Google+ Crowds The SERP’s Even More

Posted by admin on January 11, 2012 under Google, Search Engines, SEO, Social Networking | Be the First to Comment

Google+ has been becoming increasingly involved in your search results starting with the footnoted results that allowed you to see links or places that you or people in your circles had visited previously. This was a great tip to let you know where you had been before or what your friends or coworkers found value in.

Google Plus One

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.

Google + SEO Results

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.

New Google Image results

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?

Google SERP page - 11 Spots

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+.

Baby smoking - Photo from the sheepchase.blogspot.com

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How Thin Content Can Harm Your Google Ranking

Posted by admin on December 16, 2011 under Keyword Research, Search Engines, SEO, Web Design | Be the First to Comment

Website structureI see this anomaly more often than not and it goes hand in hand with some of the keyword research posts we’ve done here recently. You want your website to rank well, but you can’t get on that front page of Google to save your life. “It doesn’t make sense! Why doesn’t Google rank me!? I have hundreds of pages of content!”  More often than not when a site has a lot of pages of content, it becomes too thinly spread out and disorganized. We’re going to briefly discuss what you can do about it once you’ve reached that point and more importantly, how to avoid getting caught in that trap in the first place.

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.

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