Earlier this month Giselle and I headed to New York City for the SMX East conference. We both learned a lot and met some great people in the industry. The sessions that I attended were informative and all of the speakers shared valuable knowledge.

One particular session that I want to discussed Google Instant and its impact on both SEO and users. The speakers at the session included Othar Hansson, Google Senior Staff Software Engineer, Ian Everdell, a usability consultant from Enquiro Search Solutions, and Eli Feldblum the CTO & co-founder at RankAbove.

According to Othar, the main focus of Instant is to make search faster than ever before. Here are some key facts that Othar presented:

• The average query in English takes 9 seconds to enter and 15 seconds to scan the SERP’s.
• Impression is counted when there is a 3 second pause on the SERP – impressions will increase, but clicks remain the same.
• The results shown are for the predicted query, not what you have typed.
• Instant is present in the US and 6 European countries, but will be global soon.
• Users are still searching for good content – that has not changed.

As a usability consultant, Ian Everdell from Enquiro was able to offer a unique perspective of Instant and how it affects users:

• Instant saves 2-5 seconds per search.
• Users are now looking further down the SERP’s than ever before.
• Majority of users surveyed think Instant is ‘ok’ ( > 25%).
• About 65% of users surveyed do not think that Instant changed how they search.
• 83% of users surveyed say the length of their queries has not changed.

Eli Fledblum from RankAbove offered a few interesting points:

• Instant’s predictions have pushed more results below the fold.
• Despite the change in location, results 5-10 have experienced the most growth.
• Video results are up 28% across the board (use rich media to attract users).
• It is important to investigate how your site traffic has changed, if at all.

Google Instant has been live for 45 days (as of 10/21/10) and those in the SEO industry are still unsure about how it will affect the way they work. I am glad that I was able to attend this session as each speaker brought up great points about Google Instant and SEO. Hopefully, those in the industry will feel better after reading what was said at SMX. I found it comforting to know that Instant is NOT the end of SEO!

I’ll admit it. I’m psyched about attending the Search Marketing Expo East conference next week! Sessions offered cover everything from up and coming search marketing techniques like mobile search to good ol’ search engine optimization.  My only regret is not having the ability to clone myself so that I can attend more than one session at a time. I had to go through the painstaking task of choosing only one session per time slot. It was brutal, but I managed to narrow down my schedule to some really cool sessions:

The Search Crossover: Local, Mobile, Social
As mobile and social converge, the search landscape is becoming even more localized. In fact, local search is proving to be the driving force behind consumers’ brand preferences and, ultimately, buying decisions.

In the past three weeks, I’ve had a handful of clients ask about mobile, local search, and social media.  Clearly, these are all emerging trends in the industry. I’m interested in gaining more insight on how social media, local search, and mobile search can be leveraged together.

SMX Boot Camp: Link Building Fundamentals
Ever since Google created PageRank, more than a decade ago, every good search marketer’s motto has been “I link, therefore I am.” In fact, links are cited as four of the top five factors in the SEOMoz 2009 Search Engine Ranking Factors survey.

Link building is like the ugly duckling – Nobody wants to look at it and take it seriously. But link building is important! Though it may seem like a no-brainer, it’s more complicated than many realize. This session will serve as a refresher and I hope to gain some valuable insight of what’s new in the world of link building.

SMX Boot Camp: Search Engine Friendly Web Design
“I’m not designing my site for search engines” is a common designer objection to SEO suggestions. But when search engines collectively have more users than either Internet Explorer or Firefox, how can you afford to ignore how they interact with your site?

Our industry is constantly changing. It’s imperative that we keep educated about designing and developing search engine friendly websites. I expect to bring back valuable information to share with our entire team. Although I suspect we’re already doing the things we should be doing, I wouldn’t be surprised if I learn some new techniques we haven’t adopted yet.

And last, but not least…

Actionable Metrics and Diagnostics
We have hundreds of data points to track how the search engines and visitors are accessing our sites, but what’s really actionable and what’s not worth spending time on?

The most rewarding part of my job is knowing that something we’ve done actually made an impact. Analytics is the only way we know how effective we are in what we do. I love analytics!

All in all, I’ll be a very busy strategist at this conference. From rubbing elbows with search engine big wigs to spying on the competition, it’s all very exciting and I’m looking forward to it! Watch for my tweets from the show @gisellebardwell.

In the past videos were a nice, extra piece to your eCommerce site. These days, video is a necessity, and eCommerce sites that fail to have video fall behind their competitors. One important reason to have video is that multi-media on a site is a crucial part of gaining conversions. According to a recent eMarketer report approximately 80% of online users will watch the entire video, and 25% will convert, which in turn could lift revenue by 10-15%.

The importance of implementing multi-media started back in 2007 when Google started integrating video into the universal search offering. Since then, sites featuring video have gained a significant SEO advantage. One good example of putting video to good use is Macy’s. They feature a “Macy’s TV” page on their website, as well as interactive videos throughout the site.

When a site uses relevant videos that match the site’s content, search engine’s find and index that video. The eMarketer report also said that 68% of the top 50 retailers used video in 2009, which is an 18% increase from 2008.

The article “If you care about SEO, you need to know about video” gives six good reasons why eCommerce businesses should start implementing multi-media on their sites. Offering video on a website eventually increases rankings, sales, and the visitor experience.

Do you have a success story you would like to share?

In case you haven’t heard, Google Instant has made a quite an impact on the world of search since its launch last week. It has lit the SEO world on fire with questions such as:

•    How will this impact my rankings?
•    Will Adwords count impressions the same way?
•    What if users no longer look past page 2 of SERP’s?

Of course, the biggest question last week, and the one on everyone’s minds, is: Will Google Instant kill SEO?

In simple terms: No, no, and NO! SEO is not going anywhere.

The fact that Google Instant completes a search before a user has finished typing his/her query does not harm SEO at all. Above all else, search engine marketers need to consider who the audience is and how they search. Yes, this new interface may change the way that users search, and as search engine marketers, we need to evolve with them. There is no set list of tactics that we need to implement right now. There are SEO tactics that continue to hold true such as on page optimization, article distribution, link development, etc.

Many have argued that SEO is now irrelevant because Google Instant supplies highly personal results but Google has been giving users personalized results since 2005, so that is nothing new. Google Instant is actually going to be a great tool for SEO. It provides valuable information on what users are searching for such as local weather, super brands (i.e. Best Buy), etc.

As search engine marketers we still influence the results users get for their queries. As we learn more about Instant and what it has to offer, people see ways that Instant showcases good SEO tactics and fundamentals.

What are your thoughts on SEO and Instant?

Google’s Press Event

Today, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Google held a press event. For those of us who weren’t lucky enough to be at MOMA, Google broadcasted the event live over their YouTube channel. The event announced a brand new aspect of Google’s user-side interface.

Leading up to the event, Google changed its homepage logo. Yesterday, the logo consisted of flying colored balls that eventually formed “Google.” Before the press event, Google’s logo was blank – until you began to type. The theme of these logo changes? “Fun, fast, and interactive.”

So what was the “fun, fast, and interactive” change to Google that was announced at the event? The one that would, in the future, save 350 million hours of users’ time?

Google Instant

Google Instant was introduced as Google knowing “searches before you type.” Google claimed that Instant would predict what you’re likely to search and the bring results to you in real time. Google Instant was created using AJAX. AJAX is a programming language that basically allows a web page to provide new information without reloading the entire page. It’s quick. It’s simple. It’s… just plain neat.

The folks at Google said that there are three parts to Instant: Predictions, Instant Results, and Scroll to Search. When Instant is live, the engine is going to predict what you want to search, give you the results as soon as you begin to type, and let you scroll through the provided results.

Google Instant is live in Chrome, FireFox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 8 in the U.S.. In the next few months, other countries will see it as well. You will be able to turn Google Instant off. However, there is one caveat – you must be signed in to Google.

Google Raises Questions

Even though Google Instant is incredibly cool (and an amazing distraction), how is it going to affect us? What issues should be addressed in the future? After this streaming event was over, these were my primary concerns:

• How will this change SEO? Even if the fundamentals of optimization for search engines will remain the same, how will the users interact with Google moving forward? Will they abandon checking past page 1, if they can instantly change their query? Why would they want to spend more time on one search, when they can complete multiple in nearly the same amount of time?
• Since Big Brother Google will require users to be logged in to use Instant, will these cause any privacy concerns? If they are “predicting” our searches, how much more information are they going to collect from their users?
• For those who are still stuck with 256mb of RAM (if that’s even possible), will this slow down their machines? For the uneducated user, this could pose a problem.
• If you use Google Adwords, will the way impressions are counted be changed? With the dynamic of the search changed, I imagine there will be additional changes to these policies in the near future.

In summary – Google Instant is “fun, fast, and interactive.” But it will also pose a challenge for search engine marketers who are trying to adapt and stay ahead of the curve.

TKG’s Breakfast Bootcamps are back for 2010-2011! These hour and a half SEM training sessions dive into one topic at a time and provide an atmosphere with one-on-one interaction and plenty of opportunity for Q&A.

The lineup starts in October:

October 7, 2010 – Website Must-Haves
November 11, 2010 – Landing Pages
December 9, 2010 – Social Media for Newbies
January 13, 2011 – Beyond Twitter and Facebook
February 10, 2011 – Online Lead Generation
March 10, 2011 – Reputation Management

These bootcamps are completely free and space is extremely limited. Learn more about each session, location, times, etc and sign up.
As an added bonus, if you attend all 6 sessions, you’ll receive an “I Survived TKG’s Breakfast Bootcamp” t-shirt!

What is a meta description tag? It is a brief summary of a web page’s content and most often used by search engines to describe the page on a SERP (search engine results page).  The meta description tag appears between the clickable page title and the URL like so:

In the early days of web search, meta description tags played a significant role in search engine optimization.  They used to be one of the main factors in determining a site’s ranking.  Today, meta descriptions have little to no effect on ranking!  As far as search engines are concerned, a meta description tag is just that—a description.

Why waste time writing one then?  A new eye tracking study determined that searchers spend more time focusing on the description rather than the title or URL.  As you can see in the example above, Google “bolds” the keywords searched in the title, the URL, and the description.  So, the meta description tag serves as a powerful advertisement for your website.

Meta description tags won’t do much for your search engine ranking. But, writing a persuasive description will have great impact on your website’s click-through rate.  While meta description tags are not an effective SEO tool any longer, they provide valuable space for marketing calls-to-action.  Just think of them as the “prime real estate” of organic search results.  If done well, it may make the difference between users clicking your website versus the competition!

Last week, Facebook rolled out its very own location-based service, Facebook Places.  In Palo Alto, California, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a few words to say on the launch of this new service:

“This is going to be a really fun and interesting summer,” said Zuckerberg at the start of the evening. “We’ve got a lot of new products coming out.” The first of these new products — Places — is a smartphone-based service that takes on much of the functionality provided by existing services such as Foursquare and Yelp.

In other words – Foursquare, you’d better be ready for a battle of epic social proportions.

As with other location-based applications, Facebook Places is designed with a few simple goals in mind:

1. Help people share where they are, socially.

2. Let people see who is nearby.

3. Let people discover new places through their friends’ profiles.

Foursquare, Yelp!, and Gowalla have been consistently picking up steam, and it only makes sense that social giant Facebook would get in on the action. We know that people like these services – but the real question is, how quickly is Facebook going to decimate the competition?

With more than 500 million users already on Facebook, Places has a massive potential following. Although not every user will adopt Places, in a few weeks, as the brave begin to check-in to their favorite theaters and restaurants, there’s a (better than) good chance that a massive domino effect will start rippling throughout Facebook.

What do competitors need to stay afloat?

It’s simple, really – offer value above and beyond what Facebook can offer right now with extra features.

Gowalla may stay ahead of the curve, since its GPS “game” is a scavenger hunt. As people check-in to different places, they receive souvenirs. It isn’t simply a social check-in service, rather a program that people use to compete against each other using their smartphones and gas money.

Yelp!, and its already large database of user reviews, might be able to keep up momentum as well. The user following is already strong, and the focus on reviews is key. The addition of check-ins is relatively new to Yelp!, so knowing the location of friends is already a non-priority for these users.

The location-based giant that’s in Facebook’s sights is Foursquare, which has been the leader in location-based services. But that may not last for long. Foursquare has the least amount of differentiation from Facebook Places since goals and features are essentially the same. You check-in to different locations, share this information with your friends, and collect badges for different types of check-ins and achievements.

Although Foursquare plans to beef up its program with additional features, tips, to-dos and specials, the company should still be wary. Unless Facebook Places proves to be a clumsy, clunky program… Foursquare has some serious competition to worry about.

Facebook has given us some novel meanings for words such as “friend” and “poke”.  It is now attempting to give new meaning to the word “like” by creating a Like button that will tie internet content on a single networking platform – Facebook’s. 

Some Facebook users may not have yet noticed the subtle movement in the Like attribute, which was launched in April.  For a while, users have been able to give their virtual thumbs-up on their friends’ pictures, status updates and other content by clicking the like button.  In the past, users could “Become a fan” of a variety of pages hosted on Facebook.  The new Like button merges both the “Become a fan” and your typical “like” options by giving website administrators the option of placing a branded Like button on their individual content pages.  Currently, there are a variety of tools that you can add to a content page to allow users to “share this” on Facebook.  In contrast, the new Like button allows users to do both of the above:  Share content he/she found interesting on the internet with his/her Facebook friends.  And, automatically “become a fan” of the website containing the content.

As of now, all it takes is one line of code to place Facebook’s Like button on any web page.  Once the button is clicked, the page, plus a link, will be shared on the user’s Facebook page and news feed.  The Like button also shows on the original page how many users have “liked” that page so far.  

In the first week it was announced, more than 50,000 websites signed on to use the new Like button.  Beyond the ability to “like”, Facebook is trying out Open Graph as a way for websites to integrate the tools of Facebook, such as photos, notes, links, and more.  Facebook’s team has collaborated with several digital content companies including review site Yelp and music service Pandora in this endeavor.

The mobile app Foursquare is also jumping on the Like button bandwagon.  Foursquare allows users to “check in” when they spend time at any of their favorite spots.  When Facebook users visit a location (restaurant, library, mall, etc) and “check in” through Foursquare, they now have the ability to click on a Like button to instantly share a link to that location on their Facebook page and news feed.

At the annual f8 Developer Conference, Facebook presented its new tools as groundbreaking ideas with the purpose of breaking barriers between content sites and promote user collaboration on one platform.  However, other social media networks like Digg.com already have similar tools.  While the Like feature and Open Graph may not be completely new ideas, they will definitely spark a change in the way that content companies interact with members of established web communities, such as Facebook’s users.

Privacy is hard to come by on the Internet. You never know who has access to your data and who could be profiting from it. Issues over user privacy certainly do get people fired up, and for good reason. No one wants their information to be sold and used to sell products/services. The latest business to consider selling user data is none other than Google.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal published an article with information from a ‘secret’ document outlining Google’s plans for user data. For years, Google has avoided this for fear of negative repercussions and user backlash. So why are they considering it now? Most likely this is due to the success that Facebook Advertising has seen and the fact that they are second to Yahoo! in ad revenues.

In my opinion, Google has access to too much information. Some people rely exclusively on Google and its programs (such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc) to help them run their professional and personal lives. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t feel comfortable with Google scanning my emails and using that information to ‘sell’ to me.

On social networks, users can choose to omit or hide certain information from their profiles. However, Google has access to so much more personal data across their various programs; information that needs to be documented somewhere such as that meeting with your divorce attorney. Do you really want Google know about that?

What are your thoughts about Google and YOUR data? Do you think that Google will push ahead or take a step back?