I’ll tell you who these complainers are not – the people that are on page one!

Putting Stock in One Keyword/Keyphrase

It does make me wonder, though – how many businesses are focusing on ranking for one or two huge keywords, all the while missing the thousands of long tail crumbs that are out there?  Nearly every call I get for potential SEO work goes something like this:

Customer: “How long before I rank for widgets?”

Me: “While I can’t tell you how long it will take, we can certainly put some effort towards helping you rank for that keyword.  However, the real gold is in keyphrases like blue widgets and left-handed widgets.  Both are phrases that are much more specific, thus bringing in a much warmer lead/customer. “

They’re missing the big picture, trying to put all their efforts (and budget) into ranking for something they may never be able to attain, while missing out on the thousands of customers just begging for their products.

Try it yourself: Go to Google’s homepage and start typing in a query

So what’s the big deal? Nothing, really.  It’s results without the Enter key.  I assume over your lifetime it may save you a minute or so of wait time, but really? A minute over a lifetime? That’s some savings.

Also noted are the posts I’m already seeing on Google Instant meaning that SEO is dead.  Really, SEO is dead because someone doesn’t have to hit enter? How does that work? The results haven’t changed.

Lastly, something cool – type in ‘w’ and you get the weather from your location.  Or at least from your IP address’s location.  Kinda cool, I guess.

Overall effect on business owners? Trivial. Carry on.

Some people in the SEO community are freaking out about it, but I’m all for it.

There are ways to ‘game’ the 7 pack, such as purchasing a UPS box close to the city center that you want to be featured for, etc.  Some say that doesn’t even work, but I’ve got several clients who think it is worth the $100 or so yearly investment.

Nonetheless, I think it’s great.  No longer will 6 incompetent SEOs be listed alongside my name.  Now they’ll have to work for it – showing that they can actually rank for the term that is what they do.  I started targeting St Louis SEO years ago, so I’ve got a nice advantage already.  I was showing up in the 7 pack as well as the organic results.

Some other industries seem to have been hit as well, including web design, ad agencies, web hosting and graphic designers.  Some of these have been confirmed, but others haven’t.  Do a few searches for IT-related industries and you’ll see which have been removed.

So thanks, Google, for removing 6 competitors from the SERP I’m targeting.   I appreciate it.

It does have some great SEO benefit, though.  Think about it.

To get to the WW, do a search for anything.  I chose “Saint Louis Coffee”.  Once that SERP comes up, look above the results for a text link that says ‘Show Options’.  Click on it, then scroll down the left column until you see ‘Wonder Wheel’.

The wonder wheel is a wheel that spits out other suggested searches that you may want to try.  If you’re unsure about what you’re looking for, this is a great tool to give you that ah-ha “Oh! So that’s what it’s called” moment.

It’s also a great tool for small business owners that are trying to do their own SEO and are unsure where to start doing keyword research.  Sure, it’s going to be a slow painful way to get keywords, but if you’ve got no customers, you might as well be researching, right?

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Meet me at the Look at Me SEO seminar in Saint Louis on August 27th.  I’m speaking on “What is SEO and How Can it Help my Business?“, along with several other SEO experts during the one-day event.  Be there.

The snippets are generated from your meta description tag, one of the most important tags on your website when it comes to SEO.  If you haven’t got around to creating those meta description tags yet, or if every page on your website has the same stinkin’ tag, nows the time to get that fixed.

By the way, Derek Chew actually found the snippets several weeks ago.  So the announcement from Google is really more of a confirmation.

Let’s be honest.  Pagerank is nice.  Its fun to watch the little green bar grow as your website gets older.  The further it climbs, the more your ego swells.  But does that little green bar pay any of your bills?

Consider this: If you build a website full of rich information that helps your customer base, and you are a pagerank of zero, does that mean your website is useless?

Google makes major updates to their pagerank only about 3-4 times a year.  That means you could literally have a good quality website with a PR of zero for several months.

On the other hand, if you’re a good blackhat, you can swell up that pagerank number to a number higher than what it should be through manipulation of links, etc.  These are usually the people that are building and selling websites by referencing the PR.  It’s inflated, and they are demanding a price higher than the real website’s value.  Tsk, tsk.

I think the little green bar is fun to watch, but I wouldn’t put too much value in it.  If you are a business owner, and are watching for that to grow, quit wasting your time and invest it into a profitable link building plan or SEO campaign.  Provide quality content and the customers will come.

After all, customers are the ones with the real green.