• They spanked users of content spamming services
• They might have de-valued the practice of embedded links
• They de-indexed a bunch of websites, wiping out their search ranking
• As of this writing, Yahoo has made no such changes

The websites that remain indexed and highly ranked on a Google results page are the ones who appear to have dedicated themselves to writing good solid content.

There are many other techniques out there for cheating your way to the top of the Google search result page. Eventually, they too will be discovered and summarily spanked. But those who aren’t also writing great content and dedicating themselves to particular key phrases will not be spanked.

Do links pointing at your website still matter?

No one really knows precisely how the Google algorithm assesses websites. You can bet that some outside links are still given very high value by Google; probably too much value. But the links that point in to your website will have to be honest friends of your company, and it will help more than ever if they’re in the same business; writing about the same things.

What else is Google using to assess websites?

From what we’re seeing, the only thing that trumps your content is your website’s age and URL. You can see it on the video above that shows our ranking for the phrase “Search Marketing Solutions.” We’re #2, right behind a website called SearchMarketingSolutions (dot) com

But the main thing Google is using to assess websites is good, old-fashioned content writing. If you’ve got it, and you’re dedicated to a keyphrase, and others like your ideas enough to point links at you, then you’ll get ranked.

Learn more about how ion Leap creates lasting brands with valued content. Click here to contact us.

Respect where you’re working and the limits of your readers.

Content Farming Defined

There are a lot of companies out there who promise you’ll get to page 1 in the blink of an eye. One of their tricks is to park lots of links pointing at your website on content farming websites.

Google claimed that their main reason for weakening the relevance of these websites was that last year lots of folks were buying low cost .cn domains (China) and stuffing misspellings and porn phrases, weakening search results for legitimate companies. But now it appears that more is afoot.

The Good News for Content Writers

A great result of this is that websites with very little original content will be spanked – end up with a lower ranking. But it’s going further. Google now views some news aggregating websites as content farms. This is not necessarily a bad thing for those in the news industry because the Internet has truly crippled the marketability of original news reporting. Now the folks who create the content will have their websites rewarded with a higher ranking than those who “scrape” it onto their sites.

The Bad News for Both Sides

While website content writing takes a ton of work and carries a price tag for those doing it honestly, one way they benefit is by others pointing links at that terrific content. If you’re a blog writer working for a content provider, there’s no higher praise than seeing your article turn up on page 1 of a Google search. But, that’s all in danger now.

Most websites who aggregate news articles and other content put a link pointing back at the source. This is an incredibly valuable part of achieving a higher ranking for the source website. Google looks for links as a sign of authority. If that number plummets, then the source website will lose its organic ranking.

Original Content Writing Wins

We think this change will ultimately benefit those who take the time to craft original content. If it’s good enough, then other websites might simply summarize the source in their own words, then point a link to it. They still remain credible to their readers as an aggregator of great content sites. I view Drudge Report as such a site. They post almost zero original content or reporting. For the links they put up, there’s no content around them to add any context yet, as of this writing, Drudge Report has 18,577 other websites pointing links at it. They’re a pure aggregator of headlines; nothing more, and yet Google ranks them with a domain authority of 93%.

Who wins in the above case? Those who take the trouble to write the content in the first place. One more reason to love Google.

And now I’ll place a link back to the full article by InfoWars.com, my source and inspiration for this post, so they get the value for what they created.

If you write things people value,
you will be rewarded with links pointing at your website.

If you have links pointing at your website,
the search engines will reward you with a higher ranking in the organic search results.

People will follow you on your Facebook Fan Page.

You will have friends on Twitter.

Recently, we invented a very simple and addictive Facebook and blog writing idea for a famous resort in the Caribbean. It’s very visual in nature and lots of fun. All it requires is that they bring more friends who will want to participate in the fun.

In a very simple and relevant way, we added a great deal of value. The client will be rewarded with tons more followers, many of whom will give them money to visit their resort.

Internet marketing shouldn’t focus on words.

It should be about ideas. Probably about ideas that sell things.

That’s not un-zen…selling stuff.
It is the inevitable outcome of creating wonderful things.

The Internet really is no different than the real world. If you are wonderful,
people will find their way to you.

If people aren’t finding their way to you, it’s probably because you are in your own way.
Or at least your website is.

We begin by getting your website
out of your way.

Blog writing and content will become more important

The age of attempting to trick the search engines with link building spam is, hopefully, soon to wind down. When I see websites out there who have 65,000 links pointing to them (and they sell cat food), then it’s time for Google to begin to devalue this practice and begin to focus on written content. There’s no better way to handle your content than blog writing.

If you currently have a blog parked on your website, you’re part of the way towards building your content assets for search success, but it’s not enough. You must have a key phrase strategy which you incorporate very carefully into each of your blog postings. If you’re writing it carefully enough, you will be ideally positioned for SEO success in 2011. If you’re not, it’s time to call Ion Leap for advice and writing services.

Social Media will continue to rise in importance

While the pundits who predict that social media will take over everything are certainly over-reaching, they’re not wrong about its increasing importance. Perhaps the success of sites like Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon are a reaction to too much commercialism in other places on the web. People turn to groups of friends for advice, recommendations and entertainment.

We at Ion Leap think the combination of social media plus mobile delivery will point the way to the future of digital marketing; if not in 2011, then shortly thereafter. And we’re preparing all our clients to be ready for it.

One thing we’re beginning to ponder for 2011 is how to build a more effective corporate presence in the social world. We’re looking at all sorts of solutions to keeping companies relevant as everything moves more towards personalization. Can a corporate fan page on Facebook retain its relevancy. We have some very unique suggestions we’re talking to our customers about. We can’t reveal some of our techniques here, but we’d be happy to speak over the phone – (917) 676-6788.

Mobile delivery will be critical

In 2011 and onwards, mobile delivery will be more important than ever. Having a position you can occupy by using this delivery platform will be terribly important.

We’ve blogged before about the importance of positioning yourself in the growing localization movement. This is only one part of your critical mobile strategy. It’s time to start crafting your mobile content strategy; and we’re not just talking about blog writing. We’re recommending all our clients move quickly to establish a brand in mobile delivery. If you manufacture a product then you should be able to guide prospective customers to it; but there are far more lasting brand opportunities available to you.

By building your brand based on localization services with a content / context overlay, you’ll be grabbing space that others will clamor for years from now.

Begin now to set up your Internet presence so you encourage your customers to transact business with you via electronic funding. Make it simple and intuitive now, with just a few options for purchase, so your customers look to you as a leader in the mobile transaction space.

Your blog can help

If your website has a blog on it, it makes a major difference in how it’s viewed by search engines. Freshness of your content is now viewed as a plus. This is a way the search engines are offering more “real-time” value to their users. It’s also a guarantee that the search results don’t present stagnant websites which haven’t had anything new to say for years.

Writing on your blog is one of the easiest ways to update a website. Because it’s a content management system, it makes it possible for just about anyone to update the site.

But updates aren’t enough

Ion Leap blog writer teams know what Google and your business prospects are looking for. While fresh content is part of it, there’s much more to it. Our content writing seamlessly weaves key phrases into the pages in a particular density which makes it very attractive to search engines, and that’s one of the main ways we make your site rank higher. There are others.

Site structure and SEO

From a long-term perspective, we’re extremely pessimistic about the current practices of ‘link farming,’ directory hammering and other methods which have nothing to do with creating real website value. However, we also understand how Google works and we will get your website compliant with what the search engines want. There are SEO practices which can make a major difference in how your site is crawled by search engines.

We write content that creates long-term value

Ion Leap is all about long-term value. We create website content that your readers will find incredibly useful. Many of them will bookmark it. Others will point links at it. In the end, this is the way both your prospects and the search engines will value websites. By starting to create content of lasting value now, you’ll be set for the future. A blog writer team from Ion Leap will combine the artistry of persuasive writing in any business category with an SEO writer who makes sure Google will also love the page.

To learn more about how an Ion Leap Blog writer team can get you ranked higher on Google, use the “Contact” link above.

Your brand isn’t showing up in traditional media, so where is it?

Take a ride on the New York subway these days and you’ll see the evidence of slashed advertising budgets. Last week I was riding the 7 Train up to Midtown and it looked like 3 out of 5 spaces were either empty or given over to pro-bono (free) charities. New York is the business center of the U.S. These spaces are traditionally given over to the quick hit, short copy branding messages that work in outdoor advertising. Out of home marketing is one of the best branding media there is. But there’s an inherent problem with all such media, and right now marketers are truly victimized by it…

When your campaign stops, so does your brand.

Three out of 5 marketers out there who ordinarily promote their brands on the subway aren’t doing it right now. Maybe they’ve moved to radio, there seems to be no shortage of radio spots on the stations I follow. But I’ve got a feeling they’ve just pulled back.

Our blog writer teams create lasting brands online.

As I was heading into New York and observing the dearth of branding messages, I was on my way to show a client the results of 6 months of content writing by Ion Leap blog writer teams. It was an amazing meeting. I put a piece of paper in front of them which contained 4 key phrases we’d strategically chosen to write into their content over a 4 month period. Beside each phrase was the monthly search demand; the number of requests that consumers out there had made of that exact phrase in 1 month. The total represented over 1,500,000 search requests!

Then I put another page on the table which showed where they rank on each or those phrases – page 2 or better. If our blog writer teams stop writing those phrases tomorrow, this client won’t go dark. They will still show up on page 1 for a long time to come. That’s a lasting brand.

Your brand should always stand for good information in your category.

Consumers in every category still want good information. You might argue that no one wants to read lengthy writing, but I’d argue they want to give their money to a company who is the authority in the category. Google would argue the same thing!

Not just writing – branding

Ion Leap will help you extend your brand ethos into every online and offline media. We manage social media campaigns for clients with the same strategic approach. We even do billboards and subway posters (just fewer of them these days). The key is to start with brand message management and then carry it into every place your consumer prospects might intersect with you. Those companies who decided that included only traditional media are now finding that their brand message is not intersecting with consumers in the one media they can still afford; the one media that lasts – their online content. And that is the domain of the blog writer teams of Ion Leap.

It’s up to the consumers

Of all the things I love about Google, the fact that they really want to take care of their consumers is a big one. The change will truly help consumers who are in a hurry and not particular about the specific search they’re conducting. If they’re particular, they’ll learn to type in the precise phrase. Google Instant is one more way that consumers will get a better search result…or will they? Usually Ion Leap are unabashed fans of every move Google makes. This one, however, we’re not so sure about.

Is it bad for rankings?

The way this will affect rankings is absolutely fascinating and somewhat troubling. To understand this, you have to think about how key phrases are structured. The “short tail” key phrases – those with fewer words – are about to do much better than long tail key phrases. Also, those key phrases with what I’ll call the “prime word” early in the phrase will be far more valuable.

In testing this, I was searching on phrases related to the disease of cancer. My test began with the key phrase “disease cancer” which gets 33,100 requests on Google per month. It’s a valuable key phrase. If you search for the precise phrase “disease cancer,” you’ll start to see results pop up immediately as you’re typing, except they have nothing to do with cancer.

• When you’ve typed in “di” you’ll see “dictionary” at the top.
• When you’ve typed in “dis” you’ll see “Disney.”
• “disease c” you’ll find “disease control.”

Conversely, if you take the short tail approach and go for the more valuable key phrase of “cancer disease” which gets 550,000 requests per month, you get a much better, more rapid result.

• When I had typed in “canc” I was already in the ball park with the Cancer wikipedia page, the American Cancer Society, etc.

My conclusion is that this change to Google Instant will reward the short tail key phrase more quickly.

Those of us working in content writing for companies who are trying to climb the search engines often end using long-tail key phrases because the available key phrases are become scarce. (See previous blog post)  So the winners here will be the more established companies and this may actually make life much more difficult for newer companies trying to stake a claim on search results. Is this good for consumers or bad? I believe any change that limits a free market in search is bad, and this one may have crossed into that area.

It will likely change consumer behavior

Consumers have a funny way of adapting. I believe this one will change how consumers search in the long run. They will learn to put their “prime word” in the front of their search and companies who rely more on long-tail key phrases will have to adapt or die. In other words, the available key phrases which actually get a result will get exponentially more scarce.

It will make Adwords more accurate

The Wall Street Journal article, Google executives said that it won’t really affect paid search results. I don’t agree. I think it will make paid search more accurate. As customers learn to put their “prime word” up front in their search, they’ll get more accurate results. Those buying Adword phrases will have to adapt and ditch those phrases with the “prime word” in the second or third position.
Example – keep “cancer disease” and ditch “disease cancer.”

The net result here, too, will be fewer available phrases and far higher prices for this more scarce real estate. Shortages cause higher prices.

It doesn’t “learn.”

After conducting a few searches, I tested whether there was memory built into Google Instant. There’s not. And I’m glad there’s not, for two reasons -

1. It would weight me down with cookies
2. I might want to send my search a different way the next time

Google fan is very worried

I am an unabashed fan of Google. I love what they do to improve their product. But this one has me pretty upset; not just for my work in the keyphrase world, but for competition and the free market economy.

Can our blog writer teams replace your other marketing?

We’re in no way saying billboards or other traditional media are wrong for all clients; it depends on what category your business is in. However, we are saying they’re not often considered as a part of a healthy marketing mix which should include content writing by a blog writer team who knows what they’re doing with strategic key phrase work – like the folks at Ion Leap.

Contact us to learn how we would approach your unique marketing mix to contain more than a short-lived billboard campaign.