Next time you are with a group of your friends ask them “what do you think of Twitter?” and I bet you will get the same response I get from every Jane Doe and Jo Blogs I ask “erm…I have a Twitter account but I don’t really see the point of it…I prefer Facebook”.

Yes, despite having more than 200 million users, Twitter still seems to have this odd reputation as being not as good or important as Facebook. What’s more, it isn’t just individual users who appear to have this thinking, but also many small to medium sized businesses as well.

Every day I seem to come across more and more small to medium sized businesses with well optimized sites, beautiful blogs and fantastic Facebook pages but have Twitter accounts with no Tweets, no followers and not even a picture!

For a few years now many small, medium and large businesses all around the world have been realising the importance of Social Media for online brand awareness, website traffic and Google Rankings. Yet despite these businesses doing excellent things with blogs and Facebook pages, their Twitter accounts seem to have been left behind, given less attention, time and focus.

Why Twitter is Becoming More Important
In recent months we have seen Google release 2 new features to try and make search results more personal, refined and more social. Blocked and +1 have both been developed to help make Google more of a social network, focusing more on individual user’s preferences, connections and tastes, to help deliver the most relevant results for each individual user.

With this, all signs are pointing to the idea that Google rankings are being more and more influenced by user generated content such as comments on blogs, Facebook Likes and of course Tweets! With Google apparently in the process of trying to acquire Twitter and already having access to their vast amount of user data, they appear to be attributing more and more importance to businesses Twitter accounts when it comes to rankings.

Links vs Tweets
It may seem farfetched to attribute higher Google rankings to the number of Twitter followers you have, but as we can see from the latest SEOMoz Ranking Factors data, as well as other research, Twitter seems to be having as big an impact as blogs, keyword focused content and even links.

Of course, this is not to say that traditional SEO methods, such as onsite optimisation, keyword focused content and link building, are no longer important, and a strong SEO campaign should feature all of these elements. However, it is clear that we need to keep pushing Social Media and start giving Twitter the attention it deserves.

We already know how important Social Media can be for brand awareness, online promotion and networking, but now it also appears to be having an even greater impact , affecting Google’s search results.

Since the dawn of Google one of the main aims has been to make search results more personalised and relevant to the individual user. Over the years Google have tried to achieve this aim with additions such as Stars in Search results, Search Wiki and of course the addition of location settings and Google Places.

However, even with all these additions, Google is still trying to make search results more personalised and so this week has introduced a new blocking feature on Google.com which will allow individual users to block whole domains from their search results.

Basically the new process will work like this; when you search for something, i.e. “how to fix a TV”, your usual search results will come up and there will be nothing different about the results. However, if you click on a site and then go straight back to your search results (because the site wasn’t what you were after) you will then see an option to block the website from your search results, located next to the “Cached” button.

So say there is a particular How To or Content site you always see in your results but don’t like, you will be able to block the domain and stop any of their pages from ever appearing in any of your search results.

This new option is linked to Google Accounts and so to keep the block permanent you will need to do it whilst logged in. And don’t worry if you change your mind later there will be an option to undo all of your blocks.

Ramifications for SEO

On the service this is simply a new tool to make search more personalised for individual users and in that sense has very little impact for SEO. However, although they are not doing so yet, Google have mentioned the possibility of using this new feature as a signal in ranking, stating that “we’ll look at the data and see whether it would be useful as we continue to evaluate and improve our search results in the future”.

In a very simple sense, the way this would work is, the more times a site has been blocked the more damaging to its rankings. So if a sites blocked by 100,000 people it will likely move lower than a similar site blocked by just 100 people.

If this idea were to be used as a new ranking criteria in Google there could be huge ramifications for SEO. With the addition of a block button, businesses could target rivals with negative SEO, setting up hundreds of fake Google accounts through Mechanical Turk and blocking a competitor site over and over.

So how can Google prevent this negative SEO? Well if they were to use this as criteria for rankings they would surely have to use just a select group of user’s activity to determine rankings. Basically, they would have to just look at users who have been around for a long time, have a well built up profile and are blocking domains very selectively.

Is this likely to affect rankings?

In theory this sounds like a great new way for Google to evaluate rankings, but with the huge possibility for negative SEO and the labour in finding a very select group of users doing it properly, it seems unlikely that it will come into practice anytime soon as the logistics are just too large.

However, although we may not see this impacting SEO anytime soon, the new blocking option is another step towards the ultimate personalised results that Google so desire! The new feature has gone live on Google.com this week and will be making its way to Google.co.uk very soon, so look out for it and start thinking of some sites you are sick of seeing in your results.

Since the introduction of Google places, localised searches are becoming a topic of popular discussion within SEO; this is a new way to be found on Google. The online map directory has very quickly become a sort of yellow pages’ competition; search engines are already three times as popular! This has opened a new frontier for local businesses to market themselves. Despite this, it appears Google places is often overlooked by both businesses and SEOs.

Google places has many attractive features that can be optimised to meet your requirements, and improve your online presence. You will need to optimise your listings and make them a part of your SEO campaign for more effective results.

Attractive and beneficial key features

1. Google places is now incorporated in the main search engine this shows the importance Google will continue to place on local searches. We’ve noticed some searches now have as many ‘places’ results as regular organic results, Making this an ideal way to promote online presence, particularly for small to medium sized businesses.
2. Claiming your business is the first step. Using city and business keywords within the page title and listing is great for optimisation, resulting in a positive page rank. Your business may already rank so claiming it will only strengthen your positions especially after optimisation. This can really help close out your competitors as well as improve your overall clickthrough share.
3. Google places also comes with a range of tools to help market your business better. Tags are yellow markers that allow you to promote individual aspects of your business, for example, special offers.

The image shows how Google places appears after you have entered a search query.

Mobile phone web users, when downloading Google maps app, searching for any place of interest will automatically bring up local results. This is something I personally rely on especially when visiting a new area in the city. With so many benefits and key features it is hard to believe you have anything lose!

2010 seemed like one the busiest years in search that I can remember. I say seemed , mainly,  because it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, there was a fair deal of activity from both engines last year – it’s just that I don’t think much of it had anywhere near the impact so many people thought it would.
I’m talking, of course, of things like Google Instant and Instant Preview . These were pretty significant changes as far as user experience goes, and received a huge amount of attention from both the SEO community and (especially in the former case) even the mainstream media. They were the kind of changes that would make my mum say “Ooh, Google’s changed”.

The impacts of the many interface changes in 2010 changes in 2010 were all very modest though, as far as SEO goes (not even the eventual rollout of the infrastructure related ‘caffiene’ update made a huge impact). What is easy to miss is how little these changes affect consumer behaviour – people still use a search engine to find websites and click on one of the top ones, just as they did a year ago. The only difference then, is that new distractions exist – given many distractions (think vertical search) already existed; the impact on traditional search has proved to absolutely minimal. There were some bigger changes to SEO – the heavy places integration in q4 of last year is bound to have a huge impact, but only if you’re competing for ‘local’ type searches.

Despite the hype, the caffiene update didn't provide a rush of traffic for many SEO's

Nevertheless, when these changes happened, they all provoked huge debate ranging from the usual “SEO is dead”, to predictions of more specific impacts on things like click through rates. The blogs were busy, Twitter was trending, and there were doubtlessly thousands of emails received by clients and managers about how these changes would fundamentally change search and how a new strategy was needed ASAP. And yet, if we’re honest, we’re probably entering 2011 largely unchanged.

But rather like the boy who cried wolf, I do think there could be more changes in 2011, from Google in particular. Google could have a huge impact and has the potential to catch many off guard, as we remember all the changes which didn’t change much in 2010. With Google’s algorithm still being hugely dependent on links, despite viable alternative now existing and being used in a limited capacity , Google have the potential to make a change to what really matter to marketers and (particularly) SEO’s – the way websites are ranked.

If any of the below occur to a moderate degree, 2011 would create the biggest challenge to SEO’s in many years:

• Tweets/Likes used heavily in to determine popularity (as opposed to , as I suspect currently , regency)
• User behaviour, such as bounces, folded into main algorithm
• A change to the ‘reasonable surfer’ model to how links are weighted
• A complete , or near complete disregard for Anchor text in the same way as happened with meta tags
• Prevention of duplicate “mill” content from being indexed and passing page rank

For what it’s worth, I’m expecting a least a couple of these things to happen. If they do, it’ll be the year that SEO really does change.

Matthew Oxley Presenting @ Figaro

Earlier this year Gravytrain’s Head of Search Matthew Oxley gave a presentation at Figaro Digital’s “Paid & Natural Search” seminar. Matthew was discussing how best to prepare your natural search strategy a topic which many SEO companies may overlook. The difference between a good or bad strategy in natural search can be millions in extra revenue, or being banned from the Google index entirely. With this in mind, it’s more important than ever to have a clear SEO strategy.

This thought provoking session takes a top down approach to making your business loved by Google, paying attention to often overlooked principles such as sustainability and inimitability to ensure getting to the top means staying there.

To watch Matthew in action click here.