Companies in most cases have from many digital assets that they can play with when communication their message online, simple things as annual reports in PDF’s and Power Point presentations can be optimized and made visible through either own sites and/or such services as Slide Share.

Images from the last product launch can play an essential role on Google Image search and manuals in word can lower the load on support. Not forgetting social media such as Facebook, Twitter, the Company blog, Digg and Sphinn to mention few.

Implementing Digital Asset Optimization helps the search engines notice all your online content and everything from file names to meta-tags and HTML files to PDF files and Image labelling through Google Webmaster tools plays a role when it comes to holistic usage of the Internet as a marketing and communication channel.

I will be talking about this topic a the upcoming SES San Francisco.

In August 2009 Google famously changed their algorithm and how they value current events, but different from the 2003 Florida update this change to how they value content  and display search results seamed to roll out rather peacefully and in some cases unnoticed.

I have been monitoring how this has changed the search engine and it seems that the Google Caffeine update is to putting growing prominence on real-time search within search results. Specifically on Twitter and other real-time communication tools.

This might explain a post on Search Engine Land that the Caffeine update really had not been rolled out fully and is slowly being implemented throughout Google’s data centres.

But what did this update incorporate? First and foremost it was Google keeping their competitors away, there was a lot of buzz about Twitter’s real-time search options and Microsoft had just rolled out their “decision making search engine” Bing. Real-time search was the thing and Google needed to come out with an update and that they did.

Google had some years back introduced their Google Universal search, were they mixed together various results on their organic results pages, when searching on a topic you could find various channels such as web, blog, news, shop, PPC, image and video being mixed together. What Google did with the Caffeine update was to take this even further and put more emphasis on current events and blend them with the more tradition results in a kind of a “ticker style” where things happened in a more dynamic way.

What they also did with this update was to take the emphasis slightly of inbound links (still very important) and put on good copy, other things we have noticed but I am not sure if we can directly relate to this update is the emphasis on URL’s, that is the text between the www and the .TLD/ccTLD.

According to this update two companies in the same industry, let’s say car rental, one has an URL with their brand in it such as www.alp.is has a handicap when compared with a car rental URL like www.carrentals.is.

Having car rental in the URL gives the later URL more chance of visibility, one more box ticked in how Google values that URL. My research has however shown that Google has a limit on how it values the URL so something like “verycheaprentalcarsreykjavik.is” are likely to rise a spam alert, prompting a Google rep to manually review the site for spam tactics or even worse Google just demoting the site or even removing it from it’s index.

There is a massive opportunity for marketers to look pass their traditional emphasis on their own site but also to use Twitter, blogs, online press releases and other channels that can provide an alternative option to visibility based on how Google now places emphasis on current events.

Just came from a session at the SES called Black hat/White hat “Unconferenced” hosted by Matt McGowan, Publisher & head of U.S. Incisive Media and Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES/Search Engine Watch and ClickZ (believe they are merging). Everyone that came to this session was offered a white hat or a black hat to wear, in my case I got the black.

Not that I am a black hat in the sense that I use under the radar none ethical tactics when marketing online, nobe more because that the size of the black hat fitted my head better. Great session that taught me black hats have bigger heads than white hats or that Matt and Mike did not order enough hats for people with big heads, either way fantastic session and great fun!

Firstly what is a big site? Is it 10.000 pages or 100.000 or even 100.000? My experience is that sites that more than 10 .000 to 15.000 pages start to show the same symptoms, the main problem in most cases is the WCMS (web content management system), how it is used to manage the sites content.

This can be how templates are designed to show and possibly reuse content. Little problems within sites that contain millions of pages can occur again and again and grow from being a minor glitch in being a huge disaster that prevents search visibility.So planning ahead can be really helpful when managing a large site. In most cases Google problem is either too much of the same content or to little access to it.  Google as the other crawlers should only be allowed to index valuable pages with legitimate none duplicate content.

So what does that mean? Well if we look at the “too much” of the content problem, better known as duplicate content, this is in most cases because it is being reused again and again and again and …. This leads to Google either demoting the site, parts of it or even taking it out completely.

To find if there is a problem it´s in all cases good to put Google Webmaster tools on the site and Yahoo Site Explorer. When the site has been verified you will start to see all kinds of data such as crawler errors, what keywords the site us found under but not getting clicks through and more.

Although very basic this should get you going in identifying crawler issues that will eventually lead to visibility issues on the search engines.

Reykjavik Internet Marketing conference is just around the corner with speakers from Ericsson, Bing/Microsoft, Anomaly, CCP games and Icelandair to mention few. In its 6th year the conference is going to be bigger than ever, attracting a wider audience on an international basis. The conference is accompanied by an Expo that lasts all weekend, Netið 2010 (roughly translates Internet 2010). Some 40 – 50 companies are expected to show their Internet related products and services.

You can get more information about RIMC 2010 at www.rimc.is

A few weeks ago, Google announced its new focus on fast loading pages as part of quality involved in the searching experience. This means that Google´s ranking algorithm may take into consideration the speed of a web page.

Since Google’s ranking algorithm isn’t 100% clear, the points below are rather a theory that may improve your website ranking in Google.  Experiment if you can and share your results, here are some easy to make changes:

1. Make sure your web host is fast and you have a good connection to the Internet. Your web server should be easy to reach without any down time.
2. Join together external JavaScript code files into one file. The fewer files the server has to request, the better the web page’s speed. Then make these files smaller by compressing them.
3. Put external CSS files into one and compress them also.
4. Enable gZip compression if possible. Your webhost may do it for you.
5. If you use images, compress them and try to use as few as possible.
6. Tracking codes and other JavaScript snippets should be placed at the end of your web page.

However, keep in mind that page loading time in the ranking algorithm can be problematic. This is in respect to the cost of using a high quality web host and also competing against bigger corporations and other websites across the World Wide Web.

On 7^th December of 2009, Google launched real-time search results into search pages but what do these real-time results look like? Google search page results update currently discussed topics from social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca just as they are happening.

How Google chooses the real-time results or finds out which posted messages are true is yet unknown. However, there are some things one can do. Google analyzes the content from blog posts, tweets etc. to verify the value and the quality of the posted message to place the real-time results and avoid anything that looks like spam. Later on the collected text will be used to update page rankings for every contributing user. Google’s real-time results are a nice addition but on the other hand real-time results do not appear with all search terms and if they do other immediate results quickly replace them.  So how can high authority posters sell links in their tweets? This is yet another problematic side.

So should you invest your time to get into Google’s real-time results? Well that of course that depends on you but your real-time results won’t stay up for long. Therefore the number one priority is still to be listed in Google’s top results – these are the long lasting results that will truly bring targeted visitors to your website.

According to www.travelmole.com, the second global travel survey, 85 percent of travel companies are due to increase or maintain the same online marketing budgets for 2010, which promises to be a highly competitive year in the travel industry for internet marketing.

27 percent of the participated 227 companies including hoteliers, travel agents, tour operators and airlines expect online budgets to increase by up to 50 percent, as securing online bookings pushes for more advertising.The Travel Mole study revealed that overall 54 percent of the travel companies will be increasing their budgets to promote themselves online for 2010, while only 15 percent will be investing less. 84 percent believe that the role of SEO will be more than ever, the number one priority for 2010, in order to maintain or declare company presence on the ever increasing online community.

Social media marketing, as well as the use of original content translated into different languages to capture a wider market, is a top priority for more than half of the companies involved in the survey.

A website’s ranking is based on the analysis of those websites that link back. This link-based analysis is a very good way to measure a website’s value and can help greatly improve the quality of web search. To get a good ranking on Google the quality of links is the most important aspect followed by the quantity.

There are numerous websites one can buy links from to get them to link to your website. Some webmasters and SEO use this method of buying and or selling links regardless of their quality in order to increase popularity on the Internet. However, search engines do not support paid links. Google even has an official form for webmasters to report paid links.Bad quality links and sources can get you in trouble with long-term impact, which is a problem a webmaster recently reported to Google’s webmaster discussion forum:

“Today I found that my entire site has dropped out of sight in search results. I have a site that received over 2,000 search visits per day and today that has stopped.”

The problem was that the website had many affiliate links and linked to advertisers that Google saw as paid links. The links were not marked as paid links and Google penalised the website for having the paid links.

If you don’t want to get in trouble with Google avoid paid links to manipulate the links to your website and do not join automated link systems to increase the number of links to your website. Remember to use the rel=”nofollow” attribute in links to show that the paid links are there only for advertising purposes and that you don’t want to manipulate your website rankings with the link. Make sure that websites linked to your page are relevant to the site, and have keywords related to what you want to get a higher ranking in.

Since last summer, Google has changed its algorithm so that search results now automatically include relevant local results. For many businesses this is an important feature that can increase the amount of visitors to their web site and also the overall awareness of their website without paying for it.

If your services or products are listed on Google Map, your businesses offers, that are relevant to a special area of searched keyword, will be listed on page one above the first regular result. People will also see the exact address of you businesses and users’ reviews about your products and services.To get listed on Google Maps you need to submit your website to Google Maps through Google’s Local Business Centre. You can do this by logging into your Google account and going to “Add New Listing” and entering your company information on “Add New Listing”.

To be listed at the top of the list, you have to optimize your entry but there are several things you can add do to make your listing “stand out” on Google Maps.

The more information you provide about your company the better listing you get, don’t exaggerate to avoid spam Google.

-         Essential keywords in your description.

-         Opening hours, payment types, etc.

-         Select the best possible category for your website

-         If possible include images and videos to help your listing stand out.

The more local directories list your website, the better.

-      Submit your website to other local directories, you can get higher on the list with good position in online yellow pages.

Optimize your site for local content.

-         Add your city and state name in your web page title.

-         Use local meta tags to tell search engines the location of your website.

Encourage your website visitors to write positive reviews about your company on Google Maps.

-         More stars can place your site higher

Follow above tips to get a good listing in Google Maps and increase the number of visitors to your website. Do not spam Google and describe your business without exaggeration. Include keywords in your company description but don’t overdo it.