Google Personalized Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ?

Its interesting to see that Google always changes the way it operates. Time to time search engine results vary and recently I observed another change (possibly I might be late).  I’m also not sure how to name it, but seems like “Personalized SEO”. I would say this would bring more and more benefits to the firm if handled and used carefully.

My blog is always ranked high in Google Search Engine for important keywords, drives me several visitors per day. Whenever I update my blog the post quickly get scrolled and showed in the top position in the Google ranking. For some keywords I wondered how it got ranked up. Later I identified Google has linked the Gmail and SEO together. If the person in your Gmail contact searches for a keyword which is relating to your post / site then the respective post / site comes up in the ranking. Lets try an example and see.

Step one – I logged in to my Gmail from other account, which has already my main Gmail contacts saved.

Step Two – I had written a post about invest in Sri Lanka in this blog, and searched for the keyword “Invest in Sri Lanka”, where my blog appeared in the first page as 8^th and 10^th result. Please see the screen shot:

Then I logged out from Gmail and again searched for the relevant keyword, where I couldn’t see the same results. So I’m not sure about my guess on these, however I can see that Google tempting people to use Gmail more and giving more personalized search results.

When I see this I got an idea, it’s good for Sri Lankan firms in the following ways:

1-    Use Gmail for communication with customers (Specially travel firms)

2-    When they reply it will be saved as contact

3-    At the same time they should share their online presence such as website, blogs etc etc. Both should be killer content.

4-    Now when they search for relevant keywords since the firms are in the contact list with shared content the relevant content will appear in the first page, which might surprise them and create credibility.

(But using Gmail for customer contact may not represent professionalism since people may worry about the trust).

These are just my observation and the ideas are totally with predictions. If I’m wrong please correct me. 🙂

Year 2010 – Role of search marketing

I could not find the time to update my blog for the past one month.   Yesterday when I was going through articles and research findings I came across some important facts which I thought of sharing with you.

It looks like that  in the  year 2010 search engines are going to play a major role than  before.  Influence of search results is the major part of the purchase decision cycle. Based on research it was found that 68.3% of search was related to the consideration stage and almost  42.6% search came for decision stage.



When looking at the above graph it is also clear in the  recent past the money spent on online had taken high and had exceeded the other mediums. Also in the travel industry search engines are the game deciders. In year 2009 so far it has been noted that 66% of the travelers use internet to plan their travel arrangements, 56% made online reservation and 34% of the travelers visit search engines first when considering destinations. The trend looks amazing and it shows search engine marketing is going to be the high prominent marketing strategy for travel firms. (This is not only for tranvel but for other industries as well)

In the search engine market still Google remains as the market leader. Please see below the graph

But there are threats for Google as well because of the rise of Bing. Google has already lost its 1% market share and Bing starting to grow . Within just a 3 months it has gained the 0.4% market share which has high  travel technology as well. So in future it can be turned out as a major travel search engine. Let’s see what happens.

Now its time for e-marketers to look at the new search display trends. You need not consider just building web links. Now its time to think of videos, news articles, blog posts, images etc. Google algorithm also has changed accordingly. In simple it means SEO is not going to be the just tweaking the site. It is all about creating and optimizing whatever forms of content make sense for the business  industry. Now Google has changed the algorithm, which values the video content much as well. Also according to research, video marketing is the number one tactics that US marketers are focusing in 2009. Please see below the e-market source

So what are the recent changes in Google? It has recently announced (Oct 7, 2009) the search results now feature an option allowing users to view formatted PDFs from within the browser. Also Google introduced the new feature on Sep 23, 2009, to the Gooel toolbar that  allows anyone to leave comments about pages as they surf the web site. The more comments you have for your site the more value is  increased.

Google’s searchwiki, a major addition to its user interface that allows users to edit search results. When using searchwiki you can re-order, remove or add web pages to search results for any query. You can add any number of comments you want, but there are few criteria Google consider. The quality of the entry, the author and user contributed signals such as voting and flagging. But one thing I have noticed the old SEO mantra remains the same. Meta tags, title header, alt tags and content are the kings anyway.

Few travel insights

Social media integration like videos , photos , blogging and tweets are going to play a major part. In simple I can see that the role of Social media effort is to directly influence social communities  so that the social media pages show up in the search results.

Using the social media effectively is going to be the major factor in future. Measuring the ROI and taking proper actions are going to be critical. Based on e-marketer research 84% of Social Media Programs don’t measure ROI. They just do everything without having proper mechanism,

Please find below some measuirememnt of ROI you can use.

ROI is a function of the goals may not always be monetary, but people have to consider ROO(return on objectives) such as branding, awareness relationship and engagement.

Here are some cool tools I found when getting contents for my post.

Post Rank – Allows to enter a feed URL and returns statistics about its posts, including which are the most popular based on how many times they are shared on variety of social networking sites.

Xinu – Is a handy website where you can type in a URL and receive a load of useful statistics ranging from SEO to social bookmarking and more.

Google Trends – People can compare the world largest interest in favorite topics.

Also use Google analytics and feedburner, quancast and copmeptecom If you are running a small site you can use Clicky instead of analytics.

Although off line marketing trend is stronger now,   but it is time for every business circle to think of online marketing much stronger than before.

To Come top in the Google search results within an hour.

It is always difficult to come top in the google results position in an hour. Just worked out few techniques and  finally got the idea how it works. I heard recently Google has changed the way of crawler’s work. I have created a video to test this technique. Named the video with a title which is having 17,000,000 search results in Google and the keyword title was “new marketing trends blog”.

 

Video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPR02oDXriU see below the screen shot as well. 

 

Did other technique- Better to keep it secret 🙂

In an hour I saw my video had come in the first page out of 17,500,000 results. See the screen shot below. (Go to http://www.google.co.uk, then type this keyword -” new marketing trends blog”)

I think it is time for marketers to think about the use of YouTube. After aquired by Google it has become more search engine friendly. In my point of view all can optimize their videos for targeted keywords, and can get the videos on top. I also observed that  if we can upload it to more than 10 video sites and optimize, can see the results even better because if you optimize only one video channel,  in a  few days time  it will go down. So continuous optimization will help you to retain the position. 

Hot SEO trends 2009

Trying to going inline with all the changes in search engine optimization is a always a difficult task.  It’s an ever-changing industry with new trends and dimensions. SEO is still going to play a major impact on the online business. Currently I’m reading for me e-marketing award so tend to search for some trends about SEO and came across the followings from various webs. The trends are amazing anyway based on my experience I also got some points to tell.

1 – Google is going to remain the the top of the curve. According to Cnet Google conquered nearly 70% of Internet searches in year 2008. So what does this means? You all have to optimize your site for Google. It is also important to note that Google had made 400 changes in the algorithms as well.

2- Links are important. Get quality links pointing to your site. Do not forget to make your content in an exceptional quality. I think Google always monitor this because recently I have created a blog by doing continuous book marking. Within 2 weeks I got 1 PR. It remained for about 1 month and then again vanished. So make sure you get quality link without spamming. 🙂 Make your site more informative. Because recently based on research there are more “lookers” than “getters”. People search more for information than make a transaction. Even if you’re selling something, you must provide some free information that draws outside resources to your pages or you’re going to get left behind. Quality content = links = credibility = rankings.

3 – Viral and social media. I don’t care if your company sells bubble gum or $100,000 plastics injection molding equipment, you can benefit from social media. Set up an account on Twitter and Facebook and get connected. Social media (sites such as Facebook and Twitter) isn’t going anywhere. And more of your potential customers are using it to make connections. You should be, too. By being active in online communities, you can develop an audience

4- Based on the recent research I found that video optimization is also going to be a key in SEO. YouTube strategy need to be developed in order to get to the top position or organic ranking. This can be done easily I will post this as my next post. Where within 2 hours you can come to the first Google result page. My argument is if you are running a web site and if you are not getting in the top position then worst. But instead of page if your videos are in top position again you will find it good.

5 – With smartphones like the iPhone and new BlackBerry becoming wildly popular, local search is going to be huge in 2009. If your products appeal to people on the go, or if you have a local downtown shop of any kind, you need to get busy with LBL (local business listing) optimization. The next customer who drives right by your shop may have been looking for you at that very moment, and found nothing.

6- SEO now going to be the in house function. In order to cut cost firms are going to invest more on SEO internally by training and developing competent people in this area.

7. SEO Scams The downside of increased interest in SEO is that many small business owners will continue to spend money making unethical scam artists rich.

8. Personalized Search Results Personalization of search results has been simmering for a couple years now, but has started going mainstream recently. Google is leading the way with things like SearchWiki and Preferred Sites. Plus, things like your location, your recent searches, and which datacenter your search gets sent to can also impact the 10 search results you see at any given moment. It will continue to become more unusual to see the same 10 results when you and a friend in another state do the same search.

9. Local Search and Mobile Search Mobile search has been on the way for years, but it never arrived. Until now. Mobile search used to be as fun as root canal, but the growth of smartphones – fueled by the iPhone – means mobile search is more enjoyable, more productive, and more popular than ever before. If your business appeals to people who might be searching on the go, local SEO should be a high priority for you in 2009.

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