iCrossing has a list of brands that come up when you enter each letter of the alphabet (not all are brands, but many are). A is for Amazon (not Apple), B is for Bank of America, M is for Mapquest (not Microsoft), N is for Netflix, P is for Pandora, V is for Verizon, and Y is for Yahoo.

You must keep in mind, however, that the instant results are personalized. Google takes into account things like your location and your surfing habits when providing you results.

Google Instant doesn’t necessarily make things any easier on small businesses, but it’s showing big brands in cases where Google probably would’ve suggested big brands anyway. If users do a lot of local searches, it’s possible that Google could show more local results (including small businesses) for those users, I’m speculating.

Steve Rubel says that Google Instant makes SEO irrelevant. “Here’s what this means,” he says. “No two people will see the same web. Once a single search would do the trick – and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work. Now, with this, everyone is going to start tweaking their searches in real-time. The reason this is a game changer is feedback. When you get feedback, you change your behaviors.”

He’s not wrong about that, but I’m not sure that makes SEO irrelevant. Google has been showing different results to different users for quite a while now. This is really just an extension of that.

Businesses might want to try (and have other people try) doing searches for keywords that they would expect people to use to find their site. See what comes up (keep in mind the personalization) and work from there. Easier said than done no doubt, but it’s something to consider. Think about what kinds of people will be interested in your products and what other kind of searches they might be doing. It’s not a science, but again, perhaps something worth considering. It might mean getting to know your customers better, which can’ t be a bad thing anyway. Maybe it means asking them to take surveys. Maybe it doesn’t.

The whole thing doesn’t help organic SEO’s case in the old SEO vs PPC debate. I’ll give Rubel that.

Speaking of PPC, Google says Google Instant changes the way it counts impressions. “It’s possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels,” says Google’s Dan Friedman. “However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need.”

Trevor Claiborne of the Google Analytics Team says that Analytics users might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and traffic for organic keywords. “For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward,” he says.

He says, however that over time, it could change SEO. “The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time,” says Cutts. “For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.”

Google Instant will likely become increasingly important to search marketing, because not only will it roll out to more countries (it’s starting in the U.S. and a select few others), but it will soon come to mobile and browser search boxes. Each of these factors will greatly increase how often Instant results are displayed.

The mobile factor actually has implications for Google retaining a substantial amount of mobile searches in general. The better (and quicker) Google can give results on any kind of query, the less reason users have to go to different apps to acquire certain information.

Google clearly said that ranking stays the same with Google Instant, but it will change the way people search. It will affect their search behavior, and that is what search marketers are going to have to think about more than ever. You should also consider that some people will simply deactivate the feature, leaving them open to Google’s standard results.

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Have you been hearing all the talk about the Mayday update and all the fallout?  I’m going to break it all down and tell you what it means and what you need to do.  Let me just start with a quick overview for beginners.

If you own a website, you want top rankings.  With more than 8 out of 10 people using search engines to find what they need online, you are missing out if your site isn’t ranked well in the engines.

We can all agree on that!  So, how do you get those coveted top rankings?

While I wish the answer was “magic fairy dust” but it’s not that simple (which is too bad because I happen to have a fresh supply of fairy dust – my niece shared it with me!).

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your site for the engines.  Don’t know what SEO is?  Then likely your site isn’t optimized and missing out on traffic.

Already had your site optimized in the past? That’s great and it’s a start but SEO requires on-going efforts on your site to gain and increase rankings.

Why?

Because the engines frequently make changes to their algorithms (the formula used to determine how to rank your site in the search engine results pages [SERPs]).  We’ve heard rumors that Google changes their crawling/indexing or ranking algorithm as often as once a day.  Sometimes these tweaks are minor and other times they are bigger and the impact is widely felt by webmasters and site owners.

Here is an explanation of what’s going on from Ex-Googler Vanessa Fox:

“Last week at Google I/O, I was on a panel with Googler Matt Cutts who said, when asked during Q&A,  ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”

I asked Google for more specifics and they told me that it was a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which seems to imply that sites getting less traffic still have their pages indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly as before. Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic.

This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite. Based on Matt’s comment at Google I/O, the pages that are now ranking well for these long tail queries are from “higher quality” sites (or perhaps are “higher quality” pages).

What’s a site owner to do? It can be difficult to create compelling content and attract links to these types of pages. My best suggestion to those who have been hit by this is to isolate a set of queries for which the site now is getting less traffic and check out the search results to see what pages are ranking instead. What qualities do they have that make them seen as valuable? For instance, I have no way of knowing how amazon.com has faired during this update, but they’ve done a fairly good job of making individual item pages with duplicated content from manufacturer’s databases unique and compelling by the addition of content like of user reviews. They have set up a fairly robust internal linking (and anchor text) structure with things like recommended items and lists. And they attract external links with features such as the my favorites widget.

From the discussion at the Google I/O session, this is likely a long-term change so if your site has been impacted by it, you’ll likely want to do some creative thinking around how you can make these types of pages more valuable (which should increase user engagement and conversion as well).”

More notes that Fox got from Matt Cutts at Google.  This update:

•    has nothing to do with the “Caffeine” update (an infrastructure change that is not yet fully rolled out).
•    is entirely algorithmic (and isn’t, for instance, a manual flag on individual sites).
•    impacts long tail queries more than other types
•    was fully tested and is not temporary

More good advice from Fox:

“Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent changes are one reason Google itself downplays algorithm updates. Focus on what Google is trying to accomplish as it refines things (the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers) and you’ll generally avoid too much turbulence in your organic search traffic.”
(Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-mayday-update-impacts-long-tail-traffic-43054)

The Take Away Here?

This isn’t the end of “long tail” – which is something people are spouting on Blogs and ezines the past few weeks (someone is always declaring the death of something SEO related.  SEO has more lives than a cat because it’s outlived many proclaimed deaths!)

Optimization is important to get top rankings – but optimization does not mean manipulating the current “hot button” or “hot topic item” that everyone is speculating about with the algorithm.

Consistent site updates, high quality relevant content and good on-page optimization and clean code, as well as earning links because your site is a good site (and not because you play a link exchange game or belong to a link network) are the way to get top rankings.

Rankings aren’t constant and you do need to maintain them and weather some storms but the sites that don’t fall for the latest rankings ploys are the ones that do better long term.

These days most site owners realize they can’t just rely on Google alone for traffic and they are looking to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to help boost their exposure online.

So your action plan?

•    Check your stats and see if you were in fact impacted by the Mayday update (did you lose traffic from some long tail phrases).
•    Check out your linking practices and make sure you haven’t done any shady linking lately.
•    Look at your link strategy and make sure you are passing link juice to your internal pages.
•    Bulk up your internal pages with unique content and quality info (other than just manufacturer supplied product info)
•    Make sure you have a Facebook Fan Page/Business Page
•    Get going on Twitter
•    Contact me for a no obligation consultation or SEO and Social Media proposal if you aren’t where you need to be!

One final thought: while it’s important to stay current and be aware of changes, it’s just as important not to freak out and start making too many changes.  If you are using a strong and stable SEO strategy that covers the fundamentals, then you will be just fine for the long haul.

Author of this Article is Jennifer Horowitz

She is also the director of Marketing on Twitter

www.ecombuffet.com

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I own blogs that are 6 years old and were on page 1 for the keyword I have targeted and they have fallen to page 5 or 6  since December 2009. Now this is something that happened overnight and when I noticed it I also noticed my competitors blogs and websites falling as well. I also noticed that some abandoned blogs , that have not had a new post in years have moved to page one. This blog blogpromotiontips has not had a new post since Feb 2010 and it has moved back to page 1 on google for multiple keywords. This goes against the old blog promotion tip , that your site is rewarded for new content by google.

This is not true anymore, you can let your site sit and not post anything for months and it might climb in the page rankings if it had proper SEO to begin with. Some blogs that get massive traffic are on page 1 for there specific keywords and other blogs that have massive traffic are barely indexed by google, this is maddness and it also points out the fact that no matter how much traffic you get google might not reward you for that.

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I am going to start posting on this blog regularly now as I know there are many bloggers that need my help to achieve blog success. Your only alternative is the regurgitated same old crap site problogger. Years ago they had good blog promotion tricks and tips , but now they have grown rich,fat and lazy and there is nothing useful on the site for the blogger who wants to carve his own path to super blogdom. My last tip for the day is do not under any circumstance pay anyone that says they can guarantee you page 1 results in google. This is a blatant lie, and it can be done but it cannot be guaranteed. Any Seo company who wants to prove me wrong comment me or email me and I will glady give you keywords you cannot touch the 5th page on let alone the 1st page.

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The search terms are in italics, you notice nothing comes up in google for the search terms I entered. Blogpromotiontips was on the front page for all these terms 2 months ago when we began our 2 month no content experiment. The google fairy has touched our site and we are not coming up for the name of our website keyword search term.

This is definitely us being penalized by the google fairy. This site is number 1 and 2 in Yahoo for the same search’s so its obvious we are penalized. Why would we be penalized you ask ? Well it is one of 3 things we have been penalized for cloak and dagger type of SEO tricks , nah thats not it. We don’t do cloak and dagger type of Seo. We are publishing loads of duplicate content that was on another site word for word. Let me think no thats not it, I would never use or listen to someone on another blog promotion site as I dont need them I am a SEO expert and have many sites to prove it. Maybe I have published to weblogs or one of those other blog carnivals that steals your back links. Hmmm I have done this as a experiment for a new site, on sites that already established with a PR 5 rank or above it will not effect them, but if you are less than a PR 5 you have made a mistake publishing your stories anywhere except your blog, you might get traffic from where you published your article but guess what your story and backlink and your page position have been stolen by the more powerful site. We have done this with this site but that is not it either as we knew the outcome and it was a tactic that I have to go into great detail to explain and I dont feel like it now. Anyways It is a very puzzling situation over here at blogpromotiontips.com that when we have time we mean to get to the bottom of. We however will start publishing some new content at least once a week. Daily content is not necessary and really there is not that much SEO or blog promotion in the world that could be published daily. Some of the blog promotion sites that do publish everyday are just giving you regurgitated worthless blog promotion techniques over and over again. We will not do that,because there is something new on the horizon that is going to change everything in the coming months. It is called google caffeine and it has been talked about for a year but it is being implemented as this post is being made. Watch out your old SEO and blog promotion page ranking tips will be obsolete. Don’t worry we will be posting the new ways to promote your blog in the coming weeks.

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What are your metrics for success? Is it traffic, page views, user engagement, links, comments, rss subscribers? It’s ok if one or two of them flatlines or drops, but if most of them have turned south, you have a problem.

What are you writing about? Are you writing about topics that are of interest to your community and staying on topic?

Are you engaging the community? Are you interacting with other people in comments? Are you engaging people on twitter, not just looking for retweets?

Are you being helpful? Are you writing tutorials teaching people how to do something? Are you taking questions from your community and paying it forward?

Are you publishing regularly? You don’t have to publish daily but you do have to publish often enough that people don’t forget you exist. Are you publishing at the right time of day when most of your community is in front of their computers to read it, or are you publishing today’s news at 9PM Pacific Standard time, when most of your community is long gone. That’s not news that’s ancient history.

Are you stepping outside of your comfort zone? Are you challenging the authorities in your space who are you think are wrong? Are you willing to take responsibility for those actions, realizing not everyone will agree with you?

Are you visually interesting? Are you using pictures? Not just for the sake of meeting a visual quota but good images that make a post better.

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Are you Innovating? Are you evolving and improving how you do business, and are you trying new methods and techniques?

To put a fine point on it what are you doing to be interesting and worth reading?

Original Post on www.wolf-howl.com

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Today I came across a discussion at BlogCatalog called “What is your way of blog promotion?”. This was my response:

All of the ideas here are great, but the best promotion for your blog is to write compelling and original content. Spending a lot of time on promotion won’t help much if your content doesn’t make casual readers want to come back for more. Turning casual readers into subscribers who link to you will bring the greatest return on your investment over the long run.

It’s no different than the real world. There’s no better advertisement than a direct reference from a happy customer. You can read more ideas about blog promotion over at the discussion group.

What’s your favourite method for promoting your blog?

Original Article on www.blogbloke.com

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1# Yard Sale – Sell items you no longer want and make sure to put up a sign in your yard with the words “Sponsored by ______.com”

2# Teach a Local Class – Go to your local community center, college, primary schools, etc. and offer to teach a free class about your blog’s niche. If you blog about cars, teach a class about how to change a tire. There are a lot of ways to build face-to-face relationships in your area.

3# Get on Your Local News – Find a way to get in your local newspaper to build some hype around your blog and what you are doing online. An easy way to do this is by writing an editorial or showing up to important local events.

4# Farmer’s Markets – Give away food at local events like farmer’s markets, conventions, fairs, car shows, or other local events. People will stop by your booth and will accept a handout with your product or blog on it for a small bit of food.

5# Go to the Beach – Enjoy yourself and while there etch your url into the sand. Just be sure to watch out for the tide. – Works in snow too!

6# Write on a Dirty Car Window – It only takes a second!

7# Host a Snowball Fight! – Unless it is illegal in your state. This is a fun way to get people to have fun and with a little hot chocolate sponsored by your blog it’s a quick way to get your name out as well.

8# Yard Sign – Campaigns do it all the time, just put a very nice sign in your window or yard, be sure to check the rules of your city or neighborhood though.

9# Post Flyers – Stick a poster about your website on your work or school’s notice-board. You probably want to wait until no-one is around before you try this one.

10# Public Browser Trick – Go to your local library, internet cafe or computer lab and set your blog’s domain name as the default browser homepage on all the computers you can easily access. Just make sure not to violate any terms of use.

11# Router Trick – This is an easy one to do and can get your neighbors interested in your blog. All you have to do is name your wireless router after your blog and try to get your neighbors interested. Who knows, you might have a fellow blogger next door.

12# Blank Business Cards – You can hand out a business card whenever your blog comes up or whenever you bring it up in conversation. Be sure to mention your blog to more people offline.

13# Local Meeting – Organize a meet-up for webmasters and bloggers in your area and use it as an opportunity to network.

14# Backpack Patch – Get yourself a custom patch to put on your bag or backpack and travel with it everywhere.

15# Niche Hot-Spots – Leave fliers or posters at hot spots for your niche. For example: If you have a music blog then post flyers at a local music shop, concert venue, etc.

16# Take Out a Local Ad – Local ads in newspapers are often pretty cheap and local papers have a circulation of thousands. One more way to be found.

17# Wear your URL – Create for yourself and friends custom t-shirts or hats with your URL on it. People will want to know more and you will be creating conversations about your blog.

18# Use a Talent – You Draw? Make Crafts? Sing Songs? Find a way to expand your visitors by showcasing a talent which exposes your blog.

19# Homeless Humor Approach – Why do your advertising approaches have to be boring? Try something funny and exciting

20# Hire a Consultant – Find out specifically how you can get your blog going and get help from an expert. I have consulted many clients and the key is for bloggers to be open and willing to listen. Many consultants are pretty inexpensive considering the time they save you from having to learn it on your own.

21# Hire a Publicist – Have them take care of your PR for you. They are expensive though so be aware.

22# Bumper stickers – There a millions of drivers so get a bumper sticker for your blog and mail them or sell them to your blog readers. Every time they drive anywhere they will be promoting you.

23# Have a Party – Tell local bloggers, friends, and family that your blog is sponsoring a party with food, drinks or whatever you want. Then when everyone comes in hand them a card with your blog on it. It will create some great buzz offline.

24# Invite Offline Friends – Often we forget that many of our friends and associates offline might be interested in our niche too. Just mention your blog the next time your offline friends ask you what you are up to.

25# Advertise on the Radio – It is generally pretty cheap and very easy to set up. If you have something non-web people would want get talking.

26# Advertise on TV – If you have product to sell and 30 second commercial might be a great way to get people online to check out your site.

27# Sell Your Product on an Infommercial – If people can sell inflatable kitchen knives and tons of other wacky stuff, you can sell your product too!

28# Put Your URL on Your Desktop – If you are like me you use your computer outside of your house at school, library or in public. People will see it and may visit your site.

29# Write a Guest Posts for Offline Productions – I’m talking about newsletters, magazines, books, newspapers, or any other offline production you can help people and do a little self-promoting at.

30# Marketing Apparel – Get a t-shirt made with your blog’s logo and URL on it. You can also offer the t-shirt as a prize in a contest on your blog. If the t-shirt’s design is pretty cool, the winner will advertise for you wherever they go!

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You should reward the readers that are nice enough to leave a comment on your blog by having your comments set on auto approve. The reader should not have to register to comment and enter captcha, that is a waste of the readers time and and will cause a reader to leave your blog and never return . This is not user friendly and is not going to make your blog special by requiring this. If you are worried about spam then use askimet plugin or another spam plugin to filter the spam. Every now and then a spam comment will squeeze thru your spam filter but who cares, just delete it. If you are really working to improve your blog promotion then you should be monitoring your blog and engaging with your commenter’s and you would notice a spam comment sneaked by your plugin. But I doubt this will happen very often as askimet is vastly improved now to detect all the spam comments you dont want. If someone takes the time to  leave a comment on your blog then follow them back to there blog and leave a comment or there blog and let them know you saw they visited your blog. If your blog gets hundreds of comments a day then just do your best to comment back on as many as you can. This will go a long way in building bridges to more readers and help you increase your blog promotion. Something as simple as commenting on a blog post should not be time consuming and difficult for your blog readers. If you have your blog on approve all comments then you need to change it and  install the askimet plugin and put all comments on auto approve. Trust me on this it will make your readers very happy to know that he or she could comment on your article and it is auto approved. Those blog owners who require you to jump thru hoops don’t deserve a comment and if you are looking to get a backlink out of one of these type of comment moderation is on blogs forget it. They will not approve your comment as they think they are the comment police, and whoa is them if someone leaves a backlink on there blog. Leave a comment on my blog today and watch the auto approve. Happy Blogging Monday

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I will practice what I preach and extend a open invitation to this blog to add anybody’s blog to my blogroll that will add me back to there blogroll,just leave me a comment in this post and it shall be done. Getting your blog added to blogrolls on a lot of blogs can be blog promotions most powerful traffic tool. I have friends that are on over 500 other peoples blogrolls and every blog that is on that many blogs, blogrolls gets mega traffic. It should be your goal to get your blog on as many blogrolls as you can. If there is a blog that you visit often ask them to add your blog to there roll and do the same for them. If they refuse then never visit there blog again. I hate the so called big shots PR 5 and above who think they will get penalized for adding a PR 0 to there blogroll. This is not true I have sites that are PR 5 and I have brand new blogs on there blogrolls and it changes nothing. Like I said before on other posts the old ways google indexed pages is out the window, they have changed with the times and if you own as many sites as I do then you would know this to be true. Your assignment today is to go out there and find a blog you want to be on there blogroll and ask them, do this everyday and you will get some blogs who say yes and some will say no but you will get on nobodys blog roll if you dont ask. Do not add a blog to your blog roll who does not return the favor, don’t do it. So like I said above if you want to be a part of my blog roll just add a comment and add my site to your blogroll and we will be one big traffic trading blog family.

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