At a recent client meeting, I was lucky enough to attend a presentation that was being given by a Google employee to the client’s team of local and regional marketers. The presentation was about How To Optimize For Google In 2012 and included some interesting info on some of the new features that are going to be rolled out later on in 2012.

According to the presentation, a successfully optimized website in 2012 will leverage four marketing pillars atop a foundationally sound website. I will go into each of these tactics separately below:

Organic + Paid Search: The basis for a successful website starts with an optimized site that is easily crawled and indexed. With right around 70% of clicks going to organic results, having optimized title tags, meta-descriptions, etc. is required and lays the foundation for your website’s representation on a results page. Within the organic space there are a myriad of new features that webmasters will be able to implement including everything from new social signals to rich micro-data thanks to schema.org. (See Caleb Dann’s recent post on that.) Now, Google is rolling out the display of schema.org content vertical by vertical (you can see that recipes and sports have been rolled out already). In any case, all of the search engines have agreed that this code will benefit your site by having the code on your site by the time they roll out the display to your vertical. So it definitely doesn’t hurt to have schema code up and ready to go.

Paid Search will also see some additions as well. Just as a disclaimer here: I was told that some of the new features I’m about to talk about are currently in the alpha or beta stage, so I make no guarantees these will be released at all. Even then the presenter confirmed that these features would be rolled out on a vertical-by-vertical basis as well (similar to how recipe searches are among the best examples of Schema.org-based rich markup).  The two new cool features I saw included the ability to embed a video into your paid result, such as a commercial for your product or service. The next feature, much like the “Call” button you’ll see on your phone that allows you to call a business by simply clicking on the link, is a “Call Me” link. This link will create a pop-up that will allow you to anonymously submit your phone number to a business, allowing the next available customer service rep to call your already interested customer!

Google Places & Reputation Management: There has been steady growth in the amount of searches on Google containing “geo modifiers”, or the name of a city, town or street within the query string. I think it’s been well documented how a well run Places campaign can not only help your website, but your overall business as well. The most noteworthy item I found in this part was how much emphasis Google puts on “trust”. So say your Places page receives a horrible review from a customer. Google will find your site more “trustworthy” if the business responds kindly and respectfully to the negative review. “A successful response is more trustworthy than a good review.”

Speaking of negative reviews, reputation management was also a small part of the presentation. This part talked about how setting up a Google Alert for your company will help alert you as to when something regarding your company is added to Google. This way you can be proactive about addressing negative reviews/websites rather than being reactive.

YouTube: According to Google YouTube is now the second largest search engine, surpassing Bing and Yahoo. You’ll often notice when completing a search on Google that specific, long-tail queries will actually have the relevant YouTube video prominently displayed above any organic results.  Having your own YouTube channel for your company with keyword-rich, unique content that solves someone’s problem is another great way to drive traffic to your site and build that “trust” Google is all about.

Social – Google+: This section discussed how, while Facebook and MySpace are social “networks”, Google is striving to create a social “web” through Google+. According to Google, social also matters when you’re searching. Google+’s ability to personalize results based on who Liked or +1’ed something is changing the way online marketers are approaching their work and it cannot be ignored. The big takeaway here: 71% of users are influenced by their family & friends. This applies not only to the way people buy but the way they surf the Internet as well.

Erik Dafforn has dissected the Google Plus Your World initiative in a recent blog post if you’re interested in learning more about how Google+ will affect your Google 2012 marketing efforts.

So does your website have its foundation and four pillars optimized for Google 2012? Better get going!

Learn what #Google says you need to know to optimize for search in 2012 – ow.ly/8ZDxM from @kyleSEO_IP

— Intrapromote (@intrapromote) February 10, 2012

Kyle Misencik, Campaign Director, joined Intrapromote in March of 2011 as a SEO Specialist performing various tasks such as Keyword Research, On-Page Optimization, Competitive Analysis and Reporting. At Intrapromote, Kyle has worked to increase organic traffic and increase search engine visibility for several of Intrapromote’s longest tenured clients.  Recently promoted to Campaign Director, Kyle now manages clients as well as team members to meet and exceed client expectations.

Follow @KyleSEO_IP

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