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.”

Google is investing a lot of time, money and effort into Google+. This recent news is another step in in that direction.

Tyler Moore at SocialH writes:

This change means that it’s more important than ever for your company to have a strong presence on Google+. Because Google is returning results that have been shared on Google+, the more your content is shared means the more often it will be seen by potential users. Creating content that users will want to reshare has always been one of the main reasons businesses use social media. Google’s social network is still new, especially compared to more established sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and I think a lot of people are still figuring out how to use it. On top of that, Google+ Pages is only a couple of months old. However, creating interesting, relevant and shareable content is the real reason social media is important for SEO, and Google’s just given every SEO a big incentive to use Google+ Pages.

More than ever, creating unique, interesting and informative content that will be shared across the Internet is incredibly important to improve traffic and your search ranking. Social media marketing and having a strong presence on social networks matters a great deal as well. You’ve always needed new and interesting content if you wanted to rank highly on Google, so in that sense nothing changes, except that social sharing is now even more important than ever.

P.J. Fusco at Search Engine Watch writes:

In Google Search Plus Your World, your friends’ online experiences are more relevant to your personal search results than links and domain authority. This is a game changer from what we all knew and understood about perceived relevancy of public web search results.

If you want to get people talking about your company or your products, if you want to be shared socially on Google+ and other social networks, you’ll need a presence on these sites and you’ll need interesting content. Social media marketing, web content writing and blogging may just become more important than ever.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you’re having an enjoyable 2012 thus far.

Now that the holiday season is over, you may be thinking about the goals for your website for the next 12 months. It helps to sit down every so often to review your website and marketing plan and the start of a new year is a great time to do that.

You’ll want to consider what your current objectives are for your website and see if the site you have and the website promotion tactics you’re currently using align with those goals. You may find that you’ve changed your focus without changing your website or your online promotion strategy.

Social media is an excellent way to promote your website in 2012. Recent studies have shown that 43% of companies use social media to draw in new business. Another study showed that 23% of companies offered customer support on Facebook. That information is important because it shows one of the key strengths of social media marketing. When you promote your website and your business through social media, you can speak directly to your customers and your customers can speak directly to you. You are able to form strong relationships with customers this way by offering quick resolutions to problems and you’ll be able to get almost instant feedback from your clients. Would you like to draw in new clients or website visitors? Social media can help there as well. By establishing a presence online and by positioning yourself as an expert in your industry, you will attract website visitors and grow your business.

Onsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another way you can promote your website online. In order to attract the targeted traffic that will easily convert into sales, you’ll need to do some keyword research and analysis. Think about the words that users may type into a search engine in order to find your website. You will then want to research those terms using a resource like Google’s Keyword Tool. The key is to find  a balance between general, very competitive terms and specific, unpopular terms. Ranking highly for a very competitive term (like “shoes” for example) will be difficult, but it will show a huge payoff if you can do it successfully. Conversely, ranking highly for a very specific term (like “red running shoes with green laces”) will be easier but you’ll find that not many people are searching for that terms. This means that balance is key. Keep your website goals and business goals in mind when you choose keywords.

Blogging is another excellent way to both promote your website online and to speak directly to your customers. Relevant, interesting and entertaining blog posts are linked to by other websites, shared on social media sites and recommended on social networks. A well-written and informative blog post can spread far on the Internet.

Google Website Promotion Resources

Google is one of the largest search engines out there and the dominant search engine in many countries. Google also offers a number of tools that can help you promote your website online. Here are a few of the more useful ones:

• Google AdWords - Targeted pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. If done right, AdWords can bring a lot of traffic to your website.
• Google Webmaster Tools – This helps you see how Google sees your site. It’s great for seeing if your webpage has any dead links or invalid URLs. You’ll also be able to see which keywords Google associates with your website. This is invaluable information that can help you improve your search ranking greatly. Google provides some more information on the Webmaster Central page.
• Google Keyword Tool – This tool helps you come up with keywords to focus on. You can rank keywords by competitiveness to see how difficult may be to rank highly for a certain term.
• Google Places – If you run a business, you’ll want to rank highly on Google Places.

This differs slightly from onsite SEO.

While organic SEO includes link building and other techniques that take place off of your website, onsite SEO is exactly what it sounds like: Search engine optimization that involves only your own website. It involves your website design, your web content and almost every other aspect of your website.

Organic SEO includes onsite SEO, but the two things are not the same. As a website copywriter I spend a lot of my time focusing on onsite search engine optimization. Other Internet promotion methods such as social media marketing come into play as well, but onsite SEO is a big focus for me.

Onsite SEO Tips

Website optimization is a key tool in improving your website’s search engine ranking. There are a number of different factors that contribute to your site’s ranking, but here are a few of them:

• Site navigation and structure: Search engines need to be able to crawl your website and find all of your content easily. They also need to know exactly what each page of your site is about.
• Organization: Like with your navigation and structure, if your website is organized with categories and clear page titles, search engines will be able to classify it better
• Keyword usage: The words you use in your text matter. However, that doesn’t mean you should fill your site with a bunch of keywords. Write naturally and create content that users will enjoy reading and that search engines will be able to recognize.

The key when creating website content and optimizing your onsite text is to make sure that search engines can tell what your page is about. Having clear titles and headings on your page will make it easier for a search engine to know what topics are being discussed on that page. Including key words and phrases will accomplish the same goal.

Modern search engines are smart and they understand how people consume content. When you are writing for the web, make sure that you keep your human visitors in mind and that you don’t just write for search engines. There isn’t much point to drawing traffic to your website if the site itself is useless for visitors once they get there.

If a person can tell what your page is about at a glance, so can a search engine.

Try to be as descriptive as possible. Rather than writing “This is a list of our products” try writing “Our Blue Widget Line-up.” That way users and search engines will know that this particular page of content is about “blue widgets” and classify your website with all other pages that have information on blue widgets.

Onsite SEO is incredibly important and you should always think about optimizing your copy for the web no matter what you are writing. For more information on onsite SEO techniques or to receive a free website review and consultation, please contact me. I can work with you to develop compelling, interesting and search engine friendly content for your website.