You’re probably noticing something different, even a little annoying, this morning as you search using Google. If you don’t see it today, you soon will. As you begin to type in an intended search phrase, you’ll notice Google finishes those phrases for you–or tries to predict what you’re searching for. The SERPs show immediate results for the “predicted” word or phrase. Results continue to change as you continue typing.

For example, take a look at the screenshot below. I typed in “F” which appears in a black font, then Google added “acebook” which appears in light gray. A SERP appeared with results based on a “Facebook” search. As I continued typing, Google continued making suggestions and the SERP updated immediately based on the new “predictions.” In addition to all that, the ever-familiar drop down menu of suggested search phrases appears too.

A lot of distractions to say the least.

Example of Google’s Predictive Search

Call it Live Updating, Streaming Search, Immediate Search, or Predictive Search, but the fact is some major changes are being made at Google that SEOs needs to be aware of.

How to Turn off Live Streaming?

Annoying? Distracting? How do you turn this thing off? To the right of the Search button is a link to “turn off streaming.”

We’ll write more about this, but for now, be aware of the changes. You may notice that your impressions go up, while clicks do not. This may be the result of appearing in the SERPs briefly due to this process.

• Blog Search
• Realtime Results
• Google Places

EXPANDED BLOG SEARCH

When you perform a search, i.e. Apple TV, look to the left-side under “Everything” and click the “Blogs” link.

Still in the left-side menu, you’ll see an option for “Posts” and “Homepages.” Clicking Homepages allows searches to find individual blogs that focus on topics of interest, not just individual posts from blogs of all categories. It’s another opportunity for people to find your blog, so you want to make sure you’re listed.

Is Your Blog in Blog Search?

Bill Slawski, from SEO by the Sea, links these improvements to US Patent 7,765,209. Based off that information you want to make sure you have certain information available in order for Google to extract it for Blog Search. This includes: multiple posts/pages related to your main topics, a feed that includes at least the title, description, link, author profile and date created.When you link to other blog posts, it may help if those follow those guidelines too. You want automatic pings on your blog, which will help Google detect your blog for inclusion, but you can also submit a blog manually. Of course don’t forget to optimize your posts!

REALTIME SEARCH GETS RESPECT

Realtime Search has a dedicated page now and a few new features to help focus results. Realtime Search shows blog, webpage, and social media posts related to your search, as they become available–in real time. Results can further be filtered by using the geographic location link to see what is going on in your area. Just click the “Nearby” or “Custom Location” link in the left-side menu.

To see the rise and fall of interest in the topic, check out the “Conversation Timeline” under the search box just above the results.

GOOGLE BUSINESS LISTINGS GROW

When you search places in Google, for example pizza in Chicago, IL, SERPs usually return a map with the first seven locations marked by the familiar red tab. Now you’ll notice more locations are listed with smaller red circle as seen in the map above.

As you click on selections with the circle, those results also trigger a pop up window which lists the name, location, user reviews, etc. of the location.

While these are good changes for searchers, you also want to make sure you’re getting the added visibility. Make sure your blog is optimized, using keywords in the right places, and that you have a feed which includes title, URL, and author. Automated pings help notify Google Blog Search of updates and changes. Likewise, with the expanded local business listings you definitely want to make sure you’ve registered with Google Places and are encouraging user-generated reviews.

Firebox 4 With Multi-Touch

On August 11, Mozilla released the third beta version of Firebox 4. The most exciting difference in Firefox 4 the utilization of Windows 7 multi-touch features which lets you flip through files or pictures; open, resize, move and close images and videos, and other touch screen capabilities.

Chrome 6

Chrome 6 is now available in beta. Aside from better JavaScript handling and speed, Chrome 6 has an autofill feature, additional synchronization capabilities, and a condensed toolbar making Chrome easier to use.

Internet Explorer 9

Download a preview of Internet Explorer 9 which is due for public beta in September. Developers can run test drive samples to see the HTML5 and modern SVG in action. Like Firefox and Chrome it handles JavaScript better and is faster.

Today I am having a guest blogger, Ricky Breslin, take over and discuss his specialty – lead generation. I love Ricky’s approach as it is very much like my own; no-nonsense and full of real examples instead of posting theories.

Theories suck.

Take it away Ricky …

Want to see the inside of actual lead generation campaigns, using real money, with a nice pretty little picture? I know, this will be really weird considering that people never use real numbers and only talk about fictitious “businesses” they run and how successful they are.

(Please note: I do promote 1ShoppingCart & Aweber in the post because I actually use them and believe in them. If you click the links I would earn a small commission. If you’re not cool with that, just go directly to their website and order and you’ll get the same results)

Alright, now let me show you what really goes on behind the scenes of a real business trying to make real money online.

Okay, then – let’s roll!

There are 4 basic parts to successful lead generation.

1. Landing page with good call to action
2. Qualified traffic
3. Good follow-up
4. Simple A/B split testing

Don’t overcomplicate this.

The easy part is driving traffic, because you can buy it. Usually, if you’re doing lead generation with follow-up, the hardest part is figuring out if the campaign you’re running is actually working. If you’re straight up asking for the sale, it’s simple. Here’s why I’ve found this to be true…

Let’s make this easy. If I buy 100 clicks for $1.00 each, I just spent $100. If I’m selling a product for $50 and have a 3% conversion rate, then I just made 3 sales, which means I made $150.

That’s just simple first grade math.

If this is the case right out the gate, then I’m going to try to scale this bad boy as hard as possible and really push it. This is all easily done with Google AdWords.

But what if you’re driving traffic to squeeze pages and only asking for an e-mail address? How do you know it’s paying off for you? Sure, you can forward the visitor straight to an offer after you get the visitor’s e-mail address, but what if you’re losing money, even though you’re getting a 30% opt-in rate and a ton of e-mail addresses?

THAT is what I want to explain to you today. I want to let you in on how to do and track lead generation if you’re just asking for an e-mail address (which can kind of suck).

To do this I use 1ShoppingCart, Aweber, and AdTrackz. You can use any tools you like, but these are what I use and they work great.

Here’s what to do…

When I create my campaigns I’m cool with breaking even every time. If I make a profit it’s great, but I’m cool with breaking even.

So, let’s start with the keyword “how to golf.”

I would take that keyword and create a campaign in Google AdWords for it. And let’s say that I pay .50 per click for that keyword and I drive each click to a well SEO’d page that Google likes.

It’s got all the fixin’s: great design, big call to action button, great copywriting, high quality images, good video, etc.

Now, let’s say I spend $500, which buys me 1,000 clicks. Out of those 1,000 clicks I have a 30% opt-in rate, which gives me 300 leads.

Now, I’m using double opt-in, so in reality, only 80% of the people will double opt in and go to the free video or whatever you’re giving away. So I REALLY got 240 straight-up leads – so basically I paid $2.08 for a real e-mail address from a real human being.

Except that you also have the people who unsubscribe right after they get your free stuff because they couldn’t care about you, your life, your products, or your business. I’ve found that about 5% of all leads do this.

So that leaves us with 228 real, breathing human beings on our e-mail list, at a cost of $2.19 per e-mail address at the end of the day.

Can you see why people go broke online and give up? They aren’t going this far, they usually give up after this step because they think they lost. But not us, we keep rolling.

Now, I’ll usually follow up with 5 e-mails, for which I use Aweber. And THIS IS THE KEY right here: in each e-mail you need to tell great stories and always do a soft pitch at the end of the story, offering your product as the solution to problem that you’ve described.

Don’t be afraid to tell your readers about your products. If your products are good, they NEED to be told as long as they work and are what you say they are.

So here’s what to do next…

We NEED to know if you’re follow-up is allowing you to break even. Remember, we spent $500 to generate 228 e-mail addresses. We need find out if it’s even possible to get our $500 back.

Here’s how to do that…

In 1ShoppingCart create an AdTracker for your follow-up for that campaign. So I would create “AR1 – How To Golf Campaign,” “AR2 – How To Golf Campaign,” etc.

What’s great about 1ShoppingCart is that their AdTracker tracks EVERYTHING down to the dollar once the person clicks. It’s beautiful.

But don’t be lazy and use the ugly link the AdTracker spits out. Make sure to make it a “Pretty Link” with AdTrackz. I recommend that you create a folder on your server called “link” for tracking purposes.

So if you have 5 follow-up e-mails for this campaign, your links will look like this…

http://www.domain.com/link/1.php (AR1 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/2.php (AR2 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/3.php (AR3 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/4.php (AR4 – How To Golf Campaign)
http://www.domain.com/link/5.php (AR5 – How To Golf Campaign)

Now your links are “pretty” because your 1ShoppingCart AdTracker link is wrapped in Adtrackz, and you can track all your follow up e-mails down to the dollar.

I recommend that you send the e-mails 5 days in a row. So let’s say you just did all that. You’ve logged into 1ShoppingCart and found out that out of those 228 people, you made a total of $414 in sales from your soft pitches. Do you quit there?

I wouldn’t, although I would consider that a success because we got pretty close to breaking even and didn’t lose much money.

But the part that’s not truly quantifiable is what these e-mail addresses are worth to you 3 months, 1 year, and 3 years down the road.

Here’s where it just gets funky. Sure, the math is right in front of us in black and white, but consider this…

1. Maybe your customer buys an affiliate product related to your product because they like and trust you now.

2. Maybe your customer buys another product from you that wasn’t related to the one they originally opted in for.

3. Maybe your customer clicks on an ad in your website.

4. Maybe you have a big Christmas sale and your customer buys that.

5. Maybe your customer tells 8 friends about your website.

6. Maybe your customer posts your website or one of your blogs on their Facebook or Twitter page.

Why do I mention all of these possibilities? Because, at the end of the day, math only takes you so far in this game. Yes, it’s absolutely necessary to be on top of your numbers like crazy, but never forget that part of this game is an art, and that you can be as creative as you want.

What I’ve just explained to you is exactly how I create and track all of my lead generation. It’s one of the best ways I know, and I hope you can take something away from this you can use.

I’ve also attached a screenshot of my 1ShoppingCart account so you can actually see how they break the numbers down; it’s pretty cool.

And the nice part is you start to notice cool trends and things that work and don’t work with your 1ShoppingCart AdTracker data. This data allows you do more of the stuff that works for your market.

At the end of the day just remember that this game is never pretty, in fact it’s usually an ugly mess until you get all this stuff figured out. But once you do, everything is a lot more fun.

Originally Post: http://www.rickybreslin.com/blog/the-ugly-side-of-online-lead-generation/

While iPhone4 got the big song and dance in the media, Android phones quietly gained popularity and market share. Overall, however, more smarthphone users still own iPhones than do Android-based phones. Both fall behind Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry which still runs the show, accounting for one-third of smartphone sales over the last six months thanks to all the QWERTY addicts. It’s interesting to note that Nielsen also did a brand loyalty survey in which 58% of RIM users said they would probably try another phone/carrier with their next purchase.

Another report by Canalys shows that shipments of phones running Google’s Android operating system grew 886% worldwide in Q2 2010!

Facebook Questions isn’t up yet, but below is an example of what it will look like. Facebook describes it as a cross between Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers, but as you can see from the image below, answers can reach Wikipedia-length proportions.

Everyone on Facebook will be able to see your question or respond to it. Facebook friends will see your questions directly in their News Feed. Which poses the question: Is Facebook Questions going to be appreciated or downright annoying?

Using the service is pretty easy. You can either type your question directly into a search box found at the top of each page, use the Questions dashboard, or ask a question via your profile/homepage.

Like Yahoo! Answers, once you post a question on Facebook it will be available for everyone to see. The main difference between Yahoo! Answers and Facebook Questions is that Facebook’s service will not be indexed by search engines, though that may change.

Google-Owned Aardvark Q&A

If you can’t wait for Facebook Questions to go live, check out Google-owned Q&A service Aardvark. When you ask a question on Aardvark it sends it to registered users with experience on the topic, users with similar tastes, and friends of friends in your network who may be able to help. You can share your “Vark” Q&A’s with Facebook friends and friends of friends. Tags within the profile of your network are used to determine whom to route a question to (activities, interests, places, local information, products mentioned, skills, academic information, professional experience, organizations, political information, etc.).

Other sites using Facebook as the base of a Q&A service include TripAdvisor (enables Facebook users to ask their friends questions about specific cities) and Quora. Google Social Search isn’t a Q&A service, but it will give you content posted by people in your contacts list that is relevant to your search. This allows you to review what they have to say without broadcasting your business to your entire network.

Most of the problems lie in “education” or “perception” or what I like to call miss-perception. Why? Well, in the interviews I conducted, nearly all the business owners who feel they were cheated thought the “AdWords Professional” was a Google employee, which isn’t the case. They have merely passed a test issued by Google.

So let’s say an AdWords Professional has scammed you in some way, how do you go about it? First you need to make sure they are really AdWords Professionals and are certified by Google. Then you can fill in a form that can be found on their Google page. Look for ‘report a complaint about this partner’, and clicking that link will direct you straight to the form to fill out. Then it’s up to Google to look at the complaint and take appropriate measures.

Or, you can hire the right person the first time. I’ve used Joel McDonald for years to handle my AdWords campaigns and I have been very happy with the results. Click for more info on Joel and what he can do for your business. Just realize that he focuses on companies that are spending at least $5k a month in AdWords.

However, despite all the hype, it can also be a place where there is a lot of people talking but not a lot of people listening!

But, did you know that Twitter also helps in getting traffic to your blog or website?

Tricky thing!

Twitter

Well, that’s true! Twitter is the most popular micro blogging system that helps in gaining traffic to your blog (but yes, you need to take help from some SEO experts). However, there are certain rules to be followed. I will mention some major points for you so that you get an idea.

Twitter allows only 140 characters per message, which is why it is called a micro blogging system. Twitter is so simple to use and it is even easy to find friends and a great way to start communicate with them. This is the main reason that this particular social networking website has become so popular.

Twitter is the only place where you can hang out with people and also tell them what you are doing and how you spend your days. Starting from very light-hearted communication to blog sharing and information transfer, everything is possible on this social network. You can as well build a community of your own and have thousands of people following you, while you also follow others.

This is how traffic is generated, and traffic means profit in turn.

However, there are certain areas in this social network that needs to be optimized to drive more traffic from twitter. So, what are the steps to be taken care of, for fetching more traffic from Twitter? Some important points are mentioned below:

Tip#1: Create your Twitter Profile

Your Twitter profile should be interesting enough to grab user’s attention. The cover page determines what kind of personality you are having and also reveals your interests. If you provide the best information about yourself, you will likely find more like-minded people following you. Add your picture or something that’s interesting and might grab attention to your profile as well. Choosing an appropriate username is also very important.

Tip#2: Give the Link to your Website/Blog on your Profile page

Linking your blog or website to your profile page with proper heading and description of the content in the particular page can help in generating roe traffic. As Twitter is a great way to interact with people and make thousands of friends, you simply cannot miss out on this. This is the best way to let people now what you are capable of doing and how. Your username should speak about your interests too.

Tip#3: Interact with People

Twitter is a platform where people follow each other while sending messages. So once you receive a message from someone, never miss the opportunity. Always make it a point to interact with people who have expressed their interest in your profile. After a few moments of casual talks, you can get back to business, but informally.

Tip#4: Find Like-minded People

As there are thousands of people on Twitter, you can easily find some friends sharing common interests and having similar thoughts, in order to find them you just need to choose from a few options. Whether you want to search on twitter or on some other networks or invite some friends via email or check for the suggested user options, it’s all your choice. Also, you can use all these options together.

Tip#5: RSS Feeds are great help on Twitter

Display the RSS Feeds of your blog or website on Twitter to get more traffic. As you publish an article on your blog, you can tweet and inform your friends and get it done automatically. This will generate traffic and your followers will target your writings and make it a point to see what you have written.

Always monitor your Twitter account and be consistent – that’s the way to tweet!

tweet

Other posts that might help you to increase your website traffic:

• SEO Tips for the New Year
• Affiliate Marketing
• Boost Your Web Traffic Now

Search engine spiders or crawlers are all the same names for common software which indexes content on the web. A search spider is basically a software program that is frequently used by search engines like Google to index important pages on the Internet for retrieval by their users.

The basic task of these crawlers is to index content and follow all the links it comes across to gather even more content.

While it might apparently seem to be difficult, it’s not. I highly recommend using a “robots.txt” for your website. It is through this file that instructs the spiders what they can and, more importantly, what they can’t index on your site.

Note: If you need a walkthrough, I have a great tutorial: Robots.txt File – No Website Should Be Without One

More articles related to SEO:
• Basic Steps for SEO
• Meta Tags Google Advice
• Improve Your Site Ranking in Google
• Yahoo! Search Engine Friendly Design

Google Penalty

Getting hit with a Google penalty is hands down one of the greatest threats to a website’s existence online. Most of the time they are given when a site breaks Google’s Terms of Use, but sometimes they happen for no reason at all … and innocent webmasters are sent reeling.

Why does Google give out penalties? Simple. They want to protect their customers. Did you know that Google makes an average of 8 cents in revenue for every single search conducted on their search engine and partner sites? That’s real money … and factors into billions and billions of dollars. Google doesn’t want to see that revenue stream end anytime soon so they are aggressive at protecting it.

Here are some methods that have been proven to cause Google penalties in the past:

- Hidden Text: using targeted keywords in the same color as the background of the page so they can’t be seen by the visitor but the search engine indexes the text.

- Paid Links: Using a broker or going direct to the webmaster to purchase links with targeted anchor text to manipulate the rankings in Google. It has been said for years by Google that if you buy links you will be punished hard.

- Cloaking: Showing the search engines a highly optimized page with no graphics, just text while showing the visitor the beautifully designed page. Google has stated that if you show them one page and the visitor another you will be penalized.

- Malware / Code Injection: If you cause code to be installed on the visitor’s machine to allow you to change their user experience across the Internet, and not just your site, your site will be flagged as malicious by Google.

… we’ll discuss more in a moment …

Google has stated time and time again that if you build a site with nothing but good, unique content then people will link to it naturally and your rankings will go up. That is one of the biggest lies on the internet. It isn’t going to happen. You have to build a site with good MARKETABLE content and then get off your butt and actually work to market your site and your offer. You can’t just build the site and sit on your hands expecting something to happen. You have to MAKE it happen!

What else do you need to be wary of?

• Your website is linking to a site that has been banned by Google
• Your website is Linking to “bad” neighborhoods (Google makes the determination of what is “bad” and it seems to change from month to month)
• Over optimization your website (keyword density for on-page factors or incoming anchor text)
• Duplicate Content
• Keyword Stuffing (spamming)
• Automated page redirects

You can check more guidelines and rules at: Google Webmaster Guidelines center

Recovering your website from a Google penalty may take around 2-3 months after you rectify everything, which includes going into the “Google Confessional”. If your website has been removed from Google’s index, then apply again for re-listing by submitting a re-inclusion request at http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/request.py?, or better yet, through your Google Webmaster Tools account.

My Dad & I at my sister’s wedding in 2000.

My father passed away during the summer of 2003 and I find it hard to believe it has been nearly seven years. It seems like a lot longer than that. A lot has changed since my father died. My youngest son David was born, I’ve relocated to North Carolina and I have found peace in my life. There have been times that I’ve been happy in my life, but I can honestly say that right now, I’m the happiest I’ve been in my life. And what mostly sucks is he isn’t here to share it with.

Memories of one’s childhood are often dominated by sacred events. As a male, sacred events are often synonymous with sporting events. Growing up in the Bay Area in California, I witnessed first hand incredible events at the Oakland Coliseum. A home run by Hank Aaron; the A’s victory over the Dodgers in the ‘74 World Series and Jim Plunkett resurrecting his career in dramatic fashion with a playoff win over the Oilers in ‘80 as a stepping stone to winning Super Bowl 15 for the Raiders.

But what made these events sacred to me was not their place in sports history, but rather that my father was right next to me for each event. I remember vividly that regardless of how loud the crowd was around us, I heard every word my dad said to me as if it was just the two of us in the stadium. On the drive home, we had some incredible talks. He would always tell me that the most important role I could fulfill in this life would be that of a father. As I look at my children now, I hope to be able to instill the same attributes of integrity, honesty, compassion and loyalty that I learned from my father.

My dad and I watching the Giants

We did. A two-run homer sent the game into extras and the Giants won. Even though I know it is impossible, somehow, I like to believe my dad had something to do with it. And dad, I want you to know that even though I sometimes stumble, I strive everyday to follow your example.

Happy Father’s Day.

San Francisco Giants Opening Day