Google surprised everyone yesterday by rolling out an entirely new way of searching on Google.com. It’s called Google Instant, and it aims at being one step ahead of you when searching for something online. Instead of statically typing in a search term and hitting enter, the moment you start typing a search term, Google starts pulling up instant search results based on every character you type. Like the typical computer nerd that I am, I first stopped and pointed to the west and bowed down to the Google gods. Then, I immediately thought, what does this mean for SEO and all of the bread and butter SEO techniques we perform every day? I figured large search engine news sources would be asking this same question, and I was right:
Long Tail vs. Short Tail Keywords
This will be a huge debate in the months to come, because now every SEO professional will be wondering if ranking for long tail keywords is even worth it if similar results are going to pop up half way through the user keying in their search term. Personally, I don’t think it will take away from the relevancy or strength of long tail keywords, because there’s a big difference between searching for “new york” and “new york dentists”. No matter what, short tail keywords will still be harder to rank for and stay competitive, so I don’t think that Internet marketers should abandon their current strategies.
Increasing Search Queries by 20 Times
I am not sure what the ramifications will be on this, but I am assuming that Google has already done a significant upgrade on their infrastructure to accommodate this massive increase in search volume. Within one search of a keyword, you could easily have 10 to 20 queries pulled up. That seems a little excessive to me, but I guess Google’s thought process behind it is that the user gets a better experience.
Pay-Per-Click Ads
PPC managers are going to see a decrease in CTR, because impressions are going to rise. Maybe Google will have a way to combat this, such as if the ad doesn’t display for longer than a second, then it won’t count the impression. I’m not sure, but this will be something that every PPC manager has to explain to their client when they wonder why their CTR dropped so much.
Here’s a bullet point summary of my thoughts from Google Instant:
- Google Instant will make long-tail keyword terms more important than ever, because each letter will directly affect the outcome of the search result.
- Search users are no longer required to commit to a certain keyword term. This means that Title Tags not only need to be full of relevant keywords, but they must be compelling to the user to force them to stop their search and click on your particular website.
- The overall importance of having quality SEO has increased dramatically, because showing up in relevant search results becomes more competitive with the introduction of Google Instant. Hiring a company like Revenue Performance adapt to these changes is invaluable to the success of your business.
- Google’s search queries will increase from 1 billion per week to roughly 20 billion per week. This means that the chances of your website being found in a search result due to quality long-tail keyword SEO strategies increases your chance of being found by 20 times!
- PPC campaigns will be affected, because the amount of impressions for a given ad will increase, and this will ultimately decrease the click-through-rate percentage. If Revenue Performance is actively managing your PPC campaign, remember this when looking at next month’s PPC analytics.
