2009 is finally over, and it has been one busy year in the field of search engine optimization. We are no longer in the predictable era of search engine optimization. Google, Bing, and other top search engines are jumping on the latest trends and changing the way we all search. Personalized Search is going to be the big thing in 2010, so will be mobile, local, and real-time search. If you are a business owner who have no idea about SEO, the sooner you start the better.

A lot of people assume that it’s too late to catch up as many have already optimized their websites for the search engines. That can’t be further from the truth. There are a lot of people who don’t even implement the most basic search engine optimization tactics, and those who do often give up before seeing any tangible results. If you are looking to enhance your website’s reach in 2010, here are 10 simple tactics you should implement in the new year:

1. Listen: if you want to create high quality content, you need to keep your ears more open than ever before. There are plenty of new channels that you can take advantage of to gather valuable information about your post, but you have to keep listening to what people have to say about your products and brands in your niche, and more importantly things people say about you and your business.
2. Keywords: there is never a bad time to expand your keyword set and target new phrases. Targeting long-tail keywords and phrases that you have not targeted yet is a good way to start the new year.
3. Title: I can’t tell you how many times I see people who talk about search engine optimization but still have not taken time to optimize their title tags. It’s the no-brainer move of the next year if you haven’t already optimized your title tags.
4. Link building: links do matter. The more relevant, quality links you get to your pages, the better chance you have of getting your pages ranked high on top search engines. Search engine algorithms differ on how they treat incoming links, but in general if your content is good enough for people to link to, you are on the right track. (more…)

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Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize your online content and make a living without having to work for the man. Of course, you can always use your affiliate income to supplement the one you get from your day job.  There are a lot of affiliates who make money by optimizing their websites for search engines. You can have the best paid search campaigns or get the sweetest display deals, but nothing beats getting free traffic from sites such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. As long as you can get your blog or affiliate portal to show up for short-tail and long-tail keyword searches, you are going to get an additional boost of income and lower your costs per conversion dramatically.

Before getting aggressive with your affiliate campaigns, you want to make sure that your affiliate program gives you enough freedom to implement your tactics. Many affiliates assume that using branded terms in domains or even sub-domains is OK, but many affiliate programs are cracking down on those types of sites, especially after the FTC put more pressure on them to deal with bloggers, affiliate marketers, and social media professionals.

Affiliate programs are not trying to be mean to you when they decide to kick your website out of their program for using branded terms. You just don’t want to confuse people and give them an indication that you are in any way or shape working directly for an advertiser. Let’s take Amazon for instance. If you are trying to build a website on Amazon’s movers and shakers, the last thing you want to do is secure a domain that has the word Amazon or its misspellings in it. Not only that, your sub-domain shouldn’t have those trademarked terms either. What’s the price? You’ll get kicked out if you are caught doing it.

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I have talked about in the past about the directory submission service that I personally use to get some links to my portals. Directories are not as strong a factor as they used to be when it comes to ranking high on the search engines. But they still do matter. Directory Maximizer is a fairly cheap service that automates the process (not all of it) and keeps you in control of your submissions as well. The service was decent before, but now you can add your own deep links to directories. That should give you some additional bang for your buck. Here is what the company had to say about this upgrade:

In a move that will reinforce your belief that Directory Maximizer is indeed the best directory submission service you can find on the Internet, we are rolling out our Deep Link Submission service. Deep linking, as you probably know, is an oft-overlooked method of SEO whose benefits are manifold and long lasting. You, dear customers, can now build links to your inner pages and not limit your SEO efforts to your home page – and we are going to help you do that.

Deep links do matter. Having the ability to optimize your individual pages for your keywords of choosing makes a big difference. I can’t tell you how time consuming submitting to directories could be, so services such as Directory Maximizer can truly save you a lot of time. (more…)

We have all heard of how real time search is the future. It’s actually not that far out if you think about it. Google’s Real Time search is a good indication to where the industry is heading. By integrating services such as Twitter, you can now do your search on Google more effectively, and in real time. I have talked about in the past how portal developers need to focus on videos, images, forums, blogs, and other avenues to maximize their presence on sites such as Google. But with real time search, you’ll have yet another revenue to get the word out about your product and get traffic back from Google in return.

As long as you are on the latest tab, you are going to see real time results on Google. It may seem a bit strange at first, but if you have been on Twitter for a while, it should come naturally to you. You can obviously click on the tags and search based on those.

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That’s not really a question if you listen to Matt Cutts and other top Google engineers. A Google redesign is in the works, and we are not just talking about the look and feel of the site. After all, who really cares about how Google.com looks as long as you get the most relevant results that help you move forward with your project. The future of search is social, mobile, and much more. Your only source of information will no longer be Google news. There are millions of people who are blogging, discussing issues in forums, creating videos, taking photos, and writing books on all kinds of topics. The next generation search engines bring all of that together.

If you have wanted to try this new Google design but have no clue how to, Gizmodo has you covered. The site has released a mini trick that forces your Google to use the new design to do your search. The trick does work, and the results are very interesting.

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