I am still getting a lot of question about Google Instant, and I am sure it’s because everyone is concerned about their search engine optimization efforts, so I thought it may be best to clarify this in a post.

Google Instant is real time search that was launched a few months ago to help make searching faster and more user-friendly.  According to Google, here are a few of the core features in Google Instant:

• Dynamic Results – Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Predictions – One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
• Scroll to search – Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Google Instant works from any of the popular browsers, and the main difference between Google Instant and regular search is that Instant populates the results page before the user has completed typing their search query, giving you different suggestions. There’s no need to press Enter to generate search suggestions. Users instead select from the suggested terms or look below to see what websites come up as they are typing.

Searchers can also turn off Google Instant if they choose not to use it.

Most importantly, you can stop worrying. Google Instant does not kill SEO nor does it have any impact of rankings of search results.  Google Instant search results will show three paid ads and one organic listing while the auto-complete box is activated. This means it’s likely click-through-rates on the first and second listing will rise, while those in the third and fourth position will fall.  Thus, this may increase competition if you are using Google PPC.

If you haven’t already done so, here are a few best practices for Google Instant that you can do right away:

For SEO:

1. Edit your website’s meta titles on your main pages to include both the main keyword or phrase and a call to action.
2. Integrate new long tail search terms into your search engine optimization efforts. Use your analytics software to monitor these terms performance and find out how your users have adapted and what kind of impact it made.

For PPC:

1. Refine your negative keyword lists as necessary to lessen the chance of your ads are not displayed for less relevant terms.
2. Monitor click-through-rates carefully because many advertisers will be focusing on broader terms, and this can lead to a lot of competition.

If you need more information, there were a couple of excellent article written about Google Instant.  These will help you make changes to your SEO and PPC plans, if necessary:

Google Instant 101

Google Instant – 10 Things Marketing Teams Need to Know

Are you still using Google regular search or have you switched to Google Instant?

Dealing with clients having very high expectations that are hard to meet is not an uncommon thing for search engine optimization (SEO) providers. Since SEO is an always changing industry, and techniques and methods get outdated very soon, lots of misconceptions take birth in the mind of potential clients which eventually gets transformed into unrealistic expectations. So, it becomes very important for every SEO provider to clear all kinds of misconceptions a client may have before taking on optimization projects.

Here, we’ll cover the most common unrealistic SEO expectations clients usually have and how they should be addressed.

1. Speed of ranking improvement – Normally clients have a misconception that the amount of time required to take a website from page 2 to page 1 is the same as the amount of time it takes to bring a website from page 3 to page 2 of search results. Ranking of a website depends on many factors (links, domain age, content, onsite factors, etc.,  and the amount of effort and time required increases exponentially when one has to compete with websites on page 1 as compared to time and effort required when competing with websites on page 3 and so on.
2. You can’t rank for everything – The other unrealistic expectation clients usually have is the desire to rank for all the keywords in their niche.  Only the most relevant pages can rank at the top for a keyword, and one can’t make a website highly relevant to all important keywords. Also, since most SEO’s work on a fixed monthly budget, increasing the number of keywords will dilute the overall impact for each keyword. So either they have to increase their budgets or limit themselves to specific set of keywords.
3. All backlinks are same – Time and again, we see clients who think that all links require the same amount of effort and are of the same quality, which enables to take decisions on the basis of number of links (i.e., a link from a free link directory is similar to editorial link from an authority domain). A quality backlink is much more effective than hundreds of spammy poor quality links. So, one should consider both quality and quantity of links before hiring a new SEO provider.
4. Rankings not traffic – Some clients also get too obsessed with rankings of their website that everything else – conversion rate, web design and traffic quality take the back seat.  Rankings are important but are not very effective if the traffic they send is not relevant, or if the website is poorly designed that it can’t convert traffic into leads.
5. Fixed targets – Most clients have fixed targets like “we want to rank number one for web design in three months,” which is a wrong way to judge the performance of a SEO provider. The effectiveness of a SEO program must be evaluated on the basis of overall improvement – increase in traffic, increase in business, and increase in number of subscribers and so on.
6. Rankings shouldn’t drop – Do not panic if rankings of your website drop by a few positions. You are not the only one who wants to be at the top.  Also, search engine algorithms keep on changing, so ranking fluctuations are very normal in SEO. As long as you are seeing improvement in traffic and in your business, your SEO program is performing well.

Do you provide SEO services and would like to share some more misconceptions clients have? Please feel free to share them with us in the comments below.

Guest Author: David Smith works for Conversion Rate Optimization Company Invesp and enjoys writing on SEO, landing pages, conversion optimization and affiliate marketing.

It hasn’t been long since Google stated that they would officially be taking speed into account as a ranking factor in their search engine algorithm. Although it is only one of approximately 200 ranking factors, it is a rather significant one from a usability perspective.

Having a slow website doesn’t necessarily mean that you will struggle to rank within Google, but the search engine ultimately wants to put user experience first – so if your website has great content, is well targeted, and has a fast load time – you stand a good chance of achieving search engine visibility across a core level of terms.

1. Combine External Files

Even modern-day browsers can only load a set number of external files at one time, and for image and JavaScript heavy websites, this means that they have to go through a number of iterations to be able to efficiently load your content for the users. As an example, a website may have 5 external CSS files, 4 JavaScript files, and 10 images on one page. By combining the external CSS into one single file, and doing the same with JavaScript, you can reduce that load time quite significantly.

2. Reduce Database Calls

Each time your website has to query your database for user information (or other data); it is time that is added on to the overall performance of the page. By using static information where possible (such as hard-coded page titles and META data), you can reduce the amount of calls made to the database, which will ultimately reduce the load time of the website.

3. Image Optimization

There are many different things that can be done to images to reduce the overall load time of a website – with the two main ones being file size and utilizing image sprites. Try compressing images before uploading them to your web server, and reducing the file size when saving using programs like Adobe Photoshop. Image sprites are another great way to shave seconds off the load time, by combining common images (such as navigational buttons) into one interchangeable image that is positioned based on absolute CSS rules.

4. Choose an Appropriate Web Server

Many business owners who don’t necessarily know a lot about the internet may make the mistake of choosing a cheap hosting package when looking at website options. Although cheap packages can be great for low-traffic websites, they can really hamper popular ones. Select a web server that will meet the bandwidth and technical requirements of your website, ensuring it is in the target location of your main user’s country.

5. Put JavaScript at the End of the Web Page

Although most web development tutorials encourage you to include the external JavaScript files and code within the top of the web document, it is actually more efficient to place it at the end of the file. If you are linking to a JavaScript document that is particularly large, or one that is hosted elsewhere, it can sometimes slow the whole website down due to it being one of the first things that are loaded. Place any external JS files at the bottom of the web file, that way the main content will load first, and the user will be able to at least begin looking at your website while the remaining files load.

6. Avoid Flash or Image Based Websites

This should be a given with today’s websites, but it is shocking how many sites are built solely using flash, or with large images used instead of background colours. Avoid things such as flash intros to your website (or at least have a “skip” button if you simply MUST have one), and avoid using large flash banners and navigational menus. JavaScript and AJAX can do a lot of what flash was once famous for – and it is much more web efficient.

Guest Author: This was a guest post by Axon IT – a Manchester IT support company catering to businesses throughout the UK. Axon IT removes the stress and headaches of dealing with IT, and can be found posting regularly on their blog.

It’s easy to take the idea of search engine optimization for granted. Yeah, the marketing landscape is abuzz with all things SEO today, but did you even know what the term “search engine optimization” meant ten years ago? The term has no doubt covered a lot of ground in a short period of time.

But let’s forget about SEO for a brief moment (gasp!). Trust me, it’ll be OK.

We spend a lot of time and money trying to make our businesses look good to Google. Maybe it’s time we listen to what Google already likes about our business and do something about that.

“What the hell does that mean?” Let me explain via a personal experience.

Shortly after I started blogging a few years ago, I experienced a less-than-optimal situation at my local gym. With one post, I ranted about it. Soon thereafter, I decided to try to be a small part of the solution instead, so I wrote a post filled with my own gym marketing tips. It was a short-lived and somewhat related departure from my normal topics (namely, marketing leadership), so I immediately returned to my regularly scheduled programs.

Here’s the deal: I’m not a gym marketing expert. I have expertise in certain areas of marketing, and I have frequented lots of gyms over the years, but I’ve never really combined the two. I was simply just giving my unsolicited advice on how gym owners could make things work a little better.

However, Google doesn’t quite see it this way. In Google’s eyes, I’m an authority on just about any phrase related to gym marketing. I get a minimum of 20 visits a day from people looking specifically for gym marketing tips. It wasn’t my plan, and it wasn’t on purpose. I’m not sure if the post is constructed well or if it’s simply a void niche, but Google has decided what I have to say on this topic matters.

Which got me thinking ….

How to Leverage Surprising Inbound Keyword Phrases

Let’s face it: expertise is in the eye of the beholder. If Google thinks I know what I’m talking about, and comments and emails and other analytics confirm that I know what I’m talking about, then maybe I know what I’m talking about. But how do I take advantage of such an unexpected gift?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but my pondering has led me to these six options, and I’d love to hear more.

1. Accept advertising for the specific post. Any niche is going to have its major players. If Google’s looking to you when it comes to certain keywords, then these top dogs probably should, too. If you’re entire site isn’t dedicated to the topic, then run-of-site advertising probably doesn’t make sense to them. But an ad per post probably would. Email them and make them aware of the traffic you’re pulling for specific keyword phrases, and then give them a price. You could do banners or simple text links. This is probably the easiest and most immediate way to leverage this traffic. In my example, I could go find software programs for gyms or even authors who write on the topic of gym marketing.
2. Build your list. Forget cash, at least directly. Build your email list or subscriber level with a special, targeted call to action within the post. Or set up an autoresponder that expands on the specific topic. Then, hopefully, your delivery of valuable content over time will build trust, which in turn could lead to business.
3. Create an information product. eBooks, white papers, videos, automated presentations, video, podcast, whatever. If your ideas on the niche have legs, let ‘em loose by creating a more robust information product. You could give it away and leverage the list-building and linking to your site as your form of currency, or you could sell these items at a reasonable price. Just be sure to link the title of the product to the keywords that are most often bringing people to the site. Might as well give them exactly what they’re looking for.
4. Use affiliate links that make sense. Whether you’re keeping it easy with a simple Amazon.com affiliate program or something a little more robust with a service like Commission Junction, affiliates oftentimes take a lot of the grunt work out of selling. Find some products that fit your niche and just post them. Or you could find creators of products that would make sense for you to peddle and offer to set up an affiliate program for them. Then everybody’s winning.
5. Manufacture your own hard good. Go ahead and go old school. Make an actual, tangible product, be it a book, a widget or whatever. No need to feel confined to the online space if an offline product is what people are looking for.
6. Build a company around it. If you’re really feeling ballsy, and if the niche is really ripe for the picking, and if you’re passionate about the niche, then maybe there’s a business waiting for you here. Just be careful: opportunities like this are great at taking your focus off of what you’re really good at it. Make sure you enjoy centering your business around this new niche, or else you’ll be miserable.

Remember to harness and harvest the gifts that Google gives you every single day. Google will let you know where you really stick out. If you can figure out a way to leverage it, you’re a step ahead.

I have no idea which of the above ideas I’ll move forward with, if any. If you were me, what would you do? What other ideas do you have for ways to leverage surprising niche keyword traffic?

Guest Author: Brett Duncan offers common sense for marketing leaders at his blog, MarketingInProgress.com. He spends his days as Senior Director of Global Online Solutions for Mannatech, and his nights chasing a crazy little boy around the house in between brief moments of cheering on the Texas Rangers. He lives in Irving, Texas. Sign up for his free newsletter now if you like practical, thought-provoking marketing tips.

After a partnership agreement was signed exactly one year ago, Yahoo! has finally started testing organic and paid listings from Microsoft Bing this week. Yahoo! states if all goes as planned, users should expect Yahoo!’s organic search results to be powered by Bing around August/September.

The organic search transition will happen automatically. However, if you perform SEO on your site and ranking high in these search engines is important to you, I recommend keeping a close eye on any updates and tips from both Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Yahoo has already provided its users with three valuable tips:

1. Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that work best for you.
2. Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate.
3. Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Microsoft platform crawler, as Bing listings will be displayed for approximately 30% of search queries after this change, according to comScore.

I also found the Yahoo! FAQ page to be extremely helpful in answering some the questions I had.

Here’s to a smooth transition!

The whole point in having a website is to either generate sales or gain readers, other than that there is no other real value. Blogs want more people to reads their news and general ramblings, whereas retailers, tour operators, car leasers and directories want to generate sales. Making money is a core element in anyone’s website whether it be through creating sales or just building up your profile online for more recognition across the globe.

1) Check the layout of your page. Try to keep things as simple as possible. Don’t overload your site with images and flashy objects. Make sure that the site has a clear and easy to follow navigation. Don’t overload your home page with text; you could scare off potential customers.

2) Build separate pages to sell products. Don’t have all of your products listed on the homepage, it will be an overload of information and supplying such a mass amount to your customers could be confusing, not to mention very difficult to crawl through.

3) With the separate pages you have built, make sure that you build links to these. Deep linking to these pages will ensure that people searching for specific products will land on the relevant pages. Instead of landing on the home page which could be irrelevant to a specific product.

4) Put a search box on your site. Those that do land on your homepage for a general term may have something in mind they want to look for when they get there. The search facility gives them the chance to list a whole host of products that are more like what they need.

5) List your top selling products on your home page. The products that sell well should be advertised more, these are your top converting products which mean that someone looking for something like this has an idea of what is popular across your site.

6) Advertise your site on guest blogs. Try to write guest posts on other blogs to get recognition and possible click through(s) to your site. If you can get your name spread across popular relevant blogs then there is always the chance of a click through to your product/service.

7) Get listed on directories dedicated to your niche. If you can find directories that offer free directory lists to your site and receive a large amount of visitors, then you could be in for a win. Depending on what your niche is, will depend on your directory choice.

Guest Author: Marcus heads up the SEO for a Road Bicycles company that delivers bikes around the UK.

When putting together a website, it’s important to think about optimizing your internal link structure to make sure it’s as search engine friendly as possible. A lot of the time, the potential of internal linking is overlooked in favor of other SEO factors, focusing mainly on the specific pages and not looking at the website as a whole.

When structuring your website, you want to be making it as clear as possible to the engines what pages are most important, what categories exist and what subcategories lay under these. This effect is often done through the initial navigation and via the use of breadcrumb link trails. This is also usually backed up by a sitemap listed in hierarchical order or priority calculation with XML sitemaps.

Another thing that is often overlooked is using the full URL when linking to internal pages (i.e, <a href=”http://www.mirnabard.com/2010/05/9-steps-to-reduce-scraping-and-catch-blog-post-theft/”>). Many times the relative URL is used, (i.e., /category.html). The effect this has on rankings hasn’t quite been determined, but what is for sure is that if any of your content is picked up by scrapers, you will have a full link back to your website.  This helps the page to avoid getting penalized for duplicate content.

Anchor text is important when linking to your internal pages. Often the benefit of this is overlooked, but don’t forget that these are controllable and important links that can tell the search engines a lot about your website. SEOmoz has an interesting post about internal linking.

Another key thing to consider when looking at internal linking is PageRank sculpting, making sure that your website links well to the most important pages is vital. Think about how the search engines are going to look at your website. What pages do you want to make sure they find and understand are important?

By following these steps and making sure newer/deeper pages are well linked to with targeted anchor text from already established pages, you can help to give them a boost in the SERPs.

Guest Author: Ben Hook, a search engine marketer and owner of UK based search engine optimisation company, Navaro.

QUESTION:

“What is the impact on your blog rankings if you take some of the blog posts and repackage them as e-zine articles? Effectively, you are using the content twice. Will my blog rankings be penalized? If so, how much?” — Rob B.

ANSWER:

The duplicate content penalty is used by Google and other major search engines to control spam, but not entirely for the reason you are asking about.  Here is what Google says on their webmaster blog:

“Duplicate content doesn’t cause your site to be penalized. If duplicate pages are detected, one version will be returned in the search results to ensure variety for searchers.”

The major search engines look for quality, unique content to list in their rankings.  Their goal is to minimize the amount of duplicate content  in their index so searchers do not get frustrated.  If you include your blog posts on other sites, the search engines may choose to include the site with the most inbound links and may not include your blog in their index.

The solution is to not completely rely on duplicate content when trying to drive traffic to your blog.  However, you don’t have to avoid duplicate content all together.  If your goal is to have your blog rank high in the search engines, I would suggest to list some blog posts as articles, but not all of them.

If you want to avoid duplicate content, but still want to re-package your content, here are a couple of suggestions:

- Change the title of the blog post and rewrite at least the first couple of paragraphs, so it is not  100% duplicate.

- Instead of turning your blog post into an article, turn it into a video and/or PowerPoint presentation, optimize them with keywords, and submit them to the appropriate sites.

I hope this helps and thanks again for submitting your question.

If you would like to get your questions answered by Mirna, please visit the Ask Mirna page.

QUESTION:

“Hi Mirna.  Just how crucial it is for a start up e-commerce business to invest in an SEO campaign, and when would you say is the best time to do that?” — Ali Badruddin

ANSWER:

This is a very common question and most e-commerce business owners fail to budget for (search engine optimization) SEO into their start-up plans.  SEO for e-retailers is as important as e-commerce site functions and the products you are selling.  Many end up spending a fortune on web site design neglecting to save dollars for SEO.  This is a huge mistake because majority of online users go to the search engines to research products so it will do you no good if your site shows up beyond page one or two of the search results for your targeted keywords.

SEO should start at the conception of the web site during the web design phase.  During this stage you will be making design decisions that will either benefit or damage your SEO efforts.  Starting early can save you from having to put more time, effort, and money in re-designing the site later.

I recommend starting right away even if you start slow.  If you are looking to outsource this time-consuming task make sure you do your due diligence and search for the right SEO firm or web developer who have experience with e-commerce sites.  Unless you are doing the optimization yourself, I would budget at least 20-30% of your investment into search engine optimization since this an ongoing process and not something you stop and finish.

If you would like to get your questions answered by Mirna, please visit the Ask Mirna page.

As a business owner, you know that search engine optimization (SEO) is important. Without it, your website will languish in anonymity. It can be very easy to get obsessed with getting higher rankings and more traffic, something that everyone wants. Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous people out there who prey on those desires to make your website the best that it can be and they set up scams to trap unsuspecting website owners.

It’s easy to be lured by a site that offers extra traffic or better SEO and while there are certainly plenty of legit operations out there. Here are five scams that you should be aware of.

1. Submitting to thousands of search engines.

This is a scam that has been around for quite some time. You pay a sum of money (usually astonishingly low for the service) and your URL will be submitted to not 10, not 50, but hundreds or even thousands of search engines. It sounds great because you figure that you’ll be covered no matter where people are searching, right?

Wrong. Most of the sites your website is submitted to are actually spam sites that may even pay the scammer for your site. You’ll be getting hundreds of spam emails from them which are a waste of time and energy and certainly not worth paying someone for.

2. Your URL submitted to 500 directories.

We all know that getting backlinks is very important and can raise our value in the eyes of the search engines, but just how smart is it to submit to 500 directories? Not very. The reason for this is because first of all, there aren’t that many good directories. The vast majority are link farms (yes, they still exist) which can actually lower the value of your URL. Google in particular notes when your URL shows up in “bad neighborhoods”. The second reason this is a bad idea is that Google gets suspicious when a brand new site abruptly gains 500 backlinks within 24 hours. You could end up in the sandbox or otherwise penalized for your “SEO” techniques.

3. An insider.

You’ll actually find that some SEO companies claim to have someone inside Google. This can be pretty appealing for several reasons, but it is 99.9% unlikely to be true. Even if someone were spilling the secrets of the search engine giant, it is an every changing algorithm, meaning that it would be virtually impossible to keep up with the changes. The algorithm is also far more complex than most people imagine, making it virtually impossible to crack completely and actually implement everything.

That being said, having someone on the inside could be useful in making sure your site is in the top results for your chosen keyword, but what happens when the mole is discovered, as they always are? Play it safe and stick to real SEO tactics.

4. Guaranteed top spots in Google.

Every website owner dreams of seeing his or her site in the top results for their chosen keywords, but the truth is that this is just not always possible. It’s quite ridiculous for anyone to promise it, since they can’t actually guarantee anything when it comes to Google. Even the masters move up and down in the rankings on a consistent basis and that is totally normal . . . but unpredictable.

Something else to look out for is which phrases they are guaranteeing top ranking for. Often these will be long tail keyword phrases that no one is actually looking for. You could easily rank for these on your own with minimal effort, but what’s the point?

5. Trade Secrets

Run away from anyone who claims it’s too complicated to understand and they fail to fully disclose and explain everything that is being done to your site.  They tell you these are trade secrets; they can’t discuss their proprietary technology, or speak in quasi-mystical jargon and non-specific terms.

Real SEO experts have a true interest in their field and enjoy educating their clients about the details. They don’t hold anything back and more than willing to share the whole process with you.

What other SEO scams have you heard of?

SEO firms or consultants can be of great benefit to your business, but unfortunately, there are some frauds out there. You can’t just assume that someone is an expert in the field because he says he is. It’s up to you, the consumer, to take the time to do your due diligence, but the following questions can help you get a straight answer and figure out if the company is the right one for you.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

1. How long have you been in business? A company that has only just started might not be legit. That’s not to say that no new company is trustworthy, but you will want to know more about the people behind it and their experience with SEO before committing to them.

2. How is success measured? There needs to be a specific method of checking for success if you are going to hire someone to do your search engine optimization for you. Otherwise, there’s no telling if you are getting what you paid for.

3. What are some of your more successful campaigns? An SEO company that has been in business for a while should have some case studies of happy clients to show you. If they don’t, you might want to look elsewhere.

4. Can you share your general SEO process? This question needs to be asked because you don’t want spam tactics being used. A badly done SEO campaign can destroy your company’s online reputation and ruin your search engine rankings, so make sure the company isn’t using anything but white hat techniques.

5. Do you offer a guarantee? If the answer is yes, clarify, but be suspicious. It’s impossible for anyone to guarantee specific results when it comes to search engines, so if someone says they guarantee top spots, you should look elsewhere.

6. How will I know what you’re doing? Your SEO company should give you frequent updates on what they are doing. How frequent? That’s between you and your SEO firm . . . you should be able to request updates more often if you need them.

7. What is the long term plan? SEO isn’t just about optimizing your content and leaving it, a good strategy is ongoing. Check with the company to see what their long term plan is for your site.

Ask the right questions and you should be able to tell if the firm you are considering hiring is legit or not.  What is your advice to selected an SEO firm?

The standard for search engine optimization has been Google for a very long time, but now people are starting to think about another option. Bing has been far more popular than anyone anticipated. Even with Google Caffeine on the horizon, it would be foolish not to take this new up and comer into account when planning your SEO strategies.

Still not convinced? Here are a few reasons you should be optimizing for Bing.

1. It is rapidly creeping up on Google and if this deal with Yahoo goes through, you’ll definitely want your site in Bing. It’s important to consider all the possibilities, especially since it can take some time to get picked up by the search engine.

2. There are already many loyal users. These are people who no longer use Google. If you want to reach as many people as possible with your marketing message, you definitely want to include the newer search engine in your SEO plans.

3. If you get decent traffic from Yahoo right now, you’ll want to make sure you start optimizing now for the transition which is expected to occur early 2010. This will ensure that you don’t end up losing too much traffic when the two companies join up.

4. Who couldn’t use more traffic? If dual optimization helps you boost your incoming traffic, then it is definitely worth it. This is the main reason people have started aiming for better rankings on both Google and Bing.

5. It takes very little time. SEO for this new search engine isn’t much different from that of Google, so making some small changes or additions to your website can drastically change your results.

Despite the fact that Google has been such a big player in the SEO field for so long, we shouldn’t become complacent and ignore other traffic sources. Even the Romans ended up losing out, so keep your options in mind and don’t put all your website traffic in the hands of just one search engine.

The brand spanking new version of Google Caffeine is about to be launched, but the internet is already buzzing about it. Last week, a developer’s version was released and the testers have been reporting some excellent results. So just what can you expect from this new and improved search engine when it finally makes a full appearance?

Faster Searches

That’s right. Preliminary testing shows that the new Google search is roughly twice as fast as the current version. That’s excellent news for anyone who likes their info fast and let’s face it, who doesn’t? This could prompt searchers to refine their searches a little more, as well, resulting in more targeted results.

More Results

While Google has been the leader of indexing pages in the past, more recently it has fallen a bit behind. This may be because of so many sites winding up in the Sandbox or simply because Google is not that great at finding new pages on old websites. At any rate, Google Caffeine is showing up with hundreds of thousands of new results, indicating a drastic change in how its spiders check new pages.

This is great from the SEO side of things, since it means your site will be completely indexed faster.

Better Optimization

Keywords are extremely important in the new version of Google’s search engine. It looks like keywords used in titles are now particularly useful and that is great news for anyone who has been using proper SEO from the start. If you still haven’t optimized your business site, now is the time to get on that!

Google Caffeine isn’t just a slight upgrade to the current version, however. It is a full-blown, brand new way to search. From the looks of things, it is also going to change the way we do business and improve SEO.

These days, everyone knows that SEO is important to running a successful website, but not everyone is aware of how to implement search engine optimization successfully. Could you be sabotaging your website’s search engine ranking? Read on to find out.

The 7 worst SEO mistakes are:

1. Using Flash or JavaScript. It might seem like a great idea to use JavaScript or Flash to set up your site navigation, but the truth is that this simply makes your site a black hole for search engine spiders. The spiders can’t follow these “invisible” links, meaning your website will be invisible to them and thus impossible to rank. Your best bet is to use CSS or XHTML, but if you do decide to continue using this type of navigation, just be sure to add in real text links, too.

2. Not using ALT text. If you only have one or two photos on your website, this isn’t a big deal, but when you rely on graphics to carry your business, you could be in trouble. Minimal content could cause your website to be ranked lower by search engines, unless they realize that your photos are also content. Using ALT tags to add keywords to the photos can help boost rankings.

3. Reciprocal linking. Note that this is certainly not a terrible thing, but reciprocal links get you virtually nothing. Instead, look for real one way links that you can build up. There are several ways to get these links and they are infinitely more valuable than linking to a site which links right back to you.

4. Poorly formatted anchor text. When link building, it is in your best interest to use keywords as part of the anchor text. So why is it that so many links simply say “Click here”? Part of the reason is fear, but any SEO expert can tell you how to adjust your anchor text to give you maximum exposure without being slammed by Google for spamming keywords.

5. Using black-hat techniques. You know it’s wrong, but if it works and you don’t get caught . . . Too many people have discovered the hard way that trying to fool Google simply doesn’t work, at least not in the long run. If you’re tempted to use the latest trick to get that coveted #1 position, think again. Using evergreen SEO techniques will get you there and keep you there, without fear of being discovered.

6. Using more than 65 characters. If you look at the top listings in Google, you’ll notice that almost all of them have relatively short titles that fit into the 65 character limit. Most search engines will cut you off after this, so it’s important to format your title correctly . . . something most website owners and bloggers neglect to do. If you go over the limit, be sure to make those first 65 characters count so they can stand alone.

7. Not staying on top of the latest guidelines. Search engines are constantly changing their guidelines and rules to help keep spam off the front page, but if you aren’t aware of these changes, you could be doing precisely the wrong thing for your website.

Reading blogs like this one is a good way to ensure you won’t fall behind and end up using outdated SEO techniques that could end up dropping your site into the depths of the search results.

Are you making any of these mistakes? The good news is that they are all completely fixable. With careful attention and the right SEO techniques, your site can rise to the top.

One of the biggest advantages to promoting your business online, even if it`s a brick and mortar business, is the fact that it is affordable. You can literally spend tens of thousands of dollars for the same results that you`ll get for a fraction of the price online. Search engine marketing is one of the best methods of building your business without spending a fortune.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Quite simply, search engines are always looking for relevant content to give their searchers and if you have optimized your business site or blog for your top keywords, then the search engines are will recognize you as an appropriate search result. The higher you are in the search results, the more people will see and click on your link.

Very few business owners have the time or energy, much less the know how to do their own search engine marketing, but that`s not an issue these days. Everything can be outsourced, from building your website to providing SEO content. An entire online marketing campaign can be worked up and executed by an expert in the field for far less than an offline endeavor would cost.

What does this mean for you? Search engine marketing is far too important to miss out on. It`s an affordable method of promotion for any business, no matter what the marketing budget. Without creating your site with search engines in mind, you are essentially dooming it to a life of hiding on page 55 of the search results, never to be found by those looking to buy your products and services.

Marketing to the search engines is something that can be done every time you add content to your site and over time it will pay off, particularly if you`ve chosen a knowledgeable expert to do the optimization for you.