Many of you use Gmail – and you’re in the majority if you do.  You may notice a small change on your Gmail panel.  Right under “Inbox” in the left column you may notice the word “Buzz” – if it’s there, then you have been Buzzed.  You are now able to use Google’s latest social media marketing gadget.

What is Buzz?  Think of it as Google’s very own Twitter.  The benefit is that it’s right there on Gmail.  So, no need to open a separate screen of have a separate account or window open.  Your email, your chats and now your Tweets can all be performed, viewed, responded to right from the Gmail control panel.  Pretty slick.

Will it take over Twitter?  Who knows, it’s anybody’s guess as to what programs will still be in use months from now but one thing is for sure.  The ease of using this new gadget can’t be beat.

If you’ve already been buzzed, feel free to follow me at eckweb@gmail.com.  I’ll post my daily tips, notes and comments about this crazy SEO / Internet Marketing industry and hopefully you’ll find them useful for your own marketing.

Happy Buzzing.

Tags: buzz, google, internet marketing, seo, social media, twitter

If you haven’t yet heard what the latest Google changes are, let me give you a brief synopsis…

Google announced and began implementing several new factors in their list of ranking factors…

1) Real Time Search
2) Personalized Search Results
3) Page Speed
4) Easier search on mobile units

So, what do these mean?

1) Real Time Search
Basically, when you do a search on Google you will be given results from within Social Media programs such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. along with the other search engine results.  Here’s an article from WebProNews that explains the entire process in detail but know this, there is no doubt that from now on, your exposure in social media programs will impact your website.  This “change” by Google ensures the future of social media.  What you say and do, and what is said about you in social media circles can and will become a line in the search result pages.  So, if you haven’t yet begun the process of joining and participating in social media, the time has come to jump in.

2) Personalized Search Results

It used to be that if you had a Google account and you were signed in to your Google account and you used Google to search for something, your search results would be skewed to your history.  In other words, if your Google history showed that you shopped often at Sears online, then when you made a search for an item, you would be shown results from Sears because to Google, you like Sears so they’re trying to give you what you like.  Google calls this “Personalized Search”.

You could, of course, log out of your Google account and your search results would be different because Google had no history to tap into.  But those days are now gone.  Personalized search is now ALL THE TIME and FOR EVERYONE using Google.  So, no matter if you have a Google account or not, if you’re signed in or not, you will have a Google history and they will tap into that history everytime you do a search on Google.

This is a great feature for Internet users, it makes the entire search process faster, easier and more relevant.  But for website owners and marketers, it changes the game completely.  It means that we can’t rely on website rankings anymore for traffic.  Because, truthfully, rankings aren’t going to matter much.  After all, 10 people in the same city doing the same exact search can potentially get 10 different search results depending on their zip code and their search history.  So, what good is it to be #1 on Sally’s computer and #8 on Mike’s computer?

The game now changes from rankings to traffic.  The goal now, for every website owner and Internet marketer is to increase the amount of traffic.  Rankings still play a part of course, but we can’t rely on those rankings as much as we used to.

Here’s an article with some more information about Google Personalized Search.

3) Page Speed

Web Designers, this is for you!  If you’ve been resisting the use of CSS and other code enhancements to create websites, you’re in for a large learning curve.  Google is now using the load time of a website page as part of it’s ranking algorithm.  So, if your website page takes 5 seconds to load onto a browser and your competitor takes 2 seconds to load, well, your competitor will get some extra ranking points for that.

Of course, this is just one of over 100 ranking factors that Google uses to rank websites but it is a new factor.  It’s important enough for Google to add to their Webmaster tools which in turn, tells us that they are looking at it right now!  So, get your websites loading faster!

4) Easier search on mobile units

I said it at the beginning of 2009, that this would be the year that Mobile Internet would hit big in the US and it has proven to be true.  2010 will only be bigger and it will just continue to grow.  The impact has been acknowledged by Google as they are now providing some easier ways to search on mobile units.

They already have search by voice, search by location and now they’ve introduced search by images.  Basically, you take a photo of the item that you’re interested in and Google will “attempt to locate it and give you information…” about it.  They’re calling ig Google Goggles.  How this will pan out, I have no idea but it’s an extremely interesting concept!

All in all, Google has launched 38 different new ways to search in the last 70 days.  There’s no doubt that the “big brother” theme comes to mind but for now, as an Internet marketer, I have to change my game plan.  We all do.  Anyone associated with SEO and Internet marketing has to re-structure how they manage their website marketing campaigns if they want to work with Google and gain the benefits of that search engine.  After all, it’s being used by 74% of the planet!

If you haven’t yet heard from your SEO firm about these changes, shoot them an email.  Don’t call, they’re probably working 22 hours a day just trying to keep up!

Tags: google, internet marketing, search engine optimization, search results, seo, serps, small business seo

Something to Bark About — Waterdog Specialties
Website Redesign
New design of old website combined with search engine friendly coding puts this new site front and center . . .
The new redesigned site is experiencing high traffic and rankings from potential customers and search engines alike. Not only do people visiting the website love the new modern design, search engines such as Google LOVE the new website!

http://www.mooredesignsolutions.com/enews/2009/08-001/index.html

Tags: google, redesign, website design

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing has been getting quite a bit of press lately and for good reason.  It’s the first search engine to present a real challenge to Google.  But, I can say anything I want, the proof is in the pudding (as they say) so I thought I would do a side by side test between Google and Bing.  Let’s see what the results show.

Keyword Phrase: Seo Services

Google search results gave me 10 agencies that provide seo services
Bing search results gave me 10 agencies that provide seo services

Keyword Phrase: Name Tags

Google search results gave me 7 companies that provide name tags
Bing search results gave me 9 companies that provide name tags

Keyword Phrase: South Florida Lawyer

Google search results gave me 8 South Florida law firms
Bing search results gave me 9 South Florida law firms

Keyword Phrase: Digital Imaging Services

Google search results gave me 4 companies that provide digital imaging services
Bing search results gave me 8 companies that provide digital imaging services

Keyword Phrase: Denver Limousine Services

Google search results gave me 8 companies that provide limousine services in Denver Colorado
Bing search results gave me 9 companies that provide limousines services in Denver Colorado

Keyword Phrase: Counseling Services in Atlanta

Google search results gave me 7 listings of counseling centers in Atlanta Georgia
Bing search results gave me 8 listings of counseling centers in Atlanta Georgia

Keyword Phrase: Spiritual Life Coaching Services

Google search results gave me 10 listings of spiritual life coaches
Bing search results gave me 8 listings of spiritual life coaches

So, out of 7 searches, the results are not so amazingly different.  Some of the search results were the same but most were not.  Although most of the time Bing brought back more relevant searches than Google, the differences were not that extraordinary.  In other words, it’s not as if Bing gave me double or more search results that were better than Google.  Bing just gave me 1 or 2 search results that were more relevant than Google.

Of course, this is only for 7 searches.  It would be interesting to run a sample with 100 or 1000 searches – I don’t have the time for that.  But I did want to see for myself if the commercials Bing.com puts out are true.  Maybe if they’re compared with other search engines, but when compared to Google, it’s not so different.

But, having said that.  It’s nice to have another search engine that does return relevant results.  Now I can do my searches on Google.com and Bing.com and I’ll know that I’ll be getting good relevant results for my time.  So, yes, Bing is the first search engine to really give Google a run!

Tags: bing.com, google, relevancy, relevant searches, search engines

Found a really great tool that works on Firefox browsers.  If you haven’t yet begun to use Firefox, I have no idea what you’re waiting for.  I couldn’t possibly do my SEO work without some of the great extensions that Firefox offers.

Anyway, Mani Karthik wrote a great little script that you can install onto Firefox so that when you do a search on Google, you not only get the Google results but you also get the top 5 results from Twitter!  Now, that is pretty cool!

You’ll need the Greasemonkey Extension already installed (but you should have that anyway!)

So, how does this script help you?  Well, let’s see…

1) It provides more exposure.  Let’s say you’re a divorce lawyer in Colorado.  You can Tweet about “divorce laws in Colorado” and you’re also marketing that phrase on your website.  When someone does a search for “divorce laws in Colorado” not only will your website come up (if it’s optimized) but your Tweet will come up as well!  So, you basically end up with 2 listings on the Google search.

Yes, I know, this only works IF the person has this extension installed on their Firefox and it’s true, it may be a small percentage but the concept is that it’s an easy way to get extra exposure.

2) For researchers (such as myself) it’s an added bonus to have an additional source of information on my search results.  In addition, the Twitter information is real time so it’s more updated than the search results on Google (at least, potentially).

So, give it a try.  You just might like it!!  And if you do, pass it on!

Here’s the link to the full article – http://mt-hacks.com/20090302-realtime-twitter-search-results-on-google.html

Tags: extensions, firefox, google, greasemonkey, twitter

Tags: google, internet marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Tags: google, rankings

If you’ve done any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work or Internet Marketing work (or both) then you’ve probably read about Google’s rankings and how they look at website themes. And if you haven’t read this, well, let me introduce you to the concept.

Google’s “world domination plan” (sarcastically said) is to provide it’s users with the most relevant information as possible. So, they started off with matching keyword phrases.

The user types in “activities in Seattle”.

Google returns website pages with the phrase “activities in Seattle” and also websites with the words “activities” and “Seattle” in them. That worked for a while and most users go relevant results to their searches. But then competition began to increase.

So, Google decided they would try to figure out what the “theme” of a website is and put that score into the equation to help it decide if the website matched what the user was looking for. So, they created “Latent Semantic Indexing” (LSI) and added it to their algorithm. This means that now Google looks for the words in the phrase “things to do in Seattle” but also looks for other words related to that “theme”.

How can you find out which words would go with this theme? There’s a few ways…

1) You can go to Google and type in the search box…
~activities ~seattle (I omitted the words “in” because it’s considered a stop word)

That little squiggly line in front of each word is called a “tile” and it’s located to the left of your 1 key on your keyboard. This search tells Google to search for theme related keywords for these particular words. Look through the first 3 pages of Google results (organic and paid) and you’ll get a list of words like…

fun activities
recreation
projects
lessons
fun
games
crafts

2) Use a website like Quintura.com – type in your phrase “activities in Seattle” and on the left hand side you’ll be given a list of “related” keyword phrases. You’ll see phrases like…

guide
events
area
tours
sightseeing
attractions
trips

and much more.

Do you optimize your website page for ALL these keyword phrases? NO! But what you do is add as many of these phrases as you can to your website page content. That way, when Google visits your website, they will be able to determine not only an overall theme of the site (through your title tags) but also a theme for each website page (through your tags and the words in your body of content).

An added benefit to Keyword Theme Research is that it “shows” you what other categories you can add to the website to help increase the size of the site, the amount of content on the site which in turn help to increase the traffic to the site.

Tags: google, keyword research, keyword themes, latent semantic indexing, lsi, search engine optimization, seo

Just in case you’re not sure how to pronounce this new search engine, it’s pronounced “cool”.

The story goes that 3 of the co-founders of Cuil are former Google engineers so the speculation that Cuil will be true competition for Google can’t be ignored. But is it really? Well, let’s give it a try, we’ll compare some searches on Cuil and on Google and the results they present from the first page of results.

Keyword Phrase: name tags
On Cuil: I got 1,451,401 results – all relevant
On Google: I got 51,200,000 results – all but 1 relevant

Keyword Phrase: south florida attorneys
On Cuil: I got 3,063,754 results – all relevant
On Google: I got 2,150,000 results – all but 2 relevant

Keyword Phrase: vacations to hawaii
On Cuil: I got 22,353 results – all relevant
On Google: I got 13,1000,000 results – all relevant

In this short exercise, Google had more items “indexed” in 2 of the 3 examples, but Cuil had more relevant results in all their examples. Also, the layout on Cuil takes a little getting used to but I like the photos and I like the tabs, when they are present.

All in all, I think Cuil may present as an alternative to Google but if it will be able to truly compete with Google’s massive marketing? Well, only time will tell!

Tags: cuil, cuil search engine, google, new search engine