Traffic Building

How Lack of Trust Can Negatively Effect Your Search Engine Ranking

How Lack of Trust Can Negatively Effect Your Search Engine Ranking

Marketing your small business is rooted in creating lasting and trusting relationships with your prospects and customers. Google understands this. Bing understands this. Do you?

The Triple Threat: Search, Social, and Engagment

Change. Innovation. Speed.

That's how the internet works now.   

Remember when everything was linear? There was a beginning, middle, end.

Now content flows in every direction. And it comes in a larger variety of formats and platforms than we ever dared to dream possible.  

Social media and mobile usage are only going to grow and evolve. The mass adoption is going to continue. And people are going to adjust their online publishing as we adapt to all these new behaviors. 

Most people still think of search as our default discovery tool for information. For many it's true. Google still rules the online world. Bing is still making their search better. They're both evolving as they add more information coming from social media. 

If you have a reasonable idea of what you're looking for you head to your search toolbar or search engine of choice. You type in a query and off you go. Into the land of discovery. You're in search of the best answer for whatever you need.

How does the future look for search? What are teens doing? Kids?  

Do they think of it as "Googling" something or is it all just the "internet"?  

As more people adopt behavior patterns presented by browsers such as Chrome doesn't it just become content?

 It melds. It's the same. You type something into the address bar whether it's a website or query. It's just content.

For the future there isn't anything "magical" about this. Nothing special. And it certainly isn't limited to her computer. 

Content, or information, transcends devices and lives wherever they live. It's on their iPads. It's on their phones. It's on their Xboxs and is invading every other aspect of their lives.  

Information is ubiquitous

They're growing up digital. And we all have to keep this in mind as we move forward in our efforts to capture our audience. We connect and engage where they live.  

The revolution is global. And search is important in how and why we connect. What type of content we create. How we put it out there.  

Social and search are synergistic now more than ever and that isn't going to change.  

Are you ready? 

 

Older Content Does Not Equal Irrelevant

We don't live in a world of limited shelf space.

And that's a good thing.

In Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More he opens up with a story about an older book, almost out of print, whose sales were suddenly revived by its proximity to a newer book covering the same topic.

Recommendation engines in online bookstores picked up on the buying habits of its customers and began to pair the two together. People bought in this manner and an infinite loop was created. Over time the older book began to outsell the newer book.

green bottle and friends by Damien Franco

It's a great story that illustrates something that most of us are already coming to terms with. We no longer live in a world that shuns older work. Not entirely anyway.

Because of the internet and it's ability to bring older, relevent, content to the masses on a daily basis we have opportunities to sell things beyond their launch date. This is true whether you sell fine art prints through your online gallery or whether you have past client work you want to show off as proof of your work.

When we blog, tag, and push our content out into the Internet we create little bits of information that is waiting for discovery. Take a look back on the work you've done in the past. Is there a way to push it back to the front of people's minds?

If your older work is still relevent, if it's still timely, then you are allowed (encourage really) to tweet about it.

Look through your archives. I'm sure you'll find a goldmine of work that is evergreen. Push it out there. If it needs updating then do so. Then push it out there.

As a photographer I take a look back at some of my older photographs to see if I've missed something meaningful. Especially if it's something I hadn't shared before. When Adobe releases a new version of Lightroom and they've tweaked their processing I like to look into those older photographs and see what the new filters can do with them.

Take one day a month to comb through your archives (whether that's your art archives or your blog archives) and see what can be worked on, improved upon, and pushed back into the streams of your followers.

How Search and Social Work Together For Local Businesses

Consider this situation: A family of 4 is planning a vacation to Houston, TX. They live outside of Texas so they don't really know anyone in Texas to ask for direct advice. How do they plan this trip?