Google Instant Preview: What does this mean?

Google has recently rolled out an update for their search results that includes a magnifying glass that when clicked will serve a small screenshot of the homepage with the site associated.  They are calling it “Google Instant Preview” and similar to the double rainbow…we have no idea what this means(in terms of search).

A few things we do know about this new addition; In terms of search significance, it will not impact your actual queries or positioning…yet.  There’s also no tracking available at the moment in analytics or webmaster tools, so the immediate impact of Instant Preview is uncertain.

What I can tell you are two things:

• Flash websites do not currently work in Google Instant preview. That said, once tracking is established for Instant Preview and if we are finding this as an effective method of use by users, Adobe may take another large hit in terms of the viability of Flash on the web.

• Your website design is now even more important for search. Having a well branded, clean, trustworthy site could potentially gain you traffic.  As people may be gauging whether to visit your website more on the look of your site rather than title tags, meta descriptions, etc.

5 simple fixes to Optimize your website

Search Engine Optimization can be a long process that can take quite a bit of time and effort from professionals to accomplish meaningful results. That said, there are a few ways for you to gain results with minimal time and knowledge. Here’s a list of 5 simple and quick fixes that can help you boost your search rankings.

• Optimize your Title Tags
  • By Inserting specific keywords in your page title tags, you can instantly rank higher.  If you are in a field or profession where these keywords are oversaturated, this will be just one of many things you should be doing.
  • To do this you simply need to place them within your code between the <title> tags.
• Include your address on your site
  • By doing this you can help boost your rankings in Google Maps.
• Insert keyword specific anchor text
  • Google takes anchor text into consideration when ranking search results.  These will not make or break your site like title tags can, but they can put you over the top if you are in a market with other well optimized sites.
  • To do this simply find a keyword you want to optimize, ie. Search Engine Optimization.  In your code you would wrap this with <a href=”THE URL YOU WANT IT TO GO TO”>Search Engine Optimization</a>
• Write Good Content…often
  • Search Engines love dynamic content.  An active blog or news page that hosts compelling content is a great way to draw in visitors and ultimately boost your search results.  Submitting these articles to sites like digg, sphinn, reddit, etc. can further your cause.
• Build  Up quality links
  • This isn’t necessarily “Quick”, but it can be painless if you pace yourself.  Linking building equates to 70% of SEO efforts.  By building quality links over time you can dramatically influence your search rankings.

Down and Dirty with .htaccess files

The .htaccess file can play an important role in SEO and usability. The file is placed at the base level of your website within your ftp or hosting folder and can be edited through a text editor such as notepad.

There are many things that can be accomplished within this simple text file.  Some of them are:

Canonicalizing URLs. Canonicalizing your URLs will help eliminate duplicate content that will ding you in the mind of google.  There’s a few ways of doing this, but the easiest way is through your .htaccess file.  You can do this by adding this code snippet:

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

rewritecond %{http_host} ^MYWEBSITE.COM [nc]

rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.MYWEBSITE.COM/$1 [r=301,l]

Setup a 404 Error Page. Setting up a custom 404 error page will allow you to redirect traffic back to your site if a visitor encounters an error. You can do this by simply adding this line of code and pointing it to your custom designed error page:

ErrorDocument 404 /MYERRORPAGE.html

Block a Bad Site. With this snippet you can block all redirects from a site that may be giving you unwanted or inappropriate traffic.  There have been occasions where international sites can actually parse your site and plagiarize your content.  Using this snippet can help prevent these things from happening:

RewriteEngine on

# Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} BADSITE\.com [NC]

RewriteRule .* – [F]

Push a different version of your site live. If you need to temporarily host a different version of your site, for instance if you want to setup some quick AB testing or have a special micro site for the holidays, you can do so easily by using this snippet and simply pointing to the new homepage:

DirectoryIndex FILENAME.html

Prevent Directory Listings of Files. For many large sites there are always some files that make it onto your server that you’d rather not have publicly accessible.  You can disable these with this snippet:

IndexIgnore *.zip *.txt

If you are having trouble implementing these or just wish to save some time, you can also check out this handy .htaccess generator.

There are many things that can be accomplished within this simple text file.  Some of them are:

1. Canonicalizing URLs. Canonicalizing your URLs will help eliminate duplicate content that will ding you in the mind of google.  There’s a few ways of doing this, but the easiest way is through your .htaccess file.  You can do this by adding this code snippet:

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

rewritecond %{http_host} ^MYWEBSITE.COM [nc]

rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.MYWEBSITE.COM/$1 [r=301,l]

2. Setup a 404 Error Page. Setting up a custom 404 error page will allow you to redirect traffic back to your site if a visitor encounters an error. You can do this by simply adding this line of code and pointing it to your custom designed error page.

ErrorDocument 404 /MYERRORPAGE.html

3. Block a Bad Site. With this snippet you can block all redirects from a site that may be giving you unwanted or inappropriate traffic.  There have been occasions where international sites can actually parse your site and plagiarize your content.  Using this snippet can help prevent these things from happening.

RewriteEngine on

# Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} BADSITE\.com [NC]

RewriteRule .* – [F]

4. Push a different version of your site live. If you need to temporarily host a different version of your site, for instance if you want to setup some quick AB testing or have a special micro site for the holidays, you can do so easily by using this snippet and simply pointing to the new homepage:

DirectoryIndex FILENAME.html

5.       Prevent Directory Listings of Files.  For many large sites there are always some files that make it onto your server that you'd rather not have publicly accessible.  You can disable these with this snippet:

IndexIgnore *.zip *.txt

If you are having trouble implementing these or just wish to save some time, you can also check out this handy .htaccess generator.