SOPA is basically a legislation designed very simply to stop online piracy. Essentially it allows police, authorities, and copyright holders to be able to get court orders that will essentially force service providers (Comcast, AOL, etc.), hosting providers (GoDaddy, BlueGator, etc.), payment services (Paypal, 2Checkout, etc.) and search engines (really?) to literally shut off or stop doing business with websites that they allege are stealing or even enabling potential copyright infringement.

Just in case SOPA gets passed, we got this image from http://endoftheamericandream.com

While it seems good in theory in order to curb online pirating of music, movies, files, and the like, there’s something much more sinister in the background.  The biggest target would be torrent sites that facilitate illegal distribution of files such as PirateBay, ISOHunt, and similar sites.  But other sites that have user generated content like Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook could be shut down if SOPA gets enacted.

A site could be removed from the search engines, have their advertising revenue yanked, payment processing blocked, website shut off and even up to 5 years of prison time if someone alleges that a site is in violation and gets a court order against them. It also gives the government a LOT of power over what can and can’t be posted online. An example that may hit closer to home would be if you posted a photo on your blog that you acquired somewhere online and that you believed to be “free to use”.  If the person that owns the rights to that photo (even indirectly) decides that you’ve violated their copyright, they can get a court order to put all of those aforementioned detrimental factors into play on your very own website.  If you’re in a competitive industry, one of your competitors could reasonably shut you down over a photo buried on your site thousands of pages deep.

While it may seem far fetched, SOPA makes that completely possible. SOPA has a laundry list of big name opponents including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Youtube, Mozilla and many others. Google is exceptionally concerned because of the fact that there are many anti-Google folks just itching to tie them to something potentially copyrighted that could cause a lot of problems for the search giant. Hosting and domain megamart GoDaddy initially supported the SOPA project, but customers pulled over 72,000 domains from the registrar and moved them elsewhere as a result. GoDaddy got the point quickly and immediately pulled support once it truly understood the ramifications of the SOPA bill.

So tomorrow, Google will officially weigh in on SOPA, Wikipedia will go black (among others as well) and we’ll potentially get more details on where they stand. Actually, we know where they stand. It’s where you should stand. Even if you think SOPA won’t affect you, you’d be shocked how much it would impact your online experience. It’s a bad, bad idea.

As of today, however, Google Plus has taken it even further by now including your personal photos, friends photos, etc into the SERP’s. It initially shows personal image results that are relevant to your search, but when you click on “Show Personal Results”, whoa Nelly.  It shows you the image results you had seen previously, along with all relevant content posted from friends and family that contain that keyword term that you searched for.

Now while this is all neat ans fancy, what implications does this have for SEO? Let’s ask some questions and assume answers.

Will sites that relied on image results take a hit on that first SERP?

If you look at what’s happening now, the end result is Yes.  Stock photo communities stand to lose quite a bit when that first page real estate they once had is now replaced by a person’s personal images. While it’s understood that there would have to be a relevant term that matched a personal photo for their images to be pushed out, the possibility still exists and will be worth watching.

Even in our example below, you can see that the image results show three rows of our personal images before displaying images on other sites even without clicking for personal results. A cause for alarm for photographers and stock photo companies.

How will it affect the first page results?

A lot. A Google search for the term “SEO Experts” gave us two results on the first page because we were logged into our Google account.  The other notable thing is that the SERP’s were then increased from 10 spots to 11 when you’re logged in, which doesn’t count shopping or image results.  Log out and perform the same search and not only is it less real estate, but the results are back down to 10. The increase to 11 slots was most definitely to account for the personalized entries, but if you notice, THREE of the entries on the “logged in” page are not present on the “logged out” version.  Which begs to question, was adding 1 slot enough?

It’s designed to make it personal right out of the gate without even clicking on personal results, but people not involved with SEO or how Google makes those decisions may make incorrect assumptions based on those results. And we can’t think of many people that don’t have a Google account in some form or fashion for Gmail, Google+, Reader or something else.  And if they are, they’ll get a whole new SERP and not even know why. We’re waiting for the uninitiated to start bragging about how they’re on the first page of Google. While it’s an anomaly that’s nothing new, it’s even more prevalent now.

Will it be harder to get on the first page of Google now?

The short answer is No, but as time progresses and more people sign on to Google’s various services, the answer inevitably becomes Yes.  Especially since in our random tests, 30% to as much as 50% of the results on the “logged in” version aren’t present when compared to the “logged out” version.

That means at minimum, there’s a 30% less chance that your business won’t be on that first page if a person is logged into their Google account.  Or if you’re a “glass half full” type of person, a 30% chance that you will be on that page when the person logs out. But just how many folks do you think that will be at the rate Google is pushing their services?

And we’re sure there are tons more questions that need to be answered, but for now, this opens the doors for all types of questions for SEO professionals. While the changes are positive for the user, it makes the front page real estate even more difficult to master and as more people begin to utilize the Google+ service, the less probability that a new site will be able to crack that top 11.

Needless to say there’s a lot of positive things that will come of it, not to mention that Google will most certainly utilize your personal information even more to push relevant ads to you, steer you first to content residing on Google, or very simply making mad money off of you and all under the guise of “a personal experience”. You read that fine print when you signed up for Google services, right?

But the real question is figuring out how you, as a small business owner, can capitalize on these changes. That’s not an electrical fire you’re smelling. That’s your brain on Google+.

Let’s say that you’ve got a nice wedding cake bakery that makes wedding cakes. The site has never really ranked well, but you don’t know why.  So you start doing keyword research to find out what people are searching for related to weddings. You find wedding favors, wedding songs, wedding planning tips, wedding consultants, and the list goes on.  You decide to make a page that contains a list of the the most popular wedding songs on your site. Your thought process is that a bride will click through to see what the most popular wedding songs are and then see your services and buy a cake.

The trend continues as you then open a little side store attached to your website to start selling wedding favors. Again with the same thought process in mind that you’ll get that residual business or worse case scenario get affiliate sales from selling wedding favors.  The next thing you know, you’re ranking worse than you were before.  ”How can this be?! I added more relevant content!” Unfortunately, you just muddied up your website and made things worse for yourself.

And if you have a website that has already done something similar, you now have to figure out how to dig your way out and get back in Google’s good graces. Whenever you consider adding more content to your website, you should always first consider what type of impact this will have on your site’s relevance. Weddings are a very broad topic in general and in a saturated market, you end up being your own worst enemy.

In the above example, adding wedding favors to a wedding cake website makes your website becomes less relevant for wedding cakes. To make the matter worse, you not only will continue to fail to rank for wedding cakes, but now you’ll fail for wedding favors as well.  And while you might think that adding more wedding related items will make you more relevant for weddings such as wedding invitations or wedding dresses, you thin out your site’s focus instead of excelling at wedding cakes.  It’s the only thing you do and you should focus on your expertise on that.

If you want to add more content, make sure that it’s directly relevant to wedding cakes.  For instance, maybe you consider a section of available wedding cake toppers, so that even if they don’t buy a cake from you because they’re across the country, you may still sell them a wedding cake topper and still be able to maintain your wedding cake relevance. Everything you add to the site should be directly related to cakes.

If you’re already stuck in the mud with a website that has thousands of pages that are all thinly related in the same type of scenario, there are ways out.  You either have to restructure your website and properly silo it or totally kill it and reuse the information in a logical relevant manner.  If it’s not relevant with cakes, it has to go.  The only way that a convolution of thinly-related topics works is if you’re in a non-competitive industry that isn’t represented on the web.

So it may be time to pull a sitemap (you can get those free you know) and take inventory of what you have out there. Keyword research plays an integral part of deciding what direction may be best for your site based on keyword intent and what terms people are using to find you.

If you’ve used Google, you’ve already seen Google Instant at work. You start typing and Google is already displaying results based on what you’ve typed so far even if you pause for a split second (hence the “Instant” moniker). Not only is it presenting you with options that are the most popularly searched for the moment based on other searches, but it’s also changing the results page for each variation that you complete. In this example below, we started typing the word “printer” and it gave us keyword options that are the most popular at the moment, all the while showing us SERP results for “printer“, just in case we’re already done typing.

There is a lot of significance here for you as a website owner and one that’s not lost on any serious SEO professional worth their salt.  The first being that Google is offering up the most popular keywords based on the root keyword of “printer”.  Not since the now defunct Google Wonder Wheel has Google laid it out so nicely for you. If your website carries a wide variety of printers, maybe you would consider creating a page dedicated to reviewing those printers since it’s a heavily searched keyword. While you would never expect to rank for “printer reviews” because of the competitive landscape like CNET, Amazon and the like), it may help to round out your site’s relevance to Google and also make your site more useful and comprehensive to your visitors in search of printer information.

However, if you’re a business card printer, you’re already going down the wrong path since these variations don’t lend any relevance to what you do.  Just think about the variations of the “printer” keyword;

printer – could mean an inkjet printer, magazine printer, or business card printer.
printers – same as above, but now plural.
printer reviews – a review of inkjet printers? Or maybe customer reviews of local business card printers?

If you’re a business card printer, you should focus on that branch of keywords such as “card printer”, “business card printer” and don’t forget that adjectives are your friends. Words such as “free“, “best“, and “cheap” often rule the roost in search volume.  The same goes for localities such as “Dallas business card printer”. While “business cards” may sit on top of the most searched keyword related to your industry, you can almost guarantee that the person’s search didn’t end there simply because the results presented to them were probably way too broad to make any good decisions.  And once that happens, the searcher then begins to add those adjectives and begins refining the search term to narrow in on what they’re looking for.

This is exactly why Google implemented Google Instant. To not only guide a potential customer down the right path to find the most relevant information, but to also show you how to properly focus your site content to be useful to that person. We’ll talk more about that next.

Exactly how this new +1 feature will possibly skew results, if any, is unknown.  One would assume that if a site is neck and neck with a competitor, but one has more +1 votes, it just may be an algorithm attribute taken into consideration to push a site into the higher slot.  If it’s not going to be used that way, then what’s the point?  This was Google’s answer to the Facebook Like button, but there is also an upcoming feature that will allow webmasters to incorporate the +1 button onto their website as well.  Will that functionality pull the +1 data from the SERP’s and input them there and vice versa? Will a click on the website +1 button add a “vote” to the SERP listing?

The ad part is the most disconcerting and especially for new advertisers that don’t have any established votes.  You can see what a site that has received multiple votes looks like on this new report from Search Engine Land that covers this new feature in somewhat good detail, but it raises more questions than it answers. While it’s understood what it’s supposed to do and why it’s there when looked at in comparison to the Facebook Like button, what it doesn’t explain is exactly how Google plans to use the +1 feature. Will it be used as part of their algorithm, even if very minutely?  Will it have an effect on Adwords or factored in as part of the Google Quality Score?  How much of a frenzy will it create when CTR’s start taking a dramatic upward spike due to “accidental” click-throughs?

Regardless of how you feel, it’s coming and is being pushed out in waves.  If you don’t see it in your results, but want to take part of this experiment, head over to http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html and opt in.  SEO experts should probably consider clicking on their client websites sooner rather than later to get the jump on competition.  How skewed can this data get and how will they monitor these “votes” for legitimacy?  Or will it be yet one more back alley tactic that black hats will start using somehow to their advantage.  Since we don’t yet know the full implication, all we can do is start clicking as much as possible because it will be used.  We just don’t know for what or even why.

The topic came up again over the weekend as covered by the lovely Vanessa Fox about how major retailer JCPenney broke those rules and had enjoyed top rankings on Google for pretty much everything they sold and in turn had a very prosperous holiday shopping season.  JCPenney is not a small company and were certainly not prospering “in the shadows”.   They were caught because of a New York Times article where the writer hired an SEO company to find out just how JCPenney performed its SEO magic. The writer found that JCPenney had been buying links, supposedly inadvertently through their SEO firm, on literally thousands of websites and most of which weren’t even relevant to JCPenney.  When the Times questioned Google’s Matt Cutts about the issue, he released a very short, “Google’s algorithms had started to work.  Manual action also taken.”   The result was JCPenney’s rankings taking a major plummet, but Twitter came alive with questions about why it took a New York Times investigation and a tap on Google’s shoulder for them to notice this had been going on.  Vanessa’s article covers it in more detail here and it’s a great read, but it raises important concerns to all legitimate SEO experts.

SEO professionals have had enough.  We all have had those clients that are in competitive fields and experience this first hand.  We see a clients’ competitor sit at the top of Google rankings that are only there from beating the system. We see them buy links, appear on hundreds of irrelevant sites (some even pornographic) and they win the battle.  Meanwhile, we have to tell our clients, “I can’t do that.  You need to consider the penalties. If you get caught, you could be removed from Google’s index.  They’ll eventually get caught. You’ll see….“  and then months later, even years later, they’re never caught.  They just continue to prosper and our clients go elsewhere. Most of the time to black hat SEO hobbyists that give them what they want.  Top rankings via whatever means necessary.  If clients are smart, they will steer clear away from this type of activity, but the question truly is, when will Google figure out how to spot this?

Someone explain why Google ignores legitimate SEO professionals pleas?  The graphic below is from the aforementioned post that showed how many links JCPenney had from month to month.  Why can’t Google see this activity and why don’t they act on it?  As mentioned before, JCPenney is not a small company, and they still don’t get caught unless something like this occurs.  Maybe Google can explain to us how they don’t see this activity below?  Google’s algorithm brags that it analyzes 10,000 ranking factors to determine positioning. Is this not one of them?  There’s not one SEO professional that hasn’t struggled getting a client to rank following the rules while we watched their competitors flourish by breaking them.  All we had to do is use SEO Elite to see the origin of their links. Does Google not have something similar?  Do we have to tattle-tale on sites for them to get caught?  It’s time for this hole to be patched and thankfully it takes an embarrassing slip like this to bring it back to light.

But in case you missed it, he said, “the impending retirement of the Google Base API“.  For those not familiar with Google Base, thousands of businesses use this to upload their product databases of what could be thousands of products into Google’s databases.  Those products then would show up in Google Base searches, Froogle and even in some cases product listings in normal Google searches when a search was product related, i.e. someone searching for Tickle me Elmo or Shammy 12 packs (or any search that is obviously a searcher looking for a product).

Many speculated over a year ago that Google Base would die anyway with the fast approaching “Google Merchant Center”, but until now it has been just that.  Speculation.  If your business does truly rely on Google Base as part of its online strategy, make sure that you read up on the new changes.  And definitely make sure you check your messages area when you log in. Some users are already reporting messages from Google informing them of changes that directly affect them such as attribute alterations to their datafeeds. You have been warned.  Again…

To start, that’s not what Google is saying .  People often get confused when they see the Google Adwords tool tell them that “cars” is the highest search term.  That number also includes a lot of words that include the word cars (i.e. – classic cars, used cars, new cars. etc.), so don’t let that skewed number entice you to throw money somewhere that you shouldn’t.  Your best bet is to look for more specific 3 word terms such as Atlanta Chevy dealer, Chevy dealership in Atlanta, etc. that a searcher will actually use to find your business.

If you’re not locked into a location and have a site such as a movie review site or something similar, use Google’s Keyword Tool to look for 3 word terms that contain the word movie, movies, theater, etc.   Make sure that you choose the “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” checkbox and sort the results by Global Monthly Searches. You’ll find tons of ideas that thousands of people search for every month and where competition is little to none.

Make a list of your top 20 keywords and then make sure that you have good landing pages on your website that actually use those terms in the text, title tags, etc.  Once you have those terms, use a program like IBP to find out what you can do next with your site to start ranking for that keyword or hire an SEO expert (with a proven track record) to tell you what you need to do next.  They can even help you with the keyword search process if even that frustrates you. The trick is to not chase only the terms on the top of the list (when sorted by Global Searches), but to also make sure that you actually have a page on your site that clearly and definitively talks about the search term.

That’s the biggest mistake most people make. They say something along the lines of, “I want to rank for cookies.”, but they only have one page on their site that has one recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies.   You might be able to rank for “peanut butter cookies”, but not the broad term of cookies unless you had some more pages with a proper silo to support that term.  Understanding customer intent is very important and Google has made a business out of it.  Someone searching for photography is not looking for the same thing as someone searching for photographer.  One is most likely looking for photography tips on how to take photos and the other is looking for the person to take the photos.  That’s a big difference.  And it’s also the main reason why people get frustrated choosing the right keywords and get annoyed when they don’t appear on the rankings for those terms.  Get real about what you’re chasing.

So spend some time going over your main site pages and see exactly what you should rank for and more importantly make sure that your site has a good content silo to support it.

While many SEO professionals have screamed that this is going to kill SEO and make it irrelevant, there is a second school of thought that it will begin to even the playing field.  For every bigger player at the top of the search engines for broader terms, there are thousands of smaller players that rank well for more specific terms.

This addition by Google not only helps the searcher consider terms that they may not have thought of,  but it also helps them to possibly discover a smaller player.  For instance, in the example above, someone searching for SEO may not have considered searching for SEO tools or SEO software.  They may have simply planned on typing in “SEO” and hoping for the best.

This Google offering not only helps the person searching discover other searching options that are based on what people are actually searching for, but also provides them with more terms that will allow them to discover some smaller players that don’t rank for broader terms.

While sites ranking for broader terms will certainly cry foul because they see it as a distraction to the searcher, this change will help to reduce bandwidth for Google by helping searchers find what they want quicker and begin to level the playing field for smaller players.

While this change is fantastic to searchers, it will also increase revenue for Google because players who previously ignored the longer tail terms will have to rethink their SEM strategy to include those smaller traffic terms if they themselves aren’t ranking for those longer tail terms.  SEM professionals may want to keep their eye on sudden spikes on campaigns that once were dormant that all of sudden start seeing life.

Either way, Google Instant appears to be good for everyone.

If you were to write a great book (your website) and put it into the library (the internet), you wouldn’t just simply walk in and put it onto the library shelves. Nobody would find it unless it’s in the computer system. The only way that people could find you is if the librarian (the search engine spider) looks at the book to find out what it’s about and then puts it into the system (the index) so that people could find it. Then people could come into the library, put in what they’re looking for, find your book and check it out. And if more people check it out, the librarian makes note of that and will steer people to that book more often since she’s seeing that more people like it. That’s also why it’s important that your book is clear on what it’s about so that it can be properly indexed. In short, you have to make sure that the librarian knows your book exists. Simply building a website that is out on the internet means nothing. Ok. Enough of that analogy.

The way you do that is to submit the website to the search engines either by hand, using a submission service, or letting them find you via a link posted on another site that is already indexed like someone’s blog, link page, etc.. It’s been debated as to which is best and in truth, it really doesn’t matter although having the spiders find it on their own is supposedly a better option. Hogwash. It doesn’t matter how it gets there.

Once a person goes to a search engine, they simply enter the keyword they’re interested in and the engine returns a list of results based on a variety of factors. These factors are things like the age of the website, how many people link to it, the content of the website, what the page actually says, whether the page is even relevant to what they searched for and so much more. In some cases, the search engine will completely ignore the site age, and inbound links (links on other websites that link to yours) and just let it rank well because it thinks it’s very relevant based on how you placed text on the page.

Essentially, you could outrank a site that’s WAY more relevant than yours simply based on how you set up the page, adjusted your title tags, etc. And that’s what I’m primarily going to focus on during this SEO guide. How to get ranked as quickly as possible even though you haven’t set up any link partners, barely have any inbound links, how to structure your site and text, information, body text, etc to get quick results. I’m not going to ignore the important things, but you want quick results and that’s what I plan to give you. This is not about cheating the system. It’s about structuring your website to rank well on the major search engines and giving them what they want. Well most of what they want.

I will preface this by saying that there have been some sites that just can’t be helped at all. Sometimes well established sites are the worst to pull out of the mire. Especially ones with dynamic databases where the content is built on the fly based on what the person wants to see because there’s so much information that you simply could not build physical pages for each possibility. For instance, if you have 50 states and 10 categories, then you would have to create 500 physical pages so that each state has a page for each category. That’s mostly why databases are created is to alleviate that problem and give the user what they want on the fly. If they search for Georgia Photographer, the site goes to the database and pulls the names of the photographers from Georgia and just creates a page dynamically. Those could typically have the worst SEO nightmares sometimes. If that’s you, don’t lose heart. Make sure all of this other stuff is in line first.