search engine results – Small Business Odyssey

January 16, 2012January 17, 2012

Google is Integrating Google+ With Search Engine Results

Google is changing the whole landscape of Internet search through integration of Google+ with organic and paid search results.

A number of prominent Internet marketers have reported recently that they are seeing this integration of Google+ in the search results and have screenshots to prove it. Mike Brooks, for example, shows a screenshot where a number of paid search results are shown above the organic search results, but on the right hand side are the results from Google+:

Game Changer: Google Plus Changes Search and Social Media

He points out that Mari Smith, because of her Google+ activity, holds the number one spot in the right hand column for the search term, ‘Internet marketing’ – a spot usually held by people who pay $100 per click via Google Adwords. It is likely this positioning of Google+ results will change. However, it shows that Google is experimenting with the integration of Google+ with its paid and organic search results.

It also means that Google is seeking to give prominence to its own social network as a source of quality information. This understandably is upsetting both Facebook and Twitter. It is interesting that my own observation, and that of a number of my connections, is that the information shared on Google+ to date is more focused and of a higher quality than that shared on Facebook or Twitter – it tends to be enlightening, educational or practical. From what I have experienced from the circles I have created, Google+ posts tend to challenge my assumptions and expand my thinking. This may be a function of the fact, that because it is early days, I have been able to include people in my circles who are prominent elsewhere but excluded from access because of their number of followers.

[Image source: Pixabay.com]

The Implications for Small Business Marketing of the Google+ Integration with Search Engine Results

As many commentators have pointed out already, the implications of this Google+ integration move by Google are not entirely clear for a number of reasons. We do not know what the final configuration will look like – only some people have access to the new format which is in a testing mode at the moment. We do not know how Facebook and Twitter will respond, but respond they will! We are uncertain whether the Google+ results shown will be just those from your own circles or those from Google+ generally. What we do know so far is that a lot of old assumptions and processes about search engine optimisation (SEO) will need to change.

We can also assume that some of the implications for small business marketing will be:

if you are not on Google+, you will be at a considerable disadvantage when it comes to search engine results in the future – you may actually disappear from the search results that you are currently achieving
when you share on Google+ via your stream, you need to ensure that your content matches the primary niche(s) or keywords that you want to be visible for in search engine results
it will no longer be enough to be on Facebook only – it is interesting that Mari Smith, known widely as a Facebook guru, is prominent in the new Google+ search results (she has around 50,000 people in her Google+ circles)
Google+ is effectively integrating list building with search engine optimization (SEO) – through Google+ you will not only build your list, you will also increase your chances of appearing in Google’s integrated search engine results
Google’s shift from page rank to people rank is happening in earnest – another level of integration will be when Google integrates Google+ results with organic search results based on people rank
small business owners will no longer be able to ignore social media if they want to appear in Google’s search engine results
your Google+ business page will assume greater importance in terms of how often your business will appear in search results and what keywords/search terms will influence the search results for your small business
your images on Google+ (photos, graphics, illustrations) will feed Google’s integrated search results and feature in its increased focus on multimedia
the Google+1 button will assume even greater importance because of its indication of how your content is valued by your connections
your personal profiles on social networks will become even more important (you need to integrate them into your Google+ profile to strengthen their capacity to demonstrate your social connection)
social connections along with quality content will assume even greater importance – it will not be enough just to create quality original content, you will also need to be connected to people who “value” that content.

As Mike Brooks commented, a core meaning of the integration of Google+ with search engine results is that we are facing the era where “content and connection is king”.

We have moved over time from thinking of Internet marketing as a linear process to a circular process (with web rings, blog rings, lens rings, etc). I think we now have to visualize Internet marketing like concentric circles formed when a drop of water lands in a pool of water (as the image above shows).

Internet marketing can now be visualized as concentric circles formed when content is dropped into (shared with) our pool of connections.

The integration of Google+ into Google’s search engine results has profound implications for small business marketing that cannot be ignored by small business owners.

Postscript: Since I wrote this blog post, top Internet marketer, Bill Guthrie, has come out with his Google+ Manifesto, where he asserts that, “We’re witnessing the quick death of SEO as we know it” and that “Google+ is now mandatory”. He released his PDF Manifesto as a Warrior Special Offer (WSO) which explains the principles behind Google+, their implications and offers heaps of tips and ideas to take advantage of this massive change which will change small business marketing and affiliate marketing. You can grab your copy at the WSO discounted price here:

http://www.warriorplus.com/linkwso/4kbjzp/7888

Grab your copy now so that you can get in on the ground with the game-changing Google+ which will influence the course of small business marketing into the future and have a serious effect on your search engine results.

November 28, 2011

Tell the Google Bots Where To Go!

When I discussed Webmaster Tools earlier, I mentioned the need to create a sitemap for your website and submit it to Google. I will discuss how to do the creation and submission of a site map in this post because it is critical to the indexing of your website by Google and determines how your website will be found through search queries on Google (and other search engines).

A sitemap is basically, as the name suggests, a map or directory of your website, so that the structure and priority of the files on your website can be displayed for easy access by the search engines. You can see from the sitemap extract above that the sitemap for Small Business Odyssey has a hyperlinked list of files, a priority rating (percentage) and a frequency rating (to tell the search engines how frequently to index that part of the website).

Why create a sitemap and why submit it to Webmaster Tools?

Well, in non-technical language, it seems that the Google Bots (robots that crawl your website) are lazy ‘creatures” and do not go out of their way to properly index your site for the Google search engine. They take the easy way out – they only go where the path is clearly laid out for them. They don’t like deadends (broken links) or confused pathways (disconnected files randomly located). When I look at how Google is currently indexing my Small Business Odyssey blog, I am even more convinced of how lazy the Google Bots are – it seems that they need to be spoon-fed the information, otherwise they do a poor job of indexing your website.

So the primary reason for creating a sitemap for Google is to enable the Google Bots to comprehensively index your website. Otherwise, a lot of your website may not appear in Google’s index and will not be found by Internet searchers. Google admits as much by this comment on Webmaster Tools:

Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover.

Creating an XML Sitemap

This brings us to the creation of a sitemap. I am suggesting that you create this sitemap initially as a .XML file because it is easy for the lazy Bots to read completely. This sitemap format basically lets the Google Bots into the back engine room of your site and shows them around – where files are located and how they are linked by type (home page, static pages, dynamic pages, categories, tags).

If this post appears too technical for you, just make sure that your Webmaster has created an XML sitemap for your website and submitted it to Google.

Here are the steps for creation of your XML sitemap:

Download the free WordPress Plugin for the Google XML Sitemap Generator.
Upload the XML Sitemap Generator to your website (via your WordPress Admin panel)
Install and activate the WordPress Plugin for XML sitemaps
Make adjustments to the default settings (if you wish)
Click ‘create sitemap’ and you will very quickly have a site map and a stated location (URL) for your sitemap.

The beauty of this WordPress Plugin for creating Google XML Sitemaps is that it offers multiple options in terms of settings, automatically submits the sitemap to Google, Ask.com and Bing search engines and updates automatically when you change a file on your website. So it is comprehensive and dynamic.

In terms of adjustments to default settings, most commentators suggest that you leave the defaults as they are – it certainly makes life simpler. However, I would suggest that you may want to change the default for ‘priority’ – the default setting tells the Google Bots to give priority to the posts that have the most comments. This may not be meaningful if you have a really new site. I have set up my priorities in the following order – home page, recent posts, static pages, older posts, categories and tags. I will change this as the Small Business Odyssey site becomes more established and generates more traffic and comments.

The other default setting you may want to change before you click the “create sitemap’ button, is ‘Change Frequency’. For example, the default setting tells the Google Bots to index your posts weekly. However, if you are creating blog posts on a daily basis, you should change the ‘frequency’ to daily. The Google Bots may ignore this suggestion (remember they are basically lazy), but it is better to at least express your wishes. Google’s own experts, such as Matt Cutts, tell us that the more frequently you update your site with relevant information, the more often the Google Bots will crawl your site and the deeper (more thoroughly) they will index your website.

I’ve made a few adjustments to the priority and frequency default settings for my XML sitemap and you can see the result here:

http://smallbusinessodyssey.com/sitemap.xml

Here’s a YouTube video that simplifies the whole process and shows you exactly what to do (there are no adjustments to defaults and the WordPress Plugin is downloaded directly to the Admin panel via the built-in Plugin search facility):

How to submit your XML sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools

You might wonder why we need to do this extra step as the WordPress XML Sitemap Generator automatically submits your sitemap to Google (and to Bing and Ask.com). Well, I think it comes back to our lazy Google Bots again – they don’t go out of their way to find the sitemap, so you have to put it in front of them! If you check out the screenshots below, you will also see how Google takes up the information from the sitemap on Webmaster Tools and begins to integrate it into its index. So submitting the sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools is a way to get direct access to Google’s index (although it may take some time for all of the information to be indexed).

The process of submission of your sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools is very simple:

log in to your Webmaster Tools site
click on the web address (URL) for your verified website
click the ‘site configuration’ menu item
click the ‘sitemaps’ menu item
enter your sitemap address where indicated (see image below).

When you first submit your sitemap, the above image will appear with the messages ‘submitted URLs – O’ and “index count pending’ (and status shown as ‘in progress’). Take heart, this is Google trying to identify all your files from the sitemap and integrating them into their index. After some processing time, you will see the following image that indicates successful submission:

So this indicates that Google has taken on board your website pages (URLs) and has loaded them into their index. The actual indexing in terms of search terms (keywords) will occur over an unspecified period (you can’t rush the Google Bots).

Creating and submitting an XML sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools is critical for small business marketing because it ensures effective indexing of your website so that Internet searchers can find your website through your targeted search terms (keywords).

November 11, 2011November 11, 2011

Free WordPress Plugin: All in One SEO

All in One SEO Plugin is a free WordPress Plugin that enables you to very easily optimize your blog posts for the search engines. It also forms the foundation for the analysis and research conducted by the more sophisticated WordPress Plugin, SEOPressor, described in an earlier post.

As you can see from the image above, there are three main sections of the All in One SEO plugin you need to complete for each blog post to enable the search engines to readily locate your content. The three main aspects of this free WordPress Plugin are keyword, title and description.

Keyword for All in One SEO WordPress Plugin

It is really important to decide the primary keyword for your blog post (and the Free WordPress Plugin). The primary keyword should determine the title and the description. The keyword chosen should be governed by the content and the purpose of your article and your market research.

Title for the All in One SEO WordPress Plugin

The title should include the primary keyword and, where possible, another related keyword. However, it is important to avoid keyword stuffing otherwise your site will be penalized by Google. One of the real benefits of the All in One SEO WordPress Plugin is the ability to provide a catchy, “sexy” title for your blog post to engage the reader and then to have a more SEO-aware title for the search engines.

Description for the All in One SEO WordPress Plugin

The description should contain the primary keyword at least twice but needs to be conversational in nature – it has to be a meaningful sentence(s). The important thing with the description is to keep the reader in mind – who are they and what do they want in relation to your blog post? What problems or issues are you solving with your post?

Not only does the All in One SEO Plugin help you with your title and description, it also gives you a recommended length for each based on how search engines treat these aspects of blog posts.

The free All in One SEO WordPress Plugin can help you make your blog posts reader-friendly and, at the same time, improve the search engine results for these posts – thus boosting the marketing of your small business online.

November 11, 2011February 9, 2012

WordPress Plugin Guaranteed to Boost Search Engine Results for Your Blog

SEOPressor is a WordPress Plugin that enables you to achieve great search engine results for your blog posts and website pages. The Plugin is easy to install and it provides you with a means for ensuring that your blog posts are optimized for the search engines; that is, they will rank highly in the search engine results for their targeted keyword.

What the SEOPressor WordPress Plugin does

I’ve used SEOPressor to score first page results on Google for my blog posts. What this WordPress Plugin does is help you to improve the onsite SEO for your website – it identifies what aspects you can improve with minimum effort to gain better positioning in search engine results.

SEOPressor does all the work of analysis and research and reports an overall SEO score for the post/page being analyzed. It also identifies how you can improve your use and placement of keywords, font emphasis (bold, italics and underline), images and the key markers that tell Google what the post is about.

What you can do with the information from this WordPress Plugin

With this information you can improve the ranking of your blog post/page by implementing the minor changes recommended. SEOPressor will then recalculate your overall SEO score for the blog post. In this way, you are able to gain better results for your writing through higher placement in search engine results.

The Plugin also educates you so that you can consistently achieve improved traffic from search engines irrespective of what blog or website you are writing for. This is an easy way to maximize the return on your investment of your time and energy in writing.

The SEOPressor is a WordPress Plugin that improves your writing, boosts your search engine results and brings increased targeted traffic to your small business blog or website.