It continues to amaze me that web site owners insist on thinking their business, their service, their products, are unique and different, somehow SEO-special. By SEO-special, I mean outside the regular rules of best practices, as if those rules don’t apply to their site.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The process remains the same independent of the services being offered and the products sold.  Search engines work the way they work – - they don’t work differently depending on those services or products, and there are no “special” algorithms for “special” web sites.

So, the first advice I offer to clients who think this way is to get over themselves.  Their products and services just aren’t that SEO-special, SEO-different, or SEO-difficult to promote, and they need to stop thinking that way. So, let’s have that discussion again here.

The first, and frankly the only, purpose of an SEO strategy is to make your web site easy to find when people are searching for what you sell.  That’s it, plain and simple.

I’ve offered on these pages in past columns the self help test worth taking, and perhaps you read that earlier piece.  Imagine for a moment you are in need of the product or service you sell.  Imagine further you don’t know your web site exists.  While imagining these two things, go to Google and enter how you would search for those products or services.

If you sell blue-fringed widgets with yellow stripes, search that term.  Review the results and see how your site ranks.  If it has been optimized for that keyword and the optimization has been done well, your site should rank well.

Remember, now, it’s not how you “want” people to be searching for your products and services that matters; rather, it is how, in fact, people are already searching for them.  That data is available to know, if you look in the right places for it, and that research is crucial to the success of your SEO strategy.

So, what is it you’re selling?  How are people likely to be searching for what you sell?  What keywords are they using?  What are the most appropriate keywords to optimize your site for?

Again, it’s not how you want people to be searching for you – - it’s how they already are or are likely to search for you, and when you accept this, you are well on your way to developing an SEO strategy that will work.

If you are selling service “ABC,” and you’re selling that service in geographical area “XYZ,” your first piece of research is the search inventory for “ABC in XYZ.”  Research tools available online will be able to tell you not only how many searches have been conducted historically, but also the keyword variations searchers have used, and even predictive numbers on how many will searches will likely be conducted per day ongoing.

Imagine that!  How you think people are searching, and how they are, in fact, searching, can be separated, and in doing so, your SEO strategy becomes far more effective and more highly targeted.

So, get over yourself.  Never mind what you think; find out what’s actually happening in search engine world.  From that will come your list of keywords already being searched, and with those keywords will come your web site copy optimized for them.

One other thing, too.  Web sites are perpetual works in progress, and an effective SEO plan never ends.  That web site copy can always be changed, and quite easily, too.  Watch your site, measure its performance, analyze your analytics data, and make adjustments to that copy as appropriate.

People’s search habits change over time, and search engines re-tool their algorithms three or four times per year.  Keep up with those changes and you can maintain high ranks your work may have achieved for you.

There’s a lot more to SEO than this stuff, to be sure.  But, you first have get past yourself and let hard numbers and hard facts, all ascertainable beforehand, guide your decisions.

Google’s new “Instant” is an interesting and not surprising addition to the online search world. Some have gone so far as to suggest it makes search engine optimization (SEO) irrelevant. I wouldn’t go that far, and consider the notion a bit extreme, but it does raise a few issues worth considering.

For those not familiar with Google Instant, it’s pretty much what the words imply – - as you enter your search term in the little window on Google, results will be presented with the addition of each individual letter, even starting with the very first one.  That’s pretty instant, to be sure.  In a world that demands immediate gratification for just about everything, a world filled with folks whose attention spans get shorter with each passing day, it satisfies everyone’s search Jones.

If you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize this will tend to favor big brands over small.  If you think about for another moment, though, you’ll realize that the big brands were already likely to be favored in pre-Instant times, too.

However, locality, surfing and search habits factor into the results one will see in a Google search.  You may not know this, but search engines keep track of what you do online – - and yes, I mean you, and you, and you.  The results presented in your searches take into account your previous activities and your locale.  In other words, Google knows what we’ve been doing, each and every one of us who uses it.  Yes, it is possible to wipe that slate clean, but how many of you even knew it was happening in the first place?

The impact of this practice means that we, you and I and all of us, are each seeing a different Internet every time we search.  We are all seeing an Internet based upon what we did yesterday, the day before, and last week.  Our individual experiences in the world of search engines is unique to us and different than everyone else.

Let’s put those several thoughts together and see if we can make just a little sense of this Google Instant thing as it relates to SEO.
First, the big brands thing – - it was already happening anyway.  Big brands advertise across the media spectrum.  We all know the big brands because we see them on television, we hear them on the radio, we read about them in the newspaper or see their fliers or their boxes on the shelves of our markets when we shop.  We know them, so we are already searching for them online.  That Google Instant might tend to favor them doesn’t change what is already happening in searches.

Small businesses were already going to have to work harder to elbow their way to high rank positions for their most appropriate keywords anyway in order to compete with the big brands.  So, that doesn’t really change.  Secondly, if consumer searches historically tended more toward the local, then local small businesses might have the edge in results presented.

Yes, SEO has been effective when implemented well and carefully measured periodically, in part because we were all seeing the same Internet.  But, it’s also true we all haven’t been seeing the same Internet for a while now.  As for the debate between SEO and PPC (pay per click, those advertisements appearing the “Sponsored Results” sections on search result pages), Google Instant might tend to favor PPC as the better choice.

However, SEO still matters today, and will into the future, Google Instant notwithstanding.  Its effectiveness, though, will require more careful research and analysis with a more frequent regularity.  Small businesses will need to know their market better, and become far more familiar with their customers.  However, knowing your customers better isn’t a bad thing.

For instance, it would behoove a small business owner to know what other searches his or her customers are likely to have conducted (think local here) to understand and anticipate how the Internet looks to them.  Perhaps easier said than done, but I think this will prove to be valuable knowledge, right up there with search inventory numbers.  And, it does tend to force small business owners at least to consider PPC.

Of course, time will tell us the full and true impact of Google Instant.  That’s no different than time telling us how impactful one’s SEO strategy has been when we analyze a site’s performance.  It does mean more frequent analysis, though, in order for that strategy to be effective.  Instant means instant, and perhaps bi-weekly temperature taking on site stats is the rule to follow now, instead of monthly.

In short, though, here’s the first thing you need to know:  if you’ve had an SEO strategy in place for a while, it’s time to evaluate it and evolve.  If you haven’t, well, all I can say is shame on you.