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Yahoo Shutting Down Yahoo Groups on October 21

by Pythagoras Matko
written by Pythagoras Matko

The one time king of the search engines, Yahoo, announced today the official shutdown of its platform’s groups on October 21, 2019. The news does not come as much of a surprise to existing users with Yahoo e-mail accounts and/or group memberships. Since the acquisition of the brand by Verizon Communications in 2016, the telecommunications giant spearheaded the move to revamp and revitalize Yahoo’s online services. This includes Yahoo Groups – which for a long time – served as vital entities for both social and business engagements.

According to the announcement, all Yahoo Groups content will be removed by December 14, 2019. Existing users will no longer be able to upload new content to groups but their pages will remain on the network. This move follows the closure of Google+ back in April of this year due to security and data breaches. Google also cited the dominance of new social networks as another reason for its discontinued support of the service.

This cements the fact that older search engines and social media outlets can no longer compete with the big-hitters. With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram continuing to grow by leaps and bounds, legacy platforms are on their way out. While Yahoo does remain a competitor in the search-engine realm, Google continues to sit atop the social media totem pole. The domination of Google and Amazon (for global marketplace shoppers) has even led to worldwide businesses refiguring their presence across multiple online networks.

Which content will be removed from Yahoo Groups?

Yahoo is planning on removing the following content from Yahoo Groups on December 14, 2019:

  • Attachments
  • Calendar
  • Conversations
  • Database
  • Email Updates
  • Files
  • Folders
  • Links
  • Message Digest
  • Message History
  • Photos
  • Polls

If you have a business or brand group on Yahoo Groups, now is the time to save all your content before it’s removed. Simply sign in to your Yahoo account and download the files from the group’s page. Like the Google+ content acquisition, you will have to request Yahoo to send you the data. Once the content has been gathered and saved, Yahoo will send you a link via e-mail.

Can people still join existing Yahoo Groups?

Moving forward, Yahoo Groups will be harder to join for the general public at large. Any currently public groups will become private or restricted. While they will still have a place in the search results, users will have to submit requests to join these groups.

Today’s announcement of the closing of Yahoo Groups was done somewhat quietly. While the news has spread like wildfire across the web, Yahoo only mentioned the closure in a support document to its platform’s users. The service will only exist in minimal capacity after December 14th. Similarly, administrators will have limited access to page tools and features.

While the closing has puzzled some users, many have already migrated to other social networks with wider reaches for content distribution. Still, there are others – like Jason Scott of the Internet Archive – that have vowed to preserve as much content from the Groups as possible. With Yahoo collaborating with other providers like Google for shared ad revenue, is there a chance that it might revive Groups for brand owners in the near or distant future? Only time will tell.

 

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Google+ Bows Out of the Social Media Realm

by Pythagoras Matko
written by Pythagoras Matko

As many of you know or don’t know, Google+ is officially shutting down by April 2019. As a one-time heavy hitter in the social media realm, the platform was a haven for bloggers, digital marketers, and web developers. Its user-friendly interface was heralded by social media gurus and novices alike. Similarly, the ability to promote captivating content to mass audiences was a primary element in its growth. Sadly, Google+ fell victim to a massive data breach in March 2018 – resulting in the company rethinking its support for the network.

Why is Google+ closing its doors?

According to industry monitors, Google+ can no longer maintain its security infrastructure for the platform. At the same token, it is not able to compete with Facebook and Twitter for social media dominance. While the network was initially designed to emulate Facebook in 2010, it has been plagued by questionable content and data breaches in the last few years. The latest attack in March compromised over 500,000 accounts on the platform. Users had their personal and private information illegally shared – without consent – to a myriad of developers.

The incident occurred at the same time Facebook was hounded for the Cambridge Analytica data breach. While Google tried to remedy the situation, it was done behind closed doors. The company did not disclose the breach for several months – resulting in global scrutiny and an exodus of registered users. The company stated that none of the data was mishandled, but regulators pointed out that the data breach should have been informed to the public at once. This has resulted in the following:

  • Potential investigations of Google in the US and Europe this year.
  • Google suffered a second data breach in December 2018, which affected over 50 million users: web developers, SEO marketing agencies, social media bloggers and more.
  • Users are now scrambling to save their Google+ files, documents, photos, videos and marketing materials. If you are a registered user, you must contact Google to request an archive of your data.
  • Google Inbox and Google+ will soon be gone. Users now worry that the popular Blogger platform may be next.
  • Google+ has seen many users leave its platform for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. With a record low number of users, now is the time to remove any soon-to-be outdated links from your e-mail signatures and marketing materials.

What about my Google+ data?

Google+ was slated to shut down in August of this year. However, the second data breach called for the platform to close its doors earlier. With April as the target month, users are rushing to export their data out of the platform. To assist, Google has launched a service called Takeout, which makes the process smoother and easier. You only need to log-in to your Google Account and request an archive of all your data. This will be compiled and sent over via e-mail within a day or two.

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Small Business Checklist – Three Ways to Improve Rankings

by Pythagoras Matko
written by Pythagoras Matko

Search engine optimization (SEO) is never easy for any company. With so many metrics involved, it can be truly challenging to secure measurable results for any new or existing brand. Similarly, digital marketing can be complicated for clients with limited time, money and resources. This is why it’s pivotal to have a seasoned and reputable company handle all your online advertising needs.  For small to medium-sized businesses, there are several ways to improve your visibility and Google rankings. In fact, here are some key points to address on any business SEO checklist:

  • What to address in your online SEO marketing campaign?
  • Why is SEO important for any new or existing company?
  • Which tools will help you secure higher visibility, page rankings, and client – customer patronage?
  • How much time commitment is involved for improving my business rankings and industry ratings?

If these are some of the questions you have, it’s important to know that great organic (natural) rankings do not happen overnight. In fact, it’s a comprehensive, cohesive and ongoing process that requires you to have patience across the board. Similarly, a sound and effective SEO package reflect all the current and burgeoning trends. This includes mobile optimization for pages, along with social media integration and captivating and compelling content. With this in mind, here are three ways that have been proven to improve rankings for small and mid-sized businesses across the nation.

1. Understand What your Customers are Looking For

Before you venture into SEO, you need to know what your customers are looking for. For example specific products, tailor-made services, or quick responses to customer questions and concerns. Analyzing and assessing your small business needs is a specialty of any seasoned and reputable SEO agency. In fact, they can provide timely solutions for the following:

  • Optimizing your websites and blogs to reflect the latest changes in Google algorithms. Creating gripping websites that attract and engage your geo-specific or core customer bases.
  • Incorporating mobile optimization to secure higher visibility on Google Maps, local search results, and business listings. This is a crucial way to build a strong mobile presence while promoting your brands to new clients and consumers.
  • Ensuring your sites, blogs and online stores are fully compatible with desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. SEO experts take into account page loading times, which is important in reducing bounce rates and keeping potential customers on your pages longer.
  • Making sure your content is easy to scan and digest with industry-specific keywords, relevant text, and social media links (embedded and visible).
  • Promoting your business on Google, Yahoo, Yelp, Bing, and all social – mobile – and business platforms and directories.

2. Fix your Technical Issues

Another important aspect of small business SEO is fixing technical issues. While you may a great looking website, an SEO audit is the only way to ensure complete optimization across your pages. In fact, the way you present your pages are just as important as your business offerings and content. With this in mind, here are some of the technical issues SEO professionals address and resolve:

  • Speed and page download times. Long gone are the days of lengthy content and flash intros that would take forever to load.
  • Checking for duplicate content on the Web. This is important since duplicate content can seriously impact your rankings, ratings, and web-traffic.
  • Repairing broken links to ensure customers link back to the products, services, and information they seek. Broken links can prompt users and visitors to leave your sites and go elsewhere. Similarly, Google can penalize your pages for promoting misleading, false, or incorrect content and links.
  • Making sure all your pages are fully optimized for SEO. This allows search engines to properly crawl and index you web-pages on their listings and user searches.
  • Enhancing the strong areas of your pages, while improving the weaker and non-optimized areas of your website.

3. Optimizing your Pages

SEO on-page optimization is much more than just placing strategic keywords on pages. In fact, your content must also be streamlined, centralized and properly structured across your pages. Similarly, you must have keywords (preferably long-tailed) that effectively target your specific customer and client bases. With SEO content specialists, you are able to tap into important ranking signals and non-spammy keywords and links. Local experts will also optimize the following for optimal results:

  • Website, blog and online store titles and sub-titles.
  • Meta descriptions with back-links to your sites and pages. The correct form of preview content that can be accessed by users – by simply hovering their computer mouses over the content and links.
  • Body content – easy to scan content that is precise, concise and gets your messages across to users.

These are some of the ways to improve your small-business visibility on Google. However, you need a dedicated SEO company to cover all bases and take your brands to new heights in any industry.

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Social Media is Here: Embrace It

by Tom Bowen
written by Tom Bowen

Technology is a part of the daily fabric of today. What once seemed to be a fad, with beginnings in chat rooms, hubs, and then later on places like MySpace, has evolved into a trend that’s integrated itself within the conveniences that came with its evolution.

We are now through digital networks able to connect to family, friends, and acquaintances anywhere in the world. So why not take advantage of this connection to create and grow a business?

What is a business but the exchange between one person and another?

It’s therefore important for businesses to see that no matter what industry they’re in, the personalization of their brand through a digital network will help them connect with their audience.

It’s important to be aware of the multiple social networks and to capitalize on their success to capitalize on all the rewards available.

Below are a couple of statistics:

Facebook

  • 1.15+ Billion Users
  • 345 Million Users Check their account more than 5 times a day

Twitter

  • 500+ Million Users
  • 400 Million Tweets sent out per day

Google +

  • 500+ Million Users
  • The +1 button is served more than 5 billion times per day

LinkedIn

  • 238+ Million Users
  • Over 1 Billion LinkedIn Endorsements

Instagram

  • 130+ Million Users
  • 5 Million photos uploaded every day

Pinterest

  • 70+ Million Users
  • More than 69% of users are female

Other Important Numbers

  • 1 Billion Unique Monthly Visitors on Youtube
  • 4.2 billion people use mobile device to access social media sites
  • Social Media is The Top Internet Activity: Average American spends more than 37 minutes a day on social media more than any other internet activity including email.
  • Social media generates almost double the marketing leads of trade show, telemarketing, daily mail, or PPC according to digital insights

There are many benefits to Social Media like:

  • Lead Generation
  • Higher Search Ranking
  • Business Partnerships
  • Reduction in Marketing Expenses
  • More Sales
  • Analytics on your Audience

Just because Social Media is effective and easier to build a business on doesn’t make it easy to manage consistently. However, there are many tools that your Social Media Marketing Company can provide you with that can facilitate the persona and interaction of your business.

Make the most out of technology, get on this trend and capitalize on the possibilities.

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