The Google Freshness update is right up my alley. For those that know me I like to stay on top of what’s current and fresh. Whether it’s in music, technology or world news I like to stay on top of what’s happening and new or what is soon to come. I’m probably not alone, people in general would like to know what’s going on in the world around them. That’s why radio, tv, the internet and now social media have become so popular.

Now as you’ve all probably heard by now Google has released another update. For those that haven’t the other day, Thursday, November 3^rd Google released the Google Freshness Update. Now before you all get worried about your search results this is not as big as the Google Panda update (also known as the Google Farmer because of its effect on content farms). While they say it’s going to affect around 35% of search queries, and Panda only affected 11%, a lot of sites are not feeling it like they did with the Panda update. That’s probably because most of us are not trying to rank for terms in niches that are constantly changing or maybe it’s because you’re keeping your blogs and websites current and fresh.

What is the Google Freshness Update?

The Google Freshness update is The Big G’s way of making sure you (the searcher) has access to the “Freshest” content available. With today’s world and the way we are using the internet these days it seems that everyone wants to stay up on the top topics that are going on in the world. Things like current events, celebrity gossip, what their friends are talking about and also experts in the areas that they are searching for. Let me give you a few examples.

Say someone types in “great gift ideas for Christmas” they don’t want to know what was popular 10 years ago. They want to know the best gifts to give this year. Trust me, you go and get your kid a toy for Christmas that was big 10 years ago they’re going to be something upset. But now with the Google Freshness Update You can just type in the search query above, without a time stamp (2011) Google is going to know that you want information for this Christmas coming up and therefore saving you from getting your kid a Power Ranger and therefore saving Christmas.

The Google Freshness update is also going to make sure you are given the most up to date, up to the minute news and current events from around the world. Now when someone searches for a term about one of today’s top news stories Google is going to give you the freshest stories according to when they were posted. Take a close look at your results and you will see that the time stamps on the results will go back according to time and date. While the first result might say 18 minutes the last one may say 18 hours or even 2 days before the date of the search depending on the popularity of the search query.

If you would like a more detailed explanation on the methods Google is using for the Google Freshness update Justin Briggs does a great job of explaining it in his post; Methods for Evaluating Freshness. In this article he goes into deep analysis of how Google looks at the inception date of a document and does a great job at describing how the Google Freshness update uses social media and information from microblogs to make sure the user always has access to the freshest and current results.

How is the Google Freshness Update Going to Affect Us?

Now what does the Google Freshness update mean to you and your fellow marketers? Depending on the search terms you want to rank for it could mean nothing at all but if your websites search queries are targeting terms that are regularly changing then this could be a problem. I don’t see it as being a problem at all; I think this is a great improvement for everyone that’s using the search engine for finding current information. And for those of us that work online whether it be in SEO or Internet marketing in general, as long as you keep up with maintaining your blog or website with current information you should be fine.

But those that think they can put up a post or two and hope to rank and stay on top of the search engines are going to feel this update the most. With the Google Freshness update, if you’re not keeping your website or blog current and up to date with the freshest content possible, don’t expect to keep your rankings or rank at all.

Without links and keywords the internet stands still. So, for our local seo clients we are always digging into keywords and their ideal use.  In a nutshell, keywords and keyword phrases are the driving force behind raising search engine ranking and drawing site traffic. Sounds easy doesn’t it? However, successful SEO marketing encompasses a great deal more than “pick and place” keywords. The following SEO keyword strategy will help to achieve more localized results.

Choosing Relevant Keywords and Keyword Phrases

The first step in an effective SEO strategy is choosing keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your niche. Targeting keywords that deal with health won’t help if you’re selling automotive products.

Also, you don’t want keywords which are too general or broad in their scope. Although “automobiles” may be a high ranking keyword, it won’t do much good for your automotive product business because such a search will result in too vast a selection of sites for customers to draw from. You can localize your keyword list even further by using phrases such as “automotive parts in St. Louis” for example. Choosing keywords and phrases which deal specifically with your product or service and your target area are what you’re after.

In order to create a list of viable keywords, sit down and do some serious thinking about what you would use to search for your specific products or services. Put yourself in your clients’ shoes and determine what questions they might ask and how you might solve their problems. Draw similar advice from family and friends, and visit competitors’ sites and see what keywords they are using.

Utilizing Free Online Tools

Once you have your keyword list, turn to one or more of the free online tools available. Google provides some of the best, but others such as Word Tracker are good as well. There are also various software products which you can purchase to help with choosing keywords. However, it’s advisable to avoid them as the rules and criteria change frequently and these tools can quickly become outdated and provide misleading information.

Since Google is the most popular search engine, we’ll use their keyword tool for this example. Go down your list of keywords and plug each one into the Google keyword tool. A list of keywords will be generated which show both “Local Search Volume” and “Global Search Volume”. Export these lists into a spreadsheet and eliminate all keywords which are not relevant. When you’ve weeded out your list, you can begin the process of determining the best keywords to use. The idea is to keep the keywords which are both relevant and popular yet have a low competition factor.

Determining Keyword Value

A keyword’s competitive factor is achieved by determining its value compared to other sites. To do this, run each keyword through a Google search to bring up its results. For instance, a search for “automotive parts” produces “About 64,700,000 results”.  Even though this is a large number, it refers to all pages on which “automotive products” appears. To reduce this number, we simply need to transform our original keyword into a title using the operator “allintitle: automotive parts”. A new search now reveals 216,000 sites which have that verbiage in the title. Since titles are strong strategic elements in SEO ranking, this number will help determine the keyword’s value.

Add this value to another column on your spreadsheet and continue with this process until you have created a value for all keywords listed. You will then want to keep all keywords which have both a low “allintitle” value and a high “Global Search Volume”.

Although there is much more to an effective SEO strategy, this will give you a strong jump on the competition. By building these keywords and keyword phrases into good content on your site, you will grab a larger portion of those customers looking for your product or service.

This guest post has been provided by the Local SEO experts at http://localseo.org/.

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I entered the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world about half a year ago. While progressing at a fast pace in the industry I reached a point when I stopped and wondered if small businesses even understand the benefits of SEO. I follow industry experts’ tweets, I read blogs, and I read industry related magazines on a daily basis and mostly, I realized that everyone in the industry talks about the latest strategies, the love/hate relationships they have with Google and their infamous updates that force them to change their SEO strategies every so often. However, if Moe the Plumber landed on any one of the websites I read on a regular basis, he will probably not understand how SEO can benefit his business.

Well, Moe, this post’s for you.

How can Search Engine Optimization help your business?

1.       It will increase traffic to your website.

I know, this is the most basic and obvious benefit of SEO.

There isn’t much to debate over this point except that “more traffic” + “higher quality of traffic” = more sales. If the traffic to your website does not increase after implementing several SEO strategies then you’re doing it all wrong. Keep on reading the web to find the right strategies or hire someone to give you a hand. Chances are that if you’re busy fixing houses, doing paper work, or running a business, you may not have as much time for this whole “SEO thing”. Leave this part to the geeks who read up on SEO on a daily basis and you just worry about all the other aspects of your business.

2.       You’ll be able to track your Return On Investment (ROI).

You’ve probably heard the old saying “I know half my marketing works, I just don’t know which half”. Luckily, that statement only applies to Traditional Marketing. With SEO, you can track exactly what your ROI is .

We all know that the first place in Google will get you approximately 40% of the clicks and we can all easily find out the total number of searches for specific terms in a month. If you know your own conversion rate and your average sale price then it will be very easy for you to calculate your own return on investment.

You can also find out who filled out a quote request on your website and what path they took to get to that page so that you can focus most of your energy on high conversion keywords. No more costly trial and errors where you keep advertising in different traditional medias and you have to wait a few weeks to find out what worked and what didn’t.

With SEO, you know ahead of time what keywords you need to target and in order to increase your conversion rate, you can use several tools to test out different landing pages. With enough traffic coming to your website, you can test several landing pages and get your results in a matter of days.

You can also set up call tracking on your website. This is where an SEO company will set up a specific phone number on your website that only those coming through search engines to your website will see. This will help you identify exactly how many leads you get from your SEO campaign and you can easily calculate if it’s worth the investment for you.

These are just some examples of how SEO makes it very easy for you to calculate an ROI.

3.       It will increase your brand awareness and improve your brand image.

What do you think of the company or the professional that shows up first in a Search Engine when you’re looking to buy something or to hire someone’s services? You’re probably going to think highly of them and view them as industry leaders, someone that you can trust. Being first in Google will not only increase your awareness in the industry, but it will also bring you many clients as the top spot in Google gets around 40% of all the clicks for any given search.

SEO will allow the corner shops, the small startups, and the small players in an industry to compete with the multinational corporations and the large local companies for the first spot in Google. You may not have the multi-million dollar budgets that some companies do, to compete with them in the traditional media, but spending a few hundred or thousand dollars a month can definitely allow you to compete with them online. After all,  67% of consumers make their purchase decisions online and then proceed to buy off-line.

Food for thought: Being at the right place at the right time is what search engine optimization is about. Capturing the click when a customer is ready to buy is cheaper, easier, and makes a lot more sense than advertising them when you are ready to sell.

Local Search Expert and Unofficial Google Places employee Mike Blumenthal has put together a fantastic infographic that pulls in the intricate nature of local search optimization in a very digestible manner.  Mike’s infographic also offers up an overview of online marketing, and a glossary of the different terms used in local search optimization and what they mean to you as a business owner.

Here’s an embed of the infographic. See the longform version of Owning Your Local Web Presence at Mike’s blog.

Web Equity by Mike Blumenthal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.blumenthals.com.