The Click House, aka Google, and the White House seem far removed from one another. President Barack Obama is contemplating how to help small business; He likely has small business on his mind a fair amount lately. In another office, not oval, a team of Google executives is pondering the same. One does it with legislation, loans and federal initiatives; the other offers a range of services you can use today to turn clicks into cash.
Most business owners know that Google earns its revenue from people clicking on ads. But I’m consistently shocked that business owners don’t understand all the powerful tools that Google has for understanding them and their customer. Google Now is one of those new tools. Search engine optimization and search engine marketing is changing. Fast.
If you are marketing by leveraging the search engines, you’ll want to study Google Now. You’ll want to study how mobile is changing search. Ultimately, this news means that you need to be on Google+ and Google Local. Don’t delay any longer.
One of my favorite writers, Chris Crum at WebProNews, shared about how this shift is going to impact business owners. In his post:Â What Google Now Can Teach You About Reaching Your Customers.
“At Google I/O last month, Google revealed what could be the beginning of the future of how you use Google . Google Now was revealed as one of several prongs in a shift in mobile search strategy that Google has started with its latest version of its Android operating system – Jellybean. One of the most interesting things about it is that it really speeds up search by eliminating the need for it… If you’re a marketer or a business owner, perhaps there’s already a great deal to learn from Google Now.â€
What does all this mean?
Consumer resistance to sharing transaction-level and location-based information is going down, as evidenced in various social media sources. Google Now is poised to share that data, found and collected on your mobile device, with businesses and brands building mobile apps.
The small business
Sharon Vaknin at CNET has a solid post on how to use it for personal use, but you can get a glimpse of how it is changing for small business owners: How to Get Started With Google Now (link at end). She writes: “Often mislabeled as a Siri competitor, Google Now is not an intelligent voice recognition service. Instead, it’s a built-in assistant that serves up Google search-based answers to voiced questions.† All of that new voice-based search data will be accessible. Sharon also explains how to disable Google Now if you don’t want your location and web history tracked.
My post Google Enemy #1 is about how spammers are Google’s main concern, but it highlights four of the things you can do as a small business owner to manage your own website SEO. It included:
#1: Just write good content.Â
#2: Don’t create too many internal links. The logic I use is – what’s best for my reader, my audience? Keep that in mind and you’ll find that you won’t add a big box of keywords linked to other things (like a tag cloud) on your site, just to do it.
#3: Link building is important, essential even, but don’t go overboard and never, ever pay for links to your site. Â
#4: Spend time understanding Google rules. As a search engine and pay-per-click provider, they drive almost 80 percent of the new traffic you’re probably seeing in your stats.Â
Last week, I wrote about ten different and powerful SEO tools at Small Business Trends: Optimizing Your Website: Ten Powerful SEO Tools.  The post is meant to help you figure out how to get this important work done with web-based SEO software. Even if you don’t want to pay for a tool to manage your search engine marketing and optimization, you can visit providers like SEOmoz, SEO Book, Scribe, and HitTail to name just four offering good information and ideas via their blogs. Most of these guys will help you continue to figure out what the Google Now work means to your business.   Click to Next Page to Find More Web Resources.
Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2012/07/30/search-engine-marketing-and-seo-via-google-now-plus-ten-web-based-tools/