I have been doing some experimenting with a couple of niche sites and testing traffic and revenue obtained from Google vs Facebook. Keep in mind these were brand new niche sites and brand new domains. I want to see:

1.) How long it takes me to get these ranked in Google and the cost and time for that.

2.) How long it takes me to build up a decent fan base on a Facebook fan page and the cost and time for that.

3.) Which bring in more clicks and revenue.

I will post monthly status updates for at least the next 3 months and after that I will post the full results from this experiment including all costs and time spent. I will not share what the domains are until the very end of my experiment because I don’t want  external sources messing with things.

Update as of Feb 25th 2012

So far Facebook wins. One of the sites (very niche) which is now 3 months old is making on average $700 per month from Facebook, has a fan base of almost 24,000 and receives over 20,000 visits per month from Facebook. All from spending about 5 minutes per day posting status updates on the Facebook page. I am spending about $175 per month to obtain new targeted fans to the Facebook page. If you are a numbers geek running numbers through your head right now, you will know that so far Facebook is earning me about $210 per hour on time I am spending.

5 mins per day * 30 days = 150 mins per month/60 = 2.5 hours per month spent updating the Facebook page. $700 revenue per month – $175 ad costs = $525 net /2.5 hours = $210 per hour.

From Google organic traffic, it makes about $100 per month and gets about 7000 visits. Backlink building time and costs so far have been more than cost and time in building up Facebook page fans. So far I am spending  about 5 hours of my time per month building external content and backlinks and am spending about $150 per month outsourcing a very small chunk of backlink building. Going off the same logic as above, so far I am losing money from time spent obtaining Google organic traffic.

I do know however that if I can get the site to rank better organically in Google that the traffic will bypass what is being received from Facebook. It sure is harder now days though to get and keep organic rankings in Google.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of months. If I can obtain better organic rankings, Google will by far bypass Facebook. But at what cost and time involved?

So far from these tests it is making me re-think some of our marketing strategies and where to put our time and dollars especially when launching a new site or product.

Rather than writing a lengthy post explaining why putting the time and money into creating a mobile-friendly website is worth the investment, we thought it would be better to provide you with data from one of our own websites instead and let the facts speak for themselves.

We recently made the investment to create a mobile-friendly version of our RentShout.com rental search directory and were surprised and pleased with the results. Below are the results, by device, that the rental directory is receiving after the mobile version has been put in place. Keep in mind that these numbers are only taking into account traffic coming from mobile devices.

Unique Visits = How many unique visitors accessed the site
Page Views = How many pages on your site your visitors view
Avg Time On Site = How long do your visitors stay on your site
Bounce Rate = How many of your visitors leave your site without going to another page on your site or performing an action

As you can see from these results, visits, views, and time on site have all increased and bounce rates have improved significantly. Our unique visits from mobile devices have increased by 120%, we have fewer visitors leaving our site and those visitors are staying longer and viewing more pages. All of this has been achieved only 30 days after creating the mobile-friendly version.

Having a mobile-friendly website was absolutely worth the investment for us, and we believe it can be worth it for you, too. If you are not able to invest right away on a mobile website version, we suggest creating mobile ads for your products and services so you can benefit by capturing consumers who are using mobile devices.

2 New and 1 Special Deal

FaceItPages.com launched in mid-2010 to enable people to create a great-looking DIY custom landing tab for their Facebook Fan Page or Business Page. At just $39.99 per design, the service fills the need for a more affordable personalized Facebook Page. To say “thanks” to all of you, our existing customers, we are offering a limited time discount of 50% off your next FaceItPages order! Just use the discount code “thankyou” when you check out.

VidShout.com launched in August of 2010, and gives entrepreneurs and businesses unparalleled exposure, branding, and lead-capture on a self-service video advertising platform. VidShout’s platform allows users to create video ads from photos using its online video wizard and syndicate their video ads across multiple online networks.

Growing, Growing… Strong!

2010 was good to ClassifiedFlyerAds, with oodles of people using the service to advertise their products, services, homes for sale and autos for sale. In fact, more than 200,000 listings using ClassifiedFlyerAds were made from our 36,000 member base!

At EmailFlyerAds, more than 24,000 real estate agents and brokers advertise their properties for sale using the email marketing engine. And with 42 million emails sent in 2010, the service continues to give real estate professionals the boost they need to get their properties the most exposure possible.

RentShout Adds LSI for Bulk Accounts

In 2010, RentShout released their Listing Service Interface (LSI), enabling larger volume clients and resellers to efficiently interface with the service. This feature was developed in response to multiple requests from the rental community. RentShout has grown to more than 3,000 members since its launch in 2009.

RealShout WordPress Plugin

Over 1,800 people have downloaded the RealShout Plugin for their blogs and websites, drawing in thousands of visitors to real estate sites all across the country!

I really hate that you use reviews as a signal for ranking websites and Google Places pages. I just got another email from a vendor who was trying to sell me review postings for $3 per review. Don’t get me wrong Google, I REALLY do like reviews but the more they hold weight in search engine placement, the more companies will game the system and the entire review system will be worthless to the end user.

I really like reviews. In fact I almost always look for reviews and ratings when deciding to make a new purchase with a company. I go to Google and type “company name reviews” and read what others have written about a company. I read these reviews on multiple websites so I can get an overall picture. But what happens to the quality of the review data when it becomes known that review data plays a role in getting your Google Places page, and even your website, pushed to the top? Businesses and SEOs will game the system and you will quickly start seeing an increase in fake reviews being spread all over the web. Sure, this has always been a problem with reviews, and I know you can’t completely get away from it. But it will only get worse very quickly now that Google is using reviews as a signal to rank their Places pages and local websites.  Do a local business search and look at the websites positioned at the top in the Places pages section. Do you notice they all have reviews and a Places page? Look at the screen shot below as an example. I removed the top paid ads section to save space but you will see the first 7 slots consist of businesses that have a Google Places page and reviews.

Google Places Pages and Reviews

Businesses will quickly realize they need reviews and a Places page in order to compete. Some will get reviews honestly but many will get them dishonestly because they will need to in order to compete.

It has also recently been announced that both Google and Bing are now using social network links as a factor. For example re-tweets, likes, mentions, etc. about your brand and to your pages will play a role in your quality score. This I don’t mind as long as Google and Bing can determine that these likes and re-tweets are valid and not just a bunch of spam accounts that have been setup for this purpose. It is the reviews playing a role that I have an issue with.

Remember when Forums were the rage? I personally think one of the main things that ruined forums was that they became overthrown with spam because it became common knowledge that links in forums hold weight. While those types of links don’t hold as much weight anymore, forums are still flooded with spam and are not used or trusted like they once were. So did Google ruin forums? I fear the same thing will happen with reviews.

I understand that Google and other search engines need to look at different factors to determine a website’s value and popularity. I guess I would like to see content place the largest role but I also understand that when you have thousands of sites competing for that same content, other things need to come into play. I personally think quality, relevant, in-content links from other trusted sites are a better signal than reviews. I know, I know, those are easy to game too, but at least gamed links are not going to ruin reviews that users have become reliant on to help determine a company’s value.

Please Google don’t ruin reviews!!!

The first thing we did was run the website through http://www.webpagetest.org. This is a free tool that will break down your website performance and give each area a score. After we ran the site through this tool, we were presented with a lot of suggestions on how to optimize the site. Following is a break down of each.

Initial page load results

First Phase [Optimize images for faster page load time]:

From the test we saw many images that needed to be reduced (optimized). We went through these images and reduced the file size and from just that we were able to notice a relatively significant decrease from the load time. As you can see from the before and after screen shots below, we were able to cut back almost 200 KB from our images without resorting to a reduction in quality.

Before and after results from compressing image sizes – note the dramatic increase in score after the changes were put in place

Second Phase [Combine JS/CSS Files faster page load]:

We initially had three separate CSS files that were being used for different aspects of the same overall style, which was causing the server to have to unnecessarily download three different files. We combined the three CSS files into one, which saved about one second from the load time.

If you are using WordPress, the WP-Minify app makes this very simple. Merely install the plugin and it will combine Javascript, CSS, and HTML files automatically. We’ve found that this works best when using the Thesis theme, as there have been compatibility complications with other themes.

Before and after results from minifying Javascript and CSS files – note the increase in score after the changes were put in place

Third Phase [Enable GZIP Compression for faster website load time]:

This is more techie but it did improve load time. First make sure your host has compression turned on. Once that is confirmed you can control the GZIP compression through your .htaccess file. I won’t go into detail about what each setting means because there is already a ton of documentation about this on the web.

(A good resource is http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/apache-speed-compression.html)

Instead I will simply provide a screen shot with what we placed in our .htaccess file for the site we tested this on and leave it up to you to read more about what these settings mean.

htaccess GZIP Example

Forth Phase [Minimize serving images and other files from other sources ]:

One of the sections on this particular site was using an API to pull in data. This API passes image urls from another server so this section was having to download and serve the images from that server each time the pages were loaded. We made some modifications to this script so instead of serving the images from the other server, it saves a copy of the image on our server and loads that copy.  This cut off at least 2 seconds from our page loads. While it is not always possible to load everything from your own server (e.g. Google Analytics, Adsense code, etc.) you should minimize this as much as possible.

So that’s the low down of how we improved the load time on one of our websites. We may tweak these settings some more and will document it here if we do, but for now we are satisfied with the improvements. We would love to hear any other tips you may have.

Final page load results

Local Search
There was a lot of discussion about local, Google Place Pages and how Google is now displaying Place Pages within the organic results. There are a lot of changes in this space, some of which will create opportunities for local businesses and some of which may create more challenges. This is worthy of its own blog post so keep your eyes open for one soon.

User Data Signals
It was speculated that Google now takes into account user data signals as one of the triggers to score a website’s worth.  User data signals can be things such as Facebook Likes, Tweets, forwarded emails from Gmail, reviews, etc.  We will also discuss this further in a future blog post.

SEO Tools
As is standard in search conferences, there is a lot of discussion revolving around tools and which of them are best to use. We will be trying out some of the recommended tools over the next couple of weeks and will report on our findings.

Page Speed
Lots of discussion here too. While it was said that Google is currently not using page speed as a very large factor in your rankings, it was the common agreement at PubCon that this factor will play a larger role over time. There was a lot of great advice on how to improve your website page speed.  Rather than regurgitating what was discussed, we  implemented some of these suggestions on a few of our sites and documented the process along with before and after page load results.

Google PPC
We sat in on a really good PPC session.  One of the main key points pushed was that search queries matter more than keywords.  There was a lot of discussion on how to improve your quality score and how a higher quality score will lower your CPC. Lots of good information about how to break out your ads into smaller ad groups and more accurately target your desired clicks and eliminate the non-converting or non-relevant traffic/clicks.  We will be writing a couple of different posts about this with screen-shots in the weeks to come as we ourselves implement some of the suggestions.

Mobile
It’s no longer sufficient to be “thinking” about getting your site mobile ready – it is now crucial. With stats such as “mobile search queries have grown 500% in that last 2 years,” it is evident that your site needs to be mobile friendly if you want to tap in this rapidly growing traffic. This increase is due largely to the Android – which Google is investing in heavily – so this upward trend isn’t going away any time soon. Future blog posts to come on this topic will cover different ways you can make your site mobile friendly and methods you can use to capture those mobile searches.

HTML 5 and Microformats
This is more techie but there was some very good information on how to use microformats within your website pages/content and how to structure it with HTML5. We will be writing more about this too as we implement some of the suggestions into a couple of our sites.

Most of the manufacturing of these products and their parts are done overseas and we are consuming them like crazy.  What are we producing that other countries are consuming like crazy? What do we have that is so valuable it makes other countries line up to buy it? Not some cool device that can easily be duplicated, but something that is unique, difficult to duplicate, and high demand. In short, something that will create millions of jobs and will place our country back in the position of a producer.

Up until recently, there didn’t seem to be an American company that had the drive, insight, or innovation to produce something that was a game-changer. Then I read about Google’s self-driving car. Yep, Google, the search engine giant, has stepped out of their box and tackled something kids (and adults!) dream of. Google has the mapping data, technology, connections and money to make this dream a reality. Not only is their self-driving car cool, but it would be very difficult for other countries to quickly duplicate or catch up with what Google has already done with it. This innovation has the potential to create millions of production, management, and research jobs here in the United States.  People around the world would be knocking down our doors to purchase self-driving cars.

Now, the most important question: Will Google keep the production of this car in our country? Will they use their power and insight to create jobs here and keep the innovation, secrets, and technology here?

Google, you have the power to make a huge difference. Please use that power to help turn this great country around. You have officially grown up from being solely an internet and search company, and in my eyes, are now a company that can go down in history as turning our country around when it was on the brink of collapse. Google, what will you do?

Photo By: kb35

First from a user standpoint

I am not completely sure I like it. The instant changing results and how the screen flashes as I search is a little distracting. Those who know me will tell you that is because I am too simple, which is probably true. Maybe the hyperactive type personality will love this much more than me? On more than one occasion, I also received a message “Google Instant is off due to connection speed..”. Note that I am on a high speed cable modem connection so I feel sorry for all those folks on slower but still decent connections. I am wondering how much confusion this will cause.

Google instant search is off due to connection speed. Press Enter to search

From a results standpoint
I tested this out on a lot of different types of searches in a wide variety of niches. I noticed for some of the more competitive niches, the instant search favors and displays the large brands as you are typing your keywords. This is probably because most of the large brands dominate for short tail searches, therefore display first as you are typing the search being that your first couple of words would fall in a short tail search. This could have an effect on sites that are optimizing for the long tail around these competitive niches because a user may be inclined to click on a result that displays before they finish their entire long-tail search. Or users may just ignore the flashing instant results and finish typing their entire search string before looking at the results. It will be interesting to see how user’s behavior will change with this feature and if there will be lost traffic in long tail queries. You can be sure we will be eyeing our log files for this.

I noticed the instant search doesn’t do well for localized type search, at least in my tests. For example when searching for “2 bedroom condos in Pismo Beach” the instant search tried giving me results in Myrtle Beach and Destin FL. I had to keep typing until I typed “2 bedroom condos in Pismo” in order for me to get the results I wanted. Until instant search can predict what location I am wanting, I think a lot of the Real Estate and localized long tail searches will still have an impact.

Another example “size 9 women’s black boots” didn’t come close to pulling up what I wanted as I was typing until I starting typing the word boots. Interesting enough though, the second and third time I performed the search, Google displayed more relevant results when typing just “size 9 womens” so it seems as though the instant search also takes into account previous searches (personalized search). That didn’t happen with the Pismo Beach condo search though. No matter how many times I type that search, I am still presented with Myrtle Beach and Destin FL. I guess Google really wants me to move to SC or FL . I am sure Google will improve this overtime though.

From an SEO standpoint

One of the things I like about instant search is all of the other possibilities it gives you around a search. I think paying attention to the other options it gives you in that dropdown and optimizing for those can have a positive impact on your SEO and traffic you can obtain from targeting those other options.  I think SEOs really need to pay attention to this because if it sticks, it will for sure be a game changer.  I am also very interested to see how it affects our PPC ads and clicks.  It is too soon for me to comment on that but after at least a few weeks of analyzing our PPC data, I am hoping to have a better idea.  We will be keeping a close eye on our organic keyword traffic and PPC traffic to see what kind of impact this has and will try to report back in 30 days.

August 17, 2010 — Go Smart Solutions has created VidShout to satisfy the need for entrepreneurs, small and mid-sized businesses, and large corporations, the ability to add video to their online advertising efforts and get in front of the growing number of consumers and businesses who are using online videos as a way to research products and services online.

Video Distribution

VidShout offers businesses unparalleled exposure, branding, and lead capture on its self-service video advertising platform

VidShout’s self service platform allows users to create video ads from photos using its online video wizard and syndicate their video ads across multiple online networks. The video distribution provided by VidShout includes over 60 online properties including video networks, online directories, shopping sites, and social networks making it a powerful online advertising platform for businesses.

VidShout members create a profile and upload photos to create a video. Once photos are uploaded users choose to add music or their own voice file in .mp3 format as well as a custom banner for their video page. Users also have the option of uploading their own videos to the Vidshout platform.

Vidshout is a lead generating powerhouse. Each video a user creates using the VidShout platform automatically generates a free landing page that is fully branded and search engine optimized. Once a video is created using the video creation wizard or an existing video is uploaded to the Vidshout Platform users can then create a video landing page.

Landing pages created using the VidShout platform act like mini websites for online video ads. Users can add a description of their online video, their contact information, their logo, and a header. User can then choose their landing page from multiple landing page templates within the VidShout platform. Each landing page includes call to action forms, and links, making it easy for businesses to capture leads from their online video advertising efforts.

The Vidshout platform comes full circle by distributing its users’ videos across over 60 social networks and directories including Youtube, Vimeo, Google Base, PriceGrabber, eBay, Yahoo Shopping, Facebook, Twitter. VidShout has an activity and leads reporting tool that allows users to track opens, clicks, and leads generated to and from their videos.

“While other advertising companies are concentrating on video creation and video distribution, the Vidshout platform creates a one stop shop for businesses and entrepreneurs who are seeking video creation, lead generation, and video distribution that is simple, cost effective and time efficient. We will continue to build new tools to the VidShout platform to keep up with the growing demand for easy and cost efficient online video advertising solutions.” says Misty Lackie, Founder and CEO at Go Smart Solutions, LLC, creators of VidShout.

Vidshout is affordable for every budget with pricing plans starting at $19.99 and a 20% discount for yearly plans. This cost effective self-service video marketing platform allows users the ability to use one video advertising platform to create lead generating online advertising campaigns that are easy to create, facilitate, manage and track their campaign’s effectiveness and their ROI.

VidShout is part of the Go Smart Solutions, LLC ad service family. It is an online video advertising solution for businesses. Its user-friendly self-service platform allows members to create professional videos and search engine friendly landing pages which are distributed to a host of online directories, video networks, shopping sites, and social networks.

A cost-effective online advertising solution, VidShout also offers a powerful API that enables affiliates, resellers, software developers, or bulk advertisers to interface with its video advertising system. For more information visit www.vidshout.com.

Following are a few ways to get your content in front of search engines:

1. Bookmarking - submit your new posts or pages to bookmark sites.  Don’t spam the bookmark sites with only pages to your site or you may get blocked.
2. Sitemaps – create a sitemap page on your site that includes a link to all your internal pages.  This will help search engines crawl and find your pages quicker.
   
3. Google XML site maps – create a Google XML sitemap that includes all your pages and submit it through Google Webmaster Tools.
4. Backlinks – work on getting other relevant sites, blogs, etc. to link to you and your pages.
5. Submit to feed directories - create an RSS feed that includes your latest pages/posts and submit the feed to feed directories.

Ways to get in front of users:

1. Social networks – join social networks such as Twitter and Facebook and share your latest posts, news, etc. in your Twitter stream or your Facebook page.  You don’t want to flood your followers with only your stuff because they may run away.  Share other relevant useful information too.  And only follow or friend people that you feel will be interested in what you are sharing.
2. Post ads on classified sites - if you sell products or offer services, posting ads to classified sites can be a great way to place your product and services in front of thousands of web users.
3. Tell people – if you have great content that can be useful or beneficial, don’t be afraid to talk to people about it.  If the opportunity comes up and you can pitch your site naturally in a conversation, do it.

So, if you have great content, that’s a good start. Remember, though, that your content won’t be “king” unless you distribute it around the web for others to find!

The best Super Bowl commercial in my book was the Google commercial.  It was brilliant.  But again, maybe that’s the business in me or a little of the marketing in me speaking.

We are excited about 2010, as we have no plans of slowing down! We will be launching even more valuable services soon, but here’s a quick look at a few notable milestones from 2009:

• EmailFlyerAds has grown to 21,600 members. Over 17,000 email flyers have been sent totaling 45,307,716 real estate emails!
• ClassifiedFlyerAds now has 23,800 members who sent out 120,000 ads in 2009!
• RentShout was launched in June this year, and since then has grown to 1,300 members who have sent out over 1,500 ads!
• RealShout is our latest reveal, launching earlier this month. This service will use Geo-targeted technology and proven Go Smart marketing systems to deliver leads to real estate brokers, MLS’s, and mortgage brokers.
• TwitBacks was a fun side project that took on a life of its own in 2009. With more than 152,000 members and 166,700 Twitter backgrounds created, TwitBacks was a fun success!

We hope your year has been as great as ours, and wish everyone the very best for 2010!

Read our newsletter for a more in-depth look at 2009.

Photo credit: Optical Illusion

Improving Real Estate Search On Google Maps

On July 6th, 2009, Google announced that real estate listings would now display within a map with a one-box that would take you to real estate listings when users search for property related queries.

Google Retires The “One at a Time” Feature

On July 30th, 2009, Google announced that they would no longer allow manually entered single listings.  Maybe I read into it wrong, but at the time of the announcement I translated that into Google wanting to target the large data providers.

Place Pages for Google Maps

In September, 2009, Google launched Place Pages.  There are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks, and cities all over the world.

More Real Estate in Google Maps

On October 29th, Google announced some changes to Google Maps that would make it easier for you to find listings. “First of all, we’ve made it easier to find real estate listings. Now, you can simply select “Real Estate” from the ‘More’ button on the top right of any Google Map to discover listings.”

Integration of real estate listings with Place Pages

On November 19th, Google mentioned the integration of real estate listings with Place Pages, saying “Now clicking the “more info” link next to a listing takes you to a faster, easier-to-read page that gives you all of the information we have about a listing: photos, inspection times, videos, details, a Street View preview and nearby public transit information if available, allowing you to quickly find the listing you want and click through to the sources of the listing.”

Google to Acquire Yelp?

On December 17th, 2009, rumors were flying around that Google was in discussions to acquire Yelp.  Acquiring Yelp, in my opinion, would allow Google to enhance its real estate portal with ratings and other localized information.

Google to Acquire Trulia?

On December 18th, 2009, rumors surfaced that Google is in discussions to acquire Trulia.  “According to sources close to the situation, along with its pending bid for Yelp, Google has been in on-again, off-again acquisition talks with Trulia”.

Is it just me here or does this look like a pattern? I personally feel that if Google purchases Yelp and Trulia, this will be another game changer in the Real Estate space.  What will this do to the MLS?  Will the many MLS’s be as important or will Google eventually be the main source for real estate search and data?  After all, the MLS’s don’t have all the listing data.  They don’t have FSBO listings, foreclosures, or other listings from Agents that don’t belong to the MLS.

Today we suffered from an outage on a few of our primary sites because our server company, Rackspace, went down in one of their data centers.  My first step to address the issue was going to myrackspace.com to submit a ticket.  That didn’t work because it was down too.  Next, I tried calling our account contact phone number.  Busy signal!  Thirdly, I tried calling the support 800 number.  Busy too!  So what did I do after that?  I went to Twitter http://search.twitter.com and searched for “rackspace”. Instantly, I was presented with thousands of tweets of others complaining about their servers/sites being down.

Rackspace Is Down - Twitter Updates

I knew at that point it was not something that was specific to our servers.  I then went to @scobleizer‘s profile and his tweets confirmed the outage.  He also tweeted a couple of references to check for status.

While Twitter didn’t solve the problem of our servers being down, it sure did take me out of complete panic mode because I was at least able to see what was going on.

Thanks for saving my sanity today, Twitter!

Are basic conversations you have on Twitter going to take away from your conversion?

A basic @reply tweet like, “Hey thanks for drinks tonight”, or something similar, may show up in a Google search when potential clients are searching for your brand.  Does your brand, service or product have anything to do with going out for drinks?  If not, what will your clients and customers think? Is this really the first impression you want to leave them with?

Are links you post sending your potential clients AWAY from you?

Now this is a big one, and one that I am trying to evaluate for myself as well.  I post links all the time on Twitter to other resources/websites.  These tweets with links now have the potential to show up in the top of Google when searching for your brand/name.  Think of what could possibly happen if a user, searching for your brand, see’s your tweets at the top of the search results and clicks on the link you tweeted.  You just may lose that client because they now clicked on a link that is associated with your name but actually takes them to a page that has nothing to do with your company.

Are your non-business tweets hurting you?

Again, another one I struggle with, since I tweet both about business related stuff and non-business related stuff.  While the non-business related stuff is always clean and friendly, it is not targeted to my brand and I am pretty sure if a potential client searches Google for my brand and sees these types of tweets at the top of the results, they will be completely confused.

Following is a screen shot of a search on one of our brand names that illustrates some of these concerns.

Tweets showing up in Google

While I have no concerns of my conversation with Kathy and I think she has built a solid Twitter presence for herself, I have to think about how a potential client would respond when seeing this in Google search results for my business.  Will they click Kathy’s name and be taken to her Twitter account?  That would be great for Kathy, but could the potential client misunderstand that Kathy’s Twitter account is the Go Smart account?  Now imagine if a conversation you have with someone who doesn’t have a solid or professional Twitter profile shows up in Google for your brand.  Imagine if the potential client clicks on that person’s name and see’s some not-so-appealing stuff.

Now let’s look at the second example.  Again, a tweet that I have no concerns of and one that actually links to a very valuable blog post.  BUT again, as a business owner, I have to consider how this may confuse a potential client or send them AWAY from our company and services.  A potential client will most likely click on this link and be taken to a page that has nothing to do with Go Smart Solutions or our services.  Can we say “confusion”?

You have to remember that you and I and whoever else is reading this is probably aware of and understand these latest changes, but your everyday person (clients, consumers) are in a completely different world and have no idea about this stuff.  All they know is, all of a sudden, these scrolling results are now sometimes showing at the top of their searches.

See my other posts about similar topics

• Is Real Time Search REALLY a Good Idea?
• Are You Ready For Google Search Changes
• Google Search Sidebar
• Twitter is Important For SEO
• This is for all of those long-tail SEO skeptics
• Have you seen Google’s new search options?

Rae Hoffman, CEO and Co-Founder of Outspoken Media, began playing with the new feature and discovered some alarming results.  Watch this video and you will see that this is a major issue.  The thing that scares me the most is when Rae touched on safety concerns for children online.  Please spread this video so it gets the attention of the search engines and hopefully they either remove the Twitter real time stream or they fix/filter the junk.

See my other posts about similar topics

• Are You Ready For Google Search Changes
• Google Search Sidebar
• Twitter is Important For SEO
• This is for all of those long-tail SEO skeptics
• Have you seen Google’s new search options?

Google’s real-time results are also pulling in other data, which includes latest updates from blogs, videos, news sites, and even images. The screen shot below shows a search on “Tiger Woods” and how some of these sources are mixed directly in on the first page of Google’s search results.

If you are an internet marketer, you need to be aware of these changes and create videos, optimize images in your content, participate in blogging, and participate in real-time social networks if you want to stay on top.

See my other posts about similar topics

• Google Search Sidebar
• Twitter is Important For SEO
• This is for all of those long-tail SEO skeptics
• Have you seen Google’s new search options?

This new sidebar will be placed as a permanent fixture in the Google search engine.  This means more people will click these options.  If someone is doing an organic search for your niche, Google is making it even easier for them to search other verticals such as videos and blogs.

So how can you prepare for this?

• Create videos around your niche and post those videos to YouTube and other popular video portals.
• Optimize your images (image name, alt tag) for the page you place them in.
• If you don’t already have a blog, it’s time to get one.  Focus your blog around your niche.
• Submit press releases for product launches or announcements.
• Participate in industry specific forums.  Don’t spam, but participate.