The new enhanced sitelinks will use your current text ads that are associated with your sitelinks and expand them like you see in the 4-pack SERP results on major brands. In order to be eligible for sitelinks your ad must be above the Google search results (1-2 in most cases) and your account must have ads closely related to the sitelinks in your campaign.

See the screenshots below for examples they used.

Here are some examples of all of the different testing that Google is doing with Google+ in your ads, sitelinks with new arrows on them and reviews and product streams.

If you are interested in creating a Google Plus page for your business you can visit the Google Plus for Business guide or click the link below:
http://www.google.com/+/business/

Here is an instructional Youtube video on how to create a Google Page for your business

Your customers and clients will often turn to their friends and family to help them make decisions and gather recommendations for using businesses. The +1 button combines the power of these types of recommendations on Google and it’s owned and operated properties. Google has social circles across the web and has integrated this into Google search and on many news sites to show these timely recommendations to help your site stand out in the crowd.

You can customize your +1 button and +Snippet here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

Google+ Pages help you build deeper relationships with customers by sharing your links, photos and videos as well as promotions. You can get reports on visitors and highlight special deals and offers as well as to chat live with international customers all over the world.

Google has one of the most advanced Webmaster tools that you can use to both submit your website to be crawled and also to add sitemaps, xml feeds or product feeds for them to crawl and index.

Google Webmaster Central also has great reporting tools and resources to show you any site errors or issues they have crawling your content. To sign-in to Webmaster tools you just need to have an active gmail account. I usually use the same one that is linked to my GA and Adwords accounts to keep everything streamlined.

Once you have logged into the site and are on the Tools homepage at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home, you will see a red “Add a Site” button and enter your sites URL. You will then need to authenticate ownership of the site and you can do this using Google Analytics if your GA tracking code that uses the asynchronous snippet. You can also click on the ‘alternative methods’ tab and add a meta tag to your sites homepage, add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration or upload an HTML file to your website. They will provide a link to download the HTML file and you will need to upload it directly to your root folder. Remember – you only need to do one of these methods to verify your tag.

Google Verify with HTML

Google Site Verification Tag

If you are using WordPress and want to verify your site using the meta tag snippet then you can usually go to the Appearance > Editor > and edit the header.php file and place the meta tag just before the tag in the file and then go back to the Google Webmaster Central page and click to verify the tag. Don’t forget this process as Google doesn’t do an auto-check until you tell them to.

Once you have verified your site then you will want to get your sitemap submitted to them. If you haven’t ever built an xml sitemap then there are a bunch of free xml sitemap tools or if you are using WordPress then you can download a sitemap plug-in which will automatically create and update your sitemap on the fly for you. I’ll do another post on best practices sitemap settings for the different fields like lastmod, changefreq and priority.

http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

With your Google Places account you can get your business listed locally and be found on Google searches. Your Google Places listing will also allow you to control the categories you would like to be placed in as well as to enhance your listing with photos, videos and public reviews.

Once you have setup and secured your listing on Google Places then you can create offers that show up on your Google listing where your customers can print the offers and bring them in to your place of business to redeem. The offers will also allow you to attract new customers as you can specify that they need to be first time customers if you own a salon or service related business.

If your business is already listed on Google and you see if appear on Google Maps and want to claim if from there then you can follow these steps below to do so.

1. Make sure you are logged into a Gmail account that you want to associate with your business.

2. Go to the Google maps page that you saw your company listed on.

3. Click on the “more info>>” link next to your listing.

4. Next to the Get Directions links you’ll see a link that says “Edit this place. Business Owner?”. Click that link.

5. This should take you to the Google Places dashboard if you are already logged in. You can verify your business by getting a phone call to the business phone or receiving a postcard in the mail with a 4-digit verification.

Tips: Make sure you pick a few categories for your business and if you have a local physical location of your business then be sure to list the address in your home page footer. Google seems to like this for use with Google Instant search results.

-Brian

Here is the starting page for everyone that wants to create a Facebook Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

What is the difference between Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups?

I get this question quite frequently and think of Facebook Pages as being the official profiles for entities, such as businesses and celebrities or brands and Facebook Groups for smaller groups to interact with each other around a common interest like a church group or athletic team. If you are interested in creating a Facebook Group you can still do so at:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php

Another good reason to create a page for your business is that you can then create Facebook ads to promote your page or you can create and embed your own Like Box on your companies website by going here after your Facebook Page has been created:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box

Happy Facebooking!

-Brian

Once you see a flash banner or button that you want to save to your desktop locally then all you need to do is follow the steps below and make sure you are using Firefox as your browser:

1. Right click on a blank space in the page where there isn’t an image showing. Do not click on any links, text, or images.

2. Select the “View Page Info” option directly underneath “View Page Source”. You will now see a Page Info pop up box with 5 or so tabs on the top.

3. Select the “Media” tab. It will list all of the embedded content from the page. This will include images, flash, audio, etc.

4. Scroll down the list until you see an “Embed” type file. When you locate what you think is the flash ad you want to download, choose the “Save As” button on the bottom right and save it to your hard drive.

5. Last step is that you can right click the .swf file where ever you have stored it locally and select “Open with” option and then select “Other” and under Enable select the “All Applications” drop down and scroll down to Firefox application and then tick the “Always Open With” box and click “Open” button and Firefox will launch a new window with your flash file.

Firefox is amazing huh? I think so too. Enjoy. Here is some screen shots that might be helpful as well.

-Brian

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit

Once you are on this page then you can click on [edit] in the Public Profile line and then you can put in your last name or full name in the update address box and click the set address button. You can also make changes if you have recently had a name change from a marriage. The only problem is that your old name won’t remap to your account anymore.

Here is some other helpful Linkedin resources on setting your privacy and personalization controls on your profile:
Linkedin Privacy Settings

They had a link to this Twitter Advertising information page that has a information request form at the bottom of it.

How much does it cost to promote your content on Twitter? Is it a cost-per-click (CPC) model?

Some Promoted Products offerings, such as Promoted Trends, are a fixed rate. Others use a simple impression-based (CPM) pricing model. Twitter is still developing that model with a small group of beta advertising partners and are measuring multiple indicators of engagement, such as: retweets, @replies, use of #hashtags, avatar clicks, in-Tweet link clicks, views after re-tweets, and more. They are calling these indicators “Resonance” and they believe that over time, a pricing model based on resonance will be better for promoting a Twitter account than a CPC or CPA model on followers.

Here is the response when I asked to be signed up on the Twitter Advertising Beta.

2/11/11 – Post follow up: I just found this “Promoted Tweets” page on the Twitter Business section. They explain both promoted Tweets and promoted Trends offerings.

Promoted Tweets Explained:
* Send a Tweet to your followers first, then promote that Tweet
* The Tweets then appear as content in Twitter search results, not alongside them
* The Promoted Tweets can be interacted with just like normal Tweets

http://www.facebook.com/username/

Be careful in choosing the name as you can only release and change it once. This is a great way to promote your business or personal profile to friends and fans. As Google and the other engines continue to crawl and index the entire Facebook community this makes it easier to connect your social profiles with your name and business.

If you ever want to change your username, you have to go to your account settings page at:
Facebook Edit Account Settings

It is available in the account drop down menu on the top right navigation bar. Remember it can only be changed one time and it is the ‘username’ that you will want to edit.

Here is another Facebook SEO tweak that you can apply to your profile to cross link your sites to show the engines that they are related to one another. Go to your profile page, click the info tab, scroll down to contact section and click edit and you can fill in your website URL(s) there.

Another great tool that Facebook allows you to do is create a profile badge or widget to embed on your website to increase your fans. The Facebook widget page can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/profilebadges.php

-Brian R.

Google AdWords Ad Preview Tool – Enter a keyword, then select a Google domain, display language, and location to preview paid ads in that region.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool – Use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword expands and to find good negatives to add to your current campaigns.