On Tuesday, we looked at some of the changes that Google has recently made to its search options, included letting internet users pick from lists of which media they want to see and letting them decide just how far back in time they want to go. The ability to go as far back as one year (and probably further) means that what you do to optimize your web presence today can have an effect on how people perceive your organization in the future. When you build your web presence and work on improving your search engine ranking, you are helping to build an archive of relevant data about your operations and your field.
Google users are now also able to change just how they view the information they request in searches. They can choose:
Related Searches: This means that a Google user can get a several lists with searches that relate. Some people would tell you that you should just optimize for every possible thing. We would not advocate that approach. You should, however, be certain to optimize for a range of subjects that are truly related to your business. Increase Visibility offers a free website analysis to see if your website is making the most of the keywords used to find organizations like yours.
Timeline: With this option, a Google user can see search results grouped by dates. For those who are searching for time-specific content, this will make things a lot easier.
Wonder Wheel: If you have read up a little on education, you know that some people are visual learners. For this people, lists don’t quite work. This is where something like the Wonder Wheel comes into play. The main topic is in the center of the wheel and related topics are spun off onto spokes.
Take some time to play with these new search options to get a feel for the many ways in which someone can come across your organization. This will help you to understand more about the importance of organic search placement. You want to be in the places where people who are looking for you will be able to find you, but you don’t want to force it. If you try to stuff your website with what you think are popular keywords just because. Doing that means that people who are not looking for you will get to your site and may not find is useful. In the meantime the people who would benefit from connecting with you, may not get to you.
