Google has introduced another algorithm update this month and many webmasters have seen a huge drop in traffic from Google for keyword phrases that are three or more keywords long so called “long tail keywords“.

How does this affect your website?

In an online forum, webmaster discussed their experience with Google latest ranking algorithm update that has been given the name Mayday. If your website gets fewer visitors from Google, the update could be the reason for that.

What exactly has happened?

Many webmasters have seen a huge drop in traffic from Google for keyword phrases that are three or more keywords long (so called “long tail keywords”). Some webmasters have lost 90% of their traffic from Google because they cannot be found anymore for the long keyword phrases. The ranking drop did not happen to spammers. Among the affected websites was a 13 year old site with a Google PageRank of 7 and 400,000 backlinks.

Why did it happen?

It seems that this is not a penalty but a change in Google’s ranking algorithm. Google might now be able to index longer keyword phrases more accurately. There’s a new Google patent that deals with this topic.

Identifying phrases requires a lot of computing power and a lot of memory. A webmaster explained it in the discussion:

“For example, on the assumption that any five words could constitute a phrase, and that a large corpus would have at least 200,000 unique terms, there would be approximately 3.2.times.10.sup.26 possible phrases. Clearly more than any existing system could store or otherwise programmatically manipulate.”

It seems that Google guessed the best pages for long keyword phrases until recently based on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages. The new Google patent indicates that Google now has the computing power to index longer keyword phrases on web pages instead of guessing them.

Do you have to change your web pages now?

If you experienced a decline in traffic to your website from Google you might have to change your web pages. For example, if you want to be found for “personal injury lawyer london” then these words should appear in that order on your website.

If you use other variations such as “london lawyer personal injury” then you’ll probably get listings for that variation but not for other word combination’s. If you want to know how to get Top 10 Rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice, analyze the web page that you want to see in Google’s search results with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer.

IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer will tell you how to change your web page so that it will get top 10 rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice.

A new report from Gartner Research, predicts that approximately 60 percent of the handsets shipped will be smart phones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner.

The report also states that:

The Mobile Web

By 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser. In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60 percent of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner.

The growth in smartphones with relatively large and high-resolution screens will encourage greater numbers of people to access conventional websites on mobile devices, and will make it possible to deliver some B2C applications using conventional Web tools without adaptation. In mature markets, the mobile Web, along with associated Web adaptation tools, will be a leading technology for B2C mobile applications through 2012, and should be part of every organization’s B2C technology portfolio.

Mobile Widgets

Widgets are installable Web applications that use technologies such as JavaScript and HTML. Many handsets support widgets running on their home screens, where they are easily visible and accessible. Despite the lack of standards, widgets provide a convenient way to deliver simple, connected applications, especially those involving real-time data updates (such as weather forecasts, e-mail notifications, marketing, blogs and information feeds).

Because widgets exploit well-understood tools and technologies, they have lower entry barriers than complex native applications, and thus can be a good first step to assess the demand for an application on a specific platform before undertaking expensive native development.

Enhanced Location Awareness

By the end of 2011, over 75 percent of devices shipped in mature markets will include a GPS. GPS will be the primary, but not the only, means of establishing handset location. Wi-Fi and cell ID systems will remain important in situations where GPS is unavailable or unreliable.

The popularity of location-aware handsets will enable a wide range of B2E and B2C location-aware applications, and will serve as a foundation for more-sophisticated contextual applications in the future. However, organizations must be sensitive to local privacy regulations, ensure that applications that expose location are “opt in,” and remain on alert for new risks and concerns that will be raised by location awareness.

Cellular Broadband

During 2010 and 2011, the availability of multimegabit wireless broadband performance will continue to grow as mobile networks enhance their broadband performance. Continuous improvements in wireless broadband performance will increase the range of applications that no longer require fixed networking, and make cellular broadband a more effective fallback when fixed connections fail. Embedded cellular networking will become a standard feature of many corporate laptops, and will enable new types of network-connected devices and business models, such as e-books and media players.

Touchscreens

Touchscreens are emerging as the dominant user interface for large-screen handsets, and will be included in over 60 percent of mobile devices shipped in Western Europe and North America in 2011. Touch-enabled devices will also make increasing use of techniques such as haptics to enhance user experience. Organizations developing native handset applications may need to exploit single and multitouch interfaces and haptics to give their applications a compelling and competitive user experience.

Additional info in the report “Ten Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2010 and 2011” is available on the Gartner Web site at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1311324

According to Google, when you create a new business listing in the Google Local, a great local search business listing should include the following:

• Categories
• Photos/Videos
• Hours of operation
• Payment options (and) the payment types you accept
• Additional details: Brands you carry or if your provide Free parking

More specifically, the information you should submit to create a great Google LBC Listing:

Basic information

When you submit information about your business, make sure to include the following:

• Company/Organization: This is the official/registered name of your business
• Address: Enter your address the same way it would appear on a paper mail envelope
• Phone number: Include the area code with your business phone number
• Website: Make sure to list your authoritative business website as your homepage, since Google uses information from your homepage to help improve search results. The URL you provide can be a maximum of 255 characters
• Description: Tell users what makes your business special
• Email address: Let users know how to contact you

Categories

Categories are ways to classify your business that help Google show your business for the right searches. The Local Business Center will suggest categories that match what you type, but feel free to create your own if you don’t see a category that fits your business. Make sure that the categories you choose are accurate and describe your business well. It’s OK if they’re specific; Google’s search algorithm makes sure that users looking for a general business type, like ‘book stores,’ will see businesses in more specific categories too.

Hours of operation:

Let customers know when your business is open.

Payment options:
Specify the payment types you accept.

Photos and Videos:
Including photos and video adds visual appeal to your listing.

Additional details:

Create custom attributes that allow you to include additional information that you’d like customers to know. For example, you can list what brands you carry or if your business provides free parking.

Last year, a client of mine asked me to help them with getting more (free traffic) to their site. Whole World Baby is your typical small business trying to compete with thousands of more established and much larger companies.

To help them compete against The GAP and other high end baby clothiers, I told them that I would create and optimized their LBL on Google using high traffic keywords that matched their product line. In less then 30 days, WWB was on Page #1 of Google Local in the very competitive “baby clothes” niche market.

Top 10 Most Important Review Engines

1. Yelp

2. InsiderPages

3. Yahoo! Local

4. CitySearch

5. Google Places

6. Superpages

7. Niche Industry Sites (BBB)

8. TripAdvisor

9. Judysbook

10. Kudzu

Other sites worth noting: YellowPages, Merchant Circle, Angies List.

Important Data Providers

• infoUSA

• Superpages

• Localeze

• YellowPages

• Yelp

• InsiderPages

• Acxiom

• Yahoo! Local

• CitySearch

• Niche Industry Sites (BBB)

Other sites worth considering:

• Niche Civic/Municipal Sites (Chamber of Commerce, Local Directories)
• Merchant Circle
• Universal Business Listing
• Yellowbot

CLICK HERE for a Map of Social Media Marketing Plus

The number one reason why people fail online is because they do not take the time necessary to investigate the strength of the competition in their marketplace. This means that they never get a front page listing in Google, which in turn means they never get any real traffic to their website and therefore never make any real sales.

In this video lesson you will see one of Market Samurai’s most powerful features that can quickly and easily help you to improve your Google ranking. The amazing thing about these features is that many Market Samurai users don’t even know this feature exists!

Specifically, you will learn:

• What is a link network and why it has a massive impact on your Google ranking
• 3 factors that influence your link network and why you must understand them
• How to reverse engineer your competitor’s link network using Market Samurai to gain a competitive advantage

Noble Samurai is an organization dedicated to developing and improving all elements of the market research process. They build and develop cutting edge applications to slash market research time and deliver genuinely useful marketing information to internet marketers through easy to use, innovative software.

Keyword Research (Free Video Tutorials)

1. Introduction to Keyword Research

2. Golden Rule #1: How to Find Relevant Keywords

3. Golden Rule #2: How to Find High Traffic Keywords

4. Golden Rule #3: How to Assess Market Competition

5. Golden Rule #4: How to Assess Commerciality

6. Golden Rules Case Study

7. Finding Long Tail Keywords

8. Understanding Match Type Data

9. How to Avoid Targeting the Wrong Keywords

If you decide to take action and get your free trial copy of Market Samurai, if you’re like me, you will find yourself spending quite a bit of time experimenting with all the outstanding features of this amazing tool. To help fast track your cycle time, once you get your free trial copy, send me your confirmation and I’ll send you 30 high quality back links in Social Media Marketing (P5-P6-P7) to help kick start your link building effort.

Your website pagerank on Google is directly related to the quantity and quality of backlinks you have. Page rank can be improved with the search engine bots by using the Market Samurai Google SEO research tool. The good news is, you can do use this SEO tool for any niche market and uncover these quality backlinks in a matter of minutes.

In order to get a high Google pagerank and is simply a matter of identifying the right keywords, relevant to your site and finding the Top 10 websites on Google and then visiting that website with a high link popularity and leaving a relevant comment that the webmaster will want to approve.

I did a brief video demo on how I use the Market Samurai SEO research tool and the added value of using an anchor text coded comment to show how getting a higher Google ranking is very doable and costs next to nothing (other than your valuable time) as compared to what a link exchange would cost you.

Make special note of the impact and value an “anchor text coded comment” brings versus the lazy man’s simple www or normal http only linked URL. When you go the extra step and use an anchor text coded comment, your will get a double hit (i.e.) link juice the high quality “authority” site as well as the keyword association in your anchor text comment.