Google Social Search Will Change SEO

Today I noticed Google introducing results from my “social circle” into my organic search results. This is a big move towards personalized search from Google – which WILL affect the SEO world in the next couple years. This puts importance on social connections and content outposts.

Here you see “Results from people in your social circle”

When you click through you get an interesting result…

Filtered search results from your social circle!

What makes up your social circle?

If you have a Google Profile – then Google knows about your social outposts. It uses these outposts – like Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Reader, and others – to create your social graph and filter organic results by what your friends have blogged, shared, and linked to.

How does this change SEO? If it isn’t obvious – this move is away from traditional ranking by keywords and authority and into ranking by social proof. This means your content outposts and social connections will become increasingly important.

The future of SEO is changing. We’re moving towards a social proof model where your social graph will help determine the relevancy of results. SEO tactics will move away from keyword targeting towards building an expansive social graph. The standard SEO practice of link building will change – shared links will carry more weight than inbound links.

SEO is changing – are you ready? Traditional SEO tactics will remain unchanged and will still be important. Adding social into personalized results will just add another facet to our internet marketing strategies.

Do you have questions about Google social / personalized search? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

5 Tips For Local Internet Marketing

This was adapted from a post on Local SEO in Iowa written by Andy Brudtkuhl for TechSentry

Here are five tips for improving your local internet marketing campaign. You have a local internet marketing strategy… don’t you?

If you don’t – sign up for our local web optimization webinar and get started as soon as possible.

1. Sign Up For Google Local

Since implementing Universal Search Results, Google has been using your location to provide local search results for broad queries. See my broad match query for “plumber” below…

Signing up for Google Local results is free and is essential for Iowa businesses targeting a local demographic.

Watch our Google Local case study on how a local restaurant made a sale from Google Local.

It is essential – and it’s free online advertising. You can’t beat that – do it now!

2. Target Local Keywords In Your Content

We always tell clients content is the best way to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) their website. When it comes to local SEO - simply appending City, State to keywords helps your ranking for local results. Here’s an example from our website…

3. Measure Results

Once you have signed up for Google’s Local Business Center (Step 1 above) you will have access to all kinds of data regarding local search results via the Google Local Dashboard. These free insights tools give you data to learn where your customers are coming from and what they searched for to find you. For example

Google is giving local merchants the ability to access data about how Web surfers arrive at a local listing in Google Maps, in hopes of figuring out why so many people in a particular neighborhood are searching for pizza.

This kind of information can be extremely powerful for optimizing your presence online…

“More people use online search engines like Google than any other medium to find local information”

4. Categories and Keywords in Local Listing

These are two fairly straight forward items for optimizing your Local Business Listing. The category is the classification your business has within Google Local. Back to our plumber example – if you have listed your plumbing company on Google Local, be sure to use the following categories: “plumbing”, “home remodeling”, “home repair”, etc. This will ensure that if people in Des Moines, IA search for plumbing you will be included in the local results.

Adding keywords to your listing helps too… Let’s say your plumbing company is called “Handy Andy’s” – when you add your business listing to Google Local, ensure that the keyword is part of the listing. In this example, you would want to use “Handy Andy’s – Plumbing Installation and Repair”. Instead of having a vague title that is the company name we have appended two keywords that we want to be findable on.

These simple techniques can have a huge impact in your local results placement.

5. Hone Your Advertising

Many times when working with companies to form a strategic plan for their website we bring up using Paid Traffic, ie Google AdWords. Most of the time we get the response “We’ve tried that already and wasted a lot of money”. In most cases this is 100% correct – but the problem wasn’t AdWords, it was the how the campaign was set up. If you are a plumber in Des Moines, IA there is no need to bid on the keyword “plumber” at $4.29 per click. Using this method of broad matching you are likely to run up a steep advertising bill very quickly while not reaching your target market.

Instead, try local based searches using exact keyword phrases “Des Moines Plumber” and use AdWords built-in geographic targeting system to ensure that your advertisements are being seen only by potential customers – instead them appearing to anyone in the world that searches for anything related to plumber.

If you are looking for more on targeting local online – check out our FREE webinar on local online marketing and advertising.

Google Local Business Dashboard

We’ve talked about using Google Local Business dashboard before but here’s a quick overview in case you have yet to use it. Not only does this give you a huge advantage in local SEO – it helps you manage your business online.

Official Google Blog: The Local Business Center dashboard opens its doors.

Get A Free Website From Google Sites

Google Sites makes it easy for anyone to create and manage simple, secure group websites. Getting started is easy, and there are a number of helpful templates. More than just a visual theme, site templates can include site structure and navigation, custom page templates, embedded gadgets, and more. Google Sites is powerful enough for a company intranet, yet simple enough for a family website.

Visit http://sites.google.com to get started

Google Caffeine – What Does It Mean For You?

In cased you missed it – Google is prepping it’s new search engine “Caffeine”…

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.” – via Google Webmaster Blog

Well for us it means a loss of many of our top rankings because of the change in how keywords are ranked.

While Google hasn’t revealed any specific changes it’s easy to figure out that:

• The index has grown
• Big importance on real-time
• Longer keyword phrases
• Speed – it’s super fast

Check it out here http://www2.sandbox.google.com

How are your rankings affected? It may mean back to the drawing board for a lot of our sites :/ Let us know how this affects you in the comments and forum!

More on Google Caffeine

• Check out Mashable’s detailed test
• More discussion on FriendFeed

Track E-Commerce with Google Analytics

What products are selling best? What AdWords keywords have the best ROI?

If you set up ECommerce Tracking with Google Analytics you can do all this and more. You will be able to track all the transactions on your site, as well as see quick stats including…

• Overall revenue generated from online sales
• Average Order Value
• Product Performance
• Visits to Transactions

If you have integrated Google Analytics with AdWords, you will be able to calculate Revenue Per Click, ROI and Margin down to the keywords you are bidding on.

If you have an ecommerce site – or are selling anything online – this is essential.

Link Google AdWords with Google Analytics

If you are running or plan on launching a Google AdWords campaign you should definitely link it with your Google Analytics account for detailed campaign tracking reports. I think this is a “Must Do” if you are running an AdWords campaign.

Videos In Search Results Work

Generally if you have a keyword targeted video it will show up in Google universal search results – and it has a dramatic effect. Check out this eye-tracking study from Google. The results are pretty amazing…

via ReelSEO

What is “The Edge”

In the first episode of Managing The Edge, we discuss the following:

• What does it mean to become more findable and engaging on the web?
• How does search and Google impact your business?
• Building community is essential for success
• Findability is an absolute requirement in today’s business world

[audio:http://managingtheedge.com/podpress_trac/web/3/0/EdgeCast001.mp3]
Managing the Edge is brought to you from Impromptu Studio in Des Moines, IA by Doug Mitchell of CreateWowMedia and Andy Brudtkuhl from Web Strategy Workshop.

Google SEO Starter Guide

Google recently released their SEO Starter Guide, which is a great introduction into Search Engine Optimization tactics straight from the horse’s mouth.

From Google’s official announcement:

“Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing.”

Google SEO Starter Guide Tips

1. Create Unique, Accurate Page Titles
2. Make use of the “Description” Meta Tag
3. Improve the structure of your URLs
4. Make your site easy to navigate
5. Offer quality content
6. Write better “Anchor” text
7. Use “Heading Tags” appropriately
8. Optimize your use of images
9. Effectively use your “Robots.txt” file
10. Promote your website in the right ways
11. Use free webmaster tools
12. Use free web analytics

I know – that’s a lot. We are here to help though! Stay Tuned!

Download (PDF)