of Google's new social network, Google+. Unfortunately, unlike Google's other attempts at achieving social networking success, given its quick success, it seems like Google might actually be onto something this time with Google+. This means marketers everywhere must pay attention and start taking advantage of the new social network to stay ahead of their competition and reap the marketing benefits Google+ can afford. Google+ is here. Google+ is here. Google+ 101 Guide " by Supernova Studios. Google+ 101 Guide. MORE >>

Social media sites like Facebook with its more than 750 million users, Twitter with its more than 280 million users and the business network LinkedIn with its more than 100 million users offer wide opportunities for businesses, not matter if they are B2B or B2C, to get seen and to get in touch with their future customers. 3rd Go to Google Alerts and set Alerts for your name, your company brand, your products, your best customers and your top ten competitors. To learn how take a look at HubSpot how they have published a PR on Twitter with its 140 characters. MORE >>

This year, however, Google decided to help keep things exciting with a couple of new announcements that were covered on this week's episode of the Marketing Update on HubSpot TV. Google's Ban of Co.cc On Thursday evening, Google banned the Co.cc domain , which removed every website using that domain from all Google search results. While Google reserves the right to ban all sites on a certain host if a high percentage of sites hosted on that domain are spammy, it's not something they do very often. Marketing Lesson: As a marketer, Google's co.cc MORE >>

As social sharing gained greater importance in Google's search algorithm updates throughout 2011 , it makes perfect sense that Google would venture into the social space by creating Google+ and the +1 button to get in on the action. Since then, Google has slowly rolled out updates to how Google+ and +1 impacts search results, and these little changes are starting to add up. To stay ahead of the curve, let's take a look at the four most recent updates that Google has started testing to integrate their foray into social networking with the organic search world. MORE >>

Many of the same principles apply to optimizing a blog for search as for optimizing a business website : use keywords in the body copy, post titles, subheadings, permalink URL, image alt tags and meta tags. But a blog also presents additional opportunities for search optimization beyond those that apply to standard websites (which is why Google loves blogs ). But with a blog, you can create any (reasonable) number of top-level categories, and give these keyword-rich labels. Fee-based platforms like Compendium and HubSpot are also search-friendly. Fresh content. MORE >>