Search Without SERPs: The Future of SEO?

Yesterday was Google's 10th anniversary, and I thought it would be a good time to write about something I've been thinking about a lot lately: the humble SERP. Even as Google reinvented how pages were ranked and changed the SEO game forever, the search engine results page (SERP) remained virtually the same. Consider this search result from Lycos, circa 1996 (courtesy of the Internet Archive):

Looks pretty familiar, doesn't it? It's only been the past couple of years where we've begun to see the evolution of the SERPs, an evolution which seems to recently be accelerating. Even putting aside advertising, such as Google's mind-bogglingly profitable AdWords program, search results have started to become customized, personalized, segmented, and have even begun to leave the SERPs altogether.

Enhanced SERPS

This first step in this evolution was search enhancement, when search engines began to add customized features to the SERPs to supplement the basic text results. I'll briefy discuss two, Google OneBox and Google Suggest.

Google OneBox

Back in 2006, Google started experimenting with the OneBox, an area at the top of the SERPs that contained customized information for certain kinds of queries, such as movie showtimes and stock quotes. Probably most notably, OneBox revolutionized the landscape for local search, providing integrated local business listings with Google Maps.

Pardon the large image, but it really serves to illustrate how much SERP real-estate the OneBox consumes and just how fundamentally it changed the game for searchers and search marketers in certain niches.

Google Suggest

Recently, Google rolled out Google Suggest, a pop-up menu that suggests alternative search queries while you type. For example, when I typed in "chicago pizza" on the Google home-page, I saw this:

While Google Suggest still seems like a work in progress, what's notable about it is that it potentially bypasses the first round of SERPs entirely, redirecting a searcher from one set of results to another without even seeing the original listings.

Search Without SERPs

Recent advancements go far beyond SERP enhancement, though. Lately, with technological advances in mobile devices and a resurgence in competition in the browser market, we're starting to see alternatives to the traditional search results.

Mobile Maps – iPhone

I'm a recent iPhone convert - I'll spare you the gory details, but one selling point for me was the integration of GPS. The iPhone 3G comes with a customized Google Maps application with built-in search, but instead of traditional SERPs, you get something more akin to the OneBox map:

Unlike the OneBox, though, the traditional SERP is completely gone, replaced with an interactive map based on your current location. This is obviously useful to end-users, but it changes the game completely for local businesses. If your business isn't ranking for local searches, an iPhone user probably won't find it, even if you rank well on traditional SERPs.

Direct Queries – Ubiquity

Mozilla Labs, creators of the Firefox browser, recently released Ubiquity, a tool for entering simple, customized text queries. For instance, if I call up the Ubiquity plug-in and type "map chicago pizza", I get a search preview:

Once again, results seem to be pulling from the Google Maps/OneBox data, but just as with the iPhone map, Ubiquity has completely circumvented the traditional SERPs.

Implications for SEO

As search marketers, it's hard not to be a little worried by these recent changes - as a group, these advancements are undeniably game-changers and represent a significant learning curve. The important thing to remember, though, is that this evolution is not only good for users, it can be good for clients if we're willing to adapt. SEO is a young field that is destined to break into niches and specialties, and how you best guide searchers to information will depend more and more on your clients and target industries.

Source: http://www.usereffect.com

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5 Tips to Safely Steer Clear of Poor Keyword Usage and Keyword Abuse

Increasing the volume of pre-qualified traffic to your blog or website and building credibility can’t be done overnight. And when you’re strapped for time, you want the easiest method to get the job done fast.

Some recommended methods may look easy and claim big results. The reality is many of these quick and easy methods may be sabotaging your efforts.

One such method: Throwing keywords aimlessly at content.

In the second edition of our Common Article Writing Roadblocks video series, discover the top 5 roadblocks associated with poor keyword usage and keyword abuse!

Quick Recap of the Poor Keyword Usage and Keyword Abuse Roadblocks!

1. Stuffing Keywords - Limit yourself to 2 keywords or keyword phrases for every 100 words.
2. Bolded Keywords - Save bolded keywords for headers or when it’s stylistically correct to emphasize.
3. Excessive Keywords - Ensure your keywords provide informative value and are relevant to your article topic.
4. Misspelled/Grammatically Incorrect Keywords - Write content naturally and proofread your articles thoroughly.
5. Variations of Keywords - Focus on writing for your readers and avoid adding dashes, commas, or spaces to keyword phrases (unless grammatically correct).

Always provide quality, informative content that targets readers, not search engines. Without the proper incorporation (and moderation) of keywords, throwing keywords at articles will damage your credibility and readers will be less inclined to click-through to your blog or website.

Maintain your credibility and increase trust with your readers by incorporating keywords moderately in your next set of quality, original articles!

Source: http://blog.ezinearticles.com

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3 Effective Guest Blogging Tips to Attract More Traffic

After the Panda and Penguin updates, the relevance of quality content is felt a lot more now than ever before in the Internet industry. Hence, the trend of guest blogging is welcomed with open arms by both the webmasters who get free content for their website as well as the bloggers striving to drive more traffic to their site by earning an important link in the process.

Many of you might argue that you write, say 4 posts, every day and still it didn’t make much difference in your blog traffic. Well, I won’t argue with that because at the end of the day, quality overrules the quantity of links any day. And this rule very well applies to guest blogging as well.

So to make sure that you have the right approach in your guest blogging endeavors, here are a few things that you must keep in mind:

1. Work On Long-Term Benefits – The truth is – you’ll have to work your ass off if you’re writing the guest posts yourself. Writing is time consuming and a good insightful post does take a lot of your time. Add to it the time consumed in communicating back and forth with various webmasters and finally make one of them agree to publish your post is not an easy job.

At the end of it, what do you get? Only 5 additional visitors per day from one post? And if you’re contributing, say 50 guest posts every month, it would be what…250 extra visitors per month? It’s just not worth it. Right? Well, yes if you choose to see it that way. But if you do a little more math, you’ll know that this actually means thousands of additional visitors over the years.

Interestingly, many SEOs believe that your target should be to get links from bigger and popular blogs. Sure, that would help your blog a lot but it is also true that while these blogs can drive a lot of traffic to your website, they do get hundreds of guest posting requests every month. So, the chances of being a guest blogger on such sites are limited.

It is thereby best that you concentrate on long terms goals by writing for small yet established blogs and slowly build your site’s traffic, recommends the experts at SEO Consult.

2. Take Links From Relevant Sites – After Google’s Penguin Update, it isn’t difficult to hide around for too long if spam links are a part of your SEO strategy. Contribute as a guest blogger only to blogs that are related to your niche. If you have a blog about tech blog, then you can contribute posts about various apps, computer accessories, and others.

You may even strike a middle-ground when contributing posts to a slightly different niche. For example, if you have a photography site, you can contribute a post to the gadgets section of a tech site talking about the best cameras for underwater photography.

3. Place Your Links Judiciously – Most bloggers prefer to place links in the body of the content. But placing links in your bio will also work just as well. Many people read the guest blogger’s bio and having backlinks there direct the visitors to your website.

Finally, you have to be patient. It will take a few months before you begin to see any noticeable change in the traffic of your website. 


Source: http://www.eyes4tech.com/

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