So if your rankings have fallen, bounce rate is always worth looking into – especially during peak shopping periods.

What is Bounce Rate?

To start with, bounce rate is measurement of how many people visit your web page and hit the Back button on their browser rather than continue their online journey through your website.

Google measures this alongside other usability metrics, such as Time On Site and compares it to similar web pages ranked for the same search terms.

But generally if the Time On Site is low and the Bounce Rate higher, your web page is going to drop in the rankings.

Your page won’t take a penalty as such, but it will need to perform better to regain its rankings. And some further link building wouldn’t hurt to get it back up quicker either.

3 Examples of High Bounce Rates

Here are 3 examples of what can cause an unnaturally high bounce rate and cause your pages to fall in the search engine rankings.

Holding Pages
Sometimes you may need to create a Holding Page while you’re working on your website.

For example, Apple shows a ‘Back Soon’ note when they take their store down temporarily during product announcements, before it comes back with shiny new products.
So when you’re making significant changes to your site, redirecting users to a Holding Page can be very helpful.

However, if the message isn’t clear or the Holding Page remains active for longer than 24 hours, it can see your Bounce Rate soaring. The longer the Bounce Rate remains high, the further your web page will be demoted in the Google rankings.

No Stock
Similarly, if you’re an online retailer ranking for a popular product, but your store is Out Of Stock, your Bounce Rate will become incredibly high the second your stock levels drop.

The need for stock levels can cause even greater difficulty with seasonal web pages. For example, I when I used to work in house for a small footwear retailer and we had a Snow Boots page (after lots of link building) which ranked 1st in Google for snow boots, winter boots and après ski boots.

So every January we would have a truly MASSIVE peak in traffic and sales in January. It was partly due to all the snow in the UK and because of the start of the ski season.

However, if we didn’t maintain stock levels outside of peak season, the Bounce Rate would go up and our competitors would outrank us. So we had to maintain healthy stock levels all year round in order to keep our Bounce Rate down and our ranking up.

We did this by ‘drop shipping’ a number of the boots or having available on pre-order, so this is always something to bear in mind if you’re an online retailer.

Price is something else that may need to be addressed. If a business is pricing itself out of the market, it will have a high Bounce Rate to reflect its lack of interest from customers.

Shallow Content
If there is next to no content on a page you have ranking in Google for a popular information based search term, your Bounce Rate us going to be unnaturally high and your page is going to be demoted in the rankings.

Once client reported a loss in rankings for a number of pages in their Resource section shortly after the Penguin and Panda updates in October 2012. We advised that they get some more content on those pages, as there were only 100 words of unique content on each of them.

They wrote some great content, getting the word count up to 500 words and the pages regained their rankings. Some even ranked a little big higher as a result!

Earlier I mentioned that Google measures this alongside other usability metrics, such as Time On Site. This is because many people find an article through Google, read it from start to finish and then Bounce straight out.

So if you’re worried about your website’s high Bounce Rate, check the average Time On Site for the before worrying about Google demoting it in the rankings.

Conclusion

You can build all the links in the world to get your web pages to the top of the Google, but if there’s nothing there for customers, the Bounce Rate will become unnaturally high and the Time On Site unnaturally low – resulting in your web page being demoted in the rankings.

We were link building for one retail client and chose to hold fire on one of their product ranges until they got more stock in, because we were worried about their Bounce Rate becoming unnaturally high.

We’d got them up to position 8, but didn’t want to push them any higher, because this would increase their Bounce Rate to the point where Google would demote their page in the rankings and undo all of our good work.

How quickly the ranking of your page falls in the search results will depend on the popularity of the search term and how competitive your niche is.

However, once the Bounce Rate has fallen, the web page should start to recover. And while link building always helps, it can be hard to get web pages rankings back in particularly competitive niches without extensive link building.

So look after your pages and think about your users as well as your Google rankings and you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Well, it’s surprisingly simple. Here we break it down into 3 easy steps.

We start by doing extensive keyword research for our client’s website, based around their products or services and whatever else is popular in their industry.

Once we have our list of search terms, we identify which (if any) of their pages already rank for them and whether they need to create any new pages or use any existing pages to rank for these terms.

When we have the target search terms and target pages, link building can begin.

Before we dive in, I should also mention that while you can optimise and perfect your website until the cows come home, at the end of the day it’s links which will have the biggest impact on your website ranking higher in the search engine results.

So here is how we do it and why it works so well…

STEP 1: Optimise pages for target search terms

We optimise the Title Tag and Meta Description of the target page for our target search term.
Often this is crafted in such a way to target 5 closely related search terms.

Google Bot reads from left to right, just like a human, so we can carefully place the right words in the right order to optimise the Title Tag for a greater number of search terms.

The Meta Description doesn’t help rankings, but does encourage a better click through rate, which is why it’s often used to display a marketing message or top level information about the page.

That said, any target search terms in the Meta Description will appear in Bold, drawing the user’s eye to your page. So it’s worth optimising your Meta Description while including key information.
If your page is rich with content, you can use H Tags to break up your content and optimise it further.

If your web page is particularly strong, it may naturally rank higher in Google for your target search terms as a result of optimising the Title Tag.

Once the Title Tag and Meta Description are optimised, the page is ready for link building…

STEP 2: Create anchor text links to target pages

If your target page isn’t optimised, you will find it much harder to get it up in the Google rankings.

Now you need to build links to your target page using the anchor text for the search term you want it to rank for.

For example, if you had a page about “walking boots”, you would create as many links to it as possible with the anchor text “walking boots”.

It’s always worth throwing some variation in to make it look natural to Google Bot.
So you could have anchor text links like “best walking boots”, “cheap walking boots” “waterproof walking boots” and “leather walking boots” to mix things up.

If you optimised the Title Tag of your Walking Boots Page for all of these closely related search terms, you should be able to increase its ranking for all of these search terms in Google.

What kind of links can you get?
Here are just a few of the different types of places you can build links from.

• Directory Submissions
• Bookmarks
• Blog Comments
• Article Submissions
• Forum Posts
• Social Profiles
• Blog Posts
• Blogger Outreach
• Content Marketing
• Press Releases

It’s always best to get links from as many niche relevant places as possible as well.

STEP 3: Search engine rankings increase for target search terms

Now you’ve optimised your target page and built anchor text links, you should start seeing your web page ranking higher in Google for your target search terms.

Just remember that you’re competing against everyone else in the space, so it will take a number of months to get to the top of the Google for your target search term.

SUMMARY

Overall, link building is pretty straightforward.
You find your keywords and optimise your page for search terms.
You build lots of links from a wide range of good quality sources.
Your web page goes up in the Google rankings.

Obviously, it gets a lot more involved than this, with precise keyword optimisation of Title Tags and then there’s the actual act of link building itself, which is incredibly involved and a lot of hard work.
But in essence, that’s how it works.

On a final note: It’s also worth mentioning that if you go ahead and do all this link building without optimising your target pages, they will be much harder to rank in Google.

But if you throw so many links at a page that it does rank without being optimised, it may be subject to dramatic fluctuations in rankings.

I had a client once who wouldn’t let me change the Title Tags and this was the result.

So optimising Title Tag helps to effectively ‘pin’ the page in place so that Google always knows what that page is about, rather than needing thousands of back links to tell it what the page is for.

This is fairly top level, so you’re not going to become an SEO guru just from reading this, but if you’re an internet marketing looking for a better understanding, this should be right up your street.

What is Search Engine Optimisation and how does it work? Simply, it’s about optimising and linking building to websites in such a way that they rank top in Google. So if you have a website, you need SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation is a broad term which involves a number of tasks which help to create a website that’s easy to Google Bot to read the code of, crawl the structure of the website and understand the relevancy of its web pages.

All of these things, right down to the loading speed have an impact on the Google search engine rankings.

Website Optimisation

Having a clean, fast loading, easy to navigate website is ideal for users and for search engines.

Clean Code
Because Google Bot has to read all the code on every web page, having less code is a benefit.
Your website should have a simple CSS (cascading style sheet) for all pages.

But if there are opportunities to clean up any code and create a general rule in the CSS, rather than have unique (and often lengthy) code for specific pages, it will make the page easier for Google Bot to read and index more often.

It will also help to reduce loading time for users, which is something Google Bot also measures the performance of your website on.

Html and Xml Site Maps
Google Bot doesn’t just crawl your website from the front end like a user, it also crawls websites through Html and Xml site maps. It’s worth having both if you can, otherwise an Html sitemap will suffice.

Site Structure
Once again, for Google Bot to be able to easily crawl your website, have a tidy site structure helps – and not just for Google, but for users to find their way about as well. Ideally, a user should never be more than 3 clicks away from the Home Page. The deeper your site structure goes beyond this, the less likely (or frequently) these deep pages will be crawled.

Friendly Urls
Short Urls are great for Google and great for users too and if they include the keywords that your pages are about, they’re even better.
Urls which don’t include the keywords that the page is about or are lengthy and full of random code have been found to have lower click through rates.

For example, here are two pages for Thomas The Tank Engine:

www.toysrus.co.uk/browse/product/thomas-the-tank-engine is a good Url
www.play.com/Toys/Toys/-/3653/2920/3-/Refine.html is a bad Url

On Page Optimisation

In order to get pages to rank in Google, they need to be optimised for search terms.

Title Tags
In order to get pages to rank in Google, they need to be optimised for search terms.
So if you have a page about walking boots, make sure the Title Tag reads “Walking Boots”
You can include other keywords in the Title Tag to make the page rank for similar terms.

For example, this title tag:
Walking Boots: Waterproof & Leather Walking Boots with Free UK Delivery

Will help your page to rank for:
walking boots
walking boots uk
waterproof waking boots
leather walking boots
waterproof leather walking boots

Meta Descriptions
Meta Descriptions don’t help with Google rankings, but you can get your brand message across and include the same keywords from the Title Tag so that they appear in Bold when someone searches for them.

For example:
Buy the best walking boots online and in store from outdoor shop UK. Waterproof and leather walking boots as well as lightweight walking boots in stock now.

This should help to increase the Click Through Rate of your rankings.

H Tags (semantic mark up)
Google loves pages with content. And if you can break up your on page content with sub headers, like H Tags that include your target keywords, you can increase the ‘relevancy’ of your page for Google even further – which can also help to improve your ranking.

Link Building

Optimisation is only the first step to getting Google rankings, because you need links (lots of links!) to make those pages rank higher than they initially appear in the search engine results.
Link Sources
The best places to get build links from are other websites relevant to your niche.
So for example, if you were link building for your Walking Boots Page, you would want links from websites about walking, hiking and outdoor pursuits.

Anchor Text
Raw link value from links on relevant websites is good. But Anchor Text Links are better.
So if you build lots of links which read “walking boots” and point to your Walking Boots Page, this tells Google that your page is about walking boots and as a result Google will rank your page higher in the search results for the search term Walking Boots.

You should mix up your Anchor Text to make your link building look as natural as possible.
So going back to our Title Tag example, you can create Anchor Text links for “walking boots”, “waterproof waking boots” and “leather walking boots” which will help your ranking for Walking Boots.

It will also help your Walking Boots Page to rank for those search terms too, so it’s always good to optimise your Title Tag for a number of closely related search terms.

Link Types
There are loads of different types of websites and web pages you can build links from on the internet. All of them have different values based on the type of site that they’re from. Meanwhile each website will have their own Domain Authority and niche which will further determined the value of a link.

You always need to think about HOW you’re going to get these links, because spamming forums or simply asking webmasters for a link to your website isn’t likely to end well.

Here are 10 types of places you can get links from:
• Bookmarks
• Directory Submissions
• Bookmarks
• Blog Comments
• Article Submissions
• Forum Posts
• Social Profiles
• Blog Posts
• Blogger Outreach
• Content Marketing
• Press Releases

It’s always best to get links from as many niche relevant places as possible as well.

Social Media

Social media has been around long before Facebook and contrary to what many people say, a website will not shoot straight to the top of Google just from social signals alone. Instead, ‘social signals’ are a nice thing to have.
Wherever possible, it’s best to use your social media channels as part of an integrated marketing campaign which combines SEO and Social to achieve the best results for your campaign.

Summary

Hopefully this has given you a helpful introduction to the world of Search Engine Optimisation.
There’s absolutely loads to learn and we’re constantly learning new things ourselves.

So welcome to the dark side of the internet where every link counts for something.
The web will never look the same again!

So what does the ‘rise of the tablet’ mean for internet marketers?

Well, quite a few things actually.

Increase in Search
For starters, we can expect to see a rise in the number of searches being made overall.
Because, aside from the touch screens, the real appeal of tablets are their convenience. They’re bigger than a Smartphone, faster loading and less cumbersome than a laptop. Why wouldn’t you use one to quickly show your friends stuff or search while watching TV?

Those of us who have tablets use them constantly – but also more casually than our laptops or desktop computers. So while our usage is higher our intent and our engagement is often less serious or focussed. Although many more of us have been buying things online using our tablets compared to our Smartphones, which is very interesting for our retail clients.

Cannibalising Desktop Search
While we’d say that search is up overall, the convenience of the tablet is definitely taking us away from our laptops and desktops.

Many of us are content to make expensive purchases on our tablets in the same way we would when shopping online using a laptop or desktop computer, while we would be reluctant to on a Smartphone. And this all seems due to the size of the screen.

Maybe it’s because a larger screen is more familiar for shopping online? Maybe it’s because we can see what we’re doing better? Perhaps it’s because many online retail sites still aren’t particularly Mobile friendly? Whatever the exact reason, it’s clear that tablet search is cannibalising desktop searches.

Search Intent
From case studies we’ve done for our clients, we can tell you that there is often a huge difference in search intentions between someone searching on a Mobile device compared to a Desktop device.

In fact, someone on a Mobile device is far more likely to make a Local Search for something in their vicinity or to compare prices online while physically out shopping.

So where is a tablet positioned when it comes to search intent? While the industry has quickly pigeon holed tablet usage into Mobile Search, early studies demonstrated that search trends from tablets were position between typical Mobile Search and Desktop Search.

This is because tablets were frequently used at home as well as on the move, while the larger screens allow for more detailed interaction than on a mobile device.

However, while the industry continues to pigeon hole searches conducted on tablets as part of Mobile Search, search trends and behavioural intent will remain unclear.

Although you can filter traffic by different devices in your Google Analytics using advanced segments.

Today Google UK has revealed the most popular searches of 2012, including everything and everyone from Olympic Tickets to Kate Middleton and the North Korean techno dance sensation Gagnam Style.

But whether this is ‘Exact Match’ or ‘Broad Match’ we can’t be sure.

Top 10 Google UK Searches 2012

1. Euro 2012
2. Olympic tickets
3. Whitney Houston
4. Kate Middleton
5. April Jones
6. Netflix
7. NatWest Online
8. iPad 3
9. Gary Barlow
10. Gangnam style

We all expected “Olympics” to top the chart, followed by “Gangnam Style”, but according to Google UK, “Euro 2012″ was the biggest search term of the year, closely followed by “Olympic tickets” in second.

“Whitney Houston”, who died in February was the most searched for person, followed by “Kate Middleton”.

Other search trends demonstrate the popularity of “Netflix” and “Natwest Online” in the UK, followed by the legion of Apple fans eager to get their hands on the “iPad 3″.

X Factor has no doubt kept “Gary Barlow” in the search charts, just above the crazy dancing talents of K-Pop star PSY with the incredibly viral “Gangnam Style”.

Outside of the Top 10

The latest James Bond film “Skyfall” reflected its box-office success, as the top trending movie.

Sprinter Usain Bolt was the most searched for sports person, followed by Andy Murray, Tom Daley and Jessica Ennis.

Meanwhile, cyclist Victoria Pendleton was the most searched-for reality TV star, following her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing.

And Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt beat London Mayor Boris Johnson to the top politician’s spot.

Changing Search Trends

Some of the most interesting results are revealed in Google’s more esoteric searches.

Topping the “what is” poll was “love”, followed by “iCloud” and “3G”.

Meanwhile, the “how to” list revealed the growing trend of reigniting old skills with “knit” and “crochet” making the top 10, alongside “draw”, “kiss” and “hack”.

In many ways, a website is like a building. If you don’t lay the foundations right, you may not have a problem right away, but you’re going to have a serious problem in a few years time.

So here are three simple things you can do to get some quick rankings, but only in moderation.
Because if you do nothing but quick win ranking tricks, bad things can happen to your online business.

Allow me to explain…

1) Keyword Domains
Setting up a business on a Keyword Domain is still a great approach and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise!

However, if you’re planning on just having a Keyword Domain and throwing some spammy links at it, you’re just asking for trouble.

Yes, it will rank well in the short term, simply because it’s an exact match or partial match for a popular search term. But without good quality links and a strategy to turn your domain name into a real brand, your rankings won’t last long due to Google’s exact match domain algorithm update .

2) Spammy Links
Links are like pillars, helping to hold your website up. So if your pillars are poorly made or not likely to last, it’s likely that they will degrade and eventually crumble away. So if you lose lots of your links, your site loses its rankings.

So what constitutes a spammy link?

Well, one which might get devalued by Google for not being relevant to your niche, because it comes from a very generic or unrelated website which is blatantly selling links to anyone and everyone.

And because poor quality sites are often left to expire and are not renewed by the site owner, any links you’ve purchased from these sites will become Dead Links and pass no value as a result.

3) Satellite Sites
I love satellite sites, because they’re often Keyword Domains and they’re often held up by spammy links.

But what you’ve actually created is a website which is incredibly relevant to your niche and provides the perfect place to get relevant links from to help improve the rankings of your main site.

Hence, why these types of websites are often referred to as Satellite Sites, because they orbit your main website, like a satellite. Plus, you can have as many of them as you like.

So why bother going out to get links from other sites when you can just build your own?

Unfortunately, because business owners simply don’t have the time, money or staff to look after their 10 to 20 (or even 100+) Satellite Sites, they’re usually held up in the rankings with spammy links.

So let’s say you’ve got spammy links holding up 10 Satellite Sites. And you’ve got 10 Satellite Sites holding up your main website for its top search terms.

Suddenly those spammy links to your Satellites get devalued by a new Google algorithm update or simply disappear and become Dead Links because the site owners let their domains expire and don’t renew them.

That causes your Satellite Sites to lose their domain authority. And as a result, any links from them become equally worthless.

Oh wait, those links were the only things holding up the best pages on your main website. Well, you’re going to lose all of these rankings really quickly.

Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong, this quick win stuff is great – in moderation!

So while it may be incredibly tempting to smash your targets in the short term and get all these great rankings, if your links aren’t going to sustain themselves in the long term, your successful business could all come crashing down further down the line because someone let their domain expire or Google had another algorithm update.

Google has talked about cleaning up the web and devaluing spammy sites and spammy links for years. But now that they’re actually doing it, Future Proofing your website has become more important than ever.

And on a final note: if you do create Keyword Domains and Satellite Sites with great links and look after them properly, they can be a great way to get rankings, drive traffic and integrate with social very successfully.

Early Warning
There was talk about EMDs (exact match domains) and PMDs (partial match domains) a few weeks earlier, but no one really paid it any mind until Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam team tweeted about a “small upcoming google algo change” that was intended to “reduce low-quality exact-match domains in the search results”.

So what would we class as a low-quality exact-match domain?

Affiliate sites spring to mind. You know, the ones set up on a really basic blog template with very little content. However, they always rank well with a few dodgy back links because they’re domain name is an exact match or a very close partial match for a popular search term.

They’re a nightmare for retail sites to outrank because of their exact match domains, so by this intent, they should have been first on Google’s chopping block.

What Actually Happened
Unfortunately an automated algorithm cannot understand human intent. So while you’d expect an affiliate site named www.walkingboots.org to be cast into fiery oblivion, a really helpful resource run by an outdoor enthusiast named www.walkingbootsreviews.net could also be sent down based on the exact same algorithm.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen many exact match and partial match keyword domains holding their positions perfectly well.

We believe that this is based on their back links, because this is the only way Google Bot can determine whether a website deserves to rank for a specific search term or not.

Brand Favouritism Reduced
Remember a few years back when many brands didn’t rank #1 in Google for their own names?

Well, Google decided that brands deserved to rank #1 for a better user experience. But because Google Bot cannot understand human intent, in order to make that happen, the Google algorithm had to be weighted in favour of exact match and partial match domains.

Suddenly exact and partial match domains were ranking everywhere – Brands, affiliates and web savvy retailers in particular.

So in order to reduce low quality exact match domains in the search results without hurting brands in the EMD Update, Google had to come up with a way of keeping the brand domains ranking.

Bear in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of brands out there. Many of which most of us have probably never heard of, so it’s not like Google could manually tag all of them. They have to rely on their algorithm instead.

So what do brands always have that other exact match domains don’t always have?
Links! Lots of links and some great quality links too. Because people love linking to brands.

Quantity of Links and Quality of Links
As we all know, if you want to rank a site successfully in Google, you need links.

Back in the day you could rank well from a few high quality links. Then over time, quantity of links became more important. Now you need a good mixture of quality and quantity from a wide range of resources in order to meet Google’s “quality score” in order to rank well in the search engine results.

And this is how Google’s algorithm can tell the difference between a brand domain and an exact match domain. Because a brand should always have a good back link profile. Emphasis on the word ‘should’.

This helps to explain why there are now far less low quality exact match domains in the search results. And by ‘low quality’ Matt Cutts and Google actually means ‘low quality back link profile’ exact match domains. It has nothing to do with the quality of the user experience, which is why many sites which really deserve to rank are no longer ranking.

So if your site has been hit by the latest update, it’s worth thinking about getting some quality links as well as quantity of links while diversifying the different types of links that point to your website. Because the exact match domains which act like a brand, and receive links like a brand as a result, are still doing perfectly well.

Why Keyword Domains are Still the Best Domains
In a Q&A video a few months back, Matt Cutts answered a question asking whether someone should set up an online store with an exact match keyword domain or with a brand name.

Perhaps this was an early sign of what was to come? But while Matt agreed that there was value in an exact match domain, he emphasised that there was greater value to be had in establishing a brand.

But why not do both?

Simply choose a popular search term and make it your brand name.
Sport Shoes, Decathlon and Evans Cycles are just a few examples that spring to mind.

This way you can create a website that will rank quickly for a popular search term and then totally dominate it when you promote yourself as a proper brand and build all the good quality links and high quality of links that go with being a brand.

Conclusion
At the end of the day, you’ll never have anything to fear from a Google algorithm update so long as you keep building good links and lots of them, while diversifying the types of links you get and their sources.

If you’re running SeNukeX or similar popular black hat tools for months on end, or buying loads of cheap blog links without doing any real quality link building, then sooner or later you’re going to have a bad time.

Future proof your website by building the links that Google likes.

Everyone seems to have caught the cycling bug including myself and I’m seeing more and more cyclists on the roads.

But is all of the hype, press coverage and success reflecting anything in Google searches? I’m going to have a look at a number of search terms and see how they have been affected.

Searches regarding the term ‘Cycling’ are currently double there normal volume with a peek of over 5X more searches.

So how has that had an effect on the cycling industry?

It looks like cycling has never been so popular with the amount of searches for terms such as cycling club and cycling team having such huge increases.

This has also had an effect on the amount of people looking to buy a bike

Searches for all of the different types of bikes have also seen a great spike. This suggests that more people are looking to buy a whole range of bikes and cycling equipment.

Not only is this interesting but it is a great way to see that sporting events such as the Olympics have such a large effect on Google search.

So if you or one of your clients sell bikes, running cleats or pole volt polls maybe you should be keeping in touch with sporting events or even thinking about Rio 2016?

1. Visit the Google homepage

2. Now select the settings option on your device. People using mobile devices will find this at the bottom of the page and those on tablets the top right.

3. As shown in the below screenshot the google handwriting option will be available for you to turn on or off

4. Now google handwriting is available you are free to scribble away and see what Google’s new handwriting technology will make of it.

So now you know how to do it will you actually ever use it? With more and more devices having touchscreen technology is this a sign of what’s to come? In my personal opinion I don’t think it will last past the gimmick but maybe you can see valuable uses for it. Maybe this technology will make Google search more accessible for younger or disabled people?

Please leave a comment with your opinion or ideas on this new technology.

“In geek-speak, [the knowledge graph] a ‘graph’—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.” Google Official Blog, May 16th 2012

Whenever searching the web, there are always going to be different meanings to your search and that is what the Knowledge Graph is trying to interpret, what do you exactly mean when you search for something generic such as ‘Ford’? Do you mean the motor company? A shallow water crossing? As you can see, there are many queries that you could face when searching the net, but Google is attempting to utilise a semantic approach with the Knowledge Graph by understanding that what you are searching for is not only a word or string of words but actually a real thing that has real life connections and connotations. One of the key things mentioned in the launch video is that this is the early phases of moving from a “Information engine and becoming a knowledge engine”

Just in case you haven’t seen the introduction video, here it is -

Here are some images of the Google Knowledge Graph in action!

But how will all of this affect you and your search engine marketing?

- No evidence of Paid results – From all of the screen shots we have seen of the new search interface there is a distinct lack of paid results. I’m sure Google would not remove paid ads completely but will this new interface impact click through rates and make appearing in the top 2-3 results even more important? Or will this introduce a new kind of paid advertising?

- Link building will be key – We all know not to spam sites with tonnes of unrelated links, but there are certainly businesses out there that have secured some authoritative links, but from unrelated industries or companies. With Google already having rolled out the Penguin update targeting spammy links, the Knowledge Graph seems to go one step further. Relationship analysis of all content in and around your site will be vital that it is not related to off topic industries or companies as this could seriously affect your chances of naturally ranking at all. Quality and relevance of content surrounding your brand or search term needs to be as clean and user friendly as possible. Building information about your brand could become just as important as building links.

- Information building will be crucial if you want your website to appear on page one natural results. Because of the way Google is trying to build out the Knowledge Graph, related subjects surrounding your brand or service needs to be relevant in a common sense manner. With Google populating results dependant on relationships, what control will search marketers have? Will there be the introduction of new HTML tags that will aid how your content relates to particular search terms? There is much to answer surrounding this, which we will endeavour to do as the Knowledge graph roles out worldwide.

What do you see as the future of this update? How do you think it will affect search engine marketing? Let me know in the comments below.