You may have noticed that Google has introduced a new feature called “Search, Plus Your World.” What does this mean? According to Google it means that when you do a search on Google from now on you’ll “find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page.”

What does that mean for you, your website and your website’s search engine ranking?

The most immediate and obvious impact is that Google+ pages posts and shares will now receive a higher ranking than ever before. As Google explains ” if you search for a topic like [music] or [baseball], you might see prominent people who frequently discuss this topic on Google+ appearing on the right-hand side of the results page. You can connect with them on Google+, strike up meaningful conversations and discover entire communities in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.”

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You’ve probably heard the term “Organic SEO” before, but what is it exactly? Simply put, organic SEO is search engine optimization that is natural and unpaid. It means that you’re improving your website’s search engine ranking without using pay-per-click or any other paid methods of improving your website’s visibility.

This differs slightly from onsite SEO.

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Almost everybody wants to increase traffic to their website. If you look around the Internet, you’ll find hundreds of different ways to do so. Some of these ways work and some do not. Some of these ways are very time-consuming. For some methods, such as major design changes and written content overhauls, you may want to hire someone to do the work for you in order to save time and frustration.

However, there are a few simple things that you can do yourself in order to increase website traffic.

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Every website wants more traffic. From personal blogs to corporate websites, you always want people to visit your site. But there are millions of pages on the Internet and it’s often difficult to draw attention to your website. However, with a little hard work and some clever thinking, it is possible.

Here are a few good ways to draw traffic to your website.

• Give visitors what they are looking for.
• Take some time to think of the types of traffic you would ideally like to receive. For example, if you’re selling t-shirts online, think of the market you’d like to sell to. If that market is teenagers in your city, then you’ll want to come up with a way to draw teenagers from your city who like t-shirts to your website. There’s not much point in promoting your site to older women from across the globe who hate t-shirts. That won’t help your sales.
• Be honest.
• This goes with the point above. You want to bring in relevant traffic. Yes, it might be easy to bring in traffic by writing a blog post titled “10 ways to get free money” but unless your site actually lists 10 ways to get free money, your visitors will not be very happy. Those visitors will leave your site very quickly and you won’t get any sales from them.
• Use page titles correctly.
• Your page title is a big deal. Rather than calling your sales page “Sales” you should consider titling it something more specific like “Retro T-Shirt Sales in Toronto” (if retro t-shirt sales are actually what you are selling in Toronto.) Not only will this help for search engine purposes, but it will also give visitors information on what to expect when they click the link.
• Promote yourself.
• Use message boards, social media, email, social news site, directories and anything else you can think of to promote your website. NOTE: This does not mean spam. Don’t flood every website you can find with your link. Build relationships, follow the rules of whatever site you’re on and participate in the discussion. You’ll definitely find sucess that way.
• Don’t give up.
• Very few websites are instantly successful overnight. Keep writing, keep giving visitors what they are looking for and keep promoting yourself and you will get there.

Good luck!

A website developer recently asked me “What is ‘SEO Web Content,’ and how does it differ from the web content that typically is created for the end user?”

The answer is that SEO web content is written for the end user as well. As you know, regardless of what product or service you offer on your website, a real human being is responsible for the final purchasing decision. No matter how optimized your website is or how highly ranked you are on Google, you can never forget your true audience: the client.

Writing strictly for search engines will not get you there. You need to be able to create interesting, informative and persuasive content if you hope to gain new customers. The best way to do that is through quality copywriting.

The difference between website copywriting and standard copywriting is that SEO copywriters take search engines into account when they are writing.

If you are writing a brochure or magazine article, you do not have to worry about things like keyword usage but you still need to create quality writing.  Having informative, easy-to-understand content is important for every type of copywriting.

Like it or not, most visitors find websites through search engines and thus creating content that is easily accessed and understood is important. But you should never forget that the end user plays the most important role. That hasn’t changed.