Search engines initially weren’t very advanced. All search results were displayed in alphabetical order. Optimizing your web page was easy! Post that; things got a little difficult. Search engines paid attention to keywords. SEO service meant optimizing for the most appropriate keywords. And success was yours! Search engines got smarter at ranking and all. They now looked at meta tags too. Then came the era of linking. SEO service changed again. Finally, blogging and baiting became important. By this time, social bookmarking and social networking got popular. Well, the latest buzz is “quality”. Without quality, there is no value in any other SEO activity.

So, if you feel SEO service has changed – it has. And now it has a much wider scope and is a more challenging task. Competition is higher too. With today’s scenario, both search engines and SEO’s need to work hand in hand to be beneficial to both.

• Changes to the freshness algorithm to return the freshest and the most relevant results.
• Autocomplete is now faster.
• Spelling corrections in Autocomplete.
• Improved accuracy in spelling correction in search results. Eg. Someone searching for weird and you spell it as wierd, Google will show you results for the correct spelling, (weird) – of course they’ll let you know.
• Better results with correct spellings for rare queries.
• Timely results for recurring events.
• Panda Update for high quality sites – yes 3.2 is released.
• Auto detecting the language of the original query and displaying more accurate results
• Saudi Arabia users can now use an English Interface!
• Image search now has better scrolling with the new changes in the Google algorithm.
• Image search on the whole is improved – says Google
• Related searched at the bottom of the screen are now made more relevant and useful.
• News results are more timely and improved by the new changes in the Google algorithm.
• Google Instant can now automatically turn itself off if the speed of the computer is slow. (this was possible only with a slow internet connection previously).

So, lot many changes from Google in the Google Algorithm for providing users with quality search results. Let us as SEO experts make ourselves aware of these and use them in our SEO efforts.

Yes, it’s true – success of your ad campaign depends on the effectiveness of your call to action button. Great – now that we have established the importance of an effective call to action, let us also take a look at a few tips to create a call to action:

• Maintain clarity in the design
• Placement of the call to action button is important. Place it such that visitors can easily locate it.
• Lots of scrolling to locate a call to action is a bad idea.
• Persuasive, attractive and attention grabbing design will surely help
• Maintain just one call to action, or customer will get confused. Do not give choices and options.
• Give clear instructions. “Request Quote”, “Call Now” etc.

These were targeted towards certain websites that provide illegal downloads (like thepiratebay). The supporters of the act feel that piracy deprives the content creators of income.

There has been a lot of criticism against this act. The bill critics on the other hand are of the opinion that the bill is not in line with the architecture of the internet. The bill also says that, if there is any site that allows users to post content, and is designed in such a way that users can violate copyright, is a felon. So, the site does not even have to be an illegal one, if it provides enough space to enable copyright infringement, it will be labelled as an infringing site that promotes theft of U.S. intellectual property.

Well, this is definitely not how the internet works! Websites like Wikipedia, YouTube have a lot of content and have openly protested this act by going dark this week. The protest against SOPA and PIPA has definitely intensified.

Well, now that Google has taken a step forward and introduced Googlebot Mobile for smartphone users, let us as SEO experts ensure that our mobile specific web pages are appropriately optimized. Ensure you follow these tips for your mobile website:

• Your mobile site must be verified in Google Webmaster Tools
• Ensure that you have a sitemap for your mobile website (include the <mobile:mobile/> tag) – rest is same as the desktop website sitemap.
• It’s a good idea to link your mobile website to your desktop website – and the other way round.
• Other general SEO practices should be followed for mobiles sits too – link building being an important one.

When a visitor looks at your home page, they need to feel sure that they will find what they were looking for. Generally visitors are looking for some information, some solution to their problem or some specific product / service. So, ensure that your web design includes appropriate images, easy navigation and exact information. Well, keep scrolling to the minimum. Create a web design that “leads” the customer to what they are looking for – never let them guess where to click next!

Now, searchers shall have integrated search results – Personal, Public and social. Currently only Google+ data shall be available for inclusion of personal search information. Facebook and Twitter information has not been included for this purpose – just Google Plus. This is because, Facebook and Twitter currently do not allow deep crawling to locate information.

A Good move overall, in Google’s words, “We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships”. To state clearly, it includes three new features:

• Personal Results: to search for information that was shared in your personal profile – posts, photos etc. Includes the ones’ you shared within your network and the one’s shared with you by people in your network.
• Profiles in Search: Autocomplete and search results – to be able to find people and profiles that you might want to follow.
• People and Pages: to help you find Google plus pages of your interested and easily follow them.

Great many personalization changes coming up from Google. These are available for signed in users. Also, currently for Google.com and English Language.

Social Media

Social Media has been a huge hype in the recent years. In 2012, what different would it be? Marketers will need it more and more for sure. Looking back at the past few years, we have seen Facebook grow and today it has more than 800 million users monthly. Well, Twitter an already popular social network, is gaining popularity in the mobile world too. It is integrated in iPhone and many Androids. Facebook has become an interface that integrates features for personal use and business use including marketing requirements too. It’s got chat, messages (like email), wall posts, ads and fan pages for promotions – everything that you can think about in a social media. Similarly with Google+ entering the social media market, users have a whole list of services to take advantage of and use social media more effectively.

Mobile usage is on the rise. Well, to be very specific, smartphones and tablets are getting viral. And social media expansion definitely includes the integration in smartphones. Users will definitely benefit by this mobilized access to social media. So, in 2012, social media is not going anywhere. It’s in fact going to be more accessible, more available and more mobile!

There are many ways to promote your content in online marketing. With the ever increasing scope of customer interaction online, today we have a wide range of methods we can use to market our content. Social media is a good place to make your content visible to the masses. Spread the word to related websites/bloggers by actively letting them know about your content. Well, your existing customers are the best channel you could use. They are the ones’ who will be able to better spread awareness of you products supported with excellent content.

As per Google, the only promotion activity to be used was online ads. And any other paid methods are not in the best interests of users. Google also said that they are looking at what can be done to ensure that this does not repeat.

Well there’s no escaping a penalty when guidelines are violated. Google has penalized Chrome too. And www.google.com/chrome gets a lower page rank in search engine results. This is for at least 60 days. And Chrome will have to submit a reconsideration request like any other company.

Google has truly proven that it follows ethics and abides by it’s own guidelines – there are no exception – even for it’s own products and absolutely no reasons one can give for violating guidelines.