Will Google’s New Search Options Affect Your SEO?

admin    Google Optimization     Affect, Googles, Options, Search

Will Google’s New Search Options Affect Your SEO?

In case you haven’t noticed, Google recently unveiled a new design for its search results pages that gives users access to some new, interesting search options. The new design may not be immediately noticeable, but when you do a search from Google’s home page, you can now see a new, left-hand column on each results page.

At the top of the column are the different Google search “engines” (like images, videos, news, etc.). The next section in the column has a link called “Show search tools”, which expands to display a variety of new Google tools for people to use when looking for information.

The new search tools let users view results by criteria such as “time” (latest results, past 24 hours, etc.), “location” (nearby results), “related searches”, “sites with images”, etc., which may ultimately have a significant affect on your business’ search engine strategy. Why? Because with each new option a user selects, a different set of Google search results is displayed, based on the option that is selected.

So now that there are multiple new Google search options, does this mean that businesses must consider which Google search option(s) they wish to rank for, then optimize specifically for that option? Maybe.

The Importance of Real-Time Search

Real-time search was added to Google only a few months ago, and is the result of social sites like Facebook and Twitter becoming a major resource for users who wanted information that is minutes-old, not days, weeks, or months-old. Now that real-time search is even more accessible to users via the left-column options (e.g., blogs, news, discussions, “time” tools, etc.), social search has become even more important for businesses striving to rank well in Google.

Social search is all about visibility, meaning you need to have a presence on the social networking sites and get people talking about and / or sharing your content. You need to get people involved with you in order to be relevant in real-time search, and real-time search has already been shown to be a real-big factor in getting to the top of Google rankings.

Where Do You Want to Rank Today?

If you want to increase quality traffic from Google, it makes sense to optimize your pages for coverage in the search option categories that matter most to your business. For instance, if you operate a storefront in your town, you may want to show up in the local search (and “nearby”) results. Or, if you’re offering a time-sensitive discount or have tied a promotion to an event, then you may want to be included in the “time” results for past 24 hours or past week.

Know Your Audience!

The key to ranking well in Google – regardless of the search option category being used – is to find the right keyword phrases to use in optimizing your site. Do some actual research, don’t just guess! If you don’t know how to research and find relevant keywords, then hire a professional to help you. You must know what people are actually typing into that search box, or your efforts will do little to drive targeted traffic to your site or deliver new customers and leads. The more you know about the keywords your target market uses to find products and services like yours, the more you will know exactly where you need to focus your efforts in Google.

Hurry Up and Wait

Although Google’s new search tools are a fairly new development, experts are already weighing in with their opinions on how (or if) these new search options will have an impact on a business’ SEO strategy. The early consensus seems to be that yes, the new options will have an effect to some degree, but it’s probably too soon to know to what extent.

In the meantime, the best strategy is to keep your site updated with fresh, relevant content, create a strong presence on the social networking sites, build new inbound links, select targeted keyword phrases, and optimize your site using standard, white-hat practices that will help your web site be read and indexed by the search engine spiders. Then sit back and watch the results unfold over the next several months to see if the new Google search options indeed affect your SEO.

More Google Search Articles

Twitter Online Marketing Analytics Options

admin    Twitter     Analytics, Marketing, Online, Options, Twitter

Twitter Online Marketing Analytics Options

Internet marketing is incredibly vast and spreads out among many mediums. There are so many places on the internet where someone can advertise and market their products or services. Twitter is a great place for you to market as well just like anywhere else on the internet. It has proven to be a very strong medium for marketing. You can also find different tools on the internet to increase your marketing capabilities.

Twitter analyzer is one of these programs that can assist you by analyzing your account and the specifics surrounding it. The first thing it can tell you is how often you update your account every day over a time period, typically one month. A better capability for this is to use the graph feature that shows how many times other twitter users mention your user name. This is a lot more useful than seeing how often you update. A good indicator of your products or services being popular is to see your twitter name mentioned more frequently. You should definitely use this in order to keep track of how good your marketing campaign is going.

Twitterstats is a tool that is meant to watch keywords that are mentioned. You can determine how popular a word is by typing it into the program. A graph then analyzes Twitter to see how often it was mentioned by people within the last day. In addition, the number of tweets is displayed as well. This is an important distinction because a word may be mentioned 1,000 times but it may only be in 800 tweets since sometimes a keyword is used multiple times in one tweet. This may not be as useful as some other tools but it will assist your efforts to keep and maintain an effective marketing strategy through Twitter.

TweetBuzzer is a tool that is used to calculate how often people refer to a brand on Twitter. A brand is just another name for keyword but you can use this tool in order to see how many times your “brand” name is used. You can add your brand by simply submitting it to their database. It is a simple and painless process to do but the wait may be a little long because it must be approved manually. There is a live feed of the brands that are being mentioned as they do so to see which ones are the most popular. You could also put your competitors name in to see how you stack up against them.

Another addition to your tools should be Tweetiator. This is a tool used to track links and the content that is available on your blog as well. Twitter is so widely used that tracking who is mentioning your content and how often is incredibly useful. The link must have been clicked on at least once in order to be registered. This service does charge a small monthly fee.

Twitter can and should be used in marketing your products or services. It is a great way to reach a multitude of audiences.

Is Google The Ultimate In Search Options?

admin    Google     Google, Options, Search, Ultimate

The following are some of the popular and innovative services offered by Google and there are always improvisations in it.

Google Answers
Google Answers is an interesting cross etween ‘online marketplace’ and probably a ‘virtual classroom’. Those who wish to participate must register with Google Answers. Here, the researchers who have considerable expertise in online researching provide answers to the queries posted by other users for a fee.

When a user posts a question, he or she also needs to mention the price the user is willing to pay in case the question is answered. When the question is answered by any user, then the payment is made accordingly to the user answering the question. Moreover, the questions and the discussion that ensues will be publicly viewable and other registered users can also share their opinions and insights.

There is a non-refundable listing fee of $0.50 per question plus an additional ‘price’ you set for your question that reflects how much you’re willing to pay for an answer. Three-quarters of your question price goes directly to the Researcher who answers your question; the remaining 25 percent goes to Google to support the service.

Google Groups
Google Groups is an online discussion forum and it contains the entire archive of Usenet discussion groups dating back to 1981. These discussions cover the full range of human dissertation and present a fascinating look at evolving viewpoints, debate and advice on every subject from politics to technology. Users can access all of this information all in a database that contains more than 800 million posts by using the search feature of Google.

Google’s Image Search
Google offers a wide collection of images from around the web; its comprehensive database consists of more than 425 million images. All a user has to do is to enter a query in the image search box, then click on the “Search” button. On the results page, by clicking the thumbnail a larger version of the image can be seen, as well as the web page on which the image is located. By default, Google’s Image Search uses its mature content filter on the initial search by any user. The filter removes many adult images but it cannot guarantee that all such content will be filtered out. It is not possible to ensure with 100% accuracy that all mature content will be removed from image search results using filters.

Google’s Catalog Search
Google offers a unique service in the form of its Catalog Search. Google’s Catalog Search has made it easy to find information published in mail-order catalogs that were not previously available online. It includes the full content of hundreds of mail-order catalogs selling everything from industrial adhesives to clothing and home furnishings.

Froogle
The word ‘froogle’ is a combination of the word ‘frugal’ which means ‘penny-wise’ or ‘economical’ and of course ‘Google’. Google’s spidering software crawls the web looking for information about products for sale online. It does so by focusing entirely on product search and applying the power of Google’s search technology to locate stores that sell items you want and consequently pointing you to that specific store.

Just like the Google Web Search, Froogle also ranks store sites based only on their relevance to the search terms entered by the users. Google does not accept payment for placement within their actual search results. Froogle also includes product information submitted electronically by merchants. Its search results are automatically generated by Google’s ranking software.

Real Estate Search Engine Marketing Options

admin    Google     Engine, Estate, Marketing, Options, Real, Search

Search Engine Marketing: Options for Real Estate Agents

Using search engines has become one of the most popular activities on the Internet, second only to email. But with millions of websites and billions of web pages, potential homebuyers need a tool that can sift through this clutter to find the realtor websites relevant to their search.

Thanks mostly to the techniques pioneered by Google, search engines have become remarkably effective at providing results that are highly relevant to the term or phrase the user searches on like

Homes for Sale. But to be relevant, you have to be found, and this is where search engine marketing comes in.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

You may have great inventory, a fantastic local clientele, and a high-end new website, but if that website doesn’t show up on the first two pages of Google (or Yahoo, MSN, or Ask Jeeves), you’re not getting the exposure you need to remain competitive.

Why aren’t you showing up? You may have overlooked search engine marketing. Effective search engine marketing is about more than just optimizing your website or submitting it to the search engines for indexing. When hundreds or thousands of your competitors are competing with you on your service and keywords, just one Internet marketing technique won’t give you high rankings.

Studies have proven what most Internet users know already – people usually do not look past the first two pages of search results. And with over 71% of homebuyers initiating their home search on the Internet (according to the National Association of Realtors), you can’t afford to miss out on all of those active buyers. And if your site isn’t ranked high, it probably isn’t pulling in leads either – leads that translate to more sales and more commissions.

How does it work?

Unlike organic search engine optimization, which you (or your webmasters) can do yourself, search engine marketing requires a little financial investment to generate results. It’s pay to play, but the rewards are worth it.

Generally speaking, search engine marketing is the advertising that appears on top of or along side the “natural” or organic search results on search engine sites such as Google, MSN, Yahoo and many others, usually under the heading of “Sponsored Links” or “Sponsored Sites.” These links can also show up on many consumer and industry-specific websites, depending on the keywords used like Fort Myers Beach Florida Real Estate.

The copy that you see in the advertisement is usually written by the site owner, who will also come up with the keywords and keyword phrases trigger the ad. The site owner also determines how much she is willing to pay for each click as well as daily maximum limit, giving total control of targeting and spending. Advertising charges are only incurred when a visitor clicks on the ad, not when the ad is shown.

Although sponsored listings are a popular way to conduct your search engine marketing, there are other ways to get great results. Many real estate agents are finding that having the time and expense of a good search engine marketing service done for them by a third-party is a great way to go.

Getting traffic to your real estate website

In addition to buying sponsored (paid) listings, lead tracking, and email marketing excellent strategies for drawing relevant real estate leads to your real estate website. All of these methods work quite well and give you a high return on investment, when done properly that is. If you do not have the time or energy to invest in creating your own real estate marketing campaign for search engines, you can always leave it to the experts to create a custom-designed solution for you.

But let’s look at each of the above methods in more detail.

Sponsored (Paid) Listings

As mentioned above, sponsored, or paid listings are a great way to get fast visibility on the major search engines.

Google AdWords is by far the most popular sponsored listings program, mainly because the Google network is used by 80% of all Internet users. The AdWord program allows you to create your own ads based upon the keywords most relevant to your business. You can also choose to have Google write the ad for you for an extra fee.

Lead Tracking

Sponsored listings and SEO can help attract leads, but to truly get the most out of SEM, you will want to develop a lead tracking system to target the customers and prospects most likely to be interested in your services.

Lead tracking brings both short- and long-term benefits to your company – giving you instant access to information about each sales prospect while also helping to streamline and manage the sales process.

Lead tracking not only helps you attract more customers, it also tracks your return on investment, so you know exactly how much each lead is worth, how many leads convert into transactions, and your overall return on investment in your advertising dollars.

Email Marketing

So now you have high rankings on the search engines and lead tracking is bringing in numerous high-quality prospects. Now what? Email marketing is the icing on the SEM cake – it impresses your prospects by allowing you to send them valuable information on the market and it helps you to stay fresh in their minds.

Relevant Real Estate Website Traffic

At Fidelity Assets we have a better way. We charge you a flat fee every month for the number of visitors you want sent to your site from the search engines. That’s it. Your costs are fixed, and your traffic and quality is guaranteed. You can start with as few as 30 visitors a month for a flat $59.95/month fee. You can buy more traffic as your business grows over time.

Fidelity Assets was created and is staffed by search engine marketing experts. Our company manages online advertising for real estate agents, and our employees are veterans of companies such as NBC Internet, Xoom.com, Infoseek, CNET and other pioneering advertising and e-commerce companies. We know the online ad space better than anyone.

Taking A Look At Two Popular Brands Portable Satellite Radio Options

admin    Google's Nexus One     Brands, Look, Options, Popular, Portable, Radio, Satellite, Taking

Portable satellite radio is the latest music trend, combining your MP3 collection with the ability to hear new music via Sirius or XM Radio. You’ll find that many of the portable ones are unique, sleek and more functional than an iPod. Many people like the versatility of a portable satellite radio since they can use it in the home, office or car, with minimal installation requirements.

Your best bet for Sirius brand is the Sirius S50 Radio (with car kit), which allows you to save your favorite channels and 50 hours of music, replay songs, import playlists, get game alerts, listen to six hours of music per charge and access traffic reports. It also comes with everything you need to listen to your subscription in the car.

The Stiletto 1 or Stiletto 2 portable satellite radio offers the most stylish new design. The only difference between the two is that the second model is slightly slimmer, lighter and has longer battery life.

Both will record up to 100 hours of radio programming, bookmark 10 hours of music at the touch of a button, store your MP3s on 2 GB of space, allow an hour’s worth of replay and provide personalized sports alerts. The Stiletto 1 usually runs for $199 and the Stiletto 2 is $329, but you can often find sales.

If you’re thinking about XM brand, there are some amazing options. The Pink Pioneer Inno offers: 50 hours of storage, sports and news tickers, one touch recording, artist and tune select features, MP3 storage and play. While girls may prefer the Pink Pioneer, guys can get excited about the gray Pioneer Inno or the Samsung Helix, which has all the same features.

Both of the Innos can also play Audible audio books as well! The Nexus has a little less storage space and lacks the bells and whistles (like sports and news updates), but it will get the job done for $129 full price or $70 on sale. Your Nexus will come complete with a mini-tuner, home stand and antenna, power adapter, RC cable, USB cable, rechargeable battery, earbuds, Napster CD, belt clip and remote.

Portable satellite radio is great for exercising, walking to class, plugging into your car and bringing your subscription to the office. XM brand offers live breaking news, while Sirius brand can give sports fans Game Alerts – which is a really neat feature that your iPod doesn’t currently have! Get the most out of your Sirius or XM subscription with a portable device that goes where you go.