With today’s announcement of the Google-Twitter search deal and the Bing- Twitter search deal, it is more evident than ever that Twitter should be an important part of your SEO strategy.  Why?

Well, if Twitter results are going to appear in Google and Bing search results, don’t you think it’s a good idea you get your important information on Twitter?  Google is going to pull in what people have tweeted on Twitter. For example, if you search for “online advertising” in Google, you may see some tweets in the Google search results that relate to this search, and possibly even some of this http://search.twitter.com/search?q=online+advertising integrated into the Google search results themselves.

It will be interesting to see how Google displays the tweets in their search results. Will they display them within their regular search or will it be a side option? I have concerns about spam issues. The spammers know how to hijack all the Twitter trending topics with their spam links. I hope Google has a good way to filter this stuff out.

So for all those who argued Twitter has no importance for SEO – think again.

Google+Twitter = important for SEO.
Bing+Twitter = important for SEO.

Welcome to “real time” search!

I choose not to fail…

• … in my business, because I know I have employees that count on me and because my family’s livelihood depends on it.
• … when life throws me challenges, because I know what it feels like to conquer those challenges.
• … in being happy, because the alternative is not acceptable.
• … as a parent, because I want my son to know he should choose “not to fail”.
• … as a daughter, because my father deserves to see the rewards from the values he taught me as a child.
• … as a wife, because the man I chose as my husband chooses not to fail as a husband.
• … as a sister, because I know the unconditional bond that comes from it.
• … as a best friend, because I believe my best friend is a sister that God forgot to give me.

But…

When I do fail (because, at some point, everybody does), I choose to learn from that failure and apply that lesson towards succeeding the next time around.

Times are challenging right now.  They are challenging for businesses, they are challenging for Real Estate, and they are challenging for our economy.  Will you choose “not to fail” during these challenging times?

Oftentimes, internet marketers will steer away from PPC (pay-per-click) advertising such as Google AdWords.  Running PPC on competitive searches can get expensive, but for this discussion I would like to look at this from a different standpoint.  Rather than discussing how PPC advertising can bring you traffic and sales, I would like to discuss how it could help you analyze and improve your site.

Running PPC to find long-tail keywords
Running short lived PPC’s on a competitive search phrase can shed some light on what long-tail search phrases people are using around that competitive short tail.  For example running a PPC on “Dallas Homes” will most likely bring in traffic for a ton of more specific searches such as “3 bedroom Dallas homes”, “Dallas homes with a pool”, etc.  If you have analytics installed on your site, you can see which of these are converting and decide from there which searches you should optimize your landing pages for.

Running PPC to determine which keywords convert
Have you ever spent tons of time and effort optimizing your site for a search phrase and after you finally get it to rank organically, you find out it just doesn’t convert into paying customers? Running a short lived, low budget PPC campaign on a search phrase will help you determine how well that search phrase converts.  If it converts well, then it is most likely a good idea to spend the time and effort in organic SEO.  If it doesn’t convert well, you can decide to change your landing pages and content, or may even decide to target something else.

Running PPC on multiple landing pages
Running a short lived PPC campaign pointing to individual landing pages can help you determine how that landing page converts.  A high conversion will tell you that your landing page is setup well.  A low conversion may be an indication your landing page needs some work, or show that you could be targeting the wrong keywords for that landing page.

So, even if you don’t have the budget to run ongoing PPC campaigns, it can still be a great short-term tool for discovering the best (paying) keywords and phrases for your site.