★ 2 New Things That Any SEO Should Be Paying Attention To Right Now ★

[Nio93]

Recently (one was actually from yesterday), there have been 2 updates that I believe are important for any online marketer, especially those that are using SEO as their main means of making money online. So I just wanted to make a quick post to those that are unaware know of these latest updates, and share my "2 cents" on the changes.

The first update is Majestic SEOs release of the top 1 million sites on the web. This is not as important to SEO as the second in my personal opinion, but it will definitely give you some extremely valuable insight and data on how the web and its users are evolving.

You can read the post about the top million and download the Excel file that lists the top million sites at their website:

http://blog.majesticseo.com/research/million/

Now the second update I wanted to share is yesterdays launch of Google's new "Search + Your World". I believe this may be one of the biggest changes they have made in a very long time.

I have posted links at the bottom to Google's own pages where you can find out everything you need to know about this latest change, and I urge everyone who is serious about SEO to take the time to read them for yourself.

Basically, this latest change will make Google search much more "personal" to any user that is signed in to Google i.e. instead of the normal 10 organic listings of webpages on page 1 that we are used to, Google will return much more information such as posts, shares, images/videos etc. from your friends, social circles, etc. Google's own quote:

“Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.” -Google

If you read the whole blog post and watch the video from Google, it looks like the SERPs will eventually be returning less organic SEO listings and more socially-driven content like I listed above to users that are signed in. If this happens, that instead of having 10 chances of getting on page 1, we may only have a few.

Now although the change will only affect users that are actually signed into Google, don't make the mistake of thinking that this will be just a small % of Google searchers.

Yes, it's true that right now the amount of users searching on Google that are signed in is much less than those that are not signed in. However, I believe we will start to see an increasing shift in those numbers due to Google + and their efforts to expand into the social arena.

A few key things that I think are important about this recent change for Google:

1. It has been happening slowly, but you can really see now Google is definitely moving more and more towards becoming more of a social network than just a search engine. I'm not saying Google is going to abandon their organic search, but you can definitely see they are making this change towards a more social appeal.

2. Social is the next big thing for Google. Pay attention to Google +, and if you don't have an account, get one and start learning how to use it effectively. Google has invested a lot of money and time into building Google +(Google Wave, Google Buzz, and a few other projects were all tests for different aspects of what is now Google +), and I believe Google + is going to become much more important from here on out. Also, don't forget the other major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc...

3. Your authority in your niche is going to become an even more important factor in rankings. This means we will need to change our SEO game plan if we want to survive, and the best way to do that is to educate yourself now.

In no way am I saying that this is the end of SEO or anything even close to that. In fact, I'm the exact opposite, and I look at changes like this as an opportunity.

For example, a couple of good things that I can see will come from this change are:

1. Competition is going to decrease just like with every major Google change before. The marketers that are lazy and the marketers that can't adapt will give up.

2. Those that do their homework and learn how to adapt to the changes now will be setting themselves up for massive success. The more Google's social efforts expand, the more users will sign up for Google +(the numbers are increasing rapidly) which means more and more people will be signed in and using Google search.

Online marketers can use this to their advantage by becoming an authority figure within their niche, and being socially active(Facebook, Google +, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) within their niche. The more authority you have, the more people will listen to you and want to share your content with others. The more socially active you are, the more people will follow you and share your content, and the more connections you will make.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope some will find it useful for their business. Also, please share your own opinions and thoughts on this latest change. I love to hear what others have to say.

Let's kick some ass in 2012 Warriors

Official Google Search + Your World Info

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/plus.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/search-plus-your-world.html

[dp40oz]

Social search can big a big change for some but probably won't be for a lot of us. For example not once on Facebook has any of my friends talked about or shared a link on car insurance. Im assuming many people would have had the same experience. So if you are in the car insurance niche, that means most people will still only be seeing organic results because nobody around them cares to discuss, share or like anything to do with car insurance websites. I think this holds true for 95% of searches. Yes if you search "Beyonce and Jay-Z's baby" you'll get very personalized results. If you search "iPhone 4s" you'll probably get a lot of personalized results, but if you search things that deal with what most of us make websites about, I think the traffic changes will be negligible. I don't think my Google + friends will be sharing much on "foot fungus in men cures" Just my 2 cents.

[cagliostro]

I'm not an Adwords expert but isn't that change "conflict" somehow with Adwords ?

I mean people bet on keywords and now we get personalized results ... or i miss something ?

[stellaex]

yes, its true that social sector will be much more prominent this year as we got google with G+ and Youtube, Facebook and twitter. and as per last year changes that were made in google algorithm it seems that this time they will surely focus on the prominence of websites in social networks.

[Nio93]

Lately I've noticed that adding more google +1s to my sites causes traffic to increase.. and looking at my piwik logs, under 'List of External Websites', I now see lots of entries from Google there, when usually google entries come in under List of Keywords.

Upon closer inspection, I find that for the 'List of External Websites', those google entries have no keyword applied (the 'q' param is blank).

This traffic is from the +1s

If your wondering where to get the best Google +1's I get mine at iBacklinks.org

[MikeFriedman]

Here is why the second item in your post is not having a major impact on SEO, rankings, or search engine traffic... NOBODY is using Google+. It only impacts the SERPs if you have friends who use Google+ and have hit the little +1 button.

Few people have any substantial amount of friends using Google+. On top of that, let's just pretend you are one of the few people that have 50 or so friends using Google+. How many niches have they searched, visited, and participated in? 5? 10? 20 maybe?

While it is unique and adds some different data to look at for search engine rankings, until Google+ gets some actual users, it is not going to have a massive impact on the world of SEO.

[TBInternetMarketing]

Nice use of the stars in your title. I actually use that as a little trick for my website titles so that they stand out when they are on Google page one, even if they are not in number 1 spot. It definitely seems to get me a few extra clicks.

[Rollmodl]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Social search can big a big change for some but probably won't be for a lot of us. For example not once on Facebook has any of my friends talked about or shared a link on car insurance. Im assuming many people would have had the same experience. So if you are in the car insurance niche, that means most people will still only be seeing organic results because nobody around them cares to discuss, share or like anything to do with car insurance websites. I think this holds true for 95% of searches. Yes if you search "Beyonce and Jay-Z's baby" you'll get very personalized results. If you search "iPhone 4s" you'll probably get a lot of personalized results, but if you search things that deal with what most of us make websites about, I think the traffic changes will be negligible. I don't think my Google + friends will be sharing much on "foot fungus in men cures" Just my 2 cents.

My thoughts exactly. I keep saying Google is a search engine, not a social engine. If this was the case Facebook would have already surpassed Google in the search engine department.

Like you said

I don't think my Google + friends will be sharing much on "foot fungus in men cures"

[Andrew S]

Google Wave and Google Buzz weren't tests, they are failed projects which G+ will probably be as well (just a guess).

[Tom Albas]

How we improve our Google plus clicks and are this clicks effective for SEO?

[Laubster]

+1s have shown an impact on SERPs and traffic but that's prob. as far as it will go. The fact is even the people who have a G+ account don't actually use it. They, like me, signed up just to see what it was. Further, since people know their friends aren't on G+, they don't +1 things. If they want their network to see it they 'Like' it. Social has already proven to have an impact on search, which is why we need to use facebook, twitter and youtube, but G+ is far from having a serious impact.