When it comes to getting exposure for your site it all starts with creating a blog. A blog is a great way to use organic SEO or search engine optimization to bring attention to your website. A blog works well because of several reasons. One reason a blog works well with SEO is that you can use keywords to raise your ranking on search engines without artificially filling your site with junk. There is nothing I hate to visit more than a website for a company that is filled with keywords in random places. Instead incorporate a blog into your website to make the most of keywords and other organic SEO tactics while still giving readers what they want: quality content.

1. Make sure your blog and website are connected 

The first step to using a blog to get organic traffic to your website is to make sure your blog is actually connected to your website. I have seen many companies that use a different web address for their blog or even a whole different site. This is just foolish. The whole point of the blog is to bring people into your main site. The best way to connect your blog is to use a simple method of creating another page on your site for it. This means when someone goes to your site “www.123rent.com”, they can easily see your blog page and click on it to go to “www.123rent.com/blog” or vice versa. By using your main website as the base for your blog you raise your website’s rankings in search engines like Google and you make it easy for readers to visit your site when they encounter your blog.

2. Know who your target market is

After you get your blog properly set up your next step is to figure out who your target market is. I am sure you have a general location in mind, let’s say within twenty miles of your physical location, but you should also know who you are renting to. Do you have low income property? Luxury living? Do you cater to busy executives or large families? Do you have amenities for children or teens, or you more oriented towards the elderly? By determining who your target market is you can more effectively make use of your SEO to gain their attention. After all, if you are catering to seniors there is little point to writing articles about day care centers in your area.

3. Do your research for keywords

Once you have determined who your target market is the next step is to find out what they are looking for. There are many sites online that can help you to find out what people search for in regards to your website’s topic. For senior living, for example, they might search for “transportation”, “group activities”, “meal plans” and the like. By determining what the keywords and phrases are you can target your blog posts to reflect these issues they are concerned with. That will not only give your readers something valuable but it will also help to get you more traffic to your site by raising your search engine rankings for those specific terms.

4. Connect to social media

Regardless of your target market you should always have your blog and website connected to social media. Today social media is the backbone of searches. Everyone is looking for that personal touch and sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are some of the ways you can connect with people in a personal way. By connecting your site with social media you can increase your audience and get more exposure to your blog and your website.

5. Update a lot

One important thing you need to remember about having a blog is the fact that you must keep it updated. A dead blog is worse than no blog at all. That does not mean you have to make a new blog post every day, but going more than a week or two between posts is really pushing it. Blogs are very time sensitive. The more recent your posts are the higher the amount of traffic you will get. Unless you keep your blog active you will not see the results you are looking for. That does not mean you have to create huge, long blog posts. Five hundred to two thousand words per post is fine. Anything longer than that and you get boring, but if you go much shorter than you do not have enough content for the search engine to pick up on. Updating your blog should become part of your routine and can help to keep traffic coming into your site on a regular basis.

6. Make your site and blog style match

Another thing that website owners often forget is to make sure the style of your blog and your website match. There is nothing more disconcerting than reading a blog and then visiting a website with a whole other vibe to it. Let’s say you have luxury living. Then your site probably has a luxury feel to it with calm colors and maybe even a tropical theme. But if your blog is in neon pink and orange it just does not seem to fit the idea of what you are selling. Make sure you treat your blog as carefully as you do your website. It will often be the first thing that visitors see and we all know how important first impressions are.

7. Use images and multimedia

Speaking of first impressions you do not want your blog to be boring. Having an all text blog is effective in some aspects of organic SEO, but to really get an audience interested in reading you need to add images to your blog posts. These images can be found for free at sites like FreeDigitalPhotos.net or you can use your own images if you would like. Other things like videos and infographics also add to the appeal of your blog. Even a simple infographic can tell readers a lot and be picked up by social media very easily. Making a video is not hard to do nowadays, or you can share one from sites like YouTube. There are many ways to use multimedia to make your blog exciting to readers.

8. Get your site’s name out there

Another aspect to organic SEO is getting your site out in public view. Like I said earlier, social media is one way to do that. Connecting your blog to Facebook, for example, allows you to post blog updates and important info to your Facebook page where it will pop up in follower’s newsfeeds. Another way to get exposure is to connect with other bloggers. Large blogs often allow guest posts where you can write content for them and they will allow you to add a link back to your site. That way you get exposure to all their traffic and the possibility of some of it coming over to check out your website. You can also get links and exposure by being generous. Giving time, money or goods to non-profit organizations or things like disaster relief often means a link back to you on their site. This can mean access to their huge amount of traffic. Finally, you can also use comments to get your name out there. Responding to discussions related to your site’s topic can get you exposure in new ways. For example let’s say you ran across a blog post on a large site that talked about how dumb pet deposits were. You could respond by telling them the reasons behind it in a cool and logical manner. That response could spur people that read it to visit your site and find out more about what you offer.

These are just a few of the ways that you can use organic SEO to get more exposure for your site. There are many people that charge an arm and a leg to do these simple things for you but there is no reason to pay. Just invest a little time and effort and it will pay off in the long run. Keep in mind that organic SEO takes a little longer, so keep it up and eventually you will get results.

This article is contributed by Madoline Hatter. Madoline is a freelance writer and blog junkie from ChangeOfAddressForm.com. 

Graph Search relies on the enormous amount of data on each Facebook profile to create a network, or graph, which it then turns into a search results page. The search result page is unique to every Facebook user and provides a much friendlier way to locate and discover information from your personal Facebook network.

In this first version of Graph Search, Facebook is only allowing users to search four main categories. The list of categories and examples of a search within that category are as follows:

• People: Friends who live in my city, people from my hometown who like hiking, friends of friends who have been to Yosemite National Park, software engineers who live in San Francisco and like skiing, people who like things I like, people who like tennis and live nearby.
• Photos: Photos I like, photos of my family, photos of my friends before 1999, photos of my friends taken in New York, photos of the Eiffel Tower.
• Places: Restaurants in San Francisco, cities visited by my family, Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India, tourist attractions in Italy visited by my friends, restaurants in New York liked by chefs, countries my friends have visited.
• Interests: Music my friends like, movies liked by people who like movies I like, languages my friends speak, strategy games played by friends of my friends, movies liked by people who are film directors, books read by CEOs.

There was a great deal of chatter around the topic of social media; specifically, what is the best use of social media and how does one measure it in a way that is meaningful to the business. There were also a lot of theories on mobile, and what makes for a great mobile experience today and in the future. Here are some ideas that I walked away with and will be working with various members of our team to accomplish in the coming year.

What are you really talking about?

One of the loudest messages heard during the three days at SES Chicago was: Do you know what message you are sending to your audience? This simple question can take on several different meanings because no audience or community is the same. What I mean is: You shouldn’t expect the same reaction that your Twitter followers had from your fans on Facebook or your circles on Google+. This is, in my opinion, the starting point to any attempt into social media with the hopes of increasing visits to your website. You can only understand what metrics are important for your social media efforts once the correct message is applied to the proper platform. This is where SEO and social media marketing converge into a discipline known as Social Media Optimization (SMO).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that social media and SEO are becoming one and the same and that all social media practitioners should start brushing up their skills or look for another job (<3 you, Sarah!). What I am saying is, there are measurement strategies and best practices that can be applied to social media marketing in order to evaluate the strength of any initiative put in play. Avinash Kaushik, the digital marketing evangelist for Google and web analytics champion, gave the following metrics that should be measured (at the very least) by anyone who is serious about increasing their social media effectiveness:

1. Conversation rate: Number of comments or replies received that create threads
2. Amplification rate: Potential reach based on number of followers and their followers
3. Applause rate: Positive engagement number which gives insight to what didn’t work
4. Economic value: Number of last clicks from social compared to last clicks from other sources/micro-conversions

There’s nothing mobile about that

The second message that was painted vividly focused on the concept of user experience, specifically in the realm of mobile usage. The key here is to understand and, better yet, empathize with the person who is using their mobile device to solve a problem. The next step is to create the mobile experience based on what is logical for the device. This happens before anything is actually built because it doesn’t matter if your site is responsive or lives on a mobile sub domain; if you do not take into account what a mobile (someone who is physically on the move) user needs and how to best present that on their device, then all is lost the moment they get a poor experience. Mobile is not just having a copy of your desktop on a mobile sub domain, it is about creating an experience that lives up to the expectations that the device is known for.

So what can I do?

Start small. There is no need to try and tackle everything all at once. The best part of social media is that it does not end, it just gets refined and fine-tuned for the appropriate audience. Creating a proper mobile experience requires a little more work because it will differ from business to business. The point is, there is no quick solution to the problems that really matter. Understanding what works best for your business and your audience is the 580 million dollar question (Powerball, anyone?).

Feel free to weigh in or comment on any points I mentioned below or take the conversation to Twitter and use #aptsblog. Happy searching!

To prove our point, we asked Amado Candelario, SEO Manager of Apartments.com, to host the Apartments.com Training Series Live! webinar on search engine optimization. In this 30 minute session, Amado covered a lot of ground, explaining why SEO is crucial for small business web design, how to implement an SEO strategy and what to avoid. The recorded webinar is available for you to view here. A few of the highlights from the Q&A session are:

Q: My management company changed. How do I avoid traffic loss to my website?

A: Your efforts are not wasted! Simply swap out the old information with the new to maintain consistency on the web. Be sure to issue a 301 redirect for the old domain name or management company name. This will tell search engines to automatically send users—typing in the old URL—to the new website or domain. The best part is the user won’t even notice! Also, be sure to remind your friends on social websites of any changes.

Q: Do larger font sizes on my page ever look spammy, or can it hurt SEO?

A: Nope. As long as the font makes sense to the layout and design of your website, larger and smaller fonts can even be more appealing! However, adding text that is manipulative in nature can hurt your SEO. Let’s say a visitor enters your website and sees a clean backdrop, but you’ve placed invisible text in the background. While users on the front end cannot see the text, search engines can. Beware as that copy can be considered black hat SEO, which hurts your search rankings.

Q: If I have only pictures on a webpage and no copy or text, how can I optimize my SEO?

A: Search engines love images and video as they are considered rich media! What they don’t love, however, is Flash. Flash is produced in such a way that it is hidden behind a video file. As a result, search engines may have a difficult time decoding it, potentially lowering your SEO.

If you have any questions or comments about the webinar, tweet them to @Apartmentscom, using the hashtag #AptsTraining, or leave them in the comments section below.

Stay tuned for our next free webinar on September 13^th on the importance of online video with Patrick Grandinetti, Head of Real Estate for Google!

We hear it all the time – I just don’t have the time or energy to stay current with Google or I don’t know the first thing about Facebook marketing, or worst yet, I have a website, that’s all I need to do.

While my post will touch on the latter two points, I am not here to endorse Facebook or scold you for abandoning your website like a bad habit. My goal is to provide you with easy-to-implement pointers on how to build a solid yet simple website that is both search-engine and user friendly without making your web developer burn the midnight oil. Let’s dive right in.

Small business website design, what is it?
It’s very common for business owners who are not tech savvy to feel overwhelmed by the thought of putting together a website. The truth of the matter is the size of the website or the budget behind it is not as important to search engines as the user experience and the ability to discover the online content to index for future use. Search engines want to provide the very best answer to user’s inquiry, independent of the size of the website, fancy images and expensive ads. With a solid action plan—or any action plan—you will be able to set the proper foundation on which to build your digital empire. What I want to cover here are the simple basics needed to get your website in the best possible condition, meaning creating easy access for search engines to find and index your online content. I will also share some website pitfalls to avoid.

1. Select Your Domain: Choose whether or not you want your website to display the www. at the beginning of your domain. While often overlooked, this is one of the most important decisions to make when creating a website. Many people do not realize this decision is made by the website owner, because the place where you purchased the domain sets it automatically. Another fun fact is each domain registrar treats this differently, so please decide upfront and make changes as needed. Final note, eliminate duplicate pages on the web by adding a 301 redirect to the website you didn’t choose. This can usually be done by the domain provider.

2. Set Up Free Analytics: Once the website is live, set up whatever form of analytics you have available to you. Google and Bing provide free tools that require you to add a small file or line of code to the homepage that activates their systems ability to push information regarding your website to a dashboard for you to review. There are many companies who do amazing things with analytics to help produce insightful reports and let you focus on your business, but those usually come with a price tag. The benefit of using the paid option is variety—you are not tethered to your chair-crunching numbers.

3. Search for Keywords: Perform some searches for keywords that relate to your domain and business. Ideally, this would have been done prior to purchasing the domain, but this is the time when you dig a little deeper and investigate the competition as well as any history surrounding the particular domain name you chose. This part can snowball pretty fast as you start seeing so many results and possibly different companies showing on page 1 for the given queries. I always suggest having a list of 10 – 20 keywords and sticking to just those. Then, make a spreadsheet listing the keyword and under that keyword copy/paste the top 5 ranking websites. The last step to this process is to search for the company domain on Google. If the domain is www.example.com, click into the Google search bar and type the following: site:www.example.com – and click ‘Enter’. Please note that there is no space between the word site: and the domain. Also, depending on the decision made during step 1, make sure to include or remove the www. portion. The results you see (or don’t see) are filtered just to the domain, in this case, www.example.com.

4. Create a Sound Strategy: Have a very basic strategy in mind for what you want the website to accomplish. Ranking #1 in Google is not the right mindset and is not sound strategy. What you want to focus on is the audience who will ultimately use your website. Is it going to be geared toward renters, landlords, property managers, etc.? Focusing on this sooner than later in the development stage will simplify your brand messaging and help drive conversations on social media.

5. Build Out Your Site Architecture: Website architecture is important, especially for smaller websites, because it provides the fundamental navigation. Where do you want to drive the user? While architecture may sound scary to some, it’s not. It’s simply the layout of the website (e.g. a navigation bar). The most important aspect to keep in mind when thinking about your website layout is simplicity. Are you providing exactly what the user needs or is looking for? Does each page target very focus points? Do the pages flow in a logical manner? Are there ways to streamline the navigation even more? Is the call to action on each page clear? Does the user know what to do?

6. Define Conversion Goals: Conversion is a deceptively challenging metric to define—even in small businesses—as different teams and departments have different micro-goals to meet. The key is to define conversion for the pages and measure their success over time. Without going too far down this path, pages should be designed to make conversion easy and provide an obvious call to action. Do not make the user take multiple or unnecessary steps to send a lead or subscribe to a newsletter.

7. Produce Unique Content: Lastly, ensure each page is unique and does not repeat the same copy elements from other pages. For example, the topic on a page should only be found on that page. The title of the page should be original. The keywords found on the page should be related to the topic and should be phrased in a way that is natural to the way the user would speak. For example, apartment building instead of apartment complex or tenants instead of residents are words that could help attract many more visitors to your website.

Areas to avoid at all costs
There are a few areas to avoid at all costs when it comes to maintaining a healthy website and overall success in rankings. Scammers can sometimes find pain points associated to smaller businesses by selling an idea rather than results. The really malicious ones will actually produce results they know will not last longer than the time it takes to cash their checks. It’s these crooks that give SEO and Inbound Marketing as a whole a bad rep. Be completely skeptical of any person or business that guarantees you #1 ranking on any search engine. This is possible only by manipulating the system in place and will get you penalized or worse: banned from showing up in results. These people achieve such results by participating in link exchanges, or buying links from other domains, in return for the link authority that the domain will provide. This is usually found by the search engines over time, as certain websites just don’t make sense linking to each other due to the type of content they contain.

Another big pitfall is creating a fantastic website that is purely in Flash or constructed in a way that does not allow the search engines to see what it’s about. This can be a really tough decision for website owners because fancy animation and nice video look slick, but they are awful for search engines looking for text signals to help understand what a page is about and when to show it to users searching on the web. This is not to imply that you cannot use these great elements on your website, but to construct it 100% out of something that cannot be understood will hurt more than help.

What about social media?
This is a very tough question to answer because it is unique to every website. There are countless articles on best practices that have more expertise than I on this topic. However, to keep things consistent, I advise using social media as a medium to generate buzz for your product and brand. Jump into conversations that are happening with your target market and provide expert opinions and answers to questions they may have. This builds influence and gets people talking and linking to your website, which is the most important part because it is those talks and links that search engines pick up and use as signals to rank your website. I also recommend the social media role be handled by someone who is comfortable with whatever platform is being utilized. I do not think a small business needs to stretch themselves thin trying to be on every major social network. Instead, pick one but no more than two you are confident your target audience congregates most often and focus your energy there. This is important because your audience wants to feel there is a real person behind the brand and not a machine generating automated responses. Building credibility creates trust, translating into making you a trusted market leader.

While there are an infinite number of website frameworks to implement, the key is to follow your strategy to keep your website moving forward.

I look forward to any questions or comments you have. Feel free to continue the conversation on Twitter @AmadoCan or leave a note below. Thank you and happy searching!

If any of these questions resonate with you, then I would like to talk about a product Google has been pushing rather aggressively for some time now and the potential impact it may have to you, especially if SEO and website maintenance are on the same level as quantum field theory in your book.  The product I am referring to is Google Places and if you have not yet claimed your Places, it’s a good thing you are reading this post.

What is Google Places?

Google Places is essentially a profile page within Google to indicate you have a physical location on their map.  This is becoming more and more vital as search is focusing in on localized results, with the inclusion of a map to provide a richer search experience.  If you are unfamiliar with this treatment, try searching for something on Google that would have a storefront; a dry cleaners is an example that should work everywhere.  Mid-way down the page, you will see a handful of links with star ratings underneath the name and basic information.  To the right of ratings, Google Places will display your contact information for users to find almost immediately.

This does not mean because you are showing up in Places results,  you will not show up in the organic results; nor does it mean if you have an active paid campaign, your ad would not like in the image below.

What do I have to do to get extra links on page one of Google?

Start by claiming your business here.  There are four things to keep in mind when filling out the information Google is asking for.  It may seem tedious and unnecessary to fill all the sections out, but, trust me, the more information you provide the better it is for not only Google, but the end user who is ultimately looking for your service.

1. Fill everything out

Sounds like common sense, but time and time again fields are left blank that can provide important insight into the business.  Keep in mind that even though they are optional fields, the more data Google can display about you, the more they trust you are an actual business a person can find in the real world.

2. Be consistent

I cannot stress this enough.  If you have any kind of online presence, Google already has some data on you.  The idea here is to be the same across all of those areas Google can see.  For example, if you have a website that lists contact information, address, phone numbers and hours of operation, make sure everything lines up with what you are providing to Places.  You don’t want Google seeing an office phone number on your website, but then getting a cell phone number on the Places page.  If there are too many discrepancies, they will see this as possible fraud and will likely not display your Places profile in results.

3. Keywords

Use keywords only in your description, not in any of the optional fields they allow you to fill out.  Google is very perceptive of keyword abuse and will not hesitate to penalize people who they think are trying to game the system. When filling out your description, use the terms you would use when talking to a perspective client. Use terms you know people will like and understand, as well as make you unique.

4. Photos

Be sure to upload photos so people who have never been to your location before can find and recognize it.  This means, take high quality images from several angles and from a moderate distance to give a familiarity to the location.  Keep in mind, Google Places allows for multiple photos, so take advantage of showing people what sets you apart from the competition.

Bonus: Reviews

Although this can be tricky, it helps to have reviews, because they provide more context and more keywords than could ever be provided in a description field.  Reviews are not vital to Places, but are perceived to help overall.

What am I going to do with all the extra traffic?

As with any product or service Google rolls out, not every person will see the same level of return.  It is important to note Places is a product that makes it easier for Google to understand how you are relevant  in search, but in no way does it guarantee  you will always show up for searches.  This is the risk with any SEO initiative, but the reward is so much greater for Google Places because all it costs is a little bit of time.  To give some context, Google made around 40 changes to their algorithm in February and a large number of updates were focused on local search results.  If you would like to read more, check out this help page from Google explaining some of the benefits of using Places.

Do you have Google Places already? If so, how has it affected your traffic and, if not, is this something you are interested in pursuing?  Leave any questions or comments you have below or let’s talk on twitter @AmadoCan. Thank you and happy searching!

Transcript

Hello everybody, my name is Amado and I am the SEO Manager here at Apartments.com.  Welcome to Got a Minute?  Today I want to walk you through some of the SEO tools I use day-in and day-out.  Hopefully this is something you can use in your day to day as well.

I want to start off with SEO monitoring tools.  First of all, Google Web Master Tools and Google Analytics are absolutely free. They only require a small amount of code to be inserted into your website and then you are off and running.  They provide a wealth of knowledge from the perspective of search engines.  SEOmoz is a wonderful resource and provides a bunch of tools that can get a little bit technical, but offer a lot of information from the data you may be getting from Web Master Tools and Google Analytics, and helps make sense of all those numbers.  They also have a blog that offers lots of tips and tricks to optimize your website.  SEMrush focuses a little more on the keywords side.  If you are running a campaign for your Google paid AdWords, this gives you insight into how you are doing compared to your competitors.

Moving onto keywords.  Wordstream.com and KeywordDiscovery.com are essentially the same type of tool.  They provide synonyms to keywords that may be important to your domain.  For example; if you were to plug in something like “Apartment building” you will get back a synonym that search engines find relevant along the lines of “Apartment community.”  This is a great resource for figuring out how to attack other keywords for you website.  Same thing goes for Google Keyword Tool, the difference is this provides search volume information based off of Google.

Last but not least is ranking.  SEO book is a website that provides a plugin for Chrome and Fire Fox browsers.  It allows you to search a keyword for your domain and it tells you, in real time, where you are ranking on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

These are the tools I use every day, they work for me.  There are tons of tools out there and available.  If you have any questions please leave them in the comments section below.  Thank you!

And that’s a good thing.  There’s plenty of research indicating how important reviews are in making a big purchasing decision, and there’s none bigger than deciding where to live.

Which dovetails nicely into what didn’t happen at the panel discussion, namely the virtual tar-and-feathering of fellow panelist Wade Hewitt, VP of the Home Division of Internet Brands, parent company to ApartmentRatings.com, the target (some of it understandably, IMO) of much of the industry’s ire towards ratings and reviews sites.  Hewitt started by acknowledging that, up until now, ApartmentRatings.com had largely been staying out of the fray, perhaps the wrong message to send when trying to preach engagement in the conversation.  So, Hewitt faced the fire, and made a compelling defense for reviews and his site’s approach, including why they allow anonymous reviews (to ease the users’ fears – particularly current residents – of potential retribution).  He also tipped his hand on future product development, which includes more robust tools for property managers to monitor, facilitate and engage in the dialog.  Before you could say “Burn him!” the pitchforks had been put away, and a healthy discussion on the merits of reviews was underway.

The third panelist, Craig Donato, founder and CEO of Oodle, played the contrarian to Hewitt’s pro-reviews stance, asserting that reviews’ relevance and utility were secondary to the more powerful social recommendation.  I agreed in part with Donato, but there’s too much evidence to suggest that, while not on par with a recommendation from a friend, reviews are compelling, not to mention provide a nice SEO boost, thanks to Google’s lust for all user-generated content.

Riverstone EVP of Property Services, Maitri Johnson, the panel’s outstanding moderator, obviously knows her audience well, and brought up the question of Return on Investment (ROI).  Here, Donato and I were on the same page, urging the audience to be less concerned with measuring a hard lease-per metric on social media efforts and focus instead on building an online community (Donato had earlier given an excellent talk on Facebook.com with some very handy tips for property managers).  Donato, whose Oodle powers the Marketplace app on Facebook, may be more bullish on social media as a search platform than I am, but he made an excellent comparison to SEO: Ten years ago, when SEO was nascent, those who built a search strategy gave themselves a tremendous advantage over the laggards.  Now, he asserted, is the time to be building a strategic advantage in social media marketing.  And, I couldn’t agree more.

P.S. A special shout-out to the organizers of the TransUnion Property Management Summit for the gracious invitation and hospitality.  The entire event was a true pleasure.

What are your thoughts on property ratings and reviews?  Do you think that a social recommendation is more powerful?

“Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.” – Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Google will be bringing this content directly to your browser by personalizing your search results page in three very specific ways:

1. Personal Results: Find information meant only for your eyes, such as Google+ photos and posts – both your own and those shared specifically with you – on your results page.  
2. Profiles in Search: Immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following in both autocomplete in the search bar and the results.  
3. People and Pages: Find peoples’ profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest and follow them with just a few clicks.  

What is Google telling me?

Google will continue to show all of the natural results and ads you would normally see on a results page, but now you will also see websites that your social circles have shared as well.  Just like Google did when they rolled out Universal Search, they are now pushing content from Google+ into the search results along with Google News, Images, Maps and Video.  You will no longer need to leave Google search to find information your friends or family have shared.

What kind of impact will this have?

It is no secret the tiny component tying this new search experience together is Google+.  If you ever questioned whether a Google+ account was needed, you may find it more vital than ever, especially if you are a search marketer.  Think of this new search environment as search results sprinkled with Google+ suggestions.  This format of search is not new, but rather an update to the current Universal Search in which all Google products are being represented on one page.

As with any Google update to search (remember the Instant Search craze?), this new approach has caused quite a stir in the search marketing community as Google critics and enthusiasts alike are alarmed with the direction Google is taking.  Danny Sullivan, one of the most respected people in SEO, has written several great articles on this subject.  You can read about his concerns with this new search format on his post Search Engines Should Be Like Santa From Miracle On 34th Street.

What Can I do?

For starters, create or update your Google+ profile. You should also spend some time to build a strategy around the messaging you want to deliver via Google+.  The idea is to be engaging, so people can share your content, which gives it the most reach.  In a world where search is now personalized by what friends +1 or re-share to their circles, engagement levels should become a top priority.

I’d love to hear your take on this updated search.  Do you like this new direction Google is taking?  Feel free to leave a comment or take the conversation to Twitter (@AmadoCan).

Happy searching!

We’ve all been there. You have this great piece of new content; a fresh article or updated information about a property or model type and you don’t want to wait for the search engines to take their sweet time finding it and getting it indexed.  Lucky for us, Google has recently provided a couple of options for getting that content discovered a little quicker.  You need a couple of things set up in order to take advantage of them.

The Essentials

Google’s Webmaster Tools provide you with detailed reports about your website’s visibility on Google. Simply, visit Google Webmaster Tools and follow the instructions to get it up and running.

Submitting Your New URL to Google

In the left-hand menu, expand the Diagnostics tab and click on “Fetch as Googlebot.”

When you get to this page, enter the URL for your new content:

You’ll see the URL “Pending” for a couple of minutes.  When the status switches to “Success,” you’ll see a link that says “Submit to index.”

Click “Submit” on the pop-up and you’re all set!  Remember to only submit URLs when they’re new or something has changed on them.

Bonus Tips!

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing’s webmaster tools also let you submit URLs.

1)      Click “Index” at the top of the Dashboard

2)      Select “Submit URLs” in the left-hand navigation

3)      Paste your URLs and follow the instructions

Using Twitter

That’s right! You can use your Twitter account to help get new content indexed faster.  It’s not 100% reliable, but it can work.  Search engines are constantly crawling the stream of tweets looking for new content and links.  This is done in almost real-time.  If you tweet out your new URL, you have a good shot at getting it picked up and re-indexed by the search engines.

Now get out there and get indexed!  If you’re having trouble getting started, let us know in the comments so we can help.

Have you used this tool before?  Did you notice a jump in traffic afterward?