Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Happy to help, Ash! I am very happy to hear that things are coming into focus for you. Yes, there is a lot of information out there, and the platform is rapidly changing. It can be overwhelming at times. You may want to consider joining a couple of Google+ communities on Google+. They are great places to network, as well as ask and answer questions about the Google+ platform. Of course, Q&A is always here to answer your questions as they arise, too. Cheers, Christy

The problem with making it transparent is that you would lose 25% or so of the image which means you would still have to add some design to it (ie. making your picture offset or something)  The way it is now you can just add a photo and you're done.  No editing or Photoshop skills required.  I just think it's too 'blocky' (thanks for the verification on that word) and think the 'info card' should be just a slightly bigger size or something to make it work better.  You should be able to customize your background color for the 'text card' too.  I think it would work better with branding. https://plus.google.com/+LaBovick/ has their image fade at the bottom and the 'info card' to the left is a little longer and it looks nice that way.  If Google could make this sort of design default I think it would look a lot better.  Maybe even have the menu fit in that negative space below the image and to the right of the 'info card'. Unfortunately I don't work at Google anymore so I'll just build a template to make it work.  Either way it's much better then the old style.

Google+  & Google Local are two different things (confusing I know!) So if you have a Google plus page and a Google local page that's good and normal you have more than that yes I would recommend removing them. Google+ is for social and Google local is to help people find you (locally) Hope that helps, sorry if its overly confusing.

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule on that Bob.  So many things are involved--value of the page, value of the domain, follow/nofollow, velocity, the value of the non-guest post links, domain diversity, the future quality of those guest blog sites.  I'd hazard a guess that you're safe with 3/10 but I have nothing to go on for that number.  The thing is, as with all link building, if you put too much emphasis on any one kind of link, you risk of getting burned in some fashion down the road goes up substantially.

Great to hear Ruben, good luck! Pagemodo (comes with a free version) can also help you out with Facebook contests, giveaways and the like.

Also another program would be ok! It's just important to perform a comparison first. Any suggestions? Many thanks!

Hi Mark, No, not stupid at all. Integration of Google's products is definitely a work in progress that has left tons of people confused! I hope the TCs in the Google forum may have some guidance for you. Good luck, and if you get an answer, I'd appreciate you coming back to update this thread with what you've learned.

I think it's important to note that we currently have no strong evidence that tweets (favorites or RTs) directly impact rankings. Google cut off the Twitter "firehose" data and claims they don't factor in social as a direct ranking factor (even Google+). I think "direct" is an important word there, and that makes sense - social is relatively easy to manipulate, at least in terms of raw signals. They're still trying to figure out the right mix. That caveat aside: (1) I agree with Ratan that RT's are generally more advantageous indirectly. They expose more people to your tweet, and those people will click through, drive up engagement, and potentially link to you. Eventually, this can have an indirect but very real impact on SEO. It's unlikely that favoriting has much impact even indirectly, IMO. (2) Social signals, like RTs, can definitely be used by Google for indexing new content. Content posted on G+, for example, is indexed incredibly fast from decent accounts (not just big names, but any account that's clearly real). This isn't "ranking" per se, but you can't win if you don't play, so it matters. (3) I strongly suspect social will be a corroborating layer, if it isn't already. In other words, if you have a piece of content with 500 +1s but no tweets, not Likes, and no links, that's going to look like spam to Google. If that same piece shows signals across very dimensions, then those 500 +1s may have an impact. RTs may eventually be part of that equation (personally, I don't think they are right now).

Thanks for your comments Cyrus !! I think (but may well be wrong) that they used to have a 1000 follower critieria before verification considered, so hope they don't raise the bar regarding qualifying critieria based on follower numbers Also seems a tad unfair if follower numbers do contribute to qualifying criteria since pages in some countries (such as the USA) will have advantage over smaller country pages (UK etc) due to smaller local market size All Best Dan

Thanks everyone. Im looking into working more on G+ as well as all the others.

Glad you're back up and it wasn't anything worse. I know the disruption was annoying me this morning and threw off my regular schedule.

it really depends on whether or not you are using Google Authorship.  You cannot really attribute your work to more than one company per Google Pus account.  If you are blogging personally I would set up your business blog with attribution to your business Google Plus account.  otherwise I do not think it really matters.

Sharla - That is indeed problematic.  I think that you have a couple of options: 1. Through an attorney, send a certified letter asking for the removal of the information from the job history.  Have this followed up with a defamation claim for doing harm to a business for fraudulently claiming employment. 2. You can Report a Violation of the Facebook Terms of Service, even if you don't have an account by using the form here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/274459462613911 3. You can go the person's profile page, and click on the gear icon next to Message, and click on Report.  You can use this feature even if you're not friends with the person on Facebook.  This might fall into the bullying realm, too. Hope this helps

If people are clicking 'like' just for a discount rather than because they like what you are posting on FB they may not hang around. It's very easy for them to unlike once they have got the discount and they probably will if your posts are not good. Better to invest in writing great FB content and adding great pics then people will follow because they want to and these people will be worth more to you then any that click for money. They can even turn out to be brand advocates.

Absolutely; you should implement it anyway. Even if Authorship doesn't turn out to be as important as it was first thought it would be, it is another signal to Google.

Hi Martijn thanks, hope this will work.

What would be a 100% white hat way to get the same results?

Only public posts are indexed by Google in terms of Facebook and other social networks. To track what Google has indexed perform the following search: "site:facebook.com/username" it should reveal the posts that have been indexed or that Google is aware of. Hope this helps

1. Guest blog on niche related high PR/PA/DA domains. 2; Get ultra high Authoritative links. (yahoo, usnews, huffingtonpost sites) 3. Press release to get authoritative links 4. Top paid directories such as Yahoo. Best bet is start with #2 and work your way to #1 then #3 then #4. Looking at their content, authority and such, honestly its not that hard to rank those keywords to the top though #2 is difficult to say. Top 5 is definitely do-able in a few months.

Gregory, We added the appropriate schema info and now images appear perfectly. Thanks! Rocky