In seeking to increase their reach and help define a target audience, brands must ask themselves whether to advertise on Google or Bing. Advertisement budgets have a limit, so prioritizing one network over the other can be a prudent decision in consolidating resources, especially if you’re certain one advertising network plays better within your industry.

The question often relies on which industry you’re in, since Google works better for some industries, while Bing yields better results for others. Homing in on the top six industry types, we help identify the ideal advertising strategies for each industry, with Google or Bing in mind.

Construction

Construction jobs are typically expensive and time-consuming, which means consumers tend to be picky about which construction firm they use. As a result, it’s important to craft a legitimate and respectable marketing campaign, in addition to identifying effective keywords that find a middle ground between obscure and overly competitive.

Google AdWords makes it easy to investigate keywords with their “Keyword Planner.” The tool lets you type in a keyword and find out how many searches per month it yields, in addition to its suggested price per click. This data can help inform you of the proper keyword to prioritize, whether it’s “commercial contractor” or “construction company.” Since Google is the most popular ad network — thereby demanding a high reputation — and has tools to identify keywords easily, Google seems like a practical choice for construction firms.

Hospitality

Small businesses in the hospitality industry, such as salons, must seize the power of advertising to stand out from their competition, of which there are likely to be several within a few miles. Bing is an ideal solution for small businesses seeking to advertise, since Bing has less competition and lower cost-per-click prices than Google.

Google may be ideal for a huge firm that needs to compete on the highest level. However, Bing’s accommodation of small businesses, with lower prices and competition, in addition to more granular control of campaigns and ad group levels, makes the network an ideal fit for hospitality services like salons, which — apart from major chains — are operating as small businesses.

Fitness Centers and Gyms

Fitness centers and gyms are ideal players in the advertising market, since it only takes a few words to remind someone they need to get in shape. However, there are so many gyms and types of gyms, wading through saturated waters can be a challenge for advertisers. In a case like this, Google’s knack for clearly defined keyword match types makes advertising a bit easier for fitness centers and gyms.

For example, the keywords “CrossFit classes,” “CrossFit gyms” and “CrossFit box Arizona” would all fit under the “CrossFit Classes” or “CrossFit Gyms” ad groups. Meanwhile, adding the keyword “beginner” to any of those keywords would place them in the ad group “Beginners CrossFit” instead. Ad groups help marketers more easily define the audience and locale they want to target, which is essential for successfully advertising fitness centers and gyms.

Medical

Rehab centers and medical facilities are abundant throughout the country, since everyone needs medical care. As a result, rehab centers that are trying to advertise on Google may feel like it’s difficult to stand out among the fierce competition, including rehab centers that have a greater advertising budget. Since Bing reaches 64 million searchers Google doesn’t reach, Bing presents an ideal platform for rehab centers and those in the medical industry seeking to break away from competition and stand out in the digital advertising sphere.

Restaurants

Restaurants are another competition with ample industry, though the niche-based categorization of eating establishments makes competition less fierce. The ideal approach for a restaurant is to focus their advertising on the cuisine or ambiance they offer. Whether it’s an Irish pub, Chinese restaurant, sushi place, Italian restaurant or serving Mexican fare, a quality restaurant advertisement makes viewers exclaim, “I want that tonight!”

Google’s aforementioned defined keyword match types are suitable for the restaurant industry, since they can target specific ad groups, which can further categorize by cuisine type. Just stating a restaurant has good food likely isn’t enough. The advertisement should provide more specifics, like the food type and potential ambiance, which Google will automatically place in its relevant ad group. The categorization of Google ads is ideal for restaurants, where sub-categories and groupings are vital for advertising success.

Retail Stores

Fashion is constantly evolving, with new tastes and trends in each season. Clothing stores are wise to stay up to date on these trends, evaluating their inventory based on seasons and trends. With trends and buzz all the rage in fashion, it’s important for a clothing store to have a notable social media following, especially with millennials the target demographic of many clothing stores.

Bing accommodates social media strengths with social extensions, specifically in showing the number of Twitter followers an advertiser has within their ad. Google takes a similar approach by showing the number of Google Plus followers, though that doesn’t do much, considering Twitter’s exponentially higher user base. For marketers that value a social media presence, like clothing stores and brands, Bing tends to win out due to their embrace of social extensions outside of Google’s own, underused social networks.

These industries can all benefit from advertising on Google or Bing, though the ideal network for them depends on a variety of factors, such as their competition, niche and social media following.

 Author

Lexie Lu is a designer and writer. She loves researching trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.

Let’s face it, Google is intriguing to say the least. Thousands of marketers have been trying to crack the Google code since its inception. The folks at UAB School of Business recently put together this awesome infographic that dives into the science of Google in detail.

Did you know that Sellotape, Velcro and Jet Ski aren’t generic names, but brand names? This phenomenon is the process by which registered, trademarked brand names replace the generic term in a market where they have widespread brand recognition, usually to the point of complete saturation. You don’t buy a hot tub, you buy a Jacuzzi. You don’t use inline skates, you use Rollerblades.

You don’t search the internet for something, you “Google it”.

In the western world, Google enjoys the vast majority of market share when it comes to search engine enquiries. There are some rivals, like Bing, that try to hack away at Google anyway they can, but they cower in the shadow cast by the search giant. And it has been this way for some time, with many casualties along the way (Ask Jeeves anyone?). This success has allowed Google to roll into other markets at or around the top, be it with smartphones, wearable tech, or GPS systems.

Google certain is the most dominant search engine in the world, but it doesn’t have a stranglehold on every international market in the world. There are some countries where you don’t “Google” something. Here are some examples.

Naver

Perhaps the biggest gulf in search engine market share between Google and an international rival is in South Korea. There, the homegrown Naver portal is the preferred, go-to option. It used to be powered by Yahoo, but they have since split and developed their own engine. Similar to Google, it is very basic by design, and pretty much impenetrable for anybody who doesn’t speak Korean, but they aren’t trying to appeal to anybody else.

For those wondering, Naver’s market share in South Korea is 49.75%, compared to Google’s 36.9%. Google are closing in, so Naver say never.
 

Baidu

The Chinese Google, Baidu has a whopping 70%+ market share in its homeland. Google China was established in 2005 to compete with it, but its market share dropped as low as 1.7% in 2013. And it’s not hard to picture why – Baidu offer a very similar range of services for the Chinese speaking population.

Baidu Maps, Baidu Cloud, Baidu Space (a social media platform) and Baidu Encyclopedia (the Chinese Wikipedia) mean that Chinese users don’t need Google to supplement any of the usual services the American site provides. So it’s hard to imagine Google dislodging them any time soon.
 

Seznam

While Google may have less market share in Asia, Europe is a stronghold. But there are some exceptions, chief among which is the Czech Republic. Seznam is a search engine that has been the dominant option for a good long while, staving off Google, despite the American giant gaining ground.

Over the border in Slovakia, Google has overtaken Seznam. It may only be a matter of time before Google takes the lead in the Czech Republic too, but Seznam may be able to hold them off for a while. There are differences (Seznam looks more like a traditional news website/Wikipedia than a clean search engine platform) that could work in Seznam’s favor if the public prefer its text heavy approach, but Google could always adopt a different style more in line with Seznam’s if they ever really wanted to make a push for the No. 1 spot.

Since its foundation in 1998, Google has become one of the world’s most popular search engines. The quality of results from that search engine is the responsibility of a team led by Matthew Cutts. On April 2^nd, 2014, Cutts provided the answer to an important question about Google: “…how do you separate simple popularity from true authority?”

PageRank

PageRank, named after Google founder Larry Page, is one of the algorithms Google uses to list the results of a given search. Cutts denied that PageRank is as simple as measuring the popularity of websites, and gave the example of porn sites against government sites to demonstrate this. Porn websites are usually far more popular than government websites. However, government websites are linked to by other websites far more often than porn sites are. PageRank only takes one of those aspects into consideration: how often a given page is linked to by other websites. How popular a webpage is, Cutts says, has nothing to do with PageRank.

Authority against Reputation

After establishing that PageRank is able to distinguish between a popular website and a reputable website, Cutts brings up another interesting question: “How do we try to figure out whether a website is a good match for a given query?” PageRank is able to look at all of the websites and related links that the search engine receives about a given topic. It then looks at how many of those related links discuss the topic being searched. The more links that discuss the topic, the more of an authority the Google search engine deems the website, and subsequently, the higher it appears on the list of results for that search.

Algorithmic Changes

The last thing Cutts discussed in his answer to the popularity versus authority question was an upcoming update to the PageRank algorithm that may further refine its ability to distinguish authoritative websites. The most important part of these changes, Cutts said, is that it tries to match websites with more general queries, such as distinguishing websites that would be a good match for any medical query. These changes are geared towards making sure that well-known websites with good information are listed with less well-known sites that have just as much, or even more information on them about general topics.

The New Algorithms

A search engine like Google will always have room for improvement. If the changes Cutts proposes go through (and, of course, if they work), Google searches will almost definitely be more refined and contain more detailed, relevant information. The balance between giving a chance to newer, unpopular content and keeping popular, authoritative content high in relevance is a difficult one to hit. However, it feels as though these changes will probably bring Google closer to achieving that ideal.

Whether Google is biased towards popularity over authority is an important consideration for anyone who is using the search engine. Fortunately, based on Cutts’s comments, it is clear that Google search engines take authority into account far more than popularity. PageRank, although far from the perfect system, is able to give higher relevance on a list of search results to authoritative websites than popular ones.

With so many new forms of social media emerging all the time, it can be hard for businesses to keep up. It can be especially hard for small businesses that have smaller budgets and less time to devote to these types of things. For these businesses, who may only have the resources to focus on one social media platform, the answer might be Google Plus. While Google Plus is still in its early stages of development when compared to Facebook or Twitter, it already presents some great marketing opportunities for small businesses.

Google+ Local

Perhaps the greatest opportunities for small business marketing on Google Plus lie within Google+ Local. This internal search platform, which exists within Google Plus, is designed for local businesses. Google+ Local presents a search platform where small businesses without the budgets or time for proper SEO can rank highly and effectively.

This is because the rankings in Google+ Local are calculated differently than a typical Google SERP (search engine results page). These rankings are based off number of Google+ Local reviews and the quality of those reviews (reviews are based off a 30-point scoring system, and the average of all reviews is taken to help determine ranking). This gives smaller businesses the opportunity to rank higher by providing great service and interacting with customers on Google Plus; and ranking well in Google+ Local certainly has its benefits.

Due to the fact that Google+ Local is part of Google, ranking high in a Google+ Local SERP has extra value as a Google Map will show up next to the results with the locations of the top results. This makes it very easy for potential customers to find a business and as with standard Google SERPs, they are much more likely to choose between the higher ranking results.

Google Plus Business Pages and Customer Engagement

Another important aspect of Google Plus that small businesses need to keep in mind is the condition of their corresponding Google Plus Business Page.

It is important that they maintain this page if for no other reason than the fact that the links in Google+ Local mentioned above direct users to these pages. After all, it would be inexcusable to lose a potential customer due to a poorly constructed business page. These pages are easy to maintain and can provide prospective customers with valuable contact information such as phone numbers, email, website, etc. It is also to include a large Google map as the cover photo for this page, making it even easier for customers to find a local business.

These pages also present some opportunities for small businesses to engage and interact with their customers. Local business can post deals or promotions here or share important information related to their industry. While these same ideas can be applied to Facebook or Twitter, Google Plus offers a unique opportunity. It is unique because by selecting which circles a company wants to share certain content with, they can convey segmented and targeted messages to a specific audience. This presents a situation where businesses can deliver some very powerful marketing.

Google+ Local offers an advantageous situation for small businesses where they have the chance to rank highly without spending money on SEO. Also, Google Plus as a social media platform presents some interesting ways for businesses to engage with customers and send targeted messages tailored for a particular audience. As small businesses struggle to find the resources necessary to effectively market on all the different social media platforms available, Google Plus is one that small businesses must not overlook.

Author Bio

Paul Richardson is a n experienced content marketing professional who specializes in small business marketing and local seo. When he’s not writing about small business marketing he tries to attend as many different concert venues as he can.

Modern business courses will tell you that the marketing landscape of business has radically changed with the rise of Social Media. Unlike traditional marketing campaigns that were ridiculously costly, social media is the free, unbiased tool that is available to industry giants and small businesses alike.

Businesses have already tapped the potential of social media by including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in their content strategy. But there’s another kid in town that will rise to power: Google+.

Since Google+’s launch in late 2011, it has been steadily growing in the number of users. As of January 2013, Google+ has outranked Twitter and was proclaimed as the #2 social network after Facebook (statistics according to Global Web Index). If Google+ isn’t a part of your content strategy yet, we’ll give you some reasons why you need to jump into the bandwagon…

Reason 1: Google+ is Google’s

You know the saying, “Love your own?” Well, it doesn’t just apply to family, because Google does it as well. As it stands, Facebook is the dominant force of social media, but Google isn’t going to concede that easily. Since Google+’s launch, Google has been using its influence to persuade more and more people to use Google+. How? By indexing/ranking results from Google+ faster than those from other social media.

Rand Fishkin said that, “Google+ is the new Google Submit URL box.” It was only rumored that new URLs with content shared on Google+ were crawled instantly, but this rumor is no myth – if you want new URLs to be indexed very quickly, share content on Google+.

Reason 2: Search Plus Your World is stirring up Google’s search engine results page (SERP)

Google has really leveraged Google+ by integrating into their search engine algorithm – now, when you search in Google, you can “show personal results”. These are results are content that was shared/posted in Google+. If when you are signed out of your Google+ account, it shows you the “personal results” in the sidebar categorized as People and Pages on Google+.

Google+ is great for your content strategy because Google is really working to put Google+ at the forefront of online activity – even in Google SERPs. However, getting at the top of this new kind of SERP will require SEO, which we will elaborate on next.

Reason 3: You can SEO your Google+ account

To rank higher as a “personal result” you can SEO your Google+ profile. With regard to keywords, you should know that there are 4 places in your profile where keywords matter for ranking: Introduction, Education, Employment and Places. So, make sure to pump in some good keywords in these key places.

Optimize your Google+ Circles. Just like link building, the way you can optimize your Circles is by getting high-quality people in your circle. How do you do this? Well, just like in blog commenting, really engage and comment often on posts that these people share. If you have high quality work, you can share this as well. The goal is for these people to notice you so that they will put you in their circle.

Reason 4: More Users = More Traffic

Search Plus Your World is again a well-played strategy by Google in order to get more people to use Google+. When you click on the Learn how you could appear here too at the end of the People and Pages on Google+, you are immediately directed to Google sign-up page – nice bait from Google eh?
As more and more people jump the Google+ bandwagon, you get bigger chances of exposure to your target market. And with Google+’s Circles, you can narrow down your prospects to harness quality leads.

Reason 5: Google+’s Circles Help You Target Your Audience

Google+ Circles is a great feature. This allows you to segment people into particular groups which can help you organize your target market better. For example, you can categorize them into Customers, Prospects, VIPs etc. You can share specific posts only to a Circle so that you can track which strategies are working and which aren’t.

Though Facebook is clearly in the lead in the social media battle for dominance, Google is pulling everything in its arsenal to leverage Google+ to a closer fight with Facebook. It won’t be long when these 2 platforms will be head to head, hopefully by then, you’ve made the choice to include Google+ in your Content Strategy.

Author Bio

+Tony Evans is a freelance web designer, a graduate of Project Management at Upskilled Australia and a mother of a beautiful daughter, Athena. She has a passion in Aerobics and cooking healthy recipes.

Believe it or not Google is still a very young company when compared to other big brands that commenced in the early 1900’s that still thrive today. It is hard to imagine what Google could be ten years from now since they have already grown so much in the short time they have been on this planet.

In this Google video Matt Cutts discusses some of the possibilities for Google during the next decade or so.

If you are serious about your SEO health and you analyze your Google Webmaster Tools account on a regular basis than you might have received one of these “unnatural links” messages recently in your account. For some, this message might have caused serious panic. The truth is that you don’t have to go nuts when you see this message. Take a deep breath and start to explore what it really means in relevance to your Internet marketing approach.

Unnatural Links Video

Social Proof is the hot buzzword in online marketing. Essentially what it is all about is technological peer pressure. It is a fact that people follow what other people are doing. We gravitate towards things that others are interested in or doing. Wise online marketing strategists are pairing social proof with SEO techniques in order to enhance conversion on their sites.

Make Your Site More Discoverable with SEO

SEO is the compilation of the strategies you employ to direct traffic to your website. Having an online presence is simply not enough. You need to be using a variety of methods to constantly drive people to your website, such as blogging, pay per click campaigns, social media and link building. Once you have those new visitors at your site, you need to find a way to take them from discovery to action.
That’s where social proof comes in. Having a constant flow of new traffic means that you have new potential customers that you can influence. However, without some form of social proof, your conversion rate will be very low. You will have only web site content to use to make an impression. With social proof, you will actually be using sophisticated peer pressure to help get the desired results.

Yet Another Marketing Tool To Master

Savvy businesses know how consumers work. They realize that peer pressure aka social proof is not just for teenagers and is not always bad. We want to emulate others. That’s why you will find more and more social proof in a variety of places online.

Social proof that you encounter online is often in the form of ratings. When you search for a restaurant, hotel, apartment and most service providers, you will typically find ratings that have been provided by actual customers on websites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, UrbanSpoon, ZAGAT and ApartmentRatings. Google Plus is yet another ratings/sharing method that allows you to find out how many people recommend a site, service or product. Social proof of this type provides you with the knowledge that many others have used and enjoyed the same thing you are considering and you are therefore more likely to make that purchase.

Widgets like FacePile are another very effective form of social proof for your website. If you are logged into Facebook, and you visit a page with FacePile, you will see the faces of the friends you know and some people you don’t who like the page you are visiting. This increases the chance that you will like it too.

Other types of social proof are statistics. Companies like Box.net quote the percentage of Fortune 500 companies that use their services. The reader of such social proof wants to be a Fortune 500 company and therefore takes an action based on wanting to emulate what successful businesses do.

GetListed.org uses a similar strategy but quotes how many businesses of the same type as yours in your area do business with them. That way you see that your peers and competitors are using the company, so you should too.

When you state how many people use you your product, you are creating social proof. However, if you state how many businesses of the same type in a given town use your product, you are creating much stronger social proof. Even better is getting people to tweet or post about using your product or service. By doing so, you are making a much bigger impact on that person’s circle of influence than by any of the other forms of social proof. Social networks are the most powerful form of social proof.

Put Them Together and You Have Magic

Without the flow from SEO, your social proof strategies will be for nothing. Without social proof, your conversions from SEO will be low. Together you have a strategy that delivers results.

When you successfully direct new traffic to your website on a continual basis using SEO and then win them over through social proof, you have the perfect opportunity for action. Your lead is now ready to take the desired action. Be sure that you clearly ask for what you want. They should be ready to commit to whatever action you want them to take: share something, fill out a form, watch a video or pick up the phone.
Social activity is used to prove the legitimacy of your site to those who have found it thanks to your strategic SEO efforts. This delivers better results than you could ever imagine. Enjoy better brand power and increased conversion rates with the magic of SEO and social proof.

About the Author

Gerad Hoyt is an online marketing director with Vast Bridges. His current project, Satellite Informant, is a High Speed Internet Provider for rural areas that utilizes satellite signals to deliver broadband internet service.

If I had a penny for every time Google claimed that they take privacy seriously- even though in futility as several incidents point to the contrary, I ‘d have a company as huge as Google myself. The company’s recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for breaking privacy promises and its commitment in the past year to put up with 20 years of FTC privacy audits in lieu of “deceptive privacy practices” is making the company privacy deal with privacy with new improved and upgraded seriousness. In 2010 Google confessed over the revelations about the Street View cars data that it had been accumulating from open unsecured WIFI access points, after the incident Google appointed Alma Whitten to be its director of privacy, also added an information security awareness program for employees and started requiring engineering product managers to keep privacy design documented for every single project.

Now the company is further formalizing internal processes to test product privacy with the formation of a “red team” which is going to be a group that would attempt to challenge the organizations defenses in order to make them more effective. In the security world this is usually done as a way of penetration testing. For example, financial institutions often hire hackers to try and break into their systems in order to see where the cracks are and how can they be filled.

New hires shows your concern

Recently, a Google job posting noted by Kaspersky Lab is calling for candidates to apply for the job of Data Privacy Engineer for the Privacy Red Team. The company hopes that the selected candidate would be expected to help ensure that Google products are designed to the highest possible standards and however they are operated the privacy of the users is protected. It also expects the candidate to work as a member of Privacy Red Team and independently locate research and help deal with potential privacy risks across all Google’s products, services and business processes functioning nowadays. However, the company’s response upon this search for new hires was rather shy as the spokesperson responded we are always looking for talented people for various roles.

Privacy…..or…..privacy?

When it comes to privacy concerns Google has had a different set of preferences perhaps, or so it seems, as the priority has often been speed or other values over privacy. In this regard, for quite some time now, the company has lagged in terms of privacy issues. The incident in 2008 whereby Google was censured by Joel Anderson, a California State Assemblyman, for not having a link to its privacy policy on the homepage as per the state law, whereas the company was more inclined towards saving those extra bytes of data that the text for privacy policy would add to its speedy homepage, not to mention clutter the space as well.

However, the seriousness of Google’s much touted and newly rediscovered concern about privacy becomes dubious when other vying parties provide protections that Google does not, for example the Do Not Track setting, not that this setting is a complete protection and keeps all kinds of computer monitoring software, cell phone spy apps for one’s, etc away, but the fact that most other browsers are offering except for Chrome.

Author Bio:

Natalia David has become a reliable name in the sphere of technology. Her work regarding cell phone security apps and PC security has earned her great recognition. You can also follow her on twitter @NataliaDavid4