The Change of Online Search

Welcome back!

Just thought I’d do an update about the changing face of Internet Search in relation to SEO.

You may have noticed when doing searches that there are a lot real-time results such as Twitter, Facebook and other social network content, although Google can only index status updates from Facebook Pages – which are “for organisations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information to fans in an official, public manner.”

Bing have a deal in place with Facebook that goes further, indexing individuals’ status updates which have been set to public and Yahoo! have also started to integrate Tweet content.

Another big change on Google is the personalised search. This had an effect if you were logged into your gmail or any other Google account, but now you don’t have to be logged in. This means individuals will see an increasingly different result to another individual.

This isn’t great news for those concerned with SEO as you no longer know where your website will rank. When a result has been clicked a number of times, then that site will start to appear higher up in the search rankings for that visitor.

Personalised search is nothing new.

It all started in 2004 with a beta release through Google labs allowed users to refine search results based on their interests. Then, in mid-April, 2005, Google rolled out its search history feature called “My Search History.” This kept track of all the users’ searches and every page that they viewed from the search results. This time Google required users to have an active Google account. The process has been refined along the way climaxing with the recent change.

Personalised search involves many, many factors. Among them are:

• Geo-graphic factors (local top-level domain, IP address and query analysis)
• Technical factors such as browser, OS capabilities, cookies and toolbars)
• Time of day, time of year and other historical data
• Behavioural query history, interaction with search engine result pages and interactions with advertising and surfing habits).

So what actions can be taken in regards to personalised search?

Well best SEO practices still stand and these factors have become more important:

Factors such as demogaphics, keyword/phrase targeting strategies, quality content, search result conversion, freshness, site useability, social bookmarks, and analytics will all have an impact on your SERPS.

Practically this means:

• Get to know and research your audience and give them the (great) content they want
• Titles and Snippets that are compelling will attract a better click through rate which will in turn help these sites/pages rank better
• Make social bookmarking available and easy to do on your website
• Google Analytics will help in measuring both paid and organic traffic flows
• A logical navigation and architecture for a quality end user experience

Google Caffeine

Google also recently introduced Google Caffeine which ranks pages faster, giving you quicker results. And your page load times will now be a factor in ranking on Google. Simply put, the slower a page loads, the lower it will be ranked.

Google describes Caffeine as:
“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.”

Of course this all has implications for your search engine optimisation and your online business strategy and something to be well aware of!

Google Social Media Slap Hell

Michelle Macphearson has been discussing a social media slap from Google in her latest video.

This is affecting all those sites that have all their backlinks solely from social media and bookmarking sites…and this is where all those who have put all their eggs in one basket, flogged the dead horses etc etc are probably going to cry. This isn’t a social media slap on anyone using social media, and doesn’t mean social media is dead by any stretch of the imagination.

One word: DIVERSIFY

If you have all your links from one type of site it will be a problem, always combine the solid old school seo stuff: articles, press releases, remote content as well as the new: social media sites, video and vary the content you post on them.

Actually a great combination is Social Media Press Releases, how’s that for combination of old and new!

Social Media Press Releases include video, pocasts and all the functions of a blog. One idea worth looking at if you want to avoid the high prices involved with social media press releases is link from your normal press releases on the wires to a specialized multi-media newsroom section on your blog which acts like a social media press release. This would give you a lot more SEO benefit as well.

Sorry but I couldn’t think of a greater way to tie this in with the launch of our new new media world product
today.. (about 30 minutes I’d better shift my ass)  but We cover the whole sha-bang of content syndication and blogging, podcasting, social media and video in one fine 100 page book , along with video tutorials and mp3 interviews with Mike Koenigs, Scott Paton, Yaro Starak and many other experts!

So if you’re looking for a complete A-Z strategy to drive traffic, prospects and sales to your site or blog
using the latest AND the solid strategies and don’t want to be slapped around every 6 months check us out:

you couldn’t go far wrong in checking this out:

New Media Marketing

The dark side of Google Knols

Google Knol is described as a unit of knowledge – an authoritative article about a specific topic
and initially reeks of opportunity what with the ranking reports.

As Google roll out their wikipedia meets Squidoo mash-up there is concern that Google are
favoring their own Knol content over authority work. There is also ‘no follow’ which means
you get no credit or value for your outbound links.

Another issue is knoljacking – someone could post your content to Knol, get a couple of inbound links
and beat your ranking even if your site is an authority site.

Aaron Wall of SEOBook writes that he put the same article from the ‘authoritive’ work.com and placed it in a knol to find it ranked higher.

All this seems to be leading to a worrying trend in my opinion.

Still, let’s look at the positives – if they rank well – might as well use ‘em.

Linking to your websites and blogs will drive traffic and act as another back door
in the satellite game of Google love, even if the links are ‘no follow’.

Comprehensive information with several paragraphs and subheaders- using keywords in the title.

Let me know your comments on Google Knols!

Jerry West SEO Expert Interviewed

You must check out this interview Howie Swartz did with Jerry West recently if you have any desire to get your website top of the search engines. Jerry West, of seorevolution.com, is an EXPERT in his field..listen and learn. By the way SEOrevolution, a membership site has had its’ doors shut to new members but Howie has a way in for you.

http://www.searchingdot.com/2007/08/15/jerry-west-interview-working/