Now more than ever people are placing a high importance on the ability to socialize, establish networks, and share interests via the Internet. As search is becoming increasingly dynamic, searchers have the ability to make it even more useful and tailored to their needs. Recently, Google made an enhancement to their own search engine, which goes hand in hand with the social and customization desires of Internet users today.

SearchWiki, Google’s latest update, is a combination of organic search results determined by Google’s algorithm and contributions from searchers.  If you are logged into your Google account and perform a Google search, you will likely see something similar to the picture below.  (Note the icons next to the listings appearing for the search query, “Spa South Florida”.)

This Google update is an added feature that provides users with the ability to modify the listings that initially appeared from the organic search results. If you find that one listing is more important or more relevant to your search, it can be promoted to a higher position on the page. Entries that are not relevant can be deleted from the results for that search query. Not only are you able to shift the order of the results, but you can also add public comments. Google will remember these changes, and when the same search is performed again, your tailored results will be displayed.

A few options offered by Google’s SearchWiki:
Move a listing to higher position on the page by simply clicking the “up” arrow. 

Delete an entry from the search page by clicking the “x” box.   

If there is a website that did not appear in the search results and you would like for it to appear when searching for the same term in the future, you can click the “Add a result” link and type in the URL. This is useful for those who prefer searching for a website instead of creating a bookmark or typing it directly into the address bar. 

You can also “See all of my SearchWiki notes” and “See all notes for this SearchWiki”. “See all of my SearchWiki notes” enables you to see the changes that you have made for that search. You can also revert back to the original Google search results.  Choosing “See all notes for this SearchWiki” allows you to see how others have edited or modified the results.

Many are asking about how this update will impact SEO. The most important thing to take into consideration is that SearchWiki is only available if you are logged into a Google account. If you are not logged in, you will not have the opportunity to customize results and Google’s regular organic results will be displayed.  In addition, your changes only affect your searches and promoting and/or adding pages to the search results will only be visible in your account. You are, however, able to share your comments with other searchers.

There are still questions about how providing Google with this type of feedback pertaining to search results will affect organic search in the future. Could the combined behavior of searchers become another component of Google’s algorithm?  We will have to wait and see.

In past blogs, we have talked about how important it is to get other websites to link to your site and the benefits associated with this.  When focusing on your linking strategy it is also important not to neglect your internal linking structure.  An internal link is hyperlinked text that points to a different section of the page you are viewing, or more commonly to a different page on your site.  The most common internal links are found in the main navigation of a website and throughout the body text of the pages.

If your page keyword targeting and the anchor text of the links pointing to those pages don’t coincide, now might be a good time to revisit and make the anchor text reflect the page keyword targeting.  When you optimize a page for a certain keyword, the links from your site pointing to that page should reflect the same keyword theme.   The first places to consider a change are in the main and footer navigation.  Use keyword rich text in these areas to give extra weight to the targeted page.  Instead of just using the word “Services” in your navigation, you should use a term that is more keyword targeted such as “Internet Marketing Services” or “Banking Services”.

Another place to use keyword rich anchor text is within the text of your website when you want to direct a user to another page with more information.  Many times we will see that a website uses the hyperlinked text, “click here” or “learn more” to lead a user to a page with more information.  These terms are great if the page you are leading them to is optimized for “click here” or learn more”.  In most cases there is a better phrase to use.  When leading a user to a services page, use the main keyword phrase of the targeted page as the hyperlinked anchor text.  Example: 

 Please see our Internet Marketing Services page for more information.

In this example the page that the hyperlink is pointing to is about “Internet Marketing Services”. 

When using anchor text to point to other pages, it is important to use different versions of the text to point to the page.  This will allow you to target more keywords and not make it so repetitious for the user.  It is important to note that when varying your anchor text, you should use keywords of the same theme.  So for our above example, other beneficial keywords to use for anchor text would be “Online Marketing Services”, or” Web Marketing Services”.  While online press releases might be a product of “Internet Marketing Services” it would not be good anchor text because it does not describe the whole theme of the page but rather one point within the theme.