Ads Next™ Local Internet Advertising, Annapolis, Maryland, Internet Advertising Solutions, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design and Integration, Social Media Marketing

By MG Siegler

Today, at its Search Event in Mountain View, Google Fellow Amit Singhal (who recently participated in our Realtime Crunchup) took the stage to announce a big new feature for the search giant: Realtime.

“It’s Google’s relevance technology meeting the realtime web,” is how Singhal described it.

As we’ve learned over the past several months with Twitter Search, relevancy is perhaps the key to making realtime search a pillar of the web. Google seems to believe it has cracked the code for this, and has been internally testing it for a while now. But starting today it’s going live for everyone.

Singhal showed off the new feature by doing a query for “Obama.” The results page shows results coming in in realtime. And yes, it works with Twitter. For example, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted something from the audience, and in popped in the results immediately. This is the first time any search engine has integrated realtime results into a standard page, Google says. Obviously, this is huge. Read More

While doing my weekly search engine marketing readings I came across these best practices for ranking number one in the search engines by randfish from SEOmoz.

Ads Next’s unique solution practices these techniques to provide our clients with the greatest results and top organic rankings.

Best Practices for Ranking # 1

Curiously, though perhaps not entirely surprisingly to experienced SEOs, the truth is that on-page optimization doesn’t necessarily rank first in the quest for top rankings. In fact, a list that walks through the process of actually getting that first position would look something more like:

1. Accessibility – content engines can’t see or access cannot even be indexed; thus crawl-ability is foremost on this list.
2. Content – you need to have compelling, high quality material that not only attracts interest, but compels visitors to share the information. Virality of content is possibly the most important/valuable factor in the ranking equation because it will produce the highest link conversion rate (the ratio of those who visit to those who link after viewing).
3. Basic On-Page Elements – getting the keyword targeting right in the most important elements (titles, URLs, internal links) provides a big boost in the potential ability of a page to perform well.
4. User Experience – the usability, user interface and overall experience provided by a website strongly influences the links and citations it earns as well as the conversion rate and browse rate of the traffic that visits.
5. Marketing - I like to say that “great content is no substitute for great marketing.” A terrific marketing machine or powerful campaign has the power to attract far more links than content may “deserve,” and though this might seem unfair, it’s a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable (just look at the political spectrum).
6. Advanced/Thorough On-Page Optimization – applying all of the above with careful attention to detail certainly isn’t useless, but it is, for better or worse, at the bottom of this list for a reason; in our experience, it doesn’t add as much value as the other techniques described.

By: searchengineland.com

From marketers to Wall Street analysts to the Department of Justice, everyone (even the general public) recognizes that Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the world of search. And particularly with the introduction of the generic 10-pack to Universal results, this fact largely holds true in Local Search as well. Google Maps has pulled even with Mapquest thanks largely to this decision by the higher-ups in Mountain View.

There’s tremendous value for small businesses in optimizing for Google’s Universal results, as Hanan Lifshitz pointed out last week. It’s hard not to imagine that small business owner grabbing the lion’s share of chiropractic searchers in his region, thanks to the efforts of Will Scott’s Search Influence firm.

But no matter your industry, when it comes to Local, it’s absolutely critical to think beyond Google, even if all you’re trying to do is optimize for the 10-pack.

The importance of citations for Google Maps

One of the pathways to “Local Organic Domination,” as Hanan termed it, is through the acquisition of citations. Citations are just mentions of your business name in close proximity to your address or phone number, with or without a link to your website. Think of them like votes of confidence for a particular business’slocation…the more confidence Google has in your listing, the higher they’re likely to display it in search results. So it’s important to list yourself fully and accurately in as many places across the web as possible, including blogs about your city or industry.

Bottom line, it’s hard to rank in Google Maps (and consequently Universal Search) without paying significant attention to how your business is listed across the web, not just on Google.

“Other” local search

One of Gib Olander’s favorite lines is: ” ‘other’ is the third-largest local search engine.” What he means is that local search is far more fragmented than traditional organic search. Unlike traditional search, if you’re only paying attention to getting your business on Google and Yahoo, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of local market share.

While the demise of the Print Yellow Pages seems imminent, Internet Yellow Pages sites are far healthier, and some are even thriving. YellowPages.com’s ad partnership with Bing is just one example…at least if Bing can continue to capitalize on its current hype. Superpages.com has long been a trusted source of data with its own steady traffic stream, and more recent entrants like InsiderPages and Yellowbot are starting to develop passionate user bases.

Then there’s the online classified market. Craigslist is the default place to look for local ’stuff” here on the West Coast, not to mention other major players like Oodle and Kijiji.

Vertical local search

Success in local also means promoting your presence on sites with strong market shares of their own in particular industries. This doesn’t mean only ranking well, but paying attention to what people are saying about you, responding to their feedback, and improving their perceptions.

For example, sites like TripAdvisor and Kayak are huge in the travel industry. Restauranteurs might even think about places like Yelp, BooRah, or Urban Spoon before thinking about Google. For chiropractors like Will’s client, these might include Planet Chiropractic and No More Clipboard. For searches near and dear to my heart, [golf courses] – it’s portals like Golf Digest and GolfNow.

(Incidentally, almost all of these sites make excellent citations for your Google Maps listing…)

Social local search

Many of the sites mentioned above, and even Google and Yahoo, straddle the line between social media and search due to the prominence of reviews in their users’ experience.  But local “searchers” are often turning to purely social sites like Twitter, Praized, and RetailMeNot as well for recommendations and sale information about Local businesses. And as we all learned from Dave Carroll’s brilliant lampoon of United Airlines last week, word-of-mouth can sometimes be more powerful than any search marketing campaign could be.

Conclusion

Local search traffic is only going to grow in importance.  So don’t “put your blinkers on” as Nick Faldo loves to say (indulge me…this is Open Championship week, after all) and focus all of your energies on Google. Your long-term chances for a successful online presence will suffer if you do.

Here is an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts and his take on search engine rankings in 2009.  He makes some interesting points on what to expect from Google in 2009 and how you should be marketing your website.  Your main focus should not be on rankings. 

Cutts isn’t saying that rankings are dead however it’s not as important as it used to be.  He states that smart SEOs aren’t only looking at rankings but also conversions and metrics.  Its great to be ranking high on important keyword phrases that relate to your business but if those phrases aren’t generating sales or revenue then it isn’t helping your business very much.

Matt Cutts stresses “The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrases.”

He also gives some insight on Universal Search in 2009.

“Universal is really useful and I think it will continue to expand and what that means in 2009 you can’t just think of yourself as an SEO,” said Cutts.

“SEOs are starting to embrace the fact that they are marketers. It’s a broader spectrum. You have to think about how you build buzz, how do you get loyal customers, how do you optimize your ROI. All those different things and that can include how do I make good videos, do I have a book, things like that.”

Cutts says that people will continue to pay attention to video and images in 2009 but noted a down side. “Of course anywhere there is money there will be spam.” Google has been focusing on its different properties to manage the spam issue.

We agree, that is why Ads Next™ offers a 360°web promotion, tracking and results driven marketing solution.

Our goal is to promote your website across the web and generate as much traffic and leads as possible based on your budget.  We will balance our website traffic strategy between paid traffic (Pay-Per-Click), and organic traffic (Search Engine Optimization).  We then use our lead tools to track and convert these traffic increases into more qualified leads.  We prove results with our web-based Reporting Dashboard 2.0.  This new version combines all of our traffic and lead tracking metrics into one place with easy to read graphical charts.