what’s new in search? how destinations can leverage new search trends
TRANSCRIPT
Background
Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
TravelCLICK, Director of Sales
Milestone Internet Marketing, Regional Director of Sales
Sercius
Meanwhile…
Let’s get specific on these trends
Penguin/Panda algorithmic changes
Google+
Authorship
Knowledge Graph
Some Perspective
*http://mashable.com/2012/09/18/google-has-400-million-members/, September 2012
Google+ has 400 million users, 100 million active*
Facebook has 1 billion users
Why does Google+ matter?
Since search is becoming semantic in nature, you need a social component
Bing has Facebook and Twitter, so they don’t need Bing+
Google needs more social information to complete the picture
Is Google+’s audience all you need for marketing? No. Does it still matter? Yes.
Personalized Search
Several of the socialized results appear within the SERP’s, but Google has much more info than they’re showing.
Action Item: Focus on growing your online network to mirror your offline network.
Personal Site
Personal Site
Personal Site
Where to start on Google+? Merge Local and Business Listing.
Action Item: Update your listing with as much useful information as possible.
Book through OTA’s or hotel directly
Greater emphasis on photos with ability to
leave comments
More social
Reviewers use real names. You can still respond to reviews.
More social
G+ Getting Organized
Organize your contacts into circles
Segment circles in a similar way to email marketing
Share targeted content with your circles
Try Hangouts with your fans and tell them about upcoming events.
Use Ripples to Find Influencers
Looks at ripples from your posts
Look at ripples from your competitors posts
Authorship Influence on Rankings
Opportunity for sites with poor visibility to create valuable content and get visibility
Search is becoming more social. Credibility is tied to an individual, not just a company.
Links shared on Google+ are crawled and indexed very quickly
Authorship Set-up
You need to complete a circuit of verified trust between Google and your published content. There are several methods to configure this.
Resource: plus.google.com/authorship
Test: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Knowledge Graph
What is the knowledge graph? Announced in May, the knowledge graph provides users with semantic search driven results.
It’s this thing!
What does it mean for SEO?
Carousel introduced in August
Action Item: Ensure that you are providing useful content about these top attractions, written for people, not the search engines.
How is it devised?
Essentially based on a collection of databases including Wikipedia, Freebase, Google Maps, and Google Shopping
What can you do with it?
Action Item: Correct your information. Algorithms and human review determine if a fact should be corrected.
Knowledge Graph and SEO Implications
When content is available in a structured format then the probability of it being visible in the Knowledge Graph and in the SERP’s increases.
Content expressed as microdata makes it even easier for it to be understood by the search engines.
When this clear, structured content gets shared by authority sites (think social!), it gains more credibility and traction.
Where to start?
Start the conversation with factual, structured content
Write the kind of content that you see Knowledge Graph using
Fluffy content won’t get you UGC and engagement
Use Google+ to share targeted content to your segmented circles
• Post• Share others useful posts• Link to useful information on your site• Add your site to your ‘Contributor To’ section