This makes quite a bit of sense.  On November 3, 2011, Official Google Blog writer Amit Singal says in his blog titled Giving You Fresher, More Recent Search Results, “Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.”  I think this as a great analogy for the thinking behind the creation of the Freshness Update.

Fresh content is something that I have always considered important for our campaigns at Webtyde.  As part of our services that are included in each of our SEO Campaigns and SEO Monthly Management, we update a website and its files monthly and make various changes in code and copy.  We  recommend clients post one blog posting per week, with one posting per month minimum.  Due to this official announcement, we are now more aggressively updating our clients’ websites to take advantage of the new Freshness Update and recommending clients post as many blogs as they can with relevant content.

If you are updating your website and/or blog yourself, I recommend updating as often as you can with new and relevant information.  Never copy someone else’s content without giving them due credit and/or a link to the original work.  Try to create useful information for your viewers.  Blogs don’t always have to be essay or novel length.  They can be quick thoughts form your industry experience, tips, recipes, videos, instructional or informative photos, a opinion about a new product or service, an announcement about your company or products/services, or just a friendly well wishing for a wonderful holiday or event.

The ultimate way to decide if your content is relevant is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask yourself, “Would I get something out of this information on this website?”  This will help guide you to properly updating and refreshing your website and blogs for Google’s new Freshness Update algorithm.

Local SEO

Local SEO has seen a huge change in Q4 2010.  We saw the integration of Google Local Map results into the organic results.  This means that your Google Places page (formerly known as your Google Local page) can now place in the rankings even if you DO NOT have a website.  Most local businesses have a combination of a Google Places listing AND a website that is geo-targeted, so those clients are showing the top rankings.

As a result, Webtyde Internet Marketing now offers Local SEO package services, comprised of Local Business Listings (LBL) Management services.  You can get optimized local listings created in Google, Yahoo, and Bing for as low as $29.95 /mo with a $199 setup fee for our Local Basic package.  The next two packages up in our Local SEO Local Business Management services are the Local Advanced package, which consists of creating optimized Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Merchant Circle, and Superpages with monthly management starting at $39.95 /mo + $249 setup fee. Our most comprehensive Local SEO package is our Local Aggressive with Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Merchant Circle,  Superpages, Facebook, and Twitter optimized listing creations and monthly management for $49.95 /mo with a one-time $299 setup fee.

Included in your monthly management fees are monthly updates of your listings, including two Facebook posts and two Twitter Tweets per month.  Each of these packages help maintain the freshness of your listings, which we all know Google loves.  You will also receive valuable tips and recommendations which you can implement for your business to help rankings, such as requesting feedback from customers on your listings, etc…

National SEO

As we see local results taking up much of the shorter phrases in each geo-graphic location, one would wonder how you will be able to compete nationally against local companies.  It has become imperrative to have a current, well analysed keyword campaign as the base for your National SEO campaign.  Longer-tailed keyword phrases (ie: “fresh pecans” instead of  “pecans”, or “holiday candy gifts” instead of “candy”) and having more of these keyword phrases are the key to 2011 national SEO campaigns.  Plus, longer-tailed keyword phrases will send you more qualified traffic to really concentrate on getting that click-through and sell your products and services online.

We offer SEO packages with flexible initial and monthly payments to get you started without having to majorly invest your marketing budget, while seeing a great return on your investment.

International SEO

We are expanding this year into International territory.  Webtyde welcomes one of our new International clients, Profile Tyrecenter in Westland, located just outside of The Hague in Holland.  Our Local SEO and National SEO services can be applied anywhere served by major search engines.  We help create localized (or translated) content, work directly with websites of various languages, and optimized for your specific geo-graphic markets.  Because the United States is usually the first application of Google’s major changes, we offer cutting edge knowledge of search engines in most markets around the world.  Stay WAY ahead of your competition by contacting us today.  We offer conference calls via Skype.

eCommerce SEO

The eCommerce SEO website traffic and sales statistics are trickling in from our clients after the holiday eCommerce madness settles and they are looking like the best our clients have had.  Remember, folks, it’s not just about getting people to see your website, but to get them to act and purchase your products or services.  Webtyde Internet Marketing educates and empowers our clients to make the best of their Internet marketing campaigns.

Contact us today to get your campaign in full force by next holiday season.

Individual Internet Marketing Services

We now offer a variety of individual Internet marketing services for those people who just need a little help, are constrained by a tight budget, or just want to do one piece at a time.  No client is too big or too small for us to help.  Please let us know how we can help.

I have assembled an amazing team over 2010, made some strong partnerships with talented complimentary companies, and I’m looking forward to bringing you the best services so far in 2011.  Call us today to reserve your project since spaces are limited this year.  I look forward to talking with each of you.

Happy 2011!

Best Regards,
Allyson Seitzler, Principal
Webtyde Internet Marketing, LLC

Google created Google Health in 2009 which, like WebMD, shows results for illnesses or medical related questions.  Google Places (formerly Google Local results pages) has been developed to compete with Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other local review websites.

Large companies are clearly seeing the value of Google rankings, and the impact of not having their websites rank.

What This Means For You

What this means for you is that anything related to your business and website must be properly registered and optimized for all Google products.  This doesn’t mean you should ignore your Yelp reviews, it means you need to make sure to keep your listings current and consistent as a major factor in your local SEO and/or national Internet marketing campaign.  For Local SEO, we offer monthly Local Business Listing (LBL) Management services.  Prices start at $19.95 for monthly management of your Google, Yahoo, and Bing Local business listings and review management.  With our monthly services, clients are notified when different actions on behalf of LBL owners are recommended, such as soliciting more online reviews from your customers.  This levels the playing field for local businesses to compete with their large corporate counterparts in their local markets.

While these huge businesses fight it out with Google, you should take this opportunity to optimize your website AND your local listings to make sure Google knows enough about your business to put it in front of potential customers.

One way to remain honest is to update your content as often as you say you will in your sitemap.xml.  There are options of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly so the SEs know when to revisit your website. Even though they usually visit much more often, it shows Google that you are true to your word when you update according to what your sitemap.xml says.  Our clients show consistent ranking improvements due to monthly updates, versus our non-updated test websites.  Our non-updated websites show a steady downward trend in rankings depending on how competitive their keyword phrases are.

Just remember, Google loves fresh content almost as much as they love honesty.

This is a great advancement for technology, connectivity, and laziness, but for those of us who create and market websites, this adds a totally new variable we must consider when creating and marketing those websites.

There will now be a “10 foot UI” (UI=User Interface) which means that viewers will be about 10 feet away, or sofa-to-TV distance, and the images will need to be optimized for this new medium.  Some of what “Optimized for TV” means:

• Text will need to be large enough for “10 foot UI”
• Site navigation can be performed through button arrows on the remote, more like tabbing on your laptop computer, rather than by using a mouse pointer
• Selectable elements need to provide a visual queue when selected

There are MANY new recommendations and requirements Google is outlining for websites to be more user friendly on Google TV.   As for now, I’ll be awaiting my test version of Google TV to give you a full review.

Predictions

I’m predicting Google TV to take a while to catch on if it does.  If you have an extremely aggressive Internet marketing campaign, and already have a dedicated mobile site created for users of mobile smart devices, then I would recommend you jump now to create another Google TV version of your website to accommodate new Google TV users.  For those of you without the time, budget, or desire at this point to make custom changes, I wouldn’t worry about it until you start seeing laptop sales drop and Google TV devices flying off the shelves at your local electronics store.

For your next updates on your website, I would recommend making sure you have CSS navigation with a link hover state added if you do not already have this.  If you are an existing client of Webtyde’s, you would already have been urged to have CSS navigation installed.  The CSS navigation will enable Google TV users to navigate your website.

Here is the official Google Webmaster Central Blog entry:

Optimizing sites for TV

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 9:51 PM
Webmaster Level: All

Just as mobile phones make your site accessible to people on the go, Google TV makes your site easily viewable to people lounging on their couch. Google TV is a platform that combines your current TV programming with the web and, before long, more apps. It’s the web you love, with the TV you love, all available on the sofa made for you. Woohoo!

Because Google TV has a fully functioning web browser built in, users can easily visit your site from their TV. Current sites should already work, but you may want to provide your users with an enhanced TV experience — what’s called the “10-foot UI” (user interface). They’ll be several feet away from the screen, not several inches away, and rather than a mouse on their desktop, they’ll have a remote with a keyboard and a pointing device.

For example, here’s YouTube for desktop users versus what we’re calling “YouTube Leanback” — our site optimized for large screens:

YouTube desktop version on the left, YouTube Leanback on the right

See our Spotlight Gallery for more examples of TV-optimized sites.

What does “optimized for TV” mean?

It means that, for the user sitting on their couch, your site on their TV is an even more enjoyable experience:

• Text is large enough to be viewable from the sofa-to-TV distance.
• Site navigation can be performed through button arrows on the remote (a D-pad), rather than mouse/touchpad usage
• Selectable elements provide a visual queue when selected (when you’re 10 feet away, it needs to be really, really obvious what selections are highlighted)
• and more…

How can webmasters gain a general idea of their site’s appearance on TV?

First, remember that appearance alone doesn’t incorporate whether your site can be easily navigated by TV users (i.e. users with a remote rather than a mouse). With that said, here’s a quick workaround to give you a ballpark idea of how your site looks on TV. (For more in-depth info, please see the “Design considerations” in our optimization guide.)

1. On a large monitor, make your window size 1920 x 1080.
2. In a browser, visit your site at full screen.
3. Zoom the browser to 1.5x the normal size. This is performed in different ways with different keyboards. For example, in Chrome if you press ctrl+ (press ctrl and + at the same time) twice, that’ll zoom the browser to nearly 1.5x the initial size.
4. Move back 3 x (the distance between you and the monitor).
5. Check out your site!

And don’t forget, if you want to see your site with the real thing, Google TV enabled devices are now available in stores.

How can you learn more?

Our team just published a developer site, with TV optimization techniques, at code.google.com/tv/web/.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

First off, I want to make sure you understand the terminology.  An algorithm is a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, as for finding the greatest common divisor.  Google’s actual algorithm is, and always will be, a mystery and closely guarded secret in order to protect the integrity of their search results.  It’s about monitoring every change Google makes and following right behind.  No matter how ethical a campaign you run, there will still be changes you will need to make in order to keep up with your competition on Google.

It’s not just about what your competitors are doing and matching or outdoing them, you must also take advice from your SEO expert to help you update your website in order to keep up with Google’s most recent changes.  Being the diligent SEO expert that I am, I get the luxury of having an industry email sent to me every morning at around 4am CT, seven days a week, and I get to read through the 40 or so article and blog entries each morning that have been posted by the industry experts.  I’m very happy for the information and it keeps me very informed so I can keep my clients at the top.

Our SEO maintenance usually consist of a yearly contract designed to maintain and enhance your existing positions by adding a variety of strategic options, as well as a year of monitoring and making changes to your website as Google changes.  Many years ago, it was considered absolutely acceptable to solicit links and give reciprocal links back to those who gave your website a link.  Outbound links are now considered to be negative and we had to make immediate changes as soon as we discovered this major change in Google’s algorithm or all our clients would have started to perform poorly in the rankings.  All our clients who were in an SEO maintenance contract were adjusted and fixed for free and actually saw sharp rises in their rankings.  The people who were not under a maintenance contract were left to fend for themselves, or more likely, sink with many others who were not aware of the changes.

With the fight for Internet search supremacy fierce and the speed of changes white-lining between Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, SEO maintenance is a wise investment for your SEO campaign.  Whether you are in Google Local or in Google’s organic rankings, every campaign should be maintained in order to remain competitive and keep the high rankings.

Yesterday, Google announced it launched Google Buzz on it’s official blog. With the competition being so tight right now between Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter to capture and keep the attention of the social media masses, Google is targeting Twitter and Facebook directly. I gave it a spin today and set up Webtyde Internet Marketing’s official account.

So far I feel it’s much more like Twitter than Facebook. Most likely because I haven’t set up the other media which is pulled from Picasa, Flickr, or Google Reader. Buzz updates your status feed instantly like Twitter, let’s others follow your updates, let’s you follow others status updates, and even has it’s own mobile software portals already. At this point, I’m not sure I need another instant way to update my status, but rather another me to update it for me.

A nice feature in Google Buzz is that it does integrate Twitter into your feeds so at least your followers can follow you in one place rather than two. I imagine Google Buzz integration/compatibility will be next on Twitter’s agenda.

I feel like the way they have Buzz set up will probably give it a legitimate chance to compete with Facebook. With Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, and Twitter integrated as options to share media and the *prettier* image viewer (which looks rather nice), it should give Facebook a run for their money.

What this means for rankings: Not entirely sure yet. Definitely more exposure and inbound links. It’s up in the air how people will take to it and if it will stick.

I’ll be looking forward to where the new feed URLs will land in the rankings once Google gets to indexing and ranking them all. As always, I recommend creating an account if you have the time because, well, it’s Google.