Google’s New “Search, Plus Your World” And What It Means For Your SEO Campaign

What Is “Search, Plus Your World”?

We already know from Gmail advertisements that Google watches our every move. 

Now, Google is inviting us to check out Search, Plus Your World, which tracks your actions to provide a more personalized search experience. If you are already using Google’s social network, Google+, your search results will automatically be personalized while signed in. If not, you can upgrade to Google+ to get this search experience.

Google’s personalized search uses your web history – what you ended up clicking on and where you spent the most time – to place your previous search results higher up the next time you go searching. Google notes that “searches completed while Web History is paused won’t influence your search results.”

Connect with Klik Marketing on Google + 

However, Google still allows you to switch on and off your personalized results.

             This Icon In The Upper Right Hand Corner Means That You Are Viewing Personal Results

               This Icon Means That Personal Results Are Hidden

So far, however, people aren’t reporting drastic changes between their general and personal search results unless they have done some serious Google research on a topic in the past. The one big difference is the appearance of Google+ results in the SERPs.

How Can I Leverage My Google + Account For SEO?

Simple – do what you can to get more +1’s. Google+ is no doubt Google’s push to stake its claim in the online world of social networking. But it’s also a way Google can rank your site based on user-generated content.

It’s time to get on board the Google+ train for the sake of your company’s ranking within the organic search results. SEOMoz CEO Rand Fishkin and some other SEO geeks recently tried an experiment where they asked lots of people to +1 a site. They successfully got the site from 16^th rank to 6^th in no time. (Drag your mouse immediately to the right of a url in the Google SERPs to see the +1 button appear.)

Remember, Google owns the search market, and they have the control over how Google+ will influence the results. And so far, it looks like they are placing a good bit of importance on their social network in the SERPs.  

Google+ In Search Results- The blogosphere is lighting up with instances of Google placing Google+ results over relevancy in the organic search results pages. Check out this post from Search Engine Land for some examples.

Others are simply remarking that they’ve noticed a lot more Google+ results appearing from people they’ve put in their “circles” in their organic search results. Not surprising considering that Google said “relevant Google+ posts and comments that have been shared with you will now appear in your search results.” What does this mean? Type in your friend’s name and you’ll actually get the “John Doe” that you know, not some other guy. Images search will also include pictures from your friends and Picasa albums.

Google+1 For Human Relevance – Google+ could help Google overcome a big obstacle in the current search algorithm. It has been trying to develop a crawl bot that can determine the relevance and quality of a website. The Google+1 button allows users to do that work for them.

Instead of relying solely on keywords and backlinks, humans can tell Google which sites are most important with the single click of a button.

So, what to do? Get a Google +1 Button on your website landing pages. Try to post interesting content on your Google+ page to get others to +1 you. Make +1 profile connections by adding people to your “circles.” 

Connect with Klik Marketing on Google + 

The Klik Marketing Blog is your source for Charlotte SEO and Small Business topics. It is written by Klik Marketing founder and President Eric Fransen. Eric has been involved with the Internet Marketing industry since the late 1990’s.

BRAND LESSONS: Grammy Awards 2011: Creating Events Like You Would A Wedding by James Andrews

A successful integrated event has a story arc and build up similar to a wedding. How do you combine blogging partners, influencer networks, social media and analytics to create a winning program? This workshop uncovers the 2011 Grammy Awards and how Social People developed a “Crescendo” like approach using social media and influencer to propel this year’s award show in the most successful in last 10 years.

How to use an event to create an awesome social media experience. 

Need to find “niche” bloggers. Each blogger would cover the event based on their point of view. The bloggers should have their own followers. Bloggers area treated as professionals and have open access. 

The key is the events before the event. Need to create conversations before the event around certain themes. 

Take your event live

• Live Video can drive social conversations around your event.
• The online community can integrate with the offline community.
• Not all live video is interesting so think about “producing” content.
• Does your live event need an event curator?
• Plan your tech needs in advance.
• Live content requires promotion (pre/during)

Sharing the Data Post-Event

• Get the information socialized in a timely fashion.
• Find which analytics are important to the organization.
• Create a “teachable” moment via data findings. 
• Is there a PR story around the analytics?

How To Train Your Employees In Social Without Losing Your Mind by Lisa Hoffman, Duke Energy

Training your businesses employees in social media is much more than explaining 140 characters are in a tweet and you should reply to more often than you sell. No matter what size your business, you are introducing people to a new ecosystem of communication that has real consequences. Sometimes big consequences, for better or worse. Every business needs to understand the basics of how you can better equip your marketing and non-marketing employees to support the business online.

Lisa first asked Why would you want to develop a training program?

To explain Risk and Opportunities. Need to show pitfalls and encourage them to use the tools correctly. 

Your training needs to start with policy and guidelines. This is the place to start. The policy is to not only protect the company, but it encourages employee encouragement. 

Keep your training Simple

• Actions in the “real world” can turn into Social Media nightmares.
• Employee Ambassadors are important!
• Online spokesperson needs extra training. There guidelines need to be more specific so they are comfortable knowing their boundaries.

How to Write Results From Your Blog at Social Fresh 2011 by Derek Halpern, Social Triggers

Summary: Look – creating a blog is easy, but building one that attracts leads and makes sales? That takes some finesse, and now you can learn all about it during this presentation by the expert marketer Derek Halpern, the founder of Social Triggers. A blog is a landing page. The more you treat it as such, the better results you will see.

Derek kicked it off strong talking about businesses can’t pay the bills on “likes”. Businesses need to convert visitors to buyers. 

Framework for Successful Website

First of all you need website traffic

1. Content Based on Research – You need researched based content. People love research.
2. Content Based on Results – Customer Results, Your Product Results.
3. Content Based on Controversy –  People love a good fight. No matter what industry you are in there’s a fight going on. You need to write about it! 

Behind the Scenes Content – ex. How the business works. What tools do you use?

Advanced SEO and Social Integration by Roy Morejon and Brandon Uttley, Command Partners

Roy and Brandon are two of Charlotte’s top social media gurus. There presentation is on: There are a few ways to think about SEO and how it connects to other pieces of your marketing strategy. Increasingly, social media and SEO are becoming more closely aligned. A lot of the work we do in social get rewarded with more exposure for our businesses in the search engines. Even Google is making big efforts lately to focus on higher quality content and content that people react to in positive ways. How we rank in search engines can be an integral part of our inbound marketing system.

• Content Marketing is the backbone of all social media and search engine optimization today. 
• Social Sharing is Driving Growth
• We are in the midst of a massive shift online from search and intent to social sharing.

How do you compete with strong sites? A fresh burst of links may provide exceptional value. It will allow a page to overtake a high authority website for a short or even a long period of time. SEO is an amplifier and catalysts to social media and content marketing.

Where to Start?

• You need to make sure your website is suitable so that google can see your website properly.
• Google now has social analytics. Need to use the Beta Version of Google Analytics. You can see Social Engagement, Social Actions, Social Pages. For more information go to http://bit.ly/gasocial
• Google Profile Integration – Google allows you to see what “they see” in regards to content you are sharing. See google.com/s2/search/social.

What’s Working? Most Important Social Media Factors

• Trust Factors – Everything you do online should be done to increase the trust others have in you. 
• Google – Social Authority – An author’s authority on social networking sites is influencing traditional SEO. Social shows authority, not relevance.
• What are the Social Signals? How Google and others are quantifying social networking authority as a ranking factor within traditional search engine results pages. 
• Facebook Optimization - Fill out all page profile information completely. Because of Facebooks Social Graph all information on Facebook has the potential to be indexed. 
• Twitter - Tweeted links get discovered and indexed quickly.  Tweets from high-authority accounts get lots of RTs act as links (Google & Bing)
• Slideshare - Slideshare is great to use. Very good for long-tail keywords. Multiple opportunities for keyword placement.