Digital Marketing by Patrick LaJuett

Google Snippets in Search Results Snippet Discovery I recently discovered a unique occurrence of Google snippets that appeared in a Google search engine results page (SERP).  It happens to be one of my portfolio pages, so naturally, it peaked my interest. A Google snippet is a description of or an excerpt from the webpage.  A snippet refers to the description portion of a Google search listing. Take a look at the SERP snippet below: Note, the snippet is made up of an element count (40+ items), the meta description, and four excerpts from the page. Page Rendering in Browser Here's what the portfolio page looks like when rendered in the browser: Underlying Page Code In this case, it appears as though the Google bot has gone into the page code, and parsed out the top four image descriptions.  What's interesting is that the page contains an html table with alternating rows.  Images, followed by the company name and location. Consistency and Stabilit

Social Media for Small Business - Don't Over Complicate Things! I get a lot of questions from customers regarding social networking. The majority of them feel it is something they should be doing.  But many have a fear of taking the plunge... due in part to concerns with not having enough time. Being active on social media doesn't have to be overly complex.  A few minutes a day can get the job done for 99% of the small businesses out there.  Here are some thoughts on how a small business can benefit from being "social". What Is Social Media? According to Wikipedia, "social media refers to interaction among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. It introduces substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals." Why Small Business Should Incorporate Social Into their Marketing Efforts Audience Reach + Relationship

I recently received this question from a client needing SEO help: "I have a website for my company XYZ...the site is a Google Site. For some reason, my site is not indexed at all. Can you help?" Diagnosing the Problem Using Google Webmaster Tools, it became quickly apparent that Google was aware of the website (site was verified and an XML sitemap was uploaded).  But for some reason the search engine was not indexing it. The first thing I looked at was the robots.txt file to make sure no-follow wasn't blocking the Google bot.  Seemed OK.  Next I took a look at the page's source code...here's what I found: Page Source (Before):   HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow, nosnippet Last-Modified: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 19:27:23 GMT ... This is a problem!  Digging deeper...when I looked at the Google Sites Sharing and Permissions settings, it was set to " Anyone who has link can view ". This was

Quick Review of Google's New Web Designer Google Web Designer user interface Yesterday, Google announced the launch of Web Designer, a new tool for building interactive HTML5 sites and ads.  The beta version is available for download here . I have kicked the tires a bit.  Overall, I am excited with Google's foray into the world of HTML5 editors. Here are my initial thoughts: The Good: Cost:  It's free to download, at least the Beta version is. Animation Timeline : Keyframes are used to "tween" animation points on the timeline. (Size, rotation, XYZ coordinates, etc.). It reminds me of an old Flash animation app called  Swish .  Hooks:  Using the Components menu, you can link to external iframes, galleries, maps, tap areas, and videos. Preview : Ability to preview the ads directly within the UI.  You can also preview in local browsers. Publishing : Quick process with "zip" option (contains all related files for easy upload). The Bad: