How will Google Instant affect my search engine optimisation efforts?

by Christina on Wednesday 29th September, 2010 at 14:09 COMMENTS (0)

Background on SEO:

Search Engine Optimisation consists of site content, meta content, URL's, inbound links and internal links. With 75% of your website's authority coming from the inbound links you have worked so hard to obtain through articles, blogs and networking.

You implement all of the above after many hours of research into your competition and keywords to get a good placement within the first page of the search engine result pages (SERPs) and to then capture the 70% of searchers who only look at the first page SERPs in Google.

The affects on organic listings will be:

With the launch of Google Instant the searchers habits are likely to change due to Google helping the searcher learn how to search in a better way to get at the information or product they are looking for.

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that displays results as users type their search query. Results are displayed much faster than before because users don't have to finish typing their full search term, or even press 'search' to have the results displayed. Google are also going to help the searcher out by giving them an idea of what words could be used to form a better query - just like predictive texting.

Google are doing this to speed up the search engines response time, thus creating a better user experience. Google will also be presenting their advertisers with better prospects enabling them to charge more for pay per click advertising.

It is suggested within the search engine optimisation industry Google will increase the space used for pay per click advertising, enabling only one organic listing to be seen above the fold. It is also believed the searchers will no longer scroll below the fold or go to the next page as it will be easier and faster to alter the original search.

I would recommend you continue with your search engine optimisation as stated at the beginning of this topic but you will need to start researching keywords quarterly instead of yearly and to monitor volume of traffic for those keywords and alter your website as and when needed. To remain in the top 3 positions exact keyword matches are likely to be important, but again keeping a close eye on your analytics will confirm which keywords are driving traffic into your website.

The affects on pay per click will be:

Assuming that Google Instant does take hold, one direct consequence will be the increase in impressions for paid search. This is because when users pause for more than three seconds as they type a query, a search impression is generated. These will register as an increase in your analytics reports and in the short term skew this data, especially if making monthly comparisons is (as it should be) part of your search strategy. Comparing next month's paid search data to the same month last year will paint a very different picture.

It is advisable to annotate the time that Google Instant launches in analytics packages so that this skewing can be factored out.

In summary

Google Instant may not even be here in 12 months and may be written off as a failed experiment. If it does capture and change user behaviour, the long-tail of search terms will shorten. It follows that if you are getting traffic from long-tail phrases at the moment, you may want to look at optimising for more exact terms and influence search behaviour in your offline marketing. You should also make your search results appear on Google as clickable and attractive as possible by using good calls to action in your meta descriptions and title tags.

Filed under: COMMENTS (0) Wednesday 29th September, 2010

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