If you are serious about online marketing and SEO, staying ahead of the game is all about understanding the direction of the search engine Google. Changes in the way Google views, pays weight to and calculates your page’s rating, and how you will come up in searches, can radically change the situation you find your business in. Some changes in the last few months have greatly impacted on a number of businesses. Recently, the VP at Google, Marissa Maye, laid out the company’s future direction. Her comments and statement are a guide for our future search engine optimisation activities.
- Google Places. Google’s places listings are growing at exponential rates. Any business must have their business listed in Google Places. Google Places can mean any business can come up the top of any search, especially when a search is specific for a locality.
- Maps. No-one could have known how important Google Maps would have become. As more geolocation influences search and the way applications work, Google Maps continues to be extremely important. The important foundation of Google places continues to show greater details and include more detailed features that can be exploited by any marketing specialist. Google will deepen its relationships with location-based services. Staying abreast of the developments is essential for any professional marketer.
- Social. The rapid growth of Facebook has been, and continues to be, a huge issue for Google. It is fair enough to say the social media giant is Google’s only real competitor. Google is including social media interactivity in its search results, but this is to the exclusion of Facebook. What this means, if your friends and friend’s friends have used Twitter and other social media, and you happen to search on a similar topic, those relationships will influence the Google search result. For these tools to have effect, users must be connected through Gmail and Google Profiles. At the same time, we do not see anything as radically social as Facebook. Google says it is researching this issue, and so we can expect changes in the very near future. +1 is the latest application of which Google is showing the greatest amount of interest in. Social integration into the way Google works, and how we get search engine results, will most probably radically change further in the very near future. To give you some idea of how important this is inside Google operations, you should know that Google’s employee bonuses have been based on social media, in that they can expect bonuses if they succeed, and have salaries docked if they fail.
The last 12 months have seen some huge changes in Google that have really changed the game for many businesses and search engine optimization professionals. Google’s changes have even caused some businesses to go broke. Staying ahead of those changes has become more important than ever. More than just taking advantage of those changes, it is imperative you can survive them.
Author Bio: Tom Mallet is an Australian freelance writer and journalist. He writes extensively in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the US. He’s published more than 500 articles about various topics, including SEO and Search Engine Optimization.
