For about a year now the buzz all around the Internet was, what else, Google related. But this buzz had to do with the actual way that Google would track and thus rank your website. Now it is finally here and while some may not be ready for the changes that come with this historical decision made by the search engine giant, the new rules are here to stay; at least for now.

The new way that Google will track and rank has to do with real time, meaning that fresh content is now more important than ever. Content has always been king with Google but now you will have to really be ultra fresh with what you are putting out or risk seeing your rankings fall by the wayside.

This brings up many questions. Number one is how will Google go about tracking and ranking websites now?

You will still have to use keywords obviously but more than that you will have to go above and beyond simply SEO techniques done on your web pages. Now you will have to constantly change or update those pages and keep proper SEO techniques in the process. No longer will you be able to create, or have anyone else create, your webpages, make them live and then leave them alone. This type of content production will simply result in your pages eventually being overlooked for fresh content being made available from your competition.

According to most, Google will now lend heavy favor to the places where the freshest information is available, namely the social media sites. Do you have a Twitter, FaceBook, and MySpace page? If not, you better get them in a hurry. These social networking sites can no longer be ignored or avoided. If you want to show up on the SERPs now you will have to learn to love these types of fresh content producing outlets.

Another question is how much abuse will occur with this new system? This is a tough one to answer because the system implementation has just taken effect. But just as with anything else that Google roles out, you can bet there will be plenty of people doing their best to SPAM away and break the rules until Google determines what is and isn’t acceptable. Even after Google comes out with it ‘guidelines’ as to abuse there will still be those who will continue to bend the rules as much as they can.

A further concern raised with this new type of real time tracking is the fact that what will be considered fresh and thus worthy of being ranked tops in the SERPs will be whatever it is that people are currently talking about. The problem with this type of ranking is that what is popular today may not be popular next week, maybe not even tomorrow. So how will companies deal with this problem?

Basically there are only two options with this new scenario. The first is to continue to do what you have been doing all along and hope for the best. However, this will more than likely see your website rankings plummet like a lead balloon. The other, more plausible option is to be sure that you or someone else is constantly putting out fresh content for you website. This can be easier said than done and who has the time to sit on the computer all day posting to social networks and updating web pages?

The short answer is probably nobody. But you know that your competition will be hitting it hard so what can you do? Find and hire an Internet marketing professional that can not only handle your updating on web pages but one who is also an expert in social networking. You need to be wary in this department, now more than ever. Any Internet marketer you now consider must be state of the art and on the cutting edge of all aspects of Internet marketing and you can ill afford anything less.

Again, the new way of Google tracking and ranking is here and active and you have no choice but to deal with it. It is only a matter of time before Yahoo and Ping start to institute similar changes to their ranking systems and you know that it will probably be sooner rather than later. Don’t wait to get going on social media and updating because as the old saying goes, ‘If you snooze, you lose,’ and in this case it is your online presence that will suffer the most.

Using Google Alerts to Your Advantage

Google has come out with some time saving and useful tools over the past few years and one of the most useful and powerful free tools that they offer is Google Alerts. With Google Alerts you can be notified via e-mail when there are blogs, websites, or news snippets that contain certain keywords that you choose. This not only allows you a handy way to keep track of topics you are interested in but it opens up a whole world of online leverage that you can use to your advantage.

There are a number of different ways in which Google Alerts can help you to thrive online, here are just a few:

Your Website: Create an alert for your domain name leaving off the www. This will allow you to track how often your website is talked about online.

Your Personal Name: If you are looking to become an authority in your market place then it is imperative that you are mentioned frequently. By creating an alert using your personal name you will be able to see how often you are mentioned and thus better gauge what is and isn’t working for you as far as spreading your name online goes.

Your Business Name: Creating an alert for your company name will allow you to see what other websites may be mentioning your business’ name. This is common practice with the big boys as it allows companies to send thanks when positive remarks are posted and allows them to address issues that may arise due to a negative posting.
Your Blog: Using the same methods as you did for your domain name create an alert for the blog that you host. This will allow you to see who like and dislikes you blog.

Your Articles: When you employ article marketing as part of your online marketing strategy you can create alerts using the title of the articles. This allows you to see where your articles are being posted and re-used.

Your Industry: Stay in the forefront of the industry in which you are in by creating alerts using keywords and key phrases which will provide you with the most up to date news about your industry possible.

Your competition: By using your competitor’s domain names you can created alerts about them and conduct your own personal online espionage. See who is talking about your competition and what is being said about them.

Your Leads: Create alerts using your leads names and what you will receive in return is a whole host of information that you can then use to close the deal.

Your Best Clients: Set up alerts for all your top clients so that you can stay abreast of any major happenings that go on with them. If something big happens, such as a merger or an acquisition, you can quickly send over a note of congratulations.

Of course to maximize your efforts it is important to know how to streamline your alerts. To do this you have to choose quality words for your alerts. This can be accomplished in one of the following ways utilizing Google’s search method:

Exact Keyword Search: If you conduct a search for the word plumb, Google will also return everything that is related such as plumber, and plumbing. However, you can get result for just one word if you use a “+” at the beginning of the word. In this case you would search, +plumb.

Exact Key Phrase Search: If you search plumbers in Atlanta, you will get everything back containing those words; even if they are not next to each other. Capture what you are after by using quotes to get only those words used in a phrase. In this example you would type, “Plumbers in Atlanta.

Alternate Keyword: If you want to get results for one word or another you simply type in OR between the words. Be sure or is capitalized and remember to enclose in quotes to streamline your returns.

Like Keywords: If you are looking for synonyms use the “~” symbol in front of the word.

Once you have found the words and or phrases you want to keep track of, go ahead and set up your alerts. There really is no better way to keep track of everything related to your online presence. Utilizing your imagination and Google Alerts can help you to stay light years ahead of your competition.

Written by Mb

So you have created an iPhone App and are all set to throw it up on Apple’s AppStore and have tons of people buy it and in return make you rich. Well toss that plan out the window because those days are gone forever. Everyone and their brother is in a mad dash to create the next big iPhone App and as proof, you can now choose from over 40,000 Apps on Apple’s website and that number grows by the day.

To be truly successful in the iPhone App market you have to follow certain procedures when it comes to marketing. Just as with anything else that is marketed online, you need to make sure that your iPhone App is developed properly and is going to reach who you want it to reach. Above all else you need to know how to price your App so that people will actually want to buy it.

While this all may send your head spinning, if you follow procedure, you will be okay. Here are some strategies to help you develop and market your iPhone App to its fullest potential:

Recognize your App’s value by studying your competition: Before you can figure out what makes your App so special you have to first look at all of your competitors. Once you see what you are up against begin to list all of the features about your App that make it unique when compared to all the others. This can include style, sounds, graphics, etc. This comparison will also help you to figure out a price you will charge for your App later on.
Identify your target market: Who will you be targeting with your App? Are you going after the teen market, the young adult market, or a combination of both? How will you interest your target market?

Figure out a price: What will you charge for your App? The old strategy was to charge $0.99 so that you could eventually gain popularity and move into the top 100 Apps, but being as there are so many Apps now available this is much easier said than done. Instead you need to take the time, as mentioned earlier, to see what your competitors are charging. If your App is as unique as you think it is then you shouldn’t be afraid to go a bit higher than your competition. This will allow you some wiggle room and lets you try different discounts and promotions down the road if need be.

Deliver you message: This comes in two ways; by way of a powerful description on the Apple AppStore page and an equally powerful description on your own website. Each description should complement the other and they should be seamlessly linked. Use your website to show additional features of your App such as extra screen shots. You should always have a ‘BUY NOW’ button or link on your website that will take the visitor directly to the AppStore so that they can purchase your App with the greatest of ease. Take advantage of Social Media sites such as Twitter, FaceBook, and MySpace as well as blog sites to help spread the word about your App and thus create a buzz about it before you ever even sell one.

This of course will all fall at the wayside if you do not implement a marketing plan for your App. If you make a marketing plan and stick to it you are going to be much more likely to be successful at selling your App than if you just blindly throw your App up on the AppStore and expect for everyone to instantly want it. Just as with anything in life, a good plan is crucial to being effective.

The days of wishful thinking for Apps is long gone and success will be reserved for those who have a clear cut marketing strategy well before their App is a finished product. Even if you have already begun to create your App or have finished it, you owe it to yourself to create and implement a marketing strategy. Do it right and your sales will flourish, do it wrong and you will be out of the App game before you ever had a chance to really play.

Real Time Indexing is Changing all the Rules

For years now Google has said that it loves good fresh relevant content. However, the way that Google has historically indexed was on a periodic basis meaning from time to time. Now Google is aggressively pushing Google Caffeine and has recently said that it will now begin to index sites by way of real time. So why is this important?

With the old way of indexing it allowed for business owners to actually have the time to formulate a game plan by which they could plan and execute over a bit of a period of time. Now it seems that Google will give the biggest amount of favor to those who have the time and the resources to be constantly updating their website and those who are putting the freshest new content out to the web. While this is wonderful news for web surfers it is disastrous news for those who do not the time to constantly be online Tweeting and blogging their lives away.

This presents a problem for any business that is dependent on search for their notoriety. No matter whether they rely on organic clicks or paid clicks, Google’s new way of indexing will forcibly change their approach.

As with anything else that Google does, website owners either have to conform in order to survive online or risk falling be the wayside and lose Internet exposure. According to some Google Caffeine blogs, Google is going to process over 1 billion web pages in order to institute their real time indexing. This type of indexing is aimed at finding the freshest and thus newest content on the web and Google will look at and favor factors such as:

Google News Content
New Website Pages
Freshly Updated Website Pages
Google Blog Search Content
FriendFeed Update
Twitter Tweets
Indenti.ca Updates
Jaiku Updates
TwitArmy Updates
MySpace (In the future)
FaceBook (In the future)

According to Google it will be resources such as these that will represent the latest and freshest content that the web has to offer and so they will get the greatest amount of consideration when it comes to real time indexing.

Anyone who is into promoting their website, or any other website for that matter, knows that content is king. You have heard this countless times no doubt, but it is now truer than ever before.  Now it is imperative to have organic search results be more fluid in regards to content. Even the rules of paid searches will be altered. Now it will not be enough to simply link your PPC campaign to a specific landing page on your site and just leave it alone. Now you will be forced to be sure that the landing page is not only done with proper SEO techniques in mind, but is also updated on a regular basis to keep the content fresh and therefore appealing to the search engine giant.

Now the big question; what does this mean for you? Well to begin with you will now have to be extra diligent and more active than you ever have been when it comes to your website and its promotions. It is no longer going to be enough to have a great looking website that is full of relevant information that was designed with SEO in mind. Now that website and all things that correspond with it, such as blogs and social media, will have to be continuously updated and kept fresh.

There will no doubt be a number of businesses that struggle with these new rules that Google is laying out and that can be a good or a bad thing for you. Bad if you simply sit idly by and watch your competitors scream past you and good if you take a more proactive role in your website and all the content out on the web that involves your business.

Even if you don’t have the time or the dedication to give to this new method of real time indexing, it is here to stay and you will have to deal with it one way or another. If you cannot deal with it yourself it will be more important than ever to have a trustworthy Internet marketing firm on your side. But remember you have to get with a firm that is up to date with the entire goings on of Google Caffeine and what lies ahead. Google is waiting; how will you respond?

Written by Mark Bove’ ,

In the ultimate in Big Brother mentality, Google announced last week that now everyone who uses their search engine will have their searches tracked and recorded. Google is spinning this in a positive light and claims no ill will with the methods. According to the search engine giant, they are doing this in an attempt to personalize the search results that each person sees as they conduct searches.

What Google does is make a recording of all the searches you conduct on a regular basis and what links you are clicking as result of those searches. If in your searches you continually click on one sites link in a favorable manner then eventually that site will pop up on the first page when it may not have otherwise. So if you are into eBay and your searches end with a lot of eBay click throughs, then eventually when you simply conduct a search for light bulbs, you may see eBay as one of the top results.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, wrote a lengthy article about this very subject on the day it happened and you can access that article here. If you still don’t believe it you can see for yourself by visiting this link which is straight from Google’s own blog. Freaked out yet? Wait there’s more.

While this is not a new tactic from Google or any other search engine for that matter, what is new is that Google will now be doing this regardless of whether or not you have opted in or not and they will also do this even if you are not logged into your Google account. While you can opt out, the very fact that you have to opt out because you are included in this whether you like it or not is going to ruffle many feathers.

Now the good news is that you can easily opt out by reading the instructions on the Google blog listed above and even if you don’t there is supposedly no way that anyone can view what you have searched. Also, the results faze themselves out after 180 days so really you may or may not think that it is a big deal. But the fact remains that Google is now collecting more information on everyone and many people will be participating in an event that they may not want to simply because they don’t know any better.

Google has already been using a reference of past searches in order to decide what advertising a person sees when they are surfing the net and now this. It seems unimaginable that one company has the right to know so much about you. Then again, they do provide a great service and for the most part that service is free. But where do you draw the line on privacy?

Is it really anyone’s business where you spend your free time on the Internet? The sad truth is that whether it is or it isn’t, Google has the right to do what they do and if you want to use their services then you have to pay the piper so to speak.

If this is troubling to you then you have to be sure that you follow through with the disabling of the new personalization searches and be sure that you stay opted out. But as far as staying off the grid goes, forget it. We now live in a world where so much of our information is taken on a daily basis and many times we don’t even know about it. Even if we do know about it, the horrifying fact is, there is nothing we can do about it.