This thinking brings me back to a post I read in December on Google’s blog. I have had it on my mind since then and want to share it. In the post, Google talks about a business owner who treated his customers badly. The twist in this is that the business owner treated his customers poorly on purpose so that he would rank higher in the search engines. Most negative comments he received online had a link back to his website. Inbound links (or links pointing to your website) are considered to be the same as a recommendation for your website. Those recommendations translate into higher listing results. For a while, all of these negative comments were boosting his business.

After finding out about this, Google adjusted their algorithm to fix this problem and will continue to work to punish people who try similar methods.

Quite simply, this tactic comes down to manipulation. Manipulation methods like these may have short-term success, but they tend to eventually backfire and hurt your search results over time. So, be careful about trying to trick the search engines and focus on how you can help your clients and potential customers.

Here is the blog post: Being bad to your customers is bad for business

predicts Internet search queries and shows results as soon as someone begins to type, adjusting the results as each successive letter is typed.

Source: NY Times

After reading the NY Times article I tested out Google Instant and I have to admit that this new search feature is fast, incredibly fast. I did feel it was a little distracting as I typed, though. Distractions aside, GI might also create potential problems for website owners trying to find their place in the search engine rankings.

Possible Paid Problems
According to the article, a lot of Adwords advertisers are concerned about Google Instant because it might drastically change the way people search. This is because with each letter a person types they see instantaneously-updated results. As they see these instant results, people are more likely to stop typing without having to dig deeper using a very specific search term. As a lot of people begin using only broad search engine terms, highly targeted keyword terms in Adsense will not be as effective. Adsense advertisers will then be forced to use broader keywords, which are also more expensive.

Possible Organic Search Problems
The other potential problem is related to the Google advertiser problem above. Google Instant might also change how search engine optimization is handled. As an example, in the past our company might have had to only really compete for the search term “triune designs, Matthews, NC” because that is how people would search for us. Today, though, we have to make sure we also compete with “triune designs” or just “triune” because people would have already seen their search results change six times. With each additional keystroke they might see our possible triune competitors that much sooner.

The potential concerns over Google’s changes help to provide a reminder that no one can simply promise exact search engine results for your website. The only people who have complete control over the results are the search engines themselves. The best place to start for getting your website listed higher in search engines is to create good-quality content on your site that people will want to link to (a.k.a. recommend).

As you begin trying Google Instant I would love to hear if it affects your business and how so. Throw your thoughts in the comments below.

I have two examples come to mind.

The Iconic Symbol
The first is with a blog post I did on Twitter a few months ago. I had a good conversation with some readers and got a few links coming to the website. Awesome… and then the junk came. Apparently, the icon was picked up on Google images… and a few bloggers liked the it enough to steal bandwidth hotlink the image. I assume a few of them did it by accident, but either way it was pretty annoying and required a bit of angling so they would not use my resources.

Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt Me
The second example brings us to today: our blog kind of got hacked yesterday. I believe it has to do with some of the recent blog post about web security. So far, I cannot tell that anything actually happened, but two “people” registered on the blog as subscribers. They/he/she did this despite my not having user registration access on the main part of the website. After a quick Google search I found that one of the email addresses is associated with a person who uses that newly acquired access to break into the website and do (presumably) bad things.

I guess I might have to try and increase the security on the blog. Between that and prayer, hopefully nothing bad will go down on the back-end of the website. Stay tuned!

Google Says: “Get More Links”

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

Google’s Ranking Webmasters/Site Owners Help

How? Participate In Community
For many, a website is just an online business card. They just put some information on the site and then tell people to check it out for contact information and a quick egocentric bio. Unfortunately for those businesses they are missing out on the true power of the web: the community.

Here are a few suggestions on how to increase the number of incoming links. What you should notice is that most of the suggestions center around participating in the online community and building an online presence through active interaction.

• Create good content – Make the information on your website helpful, useful, and informative; entertaining; newsworthy; or funny. In other words, make the content on your website worth talking about.
• Read and comment – Read other people’s blogs and participate in their discussions. The web communities are not one-way streets and it is vital for you to be an active participant. The more you get involved, the more you will find people linking to your site/blog.
• Link to others – Again, the web is a two-way street. Link to other people’s or business’ web pages when you find something worth noting. Does someone have a particularly good blog post? Do they excel at a particular service or have a great product? Link to them. You will find that giving other people links becomes reciprocal over the long term.
• Give something away – People like free stuff… and people like to talk about getting cool, free stuff. Therefore, give something away. Whether it is an e-book or one of your products or services, give a little something away for free and people will want to talk about you and link to your website.
• Use Twitter – Have a good blog post on a particular day? Let the Twitter world know and throw it up on your Twitter feed.
• Add your post’s link on Facebook – This should be done a little more sparingly than Twitter. However, if you have a special article that is worth noting, post it on Facebook for all of your friends to see. Perhaps your friends will also find the post special and add a link themselves.

Remember, for small businesses like us, building links to your site is not about quick-fixes or schemes. It is about participating with those around you.

As a final thought before closing, here is Google’s own recommendation on how to build incoming links:

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

Google webmaster recommendations, emphasis added

Now, what are you waiting for? Go out there and get involved…

The Lucerne, Switzerland bridge photo is courtesy of Olivier Bruchez on Flickr.

My little guy hanging out in the shower.

I was giving my two year old a bath, and as sometimes occurs, he urinated in the water. It was at the end of his bath anyway so I figured it was time for him to get out. As I was getting the towel I warned my little guy not to drink the water (as he frequently tries to do) because of the fact that he had just peed in it. Despite this warning he tried to drink the water forcing me to abruptly stop him.

So what does this have to do with web marketing? Well, I began to think of our clients and the advice we give them when incorporating a web marketing campaign (or known to us as Web 2.M). I have noticed that on occasion, our recommendations are not followed and our clients’ efforts are thus hindered.

So in an effort to bring about action, here are a few important reminders of marketing pitfalls to avoid (not listed in order of importance):

1. Avoid the gobbledygook – Think of gobbledygook as the cliche terms, jargon and other words that basically do nothing for your product but “make you sound very, very important.” And we all know how much we like those people who try to make themselves seem more (smarter, powerful, religious, popular, etc.)…just plain annoying. (And a big thank you to David Meerman Scott for searing the term gobbledygook into my brain.)

2. Avoid having a small, stagnant website – Essentially a small, stagnant website is just a like a billboard along the internet highway that you saw 50 miles ago, but even less effective. Having a constantly updated, fresh and growing website is what you need for a strong marketing campaign. Your fresh website is like having continuous good, juicy news about your company that the town crier and gossips cannot wait to talk about to everyone else.

3. Do Not Ignore Inbound Links – Inbound links are so vital to a good marketing strategy that you cannot ignore needing them. Google (yes, that Google) places such a high importance on inbound links that they actually incorporate them into their search engine ranking system. If you completely ignore inbound links you might as well save yourself some time and abandon any type of web marketing effort at all. For more information on that, check out Hubspot’s article on Google’s PageRank.

Avoid these web marketing pitfalls and you stand to help your marketing efforts exponentially over the course of time. Conversely, falling into these pitfalls is more like drinking the pee-filled bathwater after having been warned.