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Google Maps and Local Search Optimization

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

As a recommendation engine, Google Maps can provide users information on products and services that they are looking for. Google extracts reviews from users who have visited places and businesses that are within a specific area. Think about this concept for a minute, and gain understanding about the importance of having positive reviews and ratings for your website. Having positive reviews for your website can bring in more local business.

Google Maps

Location, Location, Location

Many consumers are searching for great businesses that happen to be within their local proximity. In many instances, users will search for the product or service they want with the city name attached in the search. However, if there are not enough search results for a particular listing in the location they want, Google will provide listings for downtown areas close to the location that has been searched for. This can happen when users are searching for services in smaller towns and areas.

Maps and User Content

Google will show the user generated content associated with the business the user is looking for. This is typical for those users who use Google “My Maps” tool to find a location, and to gain directions from wherever they are to their destination, which could be your business. This is important for local business in all areas. Even though many users shop online, they still want to find local businesses that they can visit in person.

Providing user content does not always mean you need to have an excess amount of content. Having a geotagged photo of your business can also help show Google where your business is located. Keep in mind that adding keywords in the business name helps with ranking, but adding keywords to the listing title that are not already a part of the business name can get your listing banned. Therefore, be careful when tinkering with your content to boost your rankings.

Landing Page

What is the best page for your users to land on? Think about this question for a minute before you answer yourself. You need an appealing landing page that will keep users searching for the information and services they need on your website. Keep your information short and to the point with few distractions as possible. If you have a business that has multiple listings, make sure that the right information page is linked to Google Maps. This will help with your rankings, and bring users directly to your location.

A key factor for having great rankings is having a website that is optimized for your key products and services attached with city and area locations. Adding cities and towns associated with your key phrases can help users find you directly and often more easily.

Your Google Maps description should have:

  • A well developed 200 character description
  • Keywords or phrases with location
  • Picture and/or video that is geotagged

Above all, keep in mind the industry that you are in and provide users with the information that they need to find you. Keep your information to the point and provide appealing key phrases and words that are accompanied by your city and area. Make sure that it is as easy as possible to find your business. Google Maps can only take you so far; the rest is up to you.

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Google Instant and Its Affects on SEO

Monday, September 13th, 2010

Technology is constantly moving forward and many users are searching for a new way to find what they want on the internet faster. Google Instant is designed to show results as you type. Google is pushing the limits of current technology to gain realistic and rational search results for users. One of the main results of Google Instant is the fact that a user, like you, can get the search results at a much faster pace. In some instances, a user does not even have to finish typing in the key phrase or term and press the search button. This concept helps users formulate better search phrases and terms while they are typing.

Google Instant Search, Hotels

With Google Instant becoming more popular, users now have the option to adapt their search while typing until they gain the results that match exactly what they have been seeking. Gaining faster search results can help any user even if they do not know exactly what they are searching for. In the past, users had to keep typing in different search phrases and terms to find exactly what they were looking for. It was a hit and miss adventure. With Google Instant, the search prediction is shown in grey text within the search box, so the user will be able to stop typing as soon as he or she sees what they want. Now everyone is happy and searching has just gotten better.

Should SEO’s Be Worried?

The answer is NO! SEO’s should not be concerned or worried about Google Instant. In fact, this can only help. SEO will continue to evolve and grow as technology changes. This is just another stage in evolution that will help SEO users gain more traffic to their websites. Think about this concept for a moment and realize that this has made searching for everyone a lot less stressful. There is no algorithm change to worry about and it is user friendly with similarities to Facebook Typeahead Search.

As long as users are using search engines to look up information online, content on websites will need to be optimized. Therefore, the use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will always be around. Having well written and developed content will actually benefit a user of SEO for Google Instant. Having good SEOs that adapt to any changes in searcher behavior will only benefit you with Google Instant. Therefore, there is no need to be concerned about the way Google Instant has changed the way users search for information over the internet. Those who adapt will flourish and those who do not will fall behind. Learning more about Google Instant can only help.

Chase and Sanborn Instant Coffee

Probable Impacts

What are the probable impacts that will come into play with this new way of searching? SEOs will continue the way they always have with great content that has been developed with the user in mind. Google may influence traffic as the behavior of searching changes by users. The time it takes to search for information will reduce. As users become more focused on evaluating results as they type, Google Instant may make ranking above the fold more important. Targeted pay-per-click ads will continue to show as they normally do. There will more than likely be more locally targeted ads for a user’s geographical area, and ads will continuously change as users continue their search for what they are looking for. For now, SEOs are moving forward and strong as technology continues to advance and move forward towards the future.

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Are Social Check-In Sites Like Foursquare Relevant to SEO?

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

There has been a lot of talk lately about how social check-in sites like Loopt, Gowalla, and the currently popular Foursquare can be used by businesses as a marketing tool, but do they bear any relevance for SEO? It appears that such moment-to-moment location sharing sites do have an effect on SERPs, and here’s why:

Google Appears to Love Foursquare

Foursquare User Pages Return 477,000 Results on GoogleOn Foursquare, each user has a profile page which is updated whenever he or she “checks in” at a location via a GPS enabled device. The location also has its own page, which is updated at every check-in. Many of these pages are indexed. A quick search for foursquare user profile pages on Google results in about 477,000 results. Venues clock in at just over 227,000. Here’s a quick overview of Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s indexing of three top check-in sites.

Google Bing Yahoo
Foursquare User Pages 477,000 134,000 127,000
Foursquare Venues 228,000 54,000 117,000
Loopt User Pages
Loopt Places 19,000 16,000 69,000
Gowalla User Pages 440 1,900 2,900
Gowalla Spots 6,000 10,000 29,000

I couldn’t find Loopt user pages at all, and Gowalla is preventing its users pages from being indexed via robots.txt. Clearly, Foursquare is the winner on pages indexed across the board, and those numbers are nothing to sneeze at. These numbers are probably also related to the high popularity of Foursquare when compared to the other sites. Of the three sites, note that only Loopt has keyword-rich URLs for its places, while both Foursquare and Gowalla have keyword-rich user page URLs.

Foursquare and Loopt Links Are All Followed

For that matter, so are Gowalla’s, but the low index rate suggests that doesn’t matter much. Visiting the venue and user pages reveals every single link is followed, including links to venues’ Web sites and users’ Facebook and Twitter profiles. The anchor text leaves something to be desired (with such rich phrases as “Twitter Feed” and “Link”), but something is better than nothing.

Foursquare Venue Page Seen with NoDoFollow

Address Listings on These Social Check-Ins May Help Boost Localized SEO

A business address appearing across check-in sites will improve location credibility, ultimately strengthening localized SEO. In addition, all three of these services access Google Maps. The points are added manually on a per-page basis rather than being submitted to Google; however, it is still possible that when the Googlebot crawls the page, it will see and associate the points with the location.

Loopt Places Address Listing

Foursquare and its peers clearly have potential to help businesses generate buzz around visiting their establishment, but it appears they have SEO implications as well. When building your SEO campaign, don’t forget to check in to Foursquare.

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How Google Buzz Can Be Used For Business

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Google Buzz has several similarities when it’s compared to other social networking platforms, but it also has some new innovations marketers should pay attention to. If you only apply the standard techniques of social media marketing to Buzz, you could be missing out on some potential gains and reputation management issues.

Google Buzz Logo

The geolocation feature is one of the most important things in Buzz that a business with a physical address can pay attention to. Like Twitter or Facebook, Buzz users can post status updates of what they’re doing and where they’re going. The difference with Buzz is that the user’s mobile device can automatically locate them via GPS and post their location into their status updates. This means if someone is eating at your restaurant or shopping at your store and getting bad service, they can post that the service is bad and Buzz will know exactly where the user was when it was posted.

This goes hand-in-hand with a feature that allows people to see what is being buzzed around them. If users are looking at Buzz to see what’s going on around them and they see someone complaining about your business, they are much less likely to visit your establishment. Businesses should keep track of these types of buzzes so they can comment on the status update of the complaining user or contact the user and try to resolve the issue. Resolving the issue could result in the user posting a new message about how helpful you were.

In addition to nearby users being able to see buzzes about your business, Google said at the launch event that those buzzes can also show up on the Google profile for your company. This can be good or bad, but either way it’s always a good idea to stay on top of what is being said and address any issues that may arise.

Google Buzz Mobile Geolocation

Buzz hasn’t said exactly what their model for businesses is going to be, but if it turns out to be anything like Facebook’s, then it would be a good idea to start thinking of a strategy for getting quality followers. This is where some of the older social media marketing methods come in handy. Eventually, there will probably be a way for businesses to have official Buzz profiles, and when that happens, it’ll be a great way for businesses to market on the web. Just like Twitter or Facebook, the more followers you have reading your posts, the more exposure you get for your business. The only difference with Buzz is that posts can be reported as spam and users can leave other kinds of feedback, so when you post to your followers on Buzz, make sure it’s good.

Don’t think that just because Buzz is new no one is using it. Google has made it very easy for users to get started with the product, and a decent number of people are already using it. Within a week, some people already had over 5,000 followers, and that number is going to keep increasing. Getting on the ground floor of Google’s social networking platform is something all businesses should look into; it has the potential to make a huge difference for businesses and thier reputations.

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The Relationship Between Code Validation and SEO

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Creating W3C valid websites should be the goal of every Web technician. Valid websites are consistent across browsers, forward compatible, and cleanly presented to both spiders and accessibility programs such as text-to-speech readers (the latter being a legal requirement in the UK). Valid sites are also less likely to break in mobile devices due to quirks of the particular mobile browser. The question many people are asking, however, is whether valid code matters to search engine rankings.

USASEOPros W3C Validation

Currently, Google does not seem to factor W3C valid code directly into its ranking algorithm; even Google’s pages themselves are not 100 percent valid. However, some speculate that this may change in the future as Google continually looks for more ways to determine a site’s credibility. When it comes to changes in the algorithm, it never hurts to be prepared.

Although validation itself does not appear to be an algorithmic factor, it can still affect a page’s rankings in indirect ways. Perhaps the most critical of these is that, while the majority of validation errors are not deadly, some can cause a site to be misunderstood or even skipped entirely by search engine robots. These dangerous errors can include incorrect doctype declaration, unescaped entities, and improperly closed HTML tags.

If a site is not skipped over completely, invalid code still has less of a chance to be understood in its proper context. Semantic design is becoming more important as search engine algorithms grow in intelligence. Take as one example Google Squared, Google’s newest attempt at intelligently displaying search result information. Rather than simply displaying pages matching keywords in a long list, the engine crawls pages to pull information suitable for display in a tabular format. Even for traditional search engines, however, more easily understood content has a greater likelihood of appearing in organic results.

W3C validation also encourages the proper use of tags like image alt attributes. Running a validation check on a site will quickly reveal omissions of these tags. Since using them properly can be important to SEO, this is one case when being W3C compliant could have a direct positive effect on rankings.

There are many arguments for creating W3C valid websites that have nothing to do with SEO, but there are also plenty of strictly SEO reasons to comply with current Web standards. While W3C invalid sites will not be immediately booted from major search engines, avoiding errors in coding can prevent errors in crawling, allow more intelligent indexing, and cause more of a site’s actual content to be indexed. When giving such care to every other detail of a site, it only makes sense for the SEO to pay attention to validation standards as well.

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Mobile Optimization and Google’s Focus on Phones

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

With the recent release of Google’s Nexus One phone, the company also mentioned that their line of mobile devices is just getting started. This shows one of the most important trends happening on the Web, and website owners need to take notice if they haven’t already.

To say mobile search is the wave of the future is incorrect; mobile search is the wave of the now. The number of mobile searches went up roughly 500 percent in the last year, and it isn’t going to slow down any time soon. Mobile search is here to stay, and if you have a website that isn’t adapting to the changes yet, it’s time for some modifications.

Google Nexus One Phone

Google’s motto for their new device is “Web meets phone.” This motto is true for more than just the Nexus One, almost any new phone that comes out is going to be able to use the Web. If a site is still designed to be exclusively viewed on a computer monitor, it’s not going to be as successful as a site that meets the needs of those looking on their phones.

Phones are getting more sophisticated and they can now see websites in the same format a computer would display them in, but there’s still a few things to keep in mind to make sure your site works properly on phones.

One of the most important things to do is make sure your site loads quickly. Eliminate all unnecessary bytes to optimize your site for speed. This will allow your site to load faster on phones, which usually have slower Internet speeds than computers. In addition to site speed being useful when optimizing your site for mobile devices, Google has also hinted that speed is going to become a more important ranking factor. Perhaps Google is giving more weight to site speed, because so many sites are now viewed on phones.

Also make sure to get rid of any unnecessary apps and formats that might not show up correctly on a mobile device. Flash is starting to work on some phones, but most aren’t there yet and might not be for some time.

All it takes is a couple steps to make sure things run well when viewed on today’s mobile devices, and if you don’t make sure your website works well, you might be missing out on nice chunk of business.

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How Caffeine Will Change Google in 2010

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Google said they will release Caffeine into their main search engine in the new year. While most people won’t notice much of a difference, those who pay close attention will see that there are some significant changes going on behind the SERPs. The question is: How significant will these changes be for SEOs?

The most significant change Caffeine introduces from an SEO’s point of view is the bigger focus on recent results. In addition to Google rolling out their real-time search results, it also looks like timeliness is going to play a larger role in their regular rankings. Sites that stay updated are going to have a better chance to rank. Social media and news sites also fall into this category, and will most likely be given a ranking bonus. This timeliness in Google’s rankings will be more significant for generic keywords, but it’s something that SEOs should still pay attention to once Google roles out the new updates.

Google Caffeine Changes

One of the more noticeable differences in Caffeine when compared to Google’s current search set-up is speed. Google Caffeine can perform much faster than the current search engine, and while this doesn’t directly affect what SEOs do, it does point to a trend in other changes Google is making. Google seems to be focusing on speed in a lot of different areas, including the rankings in their results. As we move into 2010, it looks like Google will be putting more weight on site speed when ranking sites in their index.

There are going to be some interesting changes to Google in 2010 including Caffeine, real-time results and personalized search. These changes will affect how SEOs do their job, but proper basics are going to remain the same. There’s no reason to go out and change everything you do just because Google is introducing some new things. The best thing to do is wait to see how Google’s changes affect the rankings, and then adapt accordingly.

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A #1 Rank in Bing is Better Than Ranking #2 in Google in 2010

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

About a week ago comScore released their qSearch analysis showing how many searches were performed in the U.S. by major search engines for November 2009. Google came out on top of course, but with Bing more than likely powering Yahoo in the near future, an interesting question came up: Is it going to be better to rank #1 in Bing or #2 in Google in 2010?

The ideal situation would land you on top of both search engines, but if you had to pick one, which one would be more beneficial? The decision would vary slightly from industry to industry, but in general, how much traffic would each spot get you?

(Bing + Yahoo) > Google (sort of)

Google powered about 9.5 billion searches in the month of November for the U.S., which amounts to about 2/3 of the total searches performed. Bing had about 10 percent of the market share and Yahoo had 17.5 percent. If you add up Yahoo and Bing’s searches in the U.S. they total about 4 billion, not even half of Google. Combining those numbers with a study done on search engine result page click through rates will give you a good idea on how much traffic each rank in each search engine gives.

When you crunch the current numbers and take into account that Bing will power Yahoo in 2010, the #1 spot in Bing results will net around 2 billion clicks, assuming search numbers stay roughly the same. Using the same math, the #2 spot in Google will net about 1.2 billion clicks. This shows that, in general, a #1 ranking in Bing will be much more effective than a #2 ranking in Google.

SEOs and marketers should take note of this. Much more energy is spent optimizing for Google than any other search engine even though it might be a better idea to focus on Bing very soon. Since all the energy is being focused on Google, it could be simpler to get better rankings in Bing. While Bing may not beat Google anytime soon in market share, there could be a shift in where some SEOs begin spending more of their time.

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Google Gains Ground, How Can Bing Beat Them?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Is the Bing fad already over? Last month showed Yahoo and Bing declining in market share, but is this a hiccup or a trend?

Google gained about 1 percent in market share while Yahoo lost 5 and Bing lost 2 percent, according to an Experian Hitwise report. Bing has only been around a couple of months, and while the initial announcement got some buzz and increased market share for the Microsoft search engine, it’s possible that the new-engine smell is gone.

Google Market Share Domination

It looks like it’s time for Bing to start innovating, or it might settle back down into the small market share it’s had for years. With Yahoo market share also declining, both search engines need to pick up the pace, or combining forces in a partnership is going to scare Google even less than it already is.

Bing has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing since its launch. It’s time for them to realize it’s going to take more than a few commercials to make Bing a successful search engine; they’re going to have to do things better than Google. It isn’t about replicating Google and then marketing better; it’s about being better than Google and marketing better. Powering Yahoo’s search isn’t going to solve these problems, they have to create a product that is distinctly different than Google’s.

Bing has some opportunities to gain ground, but they have to be more aggressive. One area where Bing could capitalize is by buying up news. There has been talk of Bing trying to get News Corp. to deindex from Google, that’s a great start. If Bing could get major news outlets to remove themselves from the Google index, a huge chunk of users would probably move to a search engine where news was searchable.

If that doesn’t work, Bing will have to find something else. It’s about having something useful that Google doesn’t have. It won’t be easy, but innovation is the key to taking down a giant.

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Google Expands Personalized Search, SEOs Have Complaints

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Members of the SEO community are beginning to complain about Google’s recent announcement that they’re expanding personalized search so it works whether or not the user is logged in. This change to personalized search means SEO as we know it is completely destroyed. Google has managed to single-handedly ruin our industry with this one simple change. All of the research and strategies that have been effective for years will no longer work, and everyone who calls themselves an SEO should start looking for work in another industry, right?

For some reason, a lot of SEOs are drama queens who freak out every time Google decides to alter their search engine. This change to personalized search is definitely something to look into, but it’s not going to be the game changer many are making it out to be.

Personalzed Google Search

While some of the rankings in searches will be altered from user to user, the majority of results are still going to show up in relatively the same place. All you need to do is use the personalized search Google has for those who are logged in to see how results will be affected when the change takes place. After using personalized search for a while, it’s easy to see how Google alters results, and it isn’t all that much, especially when it’s a search the user hasn’t performed before.

This change to Google is more annoying to SEOs than detrimental. It’s going to be more of a hassle now to check baseline rankings for keywords, but it isn’t that big of deal. It’s also going to be annoying when dealing with the customers who don’t realize personalized search is turned on in their browser. Now that personalized search will be turned on in all browsers by default, SEOs can expect more clients to call in complaining about ranks, because the rankings on their computers have been messed up by them researching the competition.

From an SEO standpoint, no one should be too concerned with the changes that are coming out of Google right now. If you’re building strong sites, they’ll continue to show up in the SERPs. While SEOs are drama queens, they also have a great ability to adapt to whatever search engines throw at them. SEO isn’t going anywhere.

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