The important point is that this appears to be a radical behind the scenes overhaul of the Google search engine. That means if there is a change to the way sites and phrases are indexed it’s likely that your rating is going to change. Either in a good way or in a bad way…

And it all depends on whether you had the foresight, or luck,  to use SEO methods that still allows you to rank well in Google.

What’s Google Changed?

Several people have pointed to some changes in the results and concluded that:

1) There appears to be an increase in the weight given to the domain name
2) Similarly increased weight to tags in Technorati and other key sites
3) Maybe a slight lessening of the important of video

And I suspect there’s also an increase in the importance of Twitter data to compound the issue further.

Comparing The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Google

I discovered an enterprising SEO person had created a tool to compare the results between “Old Google” and this “New Google.”

When I tried the Google Compare Tool out on my own name: “Jim Symcox” I discovered the newer Google found 24,10 results compared to 6,810 for the older one.

So something has definitely happened…

And if you read the forums and articles on the web there are quite a few SEO specialists who are worried that they will lose the ability to manipulate the search results for their client sites because the key domains will simply be bought out by big business. After all if you’re a one man band and you’re offered 100,000 for a domain you’re hardly likely to say no, are you?

What Happens To The SEO Experts?

That means the big players will dominate the Google top positions and that leaves SEO experts unable to make much of a dent for their clients.

You can see why they’d be worried. I mean would you employ someone who gets no appreciable results for you?

So the SEO expert may be facing extinction, however that leaves the humble web site owner without any real ammunition against the bigger players. It could be an interesting few months as Google rolls this out across all its data centres.

Of course it might mean that we need to employ different methods for improving search positions, or even use only the current “white hat” ones.

Good luck to you! Personally, I hope that Business Growth Powerpack manages to cling on to it’s positions in Google. Time will tell!

The latest business thinking is a phrase that marketers like to use when they’re offering something that they want to appeal to people who must have the latest.

You probably know someone like that…

They must have the latest gizmo, drive the latest car, seen the latest film or used the most recent business school buzz phrase.

And of course the latest business thinking is a phrase that springs readily to an Internet Marketer’s pen.

Particularly when talking about search engine optimization (SEO). Because SEO is a subject that gets talked about whenever a small band of people with web sites gets together.

And yet they all agree content is king!

SEO Self-Help

So how can they agree on that I wonder? “Content is King” and yet we still need Search Engine Optimization, surely that’s not necessary?

Well of course SEO is necessary but it needs to be integrated with the content. So trying to “do” SEO on a web site or blog without paying attention to how you write copy is a complete waste of time.

There is so much that you can do to help yourself with SEO:

• Write a title with the keywords in
• Keep one page pretty much dedicated to one concept or product or service
• Research and use the appropriate keywords as you write the content
• make sure you do off-site SEO
• Encourage appropriate inward bound links

Above all, write great content, publicize your site and the hits will come.

Then Bob’s your uncle and I’m the coolest guy on the planet still!

I’ve been in control of a clients web site and also writing his blog for him.

And it’s taken until now for the results to really start happening.

He’s now at number 1 in the UK, where he deserves to be and at number 5 world wide on Google. Well done Iain.

He’s so pleased that he wrote me an email which I’ve cut and paste here:

“And to think that when I went on the Web academy course a few months back (after the work was done) I got criticized so badly that I simply shut down and stopped listening to what was being said! And now its number 1! But I wish I knew specifically what had done it.
You obviously did the right things with it didn’t you?”

Check the Google search here you’re taken directly to the Google search we used. Which by the way is the term his customers use to search for information on “infrared saunas“

So What?

I wanted to make two points here… 

1) The Web Academy course he went on didn’t understand the tactics being used to bring his site to the top.  So simply putting on a course doesn’t mean you’re an expert. So be warned. Often it can be better for a business to try out search engine optimisation themselves first.

2) Iain didn’t understand exactly what tactics I used to catapult him from nowhere to the top. And the reason?  It can take time to get results you’re looking for when you optimize a site and also do off-site work to improve placement. Things that an average business owner is frankly not interested in.

Does It Increase Sales

Very good question. Will a higher placement in Google lead to more sales?

The answer is it depends …

It depends on whether the item you’re selling is one that someone will impulse buy off the web. Iain’s in my opinion is too valuable for people to do that. Which is why we ask people to sign up to get a helpful report on detoxification. Then we can continue to send them useful information until they’re ready to buy.

Simply having people visit the site is not enough.

It needs to be part of a step by step integrated sales and marketing plan.

“Search Engine Christmas gift”, I hear you wonder, “what on earth does he mean?”

The Christmas tradition on my marketing blog is for me to offer clients and ex-clients the opportunity to ask me a question about absolutely anything (business related of course!).

And I either reply from my own knowledge or find out from other experts for them.

For my reasonably freshly minted SEO Copywriting and Optimization blog the SEO Christmas gift is going to be slightly different. I’m going to to give my friends there some resources that they’ll find helpful. In fact over December I’ll make 12 days of Christmas worth of posts with resources in.

So you get a flavour of what I’m doing here is the first gift…

On The First Day Of Christmas
My True Love Gave To Me …

One Bunch of Keyword
Research Tools

1. Yahoo Keyword selector Tool (FREE)
2. Word Tracker (FREE Trial)
3. Good Keywords (FREE software)

Of these Word Tracker is the best and Good Keywords is excellent.

And as a bonus SEO tip if you’re using blogging as part of your overall marketing strategy make sure you claim your blog at Technorati.

PS So you get all these resources why not sign up to get an email notification of each new SEO Copywriter King post?

To get you moving up the search engine ranks check out this posting.

However, my Search Engine Optimisation blog is going nicely.

I’ve just added another post giving a few more tips on improving a web site’s rankings in the search engine positions.

Obviously SEO copywriting is a sub-set of marketing.

The trouble is as we specialise and go into finer and finer detail it’s easy to lose the plot and think SEO is the main reason for doing SEO!

As I never tire of telling my clients SEO is one pillar of the Internet marketing temple.

There are so many others.

Fail to use them and you’re placing too much importance on one marketing tactic.

After all how do you know  that one day Google may pull the rug from under it with a completely new method of deciding popularity – like using human-based reviewing even more?

The post I’ve added to my SEO Blog notes that although you should concentrate on 20% of the things that payback big in for SEO you should also do the other 80% that incrementally build your ranking.

The same thinking applies to your marketing strategy. That is

Consider every tactic that applies to your company and web site. Decide what tactics give the most/best payback. Focus on them but keep the others going too.

 Update: I just checked my position regarding whether I am the coolest guy on the planet and I’ve gone from 99th to 26th since 24th October 2006. So I’m getting there…

But I haven’t felt inclined to move to it because you can’t move old postings or my tweaked template to it.

Finally I decided there are ways to get posts from Marketing for Power Packed Profits and anyway I could create another blog specifically about SEO Copywriting.

A subject that I know is dear to the heart of many an Internet user.

So I logged into my Blogger Beta account and was very pleasantly surprised to find some great improvements:

• The ability to tag (or label) posts
• The ability to show the labels on the side bar
• The ability to drag and drop page elements, including Adsense

It’s definitely an enormous leap forward for Blogger and I’m pleased to start using it.

The blog I’ve created is called SEO Copywriter King

So check out my first post and I’ll see you there!

As just one example look at the US version of the Overture search engine. These are the monthly searches for marketing related keywords:

1. Search Engine Marketing – 1,148,022 per month
2. Marketing – 337,214
3. Internet marketing – 283,868
4. Email marketing 96,125

From that list you can see the steep difference in interest between search engine marketing and just marketing as key phrases.

Obviously people with web sites are more interested in search engine marketing to begin with. But do these figures reflect established web site companies or the number of companies waking up to the Internet and trying to get better visibility amongst the millions of pages?

Given the level of interest in search engine marketing and presumably search engine optimization it’s useful to see this list of “Top 10 Mistakes With Search Engine Optimization” .

Tags: SEO, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Internet Marketing, Email marketing, marketing

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