift through it all and figure out what it is about.

So, how does Google see your content? To put it simply, they look for the words that stand out above the rest, such as titles above a paragraph, and anchor text links. An anchor text link is a link within your content that uses a word or phrase that can be clicked on to go to the embedded address. The address is not shown in the text, only the word or phrase is highlighted as a hyperlink. And it just so happens that this is a great way to show Google what the focus of your content is.

Imagine if you were looking for a few of your friends in a crowd of a thousand people. Although you may know exactly what they look like, and maybe even what they’re wearing, it would be tough to find them, and all the other people around you would be very distracting. But what if your friends were all wearing bright-blue vests and were each up on their own pedestal, putting them six feet above the crowd? Not so tough any more, right? That’s what anchor text in your content is like to Google.

Now, just like anything else with SEO, anchor text is often used in the wrong way. It’s very important to make sure that your anchor text uses the right word or phrase. So, let’s do some examples with “Good Idea, Bad Idea” (for all you Animaniacs fans out there):

Good Idea for Anchor Text: Check out this blog post on misspelled keywords.
Bad Idea for Anchor Text: If you’re looking for a great blog post on misspelled keywords, click here.
(Homework Assignment: try typing the words “click here” in the Google search bar. It’s interesting to see who is ranking for that term!)

Good Idea for Anchor Text: In my opinion, the claim that SEO is recession proof is true for many reasons.
Bad Idea for Anchor Text: If you would like to read more about how I believe SEO is recession proof, click here.

In the first bad idea example, as you can see, I gave Google pretty much nothing to work with in my anchor text. Whereas, when I used “misspelled keywords” as the anchor text, I told Google exactly how to see that link. But more importantly, I showed them where to put the emphasis when indexing the text.

In the second bad idea example, I gave too many words to emphasize, and now the whole sentence stands out, not just the keywords. This is just as commonly used as the first bad idea, and just as misleading to Google.

So, good to know, right? Now, don’t go crazy and start putting an internal anchor text on every keyword or phrase on your site. Include keyword links within your content where it makes sense. This will go a long way in telling Google how to see your world.

Internal Links – Telling Google How to See Your World is a post by SEO expert Joe Bergevin. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Ranking well for a popular keyword phrase is getting harder and harder these days. But did you know that about 10 million times a day someone misspells a keyword in their search? Normally to those poor saps I would say, “Hey, good luck with that!” But the truth is, more and more online companies are taking advantage of the misspelled keywords.

For example, if your website is selling office calendars, the average monthly search for “office calendars” is about 40,500. The term “office calenders” is searched about 1,300 times per month. What does this mean for you? Well, even though the misspelled term searches are significantly less (only 3% of the correctly spelled term’s search volume) you will not need to fight as hard to get to the top of this search, thus bringing in some extra traffic from those bad spellors that u may knot hav otherwize bin kounting on.

So what is the best way to optimize for these misspelled keywords? The first trick is to know what your options are for the possible misspellings. A great tool to use for this is the Seobook.com Typo Generator—although, in the 146 possibilities this tool gives for the word “Calendar,” they don’t even mention “Calender.” So, you will want to check out more than one source. Another source is checking the “100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English” from yourdictionary.com or other dictionary sites. Make sure to check the misspelled word’s estimated search traffic to see if it is worth optimizing for.

Next you’ll need to optimize for the misspelled term on your page. There are several ways of accomplishing this, but I believe one of the classiest methods is to simply post an article or blog post on your site that mentions different common misspellings of the desired term. You can’t base your entire SEO strategy on optimizing for misspellings. Google often times helps out poor spelling patrons showing the “Did you mean…” option above the search results.

Well, there you have it—a new arrow in your quiver. Just make sure to take some time to do a little research (Google AdWords keyword tool) before spending energy on the optimization. Often times, it’s hit or miss with these misspellings—so, good luck with that!

Misspelled Keywords – Good Luck with That! is a post by SEO expert Joe Bergevin. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

With the current tough times in the market, keeping your business “out of the red” takes smart, informed financial decisions. For example, many items these days are marked down in an effort to move them quicker during the recession, which makes now a great time to stock up your inventory at a cheap price. Another example would be to find areas where you can decrease your overhead—perhaps by taking advantage of low real estate prices. But where you’ll find the real bang for your buck is search engine optimization (SEO).

So, what does “Recession Proof” really mean? The best way I could describe it is by comparing it to a very personal example—you. What steps would you take to help “recession proof” yourself? Career wise, you would try to improve your inner qualities by obtaining as many marketable skills as possible. For example, investing a little money in acquiring some computer skills can go a long way. Nunchuck skills, on the other hand, may not get you as far. Budget wise, you would strive to cut off the fat—financially. Lowering spending in areas that are not producing desired long-term results like junk food, fast food, and monthly membership fees (World of Warcraft addicts, this means you) can help the money last in those lean months. You may also look into the price of repairing something before replacing it (like a car) to avoid raising your monthly expenses.

Recession proofing your business with search engine optimization is a very similar process. Gaining more marketable skills, or improving the inner qualities, would compare nicely to optimizing your website for the best possible search engine indexing. You want the search engines to see you for what you are—a relevant and user-friendly site. “Cutting off the fat” could be achieved by replacing pricy advertising with effective SEO, focusing mainly on building relevant links to your website. The combined result would actually bring you higher in the organic listings of search results, which, get more clicks than the paid ads.  This would also enable you to run a less expensive, more SEO-friendly business…and thus, recession proof.

SEO – The Recession-Proof Investment is a post by SEO expert Joe Bergevin. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.