Web 2.0 and Google Universal Search

The advent of Google Universal Search is in the process of changing search engine optimization. In case you missed it, read my blog post about universal search here. The quick definition is that Google is now integrating it's other search engine vertical search results into the main results. This combo result means that when you search for a particular term you will see video results, news results, photo results, book results etc. in addition to the regular search result.

While primary search engine optimization techniques are still as important as ever, this change by Google means you can bring a whole host of other Web 2.0 methods and features to bear on your website which will now not just be a nice feature, but will actually improve your search engine performance.

Here's a quick checklist of some of the more important things to do, both regular and Web 2.0, that will get the attention of the new Google Universal Search

1) Blogging and the Wisdom of Crowds
What some consider the hallmarks of Web 2.0, Blogs offer interactivity and participation. If you have a blog that you don't allow people to leave comments on, then that's not really a Blog it's a bulletin board. The whole idea of a Blog is to encourage people to participate and to comment. The theory is that a collection of people is smarter than any one individual, hence the term Wisdom of the Crowd.

Blogs can bring this effect to your website. Make it interesting and insightful, then encourage people to comment. Two big plusses here are that users add content to your site which as I've mentioned many times throughout this site that content is king. The more the better as long as it's original and relevant. The second bonus is that you might actually gain some insight from comments people leave. Pay attention to what people say and you could improve your customer satisfaction, come up with a new product or maybe just realize that you were wrong about something. If you don't have a blog, start one and write in it as often as you can.

2) Social Media - Facebook and MySpace
Think MySpace is for teenagers who want to gossip with their friends? Check out the Travelocity Gnomes page. Cheesy? Maybe. Effective online marketing tool? You bet! Best of all, Google counts all those links and indexes all that content. The result is a higher search engine rank.

One quick note about these services though, be careful what information you put up. There is NO such thing as privacy on the Internet. Remember that pretty much anything you put up could haunt you for years or even decades to come. If you want to control information, these are bad places to try.. Why do these sites work for SEO? They add content and links.

3) Press Releases
While not particularly Web 2.0, Press Releases are a critical online marketing component for anyone doing business on the Web. While putting up a HTML version of your press releases on your site is a good start, the most effective way to spread your content far and wide is through a news wire. While certainly not free, launching your press release into cyberspace via a news wire will result in your press release, filled with your content and your links, all over the Internet. If you're lucky, the release might even get picked up by a real news agency. See my Press Release Article for more information on the effective use of press releases.

4) Videos and YouTube
Videos from YouTube and Google Videos are now showing up with regular frequency in regular Google SERPs. You can take advantage of this by uploading a fun and interesting video about your product or service, then tagging it appropriately in YouTube. As it becomes more popular, your video could become part of the results for search terms. Uploading your corporate video might be quick and easy, but it may not get many views or generate much interest. Try to create something unique. If people choose to link it to their blog, like this: you'll see some very strong SEO results.

5) Discussion Boards and Groups
Open forums like Groups where users can post questions, comments or concerns about your product service serve the usual two search engine purposes. More content, and a good feedback mechanism for you. A forum isn't that much different from a blog from the user feedback point of view, but they tend to be more general and of course aren't lead by you or your comments. Groups are great support features if you sell a complex product. One thing to note though is that a group will become very unsuccessful very quickly if their questions aren't answered so make sure to respond to inquires on your group boards quickly. Groups can be set up easily and for no charge though various services. Google Groups is one of the best.

6) RSS Feeds
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's a system where when a website, blog or group changes and gets updated, a subscriber can receive the new information. There are a variety of ways to receive these RSS Feeds including desktop applications, Internet browsers like FireFox and Internet Explorer, personalized home pages like My Yahoo and email. If you have a blog, and you should, it really needs to have an RSS feed of some sort.

I try to give people options so they can get information from my blog in whatever way they choose. When I post a new article in my blog, they'll automatically be sent the information in whatever format they prefer. It started out as a news service, but RSS has reached out to almost every niche on the net. Most blog software like Blogger and Wordpress come with some sort of RSS feed service (sometimes it's called Atom which is more or less the same thing), then many people use a service called Feedburner (which was just bought by Google) to enhance their RSS services and provide an opt in email option.

7) Tagging - Flckr, del.icio.us
These two sites let you tag things. In the case of Flckr it's photos. In the case of del.icio.us it's pretty much anything on the Internet; the program installs buttons on your broswer so you can bookmark and tag as you go.

A tag is nothing more than a category you assign to something. Because they aren't preset, you can get a whole cloud of related tags, and that's how the system decides what's becoming popular.

By getting yourself an account at these two places and tagging your own content, you become part of a larger community. Other people can see what you tagged, and tag it as well if they like. Then it becomes a popularity thing and the more tags you get, the more visitors are likely to find your site on them, and then get redirected to your site.

8) Search Engine Optimization
Well, if you're not sure why search engine optimization is important, feel free to browse the rest of the articles in this website. Whether you hire an in house SEO specialist, a consultant or SEO company to do the work, search engine optimization is a critical step to getting higher ranks.

9) Customer self service
A lot of people want to serve themselves on the Internet. Particularly for hotels and the travel industry, a majority of people now would rather book online than actually speak to someone. If you offer some commodity for sale and you have a website, people should be able to buy that commodity with little or no requirement for a phone call. Ecommerce web sites require some specialized setup and software but for the most part can be handled even by small home businesses these days. Various checkout and shopping cart programs are now readily available and charge minimal fees. If people can not buy your product online, you're missing out on a huge opportunity and you'll quickly be considered behind the times.

10) AJAX
AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Big words for a relatively simple concept. AJAX isn't a weird programming language, it's in fact just a concept. That concept is that various techniques can be used on your webpage that operate on small amounts of data exchange between the browser and the server. The goal is that webpages will not have to refresh every time a user enters something in a field or requests a change. Bigger net applications like Gmail make strong use of AJAX techniques. When you select something in them, only part of the page changes and there isn't a complete page reload. This can become critically important if your pages already are heavy and take a while to load. If your website has user interactivity that right now requires entire pages to reload, get an AJAX expert to rework that part of your site.

Two things happen when you move to AJAX, your users get a much more sophisticated experience, and search engines find your pages much more easy to deal with than dynamically generated, and constantly reloaded content. This is quintessentially Web 2.0. A superior interactive experience for your visitors will also result in your page becoming more popular both with visitors and with search engines. Adding these components if they are missing is usually free or low cost and doesn't require a rocket scientist to set up (I'm the perfect example).

To get the most out of Google's Universal Search, add in as many of these features to your site as you can.

If you think you're behind on Web 2.0, watch out because there are already discussion about Web 3.0, the semantic Web. Web 3.0 is the basic concept that webpages will actually be designed to be understood by machines.

Right now, Google searches are determined by a complex algorithm based on all the information available to Google's mighty computer complex. Eventually, Google's computers will be able to talk in a way to your websites server computer and actually understand what content is there, as opposed to a complex guessing game. Essentially, the World Wide Web will become one single, large database readable by any machine connected to it.

Some would say it's the beginning of basic artificial intelligence. Of course, that definition is only current right now. Things change quickly.

More of this article to come!

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