Posts

plus1 counts pages rather than websites.
Your homepage has 166

you can check by using my +1 checker

If you want, you could try increasing the +1 count of your homepage by putting an extra +1 button on every page of your site using the homepage URL in the buttons code.

When people use it they are then +1'ing your homepage rather than the individual page.

My site has about 670 at the moment (homepage 90 even though it doesn't have the button on it)
I don't see characteristics but do see activity, audience and search impact.

I don't know the exact workings of Google Offers yet as it is still only available in USA

It's similar to Groupon but Google will do the vouchers for you and publicise them for you too.

People effectively sign up and see the vouchers or have the info sent to them

People pay for the product/service rather up front meaning the business gets paid before even redeeeming the vouchers (Google hold back 20% to allow for cancellations)

It's only available in some US cities at the moment but is coming to more soon, whether it comes to UK we will have to wait and see.

Just do a search for Google Offers for more info

I don't use them as a business because I'm too tight to pay any commission
and don't use them as a consumer as I presume the prices are bumped up accordingly and can probably get cheaper elswhere or go via my own affiliate links.

Now Google Offers, that could be a different story, if they set it up in UK it could be really interesting.

They were regularly going through my directory and calling people saying their listing had expired and was up for renewal.

First I knew about it was when someone phoned me wanting to know what happens next.

They had paid this other lot

I allow guest bloggers on a few of my sites, a company formations related articles would fit in nicely with a couple of them.

I don't surround the articles with ads and allow 2 links in the body of the article.

Do a google search for Article Sites and you will see one of my sites (it's the UK one)

I personally think Google are putting more emphasis on the traffic a page receives via their SERPs so rather than using linkbaiting to attract links I like to refer to it as traffic baiting to attract natural traffic.

What I class as a good traffic baiting technique is timing blog posts based on news stories and using catchy post titles.

I won't post a link, but do a search for "traffic baiting" and you can see an article I wrote about it.