maine web development, web design, internet marketing

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves Kasi and Amanda will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Google Personalized Results has killed SEO for Google.

Oops, did I scare you? I realize that the holiday for fright has passed, so maybe I should have served up that statement with some tasty eggnog. But now that I have your attention, let’s take a step back for a moment.

Google Personalized Results is Not New

For over two years now, if you’ve been logged into your Google Account and did some searching, your search results have already been tailored to you. As of this past Friday, Google posted on it’s blog that it’s now an opt-out feature. You don’t have to be signed in to be getting personalized results based on your searches and your data is kept for 6 months.

Basically, Google explains it as simply as this: when you are performing searches and you tend to click on results you get from eBay, the next time you do a search and there is a result from eBay, that result may be shown higher than others.

You can turn this feature off, but many not-as-savvy searchers may be unaware that this can be done.

What Does This Mean for SEO?

SEO for Google is not dead. It’s still important to follow their optimization guidelines to ensure that your website is getting the best shot possible at coming up in a search query. For search users, personalization makes sense; it can be helpful for Google to remember what you’ve been searching to get an idea of exactly what you want. However, know search results will be less “normal”. People doing a search for the same term may see slightly different results based on what they’ve been searching for in the past.

You can read a couple different views on Googles’ personalized results expansion here and here.

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

• Dec. 7 – Customer Service and Marketing
• Dec. 6 – Social Media Didn’t Invent Criticism
• Dec. 5 – Email is the frosting to your gingerbread house
• Dec. 4 – Is Google Caffeine on Your Holiday Wish List?
• Dec. 3 – Don’t Forget to Make Your Title Tags and Check ‘Em Twice
• Dec. 2 – Your Mobile Website
• Dec. 1 – Your Holiday Card List (Your Network)

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves Kasi and Amanda will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Google has decided to give us all a holiday gift this season that is two-fold: they are finally rolling out their new Search update (called Caffeine) and they are waiting until just after the holidays to do it.  Not wanting to shake things up too much for online retailers, it’s only being rolled out to a very small subsection of users so that Google can continue collecting data and improving it.

Is This Gift More Like a Lump of Coal?

Google’s aim is to incease the speed in which results are returned, index even more pages, and possibly display more “real time” results.  That’s not a bad thing in my book.  But the looming question on every SEO’s mind is whether or not it’s going to drastically affect search rankings.  I did some testing on it back in August when they opened it up for people to try out in exchange for feedback, and I didn’t notice much of a shift in rankings while doing side-by-side comparisons.  However, there’s no way of knowing how it’s going to shake it out until it’s fully implemented.

Should I Worry About My Google Rankings?

Don’t let this ruin your holidays.  I believe that if your website employs the standard SEO practices that are Google-approved and within their guidelines, it should work out okay.  Part of Google’s mission is to also increase the relevancy of the search results, so if anyone should be worried, it’s the people employing shady, spammy tactics.

I would be prepared for a shift in rankings perhaps at first while everything stabilizes, but don’t panic.  Just be aware that it’s going to happen and analyze the changes that you’re seeing in order to make any tweaks if need be.

You can read more about Google Caffeine straight from Google’s own Matt Cutts.

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

• Dec. 3 – Don’t Forget to Make Your Title Tags and Check ‘Em Twice
  
• Dec. 2 – Your Mobile Website
• Dec. 1 – Your Holiday Card List (Your Network)

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves Kasi and Amanda will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Title Tags: The Most Important Element

You’ve got your website  perfected and you’re ready to roll… but have you checked the title tags on each of your pages?  These are one of the most important on-page SEO elements and are often overlooked.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve see the titles of websites’ homepages as “Home”, which does not tell search engines what your site is about.  Use your title tags  to convey two or three keywords that reflect the content on each one of your pages.  As each of your web pages is different, your title tags should be different as well.

How Long?

This question comes up a lot.  Although there is no exact “right” answer, the widely accepted standard for title tag length is 5-12 words, or 65 characters.

Should I Use My Business Name in the Title Tags?

There are some experts that believe using a company name in the title tag is good for branding purposes, and others that advise against doing it.  I also advise against it.  It’s not very often that a company would be competing in search engines for its own name, and I would rather use the space for keyword targeting.

I Already Have My Title Tags Optimized

It never hurts to revisit the title tags on your site every now again, especially if you’ve changed your content.  The title tags that you were using before a content re-write may no longer be targeted to your new focus.

You can read more about title tags in a post on the always-informative High Rankings blog.

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

• Dec. 2 – Your Mobile Website
• Dec. 1 – Your Holiday Card List (Your Network)

During the first two weeks of this month, I was fortunate enough to be on the beautiful island of St. Lucia for my wedding.  During our time there my husband and I agreed to be “unplugged”, meaning no cell phones and no internet (gasp!).  We had the absolute best time, but I must admit that as soon as we landed in Miami for our layover, I was glued to my iPhone.  I needed to catch up on all the news I missed in the search world!

So as you’re preparing for tomorrow’s big Thanksgiving feast, here are a few recent, juicy SEO news tidbits to tide you over while you wait:

Faster Page Load Times =  Better Rankings

Nothing is more annoying to me than web pages that take FOREVER to load (and in web time, “forever” means about 5 seconds).  If you’re like me, you leave sites with slow loading pages in a hurry.  The incentive of having fast loading pages on a website seem obvious: to keep users engaged with what is being offered, to keep bounce rates low, to get quality inbound links if the site has good content, etc.  If that’s not incentive enough, add another one to that list: better rankings.  Google’s Matt Cutts was at PubCon earlier this month and said that fast load times may positively effect rankings.

Get Pumped for Google Caffeine

It’s been a few months since I first wrote about Google’s new-and-improved search capability, which is supposed to make searches faster, index more pages, and present more accurate results.  After the initial announcement, I didn’t hear much more about it until Matt Cutts announced that we should expect to see the Caffeine release after the holidays.  At least we all get to have the rest of the year to relax a bit until we see what Caffeine has in store for rankings!

New Google Interface

Rumors have been circulating that Google is testing out a new look and feel to their interface, which has been confirmed to be true.  I tested it out for myself to see what it looks like:

It’s not a drastic difference, but it does have a fresher look to it. Gotta love how Google always mixes it up!

There were so many things that happened while I was away, but I wanted to share with you what I found to be the most exciting. I am thankful for many, many things in my life and if you couldn’t tell by my post, Google is one of them.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!