Customers can now virtually stroll through your lobby or entrance with the help of Google’s virtual tours.  As we mentioned in our previous post, branded search terms that match exactly with your Google Places listing will result in a SERP with a Places page preview including thumbnails of your photos and 360° virtual tours. No longer will someone have to take that next step and click into your page to view photos, tours, or reviews. Let’s use Riviera Palm Springs as an example, to demonstrate the SERP display and virtual tours. You can see the thumbnails in the SERP and once someone clicks on a thumbnail they are directed to the virtual tour.

We know it’s challenging for many businesses to balance their marketing budget and maintain current photography, a cool website, social media campaign, the list goes on and on. Google Photos and Virtual Tours are an economical and cool way for your business to receive added exposure on Google without the pain of an expensive photo shoot. At the moment, Google is still expanding their business photo shoot locations but right now are they available in select cities in the US and other countries. Below is an example of the Virtual Tour that is created by Google.

You simply have to apply for a Google photo shoot of your business. We encourage you to fill out the short application even if you aren’t in one of the current select cities, so we can show Google where they should go next.

Photo shoots can be overwhelming and sometimes things go awry, but hopefully with proper planning it will go smoothly and result in a beautiful product.

Here are some general suggestions in the hopes that your shoot will be stress-free:

• Schedule the shoot when you expect to have little or no traffic through the areas you have selected for the shoot
• Alert any clients/guests that may be present during the shoot
• Inspect each area of the shoot – make sure everything is displayed perfectly in that area and in any peripheral spaces such as the patio outside which is seen in the background of the photo
• Assign a liaison to be present with the photographer. He/She can assist the photographer with any questions or needs, as well as talk to any guests or customers that weren’t aware of the shoot
• Inform your staff of the shoot so they can double-check their areas pre-shoot and they can be prepared to answer questions from customers and guests.

Remember that you want this to be the very best representation of your property and a realistic one too. It can look like you’re trying too hard if you add bouquets of flowers or new items to the areas that aren’t normally there. This is encouraged for an advertising photo shoot for use in your website and collateral materials; however with virtual tours and photos from a third-party such as Google it is more journalistic in nature.

If you aren’t lucky enough to be in one of the major cities that Google has selected to qualify for their business photo shoots, you can always add your own photos to your Google Places listing. This will enhance the relevancy of your listing and add those lovely little thumbnails to your listing in branded searches. SEO is an important part of your marketing strategy and these little details come together to help your business succeed in a virtual world.

2 blog posts in one day! No we haven’t gone mad… yet. We just thought that you all should see this news as soon as possible.

In the last few hours Google has changed their algorithm that pulls in review numbers. Previously when you searched for a hotel, let’s say in Chattanooga TN, you were shown a count of reviews box to the right of each search result that numbered in the hundreds or even thousands for 1st page GP results. This was because Google pulled the reviews from a number of different sources to build the cumulative count of reviews. However, now Google shows an extremely low number. Why?

The review number for this hotel is now, just 15. Previously for the Chattanoogan this figure was in excess of  200 reviews ( Tripadvisor + hotels.com + yahoo etc. etc.). This change may have a close correlation with the gaining traction of Google +1. Google wants its active members to get involved and have the main say behind review results.

So what is the impact hotel and other industry local SEO effort? The number of Google Places reviews (and their quality) will likely have a huge say in future SERP rankings. For instance my search above ranks the hotels almost perfectly in review number order – 32, 15, 4 & 5.

So what’s your follow up question to that? Hands up please… That’s right… How do we get more Google reviews? Thats something that agencies and clients need to think about and resolve before Google leaves them behind.

Unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog there’s a very good chance that there is initially only one loyal reader of your new blog – you!

Here are the top 6 ways to increase your blog traffic for new bloggers who have near-to-no audience at the moment and would like to get a jumpstart on things.

1.      Write more solid articles – the single most important thing you can do to get your blog noticed and increase your readership is to have solid articles in place. Aim for one solid article per week and at the end of the year you will have a database of more than 50 feature articles that will bring in more readers.

2.      Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com – a great strategy is to submit your articles to article directories such EzineArticles.com. To increase the visibility of your blog, you don’t want to go chasing the traffic. You want to find out where the traffic is and get yourself in front of it. EzineArticles.com has 30+ million unique visitors a month searching for articles in specific categories for your specific information. This is a great way to connect with your target audience.

3.      Submit to blog directories – whilst this tip might not bring you a ton of new readers, it’s easy to do and only take a few minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites and find the category that fits your blog and submit it. Then copy and paste a couple of lines of code to your blog so you can rank and that’s it. Over time you’ll see your blog climb the rankings creating another source of traffic for your blog

4.      Encourage comments on your own blog – when you can show that you have loyal readers on your blog this convinces someone to become a loyal reader as well. If they see people commenting on your blog they will conclude that your content must be good. You can encourage comments by posing a question in a blog post. Remember to always respond to comments so you keep the conversation going.

5.      Start commenting on other blogs – one way to find the right readers for your blog is to aim to comment on other blogs with a similar niche topic to yours. Chances are the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

6.      Use a proper domain name – be serious about what you name your blog. Something that’s easy for people to remember makes it easy for them to spread the word about your blog. A .com is always your best choice if available and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than having the correct keywords. If you can manage to make the keywords work in the domain name that’s also easy to remember then that’s the ideal.

I hope this has given you some food for thought about getting some traffic to your new blog. If you’ve used other methods that have proven successful for you, please send us a comment. We’d love to know!

Google just introduced new features to their search results that brings a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web.  Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before.  When they are relevant, Google will show the most recent posts towards the top of the search results page.

Where do the feeds come from? Google announced official partnerships with the following web entities; Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca to power their aggregate real-time feeds.

Get a first look at the new search interface and some sample searches.

So the big, very big question is what does this mean?  More spam unfortunately. More attempts by affiliate marketers to skew the system in their favor and more automated recycling of posts to always have a presence in real time results. It’s not going to be a bed of roses while the search engines get to grips with reputation management of the contributors that author content on these new partners. We know that Twitter’s user profile management is basic at best. Silly algorithms that weight banal factors as negatives or positives can easily be circumvented and before you know it you’re being stuffed with affiliate cookies and pimped malware for having clicked on what you thought was a legitimate real-time search result from your ‘trusted’, favorite search engine Google.

Moving away from the pessimistic side of what will happen, there will be advantages. More so for mobile search’s integration of real-time results. That’s another post however.

Anyway, real-time is  rolling out over the next few days and when you have it, you’ll see it just happening withing your search results.