How can you compete with the big box stores?

You can compete with big brands if you do it correctly

Smaller websites can be quicker than big brands. Big companies often take months to change something on their web pages. There are several things that you can do to compete with large brands:

• Use better and more targeted keywords that attract better customers.
• Make your web page titles and descriptions more attractive so that searchers click on your site in the search results.
• Improve your website navigation so that searchers find things more quickly on your site.
• Offer something that the big brand does not offer. This can be personal support, better customer service.

I can not tell you how many times some customers simply walk away from their website offering nothing,  No service no extras nothing. You must use yur social media, your e-mail newsletters, your blogs, give things away and see how your rankings will soar.

Let us see if anyone is reading... If you send me an e-mail to jrossini@rossini.com tell me your web site, I will look at it for free and give you my honest opinion of your web site and what you may want to do to update it.

Ok lets see:)

First page rankings on Google

Everybody knows that it is important to be listed on Google's first result page. However, how important is it exactly? How many clicks do the different positions on the first result page get and how much is a top 10 ranking worth in dollars?

The distribution of clicks on the first search result page

Optify published a study that shows the distribution of clicks on the first search result page. According to their data, the number one result receives 36.4% of the clicks and the last result on the first result page gets 2.2% of all clicks.
According to their data, 60% of the clicks go to the top three. The first result page gets 89% of all clicks. Ranking first on the second page has some benefits because there's a slight bump for position eleven (2.6%, the first result for page two) over the last position on page one (2.2%, position ten). The next highest click through rate (CTR) on result page 2 is 1.5%. All other positions have lower CTRs.

BrandSoftech published statistics based on the analysis of 63 websites that received 5,357,519 clicks from 29,327 different key phrases typed into Google. According to their study, the top result receives 38.19% of all clicks while the last listing on the first result page gets 2.59% of all clicks.

Some time ago, AOL accidentally published the search data of 650,000 AOL users. That data also revealed how often the different search results were clicked. According to the AOL data, the top result gets 42.13% of all clicks and the last result gets 2.99% of the clicks.

The Cornell University conducted a user-behavior study focused around search behavior specifically on Google. They used an eye-tracking study of a sample of undergraduate students to determine clicks and attention distribution. According to their data, 56.36% of all clicks go to the top ranked website. The last result on the first result page gets 2.55% of all clicks.
All studies show that it is very important to be listed on the first result page and that the first result gets the majority of clicks:

News about the new Android M operating system

This is a very interesting amounbt of information provided by one of the top anti virus systems on the market. I hope you like it:

https://usblog.kaspersky.com/google-io2015-news/?emv_mid=1115789453&emv_rid=1133180718528

Google is changing

By Chris Crum

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

As I'm sure you've heard, Google is going through some major changes in in structure. Google itself now has a parent company. Even after sleeping on it, it's still sinking in. Many, many businesses rely on Google for their well-being in part if not almost entirely in some cases. It's worth considering how the new structural changes might impact everyone else going forward.

First things first. In case you missed it for some reason, Google announced Monday afternoon that it has formed a new company called Alphabet, which will be a parent company to Google, among other things. Instead of Google being the parent to all of the company's endeavors, Google will sit alongside some of those under the bigger umbrella of Alphabet.

Larry Page will no longer be the CEO of Google. He'll be the CEO of Alphabet with co-founder Sergey Brin running it alongside him as President. Executive chairman Eric Schmidt will now hold that role for Alphabet instead of Google. CFO Ruth Porat will hold that role for both (Google is after all still the main moneymaker here). Longtime Google exec Sundar Pichai becomes the new CEO of Google.

Alphabet includes: Google, Calico, Nest, Fiber, Google Ventures, Google Capital, and Google X, which includes things like Glass, self-driving cars, Wing (drones), Robots, and Internet balloons. These are to all be operated separate from one another instead of all being under Google itself. Google as a company still includes the core search and advertising business as well as Android, Chrome, YouTube, Maps, etc. Presumably it will retain Gmail, Drive, Cloud Platform and various other Google-branded web-related products. For most businesses and consumers, it doesn't sound like much will change on the surface.

But just because there won't be any obvious changes on the surface, that doesn't mean the rest of us won't feel the effects from the move to Alphabet going forward. Everybody relying on Google products, like search, advertising, YouTube, apps, etc., now get to experience all of these things under new leadership.

Pichai has been with Google since 2004, and is the obvious choice to take on the new role. He has led efforts from Chrome and Chrome OS, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Maps, and Android. As of this past October, he has been Product Chief at Google. At that point he reportedly took over Google Research, web search, Google Maps, Google+, advertising, commerce, and infrastructure.

In the announcement, Page had this to say about him:

This new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google. A key part of this is Sundar Pichai. Sundar has been saying the things I would have said (and sometimes better!) for quite some time now, and I've been tremendously enjoying our work together. He has really stepped up since October of last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our internet businesses. Sergey and I have been super excited about his progress and dedication to the company. And it is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google. I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations. I have been spending quite a bit of time with Sundar, helping him and the company in any way I can, and I will of course continue to do that. Google itself is also making all sorts of new products, and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation—continuing to stretch boundaries. I know he deeply cares that we can continue to make big strides on our core mission to organize the world's information. Recent launches like Google Photos and Google Now using machine learning are amazing progress.

In other words, Sundar is taking the reins, and Page won't be as hands on with Google and all the things that have the ability to directly affect your business, though he'll still be there for guidance as needed. Also, Pichai and crew already have some unspecified new products in the pipeline (When doesn't Google have new products in the pipeline?). It wouldn't make a lot of sense to speculate on just exactly how things are going to be different under Pichai's direct leadership, but change is change, and businesses are likely to feel the effects in one way or another. Probably many ways.

At the end of the announcement, Page listed the things he's excited about, and one of these is "making Google even better through greater focus".

New Google update coming soon!

From Google:

When we launched Google+, we set out to help people discover, share and connect across Google like they do in real life. While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we’ve needed to rethink. So over the next few months, we’re going to be making some important changes. Here’s more about what you can expect:

A more focused Google+ experience
Google+ is quickly becoming a place where people engage around their shared interests, with the content and people who inspire them. In line with that focus, we’re continuing to add new features like Google+ Collections, where you can share and enjoy posts organized by the topics you care about. At the same time, we’ll also move some features that aren’t essential to an interest-based social experience out of Google+. For example, many elements of Google+ Photos have been moved into the new Google Photos app, and we’re well underway putting location sharing into Hangouts and other apps, where it really belongs. We think changes like these will lead to a more focused, more useful, more engaging Google+.

Using Google without a Google+ profile
People have told us that accessing all of their Google stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier. But we’ve also heard that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use.

So in the coming months, a Google Account will be all you’ll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google. YouTube will be one of the first products to make this change, and you can learn more on their blog. As always, your underlying Google Account won’t be searchable or followable, unlike public Google+ profiles. And for people who already created Google+ profiles but don’t plan to use Google+ itself, we’ll offer better options for managing and removing those public profiles.

You’ll see these changes roll out in stages over several months. While they won’t happen overnight, they’re right for Google’s users—

Just me talking....

This has nothing to do with SEO or web stuff but something about what I like and that is solar power. I have the beginnings of what is called a solar system that will be used by me to light several lighta in my office and maybe a fan or two. I need to revive some solar panels from the embrace of vines:( I need to wash them and then I will hook them back up test them and then hook them into my main power cable going into the house. Bottom line is to be back to around 500 watts of solar power feeding into a solar controller feeding into an inverter then feeding into my lights.  This is basic but I will add to it. My next goal is to get to 1000 watts. I want to feed it all into a power panel that will then tie into our normal power once the batteries are flat and the battery system automatically shuts off and the normal KCPL power takes over.  Yes this is going to take time but I am going to do it.

OK well there, nothing to do with web stuff just me talking:)

More to come.

Joe

words of wisdom

You can save money  or you can make money and that is the difference between doing a web page on your own or having a professional create it.

Joe Rossini