Google Instant: Friend or Foe of SEO?

What do you think of Google Instant? It’s now been a week since Google unveiled this new feature, and it’s creating a lot of buzz, even more than Google Buzz did.

In fact, the Internet has been flooded with blog posts and articles about it, critiquing it and predicting how it could affect people’s search behavior and Internet Marketing activities like Search Engine Optimization.

But let’s back up for a moment and examine what Google Instant is meant to be. According to the Official Google Blog, “Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.”

Now, the best way to understand this is to see it in action, so check out this creative video that demonstrates Google Instant with some help from singer Billy Joel:

According to Google, we should be seeing the following core features:

•    Dynamic Results – Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
•    Predictions – One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
•    Scroll to search – Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Yes, Instant does seem to offer those features, but it also introduces changes that could impact the Internet Marketing business and your tasks as a Virtual Assistant or online business owner.

Google says the primary benefit of Instant is time saved… but is it really? It seems like the primary benefit should be relevant results, and initially it seems to take a little longer to search as we train our eyes to scan the results below to see if we need to refine the search terms we’re typing. Google is not a mind reader yet; however, Instant may train users to be more thoughtful about the keywords they choose so that the correct results pop up.

Now how does Google Instant affect our Internet Marketing activities? Well, we want those “relevant results” and query predictions to point to our businesses and our clients!

So this is where Google Instant could change businesses’ SEO strategies, as users change their behavior and lean towards either long tail or short tail keywords. The blog post “Google Launches New Search Interface: Google Instant” predicts that as people spend more time refining keywords, they will ultimately focus more on long tail keywords, thereby creating a shift towards focusing even more on higher rankings for specific long tail keyword phrases.

On the other hand, the blog post “Google Instant: Personalization, The Paradox of Choice and Altered Behavior” argues that Google Instant will create a “bias against extremely long-tail queries,” predicting that users will decide against typing an extremely long query if they want to find the most relevant result for their search. Here the suggestion is made that smaller sites relying on long tail traffic may have to adjust their strategy to target shorter keywords.

Well, the jury is still out, and only time will tell, but this is definitely an opportune time for Virtual Assistants and online professionals to review their Search Engine Optimization strategies and determine how Google Instant affects them. This is where continual learning and updated Internet Marketing skills will serve you well as you catch Google’s newest wave and see where it leads your business and marketing activities.

So what do you think of Google Instant? Will it have a profound effect on your business and Search Engine Optimization? We’re eager to hear your thoughts, so please post a comment below!

Is Your Website or Blog Perfectly Optimized?

Do you ever watch those home renovation shows on TV, the ones where someone is having trouble selling their home and needs some help? Often there’s nothing wrong with the house itself, just an important design element missing. A team of experts is called in and, voila, the house gets noticed and sells! The home owners are amazed and anxious to learn the skills those experts used to make such a difference.

In your work, do you wish you could optimize your website or blog so that it attracts more attention? Are your clients anxious to optimize theirs too? The initial SEO work begins in the HTML, and consequently clients are now, more than ever, requiring their Virtual Assistants to have some level of HTML knowledge and skills. For some, that’s exciting… for others, worrisome. ;-)

SEOmoz has put together an excellent blog post that summarizes best practices for “Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization.” They provide a diagram of the “perfectly” optimized page and list all the elements that contribute to its ranking. Many of these elements are quite technical and require a good knowledge of HTML.

Below is a list of the important elements to optimize in on your webpage:

•    Keyword Targeted URL
•    Page Title
•    Meta Description
•    H1 Headline
•   Image File Name
•    Webpage Body Content
•    Internal links

Now, if you’re starting to break into a cold sweat at the thought of tackling such technical aspects, you’re not alone. HTML is a very important task and one that requires specialized training in order to do it well. For that reason, we recently offered a special 3-hour HTML Training for Internet Marketing Success Clinic. The Clinic was taught by our very own VAClassroom Faculty Member, Christina Greenway, who helped demystify HTML and unpacked the important skills you need for your business and your clients.

So there’s no need to call in a team of experts to optimize your website or blog! With some HTML training, you can make Google stand up and take notice, and that’s as good as a “Sold “ sign on the front lawn!

The Business Building Potential of Facebook Fan Pages

I recently followed a comment in Facebook from another Virtual Assistant that was questioning the value of having a Facebook Fan Page to promote their business. Will it actually lead to new client and income opportunities? Well, my answer and thoughts on this are included in the video below. Take a look and please send your comments on Facebook Fan Pages and the impact (if any) they have had on your Virtual Assistant business.

TwitWall: When 140 Characters isn’t Enough

For businesses who are utilizing Twitter’s staggering marketing potential as part of a Social Media Marketing campaign, Twitter provides a lot of room for creativity and innovative solutions for reaching target audiences.

Now that celebrities (such as Ashton Kutcher and CNN) , presidential campaigns and millions of users worldwide are accustomed to micro-blogging, Twitter is providing an enhancement to the micro-space of Tweeting.

For everyone already on Twitter, how many don’t realize they have a TwitWall? This easy to use feature is a blog companion for Twitter, allowing a space for Tweeters as an alternative, or addition to their micro-blog of maximum 140 characters. This page within Twitter allows users to embed their favorite videos and widgets, upload photos, mp3 music, podcasts, and source-images originating from existing http:// locations.

The little set-up time and effort involved is very appealing for those wanting more of a presence on Twitter, outside the context of the micro-blog. Additionally, TwitWall utilizes your existing Twitter followers that you’ve already established, with everything posted on your TwitWall updating your status on your Twitter timeline. It also carries over the personal branding design preferences of your Twitter page, such as background image, colours etc.

So why use TwitWall as a blog page rather than just your traditional blog post?

This question was posed to TwitWall founder Michael E. Carluen, who stated, “For users who currently have existing blogs, TwitWall can be a repository of content they would like to share with their Twitter network, but does not fit the general content of their main blog.”¹

As an additional blogging platform that’s unique to your followers, TwitWall provides a dynamic new communication tool, ready to be discovered!

7 Traffic-Building Avenues for Repurposing Your Web Content

Recently, I decided to simplify my life! For the last couple years, I have been blogging, doing podcasts, shooting videos, writing ebooks and ecourses, but did not give a lot of thought to the time-saving concept of “RE-PURPOSING”. I would typically write all original content and never considered how I might transfer my blog posts into an ebook, podcast, video or Squidoo Lens. I am glad to say I have been officially liberated of my former less than productive ways and have started to repurpose my web content through 7 different avenues!

Now, you may have caught onto this a lot earlier than myself and may already be a “Re-purposing Guru”, but here are 7 ways or avenues to consider….

1. 7 Twitter Tips: You might select a particular topic that you know would peak the interest of your fellow “peeps” and create 7 value-added tips. The beauty of Twitter is that hopefully your twitter pals will reply to your tips or even pass them to others creating a nice viral effect. It is important to build your tips with keyword-rich content for SEO purposes.

2. 7 Part Blog Series – A blog post series is a great way to provide a fresh influx of content built around the specific keywords you are targeting. Let’s say you decide to write a blog post series on Virtual Assistant Training and Certifications – this essentially could equate to 7 opportunities to get listed by Google for such keywords as Virtual Assistant Training.

3. 7 Articles for EzineArticles.com - While I know there are many other article directories, EzineArticles.com is the “grand-daddy” of them all. It is important to reformat and mix up your blog post content in order to not be flagged as having “duplicate content” by Google. The other cool thing about EzineArticles is that you can now sign up to have your articles automatically posted through their Twitter account – another ideal way to mass distribute your content.

4.  Free 7-Part Ecourse – You might create a freebie 7-Part ecourse that you can giveaway on your blog or website as an incentive for your audience to join your list. This is a common practice, but super effective! I would recommend getting a nice book image or graphic to promote the free ecourse on your blog.

5. 7 Part Podcast (audio) Series – It is always effective to re-purpose written content into an audio or video format. In a podcast, you can expand on the 7 points, provide more practical illustrations and really personalize it more which gives it a life of it’s own. You could certainly offer this as an incentive to build your list. I would recommend syndicating this podcast through such channels as Itunes.

6.  7 Short You-Tube Video – I would highly recommend taking your web content and converting it into a video series. You might choose to set-up “screencast” information surrounding the 7 tips or you could present it in person. YouTube videos are great for traffic building! Personally, I find that YouTube videos are listed much faster over other forms of content. For example; during our pre-launch campaign for VAClassroom, we created 4-5 videos based around particular keywords. Within a month, two of our videos were listed in the top 20 listings for two top keywords in Google.

7. 7 Tips via Squidoo or Hubpages - Social content sharing sites like Squidoo and Hubpages are just perfect for your repurposed content as they are known to be quickly listed in the Search Engines and can generate some nice traffic for you!

So there you have it, 7 fabulous ways for repurposing your web content and saving you a TON of time!

Help Your Clients Reach the Top of the Search Engines with Google Local Search

I took at little blogging hiatus over the past week to bang off a few key projects – phew – close to finished. Anyways I am back!

A few days ago, in our VAClassroom Members Forum, one of our members posted this question:

My new client has a question that I know one of you can answer. He is an independent insurance agent in Dallas. When you google “Dallas Insurance” the top listing is a map of Dallas and above it it says “Local Business Results for Insurance Near Dallas, TX” along with ten insurance agents and their locations on the map. I’ve seen similar maps when googling other things in Houston. How can he be listed in those top ten? Is it simply a search engine ranking thing, or do those ten people pay big bucks to be on that map? I’d like to help him do it.

Great Question!

To be honest, this one initially stumped me – How do those businesses get listed over others for local business search like “Insurance companies in Dallas, Texas”? Well, after some research and a chat with one of my SEO buddies, I found the answer.

For those of you Virtual Assistants who are working with Brick and Mortar clients, this is a great tip to help them increase their Search Engine Exposure as well as online and offline traffic to their business.

I found a great blog post that explained the whole process much better than I could so take a read of the post and wow your clients by getting them top placement in Google for local business searches:

How to Get to the Top of Google Listings