USA SEO Pros: Reporting Industry News

Techcrunch’s CrunchUp a few days ago had an interesting panel on real-time search. The panel included SEO heavyweights like Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Google’s Matt Cutts. The discussion surrounded what real-time search is, and what companies like USA SEO Pros are striving for it to be.

It’s good to know what the big whigs of search are doing to stay with the times, and while some of the panel members seemed to avoid specific answers, others weren’t afraid to address the issue head-on.

Cutts from Google’s Web spam team was asked what approach Google is taking to attack the real-time search problem, and all he would say is that they’re working on it as they always have. This was very different from the answer Microsoft’s representative gave when he mentioned Bing’s integration of Twitter results, and specified that real-time search is something they are definitely focusing on.

A few other panel members made some good points when the group was discussing the definition of real-time search and exactly what it is. The consensus when defining real-time search seemed to be that it is a collection of the consciousness of the Internet, where as traditional search engines are the Internet’s memory. Where regular search engines will bring up what has happened in the past, real-time search brings up what is happening in the now. Real-time search is what the Internet is thinking, not what it used to think.

Another point that was brought up is that real-time search needs to distance itself from the rankings that traditional search engines use. While filters should be put in place to get rid of spam and the like, there should be no ranking system when it comes to real-time search results. This is obviously  a matter of debate, but as real-time search gains popularity, this debate will no doubt take place where it needs to, and the resolution that companies come to should be interesting.

Check out video of the panel while they were at CrunchUp below:

We recently submitted the USASEOPros company blog to the new Amazon.com Kindle Blog Publisher to see what it was like, and what it can do for SEO. The process was relatively simple, and we now have a cool little Amazon.com store for the Kindle version of our company blog. Overall, submitting your blog is definitely a good idea, but there are some problems we saw with the setup they have for the program. It’s still in its beta form, so some setbacks are understandable. These setbacks may not affect USASEOPros, and they should be taken care of before the real version comes out.

One of the most obvious problems with the Kindle Blog program is that it is very simple to claim a blog that doesn’t belong to you. TechCrunch has already had some extensive experience dealing with this, as they have had their blog claimed by someone else, and have also stolen someone else’s blog (don’t worry, it was all to test out the system, no actual thieving was involved). There is also a problem with the pricing and split for blog creators: Amazon has full control over pricing the subscriptions and bloggers only get 30 percent of the take.

Going beyond those couple of obvious problems, the real question here is: what can submitting your blog to the Kindle Store do for SEO? We’re still in the beginning stages of this, but there are a few things we can tell you. First, the setup process only takes a few minutes, so even if it doesn’t do much for SEO, it still may be worth a shot. Although we haven’t seen much effect so far, we only set up the store this morning, and some stuff has already happened.

After we submitted the blog, it only took a few hours for them to verify it and set us up with a cool USASEOPros Amazon page. If this Amazon page has the juice it should, it’s possible that it may rank well for the brand name, which would be interesting. A more interesting aspect would be if Amazon throws a couple of links to our blog around their site. This could do some cool things for the SEO of the blog, but we’ll have to wait a little longer before we can see if any of that stuff happens.

If the Kindle Store does end up doing good things for SEO, Amazon better be watching carefully or they’re going to get massive amounts of spammers very quickly. It was so easy to sign up, that it seems like it would be hard to have anti-spam stuff for the program in place at this point. We’ll just have to wait and see.

UPDATE: After a night of getting pumped full of Amazon.com juice, our company blog seems to be doing noticeably better for certain keywords. While this could be some sort of coincidence, chances are the Kindle submission had something to do with this happening. Hopefully this keeps up, and let it be known that this is potentially and useful way to give your blog a bit more SEO power.

When it comes to SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click), it can be difficult to tell which one is better for business. It’s a debate that has gone back and forth for some time, and the truth is, both are needed to have the biggest effect. But just because both are useful ways of advertising a business, doesn’t mean they are equally effective. With most businesses, SEO is the best way to get traffic to your website with PPC being a nice compliment, and that’s now becoming obvious to a bigger section of the business world.

A recent study by Hitwise shows the amount of traffic coming from PPC is decreasing, while the amount of traffic from organic search engine links is going up. This suggests that SEO is becoming more effective while PPC is becoming less-so. PPC isn’t dead yet, but if this trend continues, there will be little reason to pay search engines for traffic. Instead of paying search engines, it is becoming much more cost effective to hire an SEO company to get you ranked well in organic search results.

The data Hitwise used for their study compared traffic from the last four weeks to traffic from a year ago. The amount of searches being performed aren’t going down, but the amount of traffic coming from PPC is. While the reason why PPC traffic is decreasing could be attributed to a number of things, the fact that it is decreasing is really all that matters.

The fact is: PPC traffic is going down, the reasons don’t matter as much as the end result. If PPC traffic is going down, it doesn’t make much sense to invest in it over organic SEO. It’s becoming obvious that SEO is the wave of the future when considering how to go about Internet marketing, and those who jump on the bandwagon earlier will reap more rewards.

If you need a crash course in the differences and benefits of PPC versus SEO, the video below has interviews from some prominent professionals in both fields and has some valuable information for people who are looking to get a better grasp on both concepts.

It’s definitely not perfected yet, but Google has made some changes to their search engine that could potentially affect SEO. This doesn’t mean SEO has to be affected in a negative way, but optimizers should be thinking about some new ways to get ranked in Google’s new categories in their results.

Now, when people search for anything in Google, there is a link at the top that says, “Show Options.” This link brings up categories that will organize the search search results. The categories include reviews, videos, forums, recent results and a few other super-fun categories. While the “recent results” categories seem to be an attempt to compete with Twitter, the categories SEO marketers should be focusing on are the reviews, forums, images and videos.

These are new ways to get ranked well on Google. Marketers need to figure out the best ways to get ranked for these categories, which might end up being easier than getting ranked in the main section of the search results. Make sure you post some reviews about the company you’re working for, and also post on some forums. If you haven’t made any videos yet, it’s time to sign up for YouTube and get on the ball. It’s only a matter of time before other people start doing this, and so make sure to get ranked before the competition does.

These changes go along with the recent changes made to promote and increase visibility to Google profiles. These profiles are another chance for people to get ranked in Google, but instead of for a review or video, it’s for their name.

Google seems to be trying to make their searches more relevant (imagine that!), and while this may work for some searches, like people’s names or certain videos, it probably isn’t going to be a “Twitter Killer” or change and SEO community and any major way. If you’re  search engine optimizer, you can probably relax a little bit. You’re job will change, but the job of someone in the SEO field is changing all the time. This shouldn’t be new to you, and it’s a change that can be dealt with.