In the world of the modern web it is vital that you keep your web pages fast for your users to see and use, this is also true for search engines as Google is now going to take into consideration load times when indexing websites.

It can be very difficult to make these web pages smaller and faster with clients requiring high quality images/ graphics and dynamic effects such as videos and slideshows. There are however a number of things a web designer can do to make sure that the website is at top speed.

Image compression

It is important to make sure that any images used within the website are at their smallest file size without losing quality. There are many graphics programs out there that can help you to re-size your images so that they are smaller. It is also important to use the correct formats such as GIF and PNG.

The GIF format (Graphics Interchange Format) has been very popular on the web for a number of years due to its ability to create very small file sizes.

You do not really want to be creating large images through this format as you will see a loss in quality but for buttons, small images and backgrounds it is ideal.

The PNG format (Portable Network Graphics) has taken over the GIF in recent years due to its great compressed quality and low file size. PNG is great for logos and other large sized graphics.

External CSS Files

CSS is a very powerful web tool and when used well it makes websites look amazing. It can however slow down the performance of a website if it is used internally (inline) because it gives the browser too much code to read through at once. The best way to use CSS is externally, linking it in to your HTML.

Every great website needs a good style sheet or two but there are many websites relying on 4 or 5 style sheets which slows down performance and the way a search engine crawls the site. Try and keep CSS files down to a minimum and make sure they are external.

External JavaScript

JavaScript works wonders on a website helping it to look and feel more dynamic but just like CSS, if it is used too much internally it can slow down your webpage and give search engines too much code to look through when crawling your site.

Use JavaScript files externally and link them into your HTML for optimum performance.

Unnecessary code

When looking through the code of a website there is very often areas of code that really do not need to be there. This could be due to various developers and designers working on the same project or a website that has had changes over the years.

Unnecessary code like this makes the browser read things that are unimportant or non existent, which will slow the load time of the site. Just take the time to read through the code and strip out any areas that aren’t needed.

Server

Good hosting is key to the speed of any website. Make sure that your server is up to date with the latest processors and can handle the traffic your website is getting. If you have a website that attracts thousands of hits then shared hosting will just slow down the website and make it unavailable to others, this is where a dedicated server is needed.

Keeping a check on your hosting can really speed up your website and keep users happy.

Script compression programs

It is a good idea sometimes when running various scripts and style sheets to run them through compression software which will compress JavaScript, CSS and HTML files to ensure that they are as small as possible. This will help to make the webpage fast.

There is one problem when doing this however, if you use a program like Mozilla Firefox’s Firebug to inspect your code, it can be hard to find the exact area you need. This is because it tends to bunch things like CSS together as so it can be hard to spot the areas you wan tot change.

Ensure that your content is being seen in the right light! Or seen at all, as the case may be – search engine spiders aren’t your average user, and may get lost while trying to crawl your site.

Use the Search Engine Spider Simulator to prevent this from happening. Just enter your site’s URL, and the tool will show you everything through a spider’s eyes. If your text, links, meta keywords, and meta descriptions all display as they’re supposed to, consider yourself well on your way to search engine success.

Bing introduced a handful of new features. The one that will likely catch the most interest is the extension of its recent announcement regarding Facebook. Now, Bing will start showing you which of your Facebook friends have liked search results as they appear in your searches.

Social (Facebook)

“Starting today, if your search results include a specific link that has also been ‘liked’ by someone in your Facebook network the link will be highlighted as ‘Liked’ within Bing,” Microsoft’s Bing team explains. “This gets especially interesting for a query like ‘Xbox’ where my friend ‘Liked’ the ‘Kinect’ site and while our algorithms didn’t feel it was relevant enough to make it the ‘answer’ we reference above, we are still able to indicate that my friend liked that link that happened to show up within the results.”

This will be one clear advantage that Bing has over Google in terms of regular web search. Google has done a lot involving delivering social results, but Facebook data are THE social results that matter most – at least as long as Facebook is the dominant social site that it is today. With people constantly “liking” content all over the web, this can be a great indicator of relevance on a personalized level. It’s going to catch your attention when you notice your friend appear in the search results.

Bing has been running a similar feature in search results for several weeks, including likes from places like CitySearch, but there should be a much more broad set of potential results that will include “like” info now. It appears the feature may still be rolling out, so if you don’t see the “liked” results, you’re not the only one. I do get a message about it when I search with Bing, but after some testing, I’m clearly not getting these results.

For example, as illustrated by Bing here, I should see when my friend has “liked” a movie on IMDB underneath the IMDB result for that movie on Bing. I have tested this with a specific movie that I made sure one of my friends had “liked” and that “like” did not appear under the result.

Sports Tickets

Bing has also added sports ticket info from FanSnap directly into the search experience, so users can view ticket results from 57 ticket companies, see ticket selection and price ranges, find the best ticket prices, and access a “view-from-seat” feature.

Image Search

Bing has also made changes to how it presents and organizes image search results. “The first thing you will notice is our new Instant Answer that organizes a rich collage of images directly into the main results page,” Bing explains. “Once you click through to the ‘images’ page you will notice that we’ve populated the tabs with the most common search queries associated with a given image.”

“Instead of making you qualify that you’re looking for (Casablanca, Morocco or Casablanca, the movie), we have organized the tabs so that one simple click gets you to what you’re looking for,” Bing adds.

Local

For local search, Bing has added interior views, enhanced OpenTable integration for restaurants, real-time transit and Streetside for Mobile. Bing has partnered with EveryScape Eats, which provides imagery of restaurant interiors. These can be accessed by clicking “step inside” on Bing Local details pages (it utilzes Microsoft’s Silverlight). For now, it includes about 5,000 restaurants, mostly in Boston, but the company will add locations and cities over time. We’ll see if they expand beyond restaurants. Google has already been experimenting with taking pictures inside businesses.

Additionally, Bing users can access local details pages for restaurants that are signed up with OpenTable and search for available reservations from Bing itself.

Bing Mobile on the iPhone now has “up-to-the-minute” data for transit agencies (in Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco so far), and Streetside – Bing’s eqivalent of Google’s Streetview is available on Bing Mobile now. Bing has also made adjustments to its map style and a bunch of other updates to its iPhone and Andriod apps

A slow-loading site is a frustrating site. Would-be visitors won’t stand for delays. So to make your site more accessible, consider using Google’s Page Speed family of tools.

The Page Speed tools include both a Firefox add-on and an Apache module, and they work by running a series of speed tests on a site. Then they deliver performance recommendations. Follow the tips, and you should see more visitors spend time exploring your site.

Google Page Speed

For a number of years, many online marketers honestly thought that the only thing they needed to do to be successful online was to build a website, and the buyers would come to them.

They heard all of the success stories from people who claimed that they had simply built a website, and people just started to arrive in huge numbers.

The story, as it is told, is:

These folks built a website, then the search engines found their websites and started showing people the link to their website. And the people using the search engines saw the link to their websites and saw that it was good. Search engine users saw the link and, as if it were the only link in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), they clicked the link by the thousands. And hoards of people came to the website with fists full of money, ready to purchase what the website was selling.

ome people still believe this is how the search engines work. They have built their websites, and they are waiting anxiously for the “Traffic Fairy” to sprinkle his magic dust on their websites too, so that they can also make lots of money.

Are YOU Still Waiting For The Traffic Fairy?

I hope not.

Those who are “waiting” for anything may wait until they realize they are flushing good money down the proverbial toilet, month after month. When they realize that they still have more money going out than they have coming in, they usually get irritated that the “Traffic Fairy” did not look favorably on them, so they stop paying their hosting bill and quit this scam called, “onlíne marketing.”

The lifespan of most new websites can generally be measured in the amount of time most people will remain members of a subscription website. In case you did not know, this number is 3-4 months. Along about the 4th or 5th month, most people will stop paying their web hosting bill and let their websites die.

Those people who prepay 1-2 years on their web hosting bill will typically allow their sites to remain online, but they will quit the site long before their website runs out of life. Most will stick it out 3-4 months, and if they are not yet making money, they will just walk away from their new “online business.”

This is why you will find so many article directories where you submit your finest work, and no one will ever “approve” your article for publication. There may be nothing wrong with your article. The fact is no one is home to approve it.

The Traffic Fairy Smiles on Those Who Take Action

If you can believe it, in the fall of 1998, Google was a startup website.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin — the founders of Google — were just like you and I. They had a startup website, and they needed people to discover their new website.

In those days, Page and Brin could not simply build their website and “wait” for the Traffic Fairy or Google to find them.

They were Google, and no one was using their website.

What did they do to get Google off the ground?

While building Google in their garage, Page and Brin were doing what you should be doing now. They were getting links wherever they could get links. They were adding their site to directories. They were issuing press releases about their new company. They were trying to get interviews with the press and ordinary webmasters. They were trying to get interviews with newsletter publishers. They were participating in forums and news groups to share their story.

They started their website in September of 1998 and they got their first major press in December of 1998, when they made the top 100 websites of 1998.

It took them three months to get their first major press, and they had been actively promoting their website with the gusto of a 10,000-person marching band.

Yet the average new webmaster barely promotes his or her website and expects to attract thousands of visitors in the same time frame as it took Google to get noticed by the public-at-large.

Are you starting to get the picture?

To Be Successful, Do What the Successful Websites Have Done

Before Google was the powerhouse it is today, its founders had to work their asses off to build their business.

They had to promote, promote, and promote some more. They had to build links, build links, and build some more links. They needed to entice people to visit and use their website, and they needed to provide a method for people to find them.

My point is that the founders of Google wanted to be acknowledged and linked from every corner of the Internet. They chased links for their website because they knew that people used links to get to a website.

Twelve years later, Yahoo credits them with 223,383,603 links to www.google.com and another 6,752,847 links to google.com. siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

You and I are not going to get 231 million links to our websites, but getting links from a variety of resources is the secret to getting traffic to ones’ website. The Traffic Fairy blesses those websites that have a multitude of links to them.

Page and Brin tapped into the basics of building traffic to their website. They made a great website, and they did everything they could do to get traffic to that website.

You should try to emulate them as you build your website and start to promote it. It was the secret to their success, and likewise, it could be the secret to your success.

Traffic Generation 101

The easiest and cheapest ways to get links and generate traffic for ones’ website is going to be: article marketing, press releases, forum marketing, social media marketing, etc.

But, there are at least three-dozen methods to generate traffic to ones’ website, and these are just four of them.

The more successful websites always strive to get traffic through a wide variety of traffic generation strategies and methods.

In my case, I have used 31 of the 35 methods I describe in the 80-page traffic guide, “Multiple Traffic Streams: The Magic of Attracting Buyers.”

This has resulted in my top three websites being on track to serving 400,000 unique visitors and 5 million page views in 2010.

Don’t wait for the Traffic Fairy to bless your website. Take massive action to make sure that the Traffic Fairy would be a fool to ignore you.

And if you do, you might just realize that the Traffic Fairy is real, and he would love to sprinkle his magic traffic dust on your website too.

Have you ever embarked on some SEO work and got that sinking feeling that you might be doing something wrong? You’re not alone. Our expert Mark Nunney gives us the dirty dozen top mistakes he sees being made in SEO, as well as tips on how to negotiate the pitfalls.

1. Missing the big picture

Most SEO advice is given for a single page, word or technique. But if a site is to be responsible for a profitable small business then in most situations it will need hundreds of pages targeting hundreds of thousands of keywords using a wide range of techniques.

All of these pages, keywords and techniques need to work together so you need a plan to coordinate that, including:

Keyword research looking for potential keywords with Wordtracker Keywords Toolß and existing traffic with Wordtacker Strategizer)

Strategy (your prioritized groups of target keywords)

Site structure (matching your target keywords) and navigation to distribute link power around your site

On page SEO

Link building with Wordtracker’s new Link Builder tool and online PR.

To work at any scale beyond a micro-niche business, you must change your perspective from single (or exact match) keywords to keyword niches – groups of keywords sharing the same seed …

… so right now I’m helping a site selling slippers and I might focus a lot of SEO and link building on the single keyword slippers but I’m really interested in tens of thousands of keywords containing slippers, including leather slippers, men’s slippers, ladies slippers, etc.

I designed Wordtracker Strategizer to work with this shift in perspective from single keywords to keyword niches.
2. Not having a keyword or SEO strategy

What are you trying to achieve? Most importantly your SEO strategy should serve the company, marketing and brand strategies. A keyword strategy is a prioritized list of the company’s target markets’ niches, as defined by the keywords used in those niches – the words and phrases used in search engines.
3. Putting too much trust in an SEO company

You need to get whoever you have approached to prove what they’ve done, even when you have a personal reference for that company. You should take a step back and ask yourself, “what is being delivered?” Make sure you are getting your money’s worth.

Often they (businesses) will see a company with a nice website and they may be inclined to trust them because of that. Here are a few simple questions to ask any agency you might be talking to:

Do you always give complete ownership of site analytics accounts to your clients? If not, why not? (The answer is they want to ‘lock you in’.)

How do you build links other than paid, directories, press releases, article sites and using your own websites?

Can you list all the link building techniques you have planned for me, give the weighting you’ll give to each and why?

Give examples of how your strategy and tactics might change with circumstances.

If their given link building techniques include the likes of comment spamming and buying links ask: I understand they can work now, but what happens when Google stops them working?

(Following up on the question above) Remember the Florida update? If the person you’re speaking to doesn’t remember ‘Florida’, ask to speak to an SEO who does.
4. Having a company structure or systems that are unable to accommodate change

Change is always difficult. But combine it with something completely new and you’ve got a problem. The new thing is SEO and online marketing – neither is particularly well understood or even trusted, and in some cases companies have never heard of it.

Change is never going to happen unless those with authority and responsibility absolutely insist it does. This slows down many large companies and allows the small, who do embrace SEO, to do well. Here’s a nice example – do a search for hotels in London, Paris or New York. You would think you would see all the big names at the top, but you’ll see plenty of companies you’ve never heard of.

5. Not coordinating SEO with your editorial, sales and marketing departments

New content without SEO to maximize the number of target visitors seeing that content is a waste.

SEO without marketing to convert those visitors is a waste.

Your content, SEO and marketing should work together as part of a process.
6. Not monitoring response or acting on results

You have to monitor response eg, the numbers buying your product or signing up to your newsletter.

You may find that the market niche you hoped would work ends up being lame. If so, move on.

Monitor traffic, rankings and response for relevant searches. If you are getting good or bad results you need to act appropriately. That might be moving on to the next target niche, or investing more resources into the same ones.
7. Poor content management systems

It’s a cliche to say you need the right tools to do the job. One of SEO and online marketing’s tools is a content management system (CMS) that gives you complete control over most of the content, on most of the pages, including site navigation, menus and all marketing. Not having that is like entering a car race on a scooter.
8. Letting developers control website content

Partly as a result of companies having no existing knowledge and systems to accommodate online marketing and SEO, those who build the website have by default often become in charge of its content.

But letting developers take control of online content is like letting the mechanic drive the racing car. Or buying a car from a Ford garage and letting the mechanics decide where you can drive.

Take control of your website.

The developer’s job is to deliver the functions you want and keep the site working. What goes on the site and where and when is the responsibility of editorial and marketing, including SEO.
9. Not doing SEO now

Here’s a simple point; every day you wait to start SEO means it will be more expensive to get the same results when you do start. If you can get to the top of Google for a collection of keywords this will give you momentum and help you stay at the top, and it becomes cheaper.

Serious search engine success allows for serious business success – put these things together and you’ve basically got a gold rush. If you don’t do the work now it’s going to cost you a fortune to do it in the future. There is a simple reason for this and it’s inbound links.
10. Neglecting the importance of site structure and navigation

Most reasonable sites for reasonably sized businesses are going to need hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pages.

If you have hundreds of pages you need an optimized site structure and an accompanying site navigation. Even on a small site it’s possible to get this wrong and waste all your work.

You might have wonderfully optimized pages and links but if you don’t have your navigation right, or your structure isn’t right then your success will be limited.

What should you do? It’s hard to give a quick answer, but you should organize your site content into categories of related content. Let’s say you had a site selling chocolate – you would have all your Belgian truffles in one place and chocolate cake recipes somewhere else, almost working as different sites with their own home page (category home pages.)

On larger sites, related categories can be grouped together into channels.

Make sure your home page links directly to your site’s most important category pages. See Are your Superman Pages trapped in a basement full of kryptonite?
11. Neglecting your home page

Your home page is by far your most powerful page because most of your site’s inbound links will come to there. Use that power with copy to both target your toughest keyword niches and help other niches with links to their category home pages.

You can test what works, trying keywords of varying degrees of difficulty and ambition.
12. Over-relying on your home page

This is just as problematic. There are only so many different keywords you can effectively target with one page. When success is achieved for a keyword niche with your home page – move that success to other pages using internal and external links.

Search and social go well together, and the search engines are finding more and more ways to use them together. In fact, the right combinations of these two elements could eventually dictate who has the most useful tools for users.

It’s become more and more clear over time that having a strong social presence is helpful in building a strong search presence for a variety of reasons, but it’s not been so clear, just how the search engines have looked at things like Twitter and Facebook profiles when it comes to organic search ranking.

Search Engine Land Chief Danny Sullivan posted an important article about this very topic, with some rare and surprisingly direct answers from both Google and Bing. While, neither exactly gave away their respective secret sauces, it would appear that they have set some things straight.

Google

Google reportedly uses when an article is retweeted or referenced in Twitter as a signal in organic and news rankings (even though links on Twitter are nofollowed). They also use it to enhance the news universal results (based on how many people share an article).

Google “computes and uses author quality” for when someone tweets. When Sullivan asked if they calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on who tweets it, Google Responded, “Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the ‘Top links’ section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.”

Google says it treats links shared on Facebook Fan pages the same way as tweeted links, but they have no personal Facebook wall data. Authority for Facebook Pages is also treated like Twitter.

So, the more authoritative the crowd sharing links to your content, the better. Not that different than PageRank.

Bing

When it comes to Twitter, Bing tells Sullivan it also looks at social authority of users and more specifically, looks at how many people they follow and how many follow them, adding that this can add “a little weight” to a listing in regular search results (though it carries more in Bing’s separate Social Search). Bing decides when links should carry more weight based on the person who tweets it.

As far as Facebook, Bing currently looks at links shared on Facebook that are marked as being shared to “everyone” and those from Fan Pages. “We can tell if something is of quality on Facbook by leveraging Twitter,” as Sullivan paraphrases Bing’s response. “If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate.”

Bing does not use its new Facebook data in ordinary web search…yet.

On a related note, Bing is finding other interesting ways to utilize Facebook with search.

So, clearly it pays to tweet and build a credible Twitter presence. This means gaining a significant following in number, but also getting authoritative users to follow you (and hopefully retweet your links). This would appear to be good for plain old fashioned organic rankings as well as other supplemental search results. More importantly, it pays to create good content that will attract authoritative Twitterers to share it with others.

These things of course pay anyway, but it’s nice to know that they actually do have an effect on search rankings as well.

It’s not surprising that Twitter is currently playing a more important role in to search engine ranking than Facebook, simply because Twitter is public by default. Facebook is much more walled, meaning that most of the good Facebook data is private. Though it will be interesting to see what happens when Bing does integrate its newly acquired Facebook into its regular search offerings.

This wall of Facebook’s is also a factor into why Facebook could potentially unleash its own legitimate search engine. It’s got a search feature now of course, but there is a great deal of potential for them to do a whole lot more and really get under Google’s skin. More on that here.

Sullivan provides more background and context around the search engines’ social signals, as well as the full with both Bing and Google, and details about the Twitter Firehose’s lack of nofollow.

Google Instant Preview is a new feature following the September roll out of Google Instant which completes searches while they’re being typed into Google’s search field, with the goal of significantly reducing time spent searching.

But is the new feature really going to speed up the searcher’s experience, or is it yet another complicated layer on what was once a simple and easy-to-understand search interface? Google’s own research revealed that on average searchers using Google Instant Preview are 5% more likely to be satisfied with the search results they clíck after seeing a visual preview next to the organic listing.

Google Instant Preview essentially gives users the ability to see a website before they visit it. Google accomplishes this by taking a screenshot of every webpage in its index and giving users access to it via a magnifying glass icon that sits to the right of every search result.

When a user clicks on the magnifying glass icon, a screenshot of the webpage in question will appear to the right of the search result listing. It’s an at-a-glance view of the website page without actually having to visit the webpage.

One of the key elements to Instant Previews though is that Google sometimes highlights a section of the page where the page description occurs. This becomes a useful feature when you’re trying to find information on a specific person on a page that lists dozens or hundreds of people. Instead of having to scroll through the entire page to find the person, you can just look at the Instant Preview and see where they are on the page.

“We realized early on that this kind of experience would only make sense if it was lightning fast. Not long ago simply downloading an image could take 20 or 30 seconds, and even today many websites take four or five seconds to load,” Raj Krishnan, Product Manager wrote in the Google Blog. “With Google Instant Preview, we match a search query with an index of the entire web, identify the relevant parts of each webpage, stitch them together and serve the resulting preview completely customised to your search–usually in under one-tenth of a second.”

SEO expert Peter Bowen at First One On says, “while Google Instant Preview is designed to speed up the searching process what it actually does is to speed up the decision-making process of choosing whether or not to clíck on the link by previewing the visual screenshot of the resulting webpage.”

“Google currently provides a lot more data to help the searcher. At one tíme search engines just displayed the first two lines from a webpage under a search result, but now they include information like site links, date, cached content, jump to links and even Google Places.”

Instant Previews can be helpful for many kinds of tasks. For example, say you looked at a page before and need to find it again – with a preview, you can tell if any of the results look familiar. Or perhaps you’re looking for an official website – look for a logo and formal style and you’ll probably be able to identify it. Or maybe you’re looking for a how-to guide – it’s easy to spot a page with clear illustrations and step-by-step instructions.

From an SEO perspective the big question is how will Google Instant Preview affect our understanding of traditional SEO, and what changes should we consider making to webpages so that they can be easily previewed in a tiny screenshot?

When a searcher performs a search and sees the search results page displayed, they do have a choice of whether or not to activate the Google Instant Preview feature by clicking on the magnifying glass icon.

“However, clicking on the magnifying glass icon is less of a commitment than clicking on a link, and you still need to convince the searcher that it is worth their time to preview a website” says Peter Bowen. “Therefore it becomes more important than ever to have a well defined and well written description of what the website page is about and it has to fit within the 150 character limit. So the Meta content description is what you will have to change and be aware of here.”

As we already know, Flash is not SEO friendly because it cannot be read by search engines and is even worse for Instant Preview as it shows as a black rectangle and cannot be rendered. The same is true for video files that also display a black rectangle in the preview, so consideration of this is important too.

It should be pointed out that because the image size of the screenshot is so small, unless the text in headings is large enough, it will be impossible to read.

So what does all this mean? Well, we have to start thinking about the overall page layout and if it looks good at postage stamp size or if it is just a blur of text with no images to make it look appealing. This means creating pages that pay more attention to navigation, titles and headers, spacing, colors and objects, such as call-to-action buttons. Having a good looking page with relevant titles now may count as much as the content on the page itself.

It is likely that we will begin to see a lot more webpages with well defined graphics and other visual aids designed to get a searcher’s attention. This makes SEO even more important than ever, make sure that your images are named with keywords and their filenames and alt text are descriptive and accurate.

Google Instant Preview is here to stay and designed to make the search selection process easier and according to Google faster, but in the end, good SEO practices are what is going make the difference of whether or not you get discovered on the search engine results pages.

Google’s new Instant real time search has sent massive shock waves through the online SEO and search engine market community.

If you’re a webmaster or an online marketer you’re probably checking your stats/traffic/conversion numbers like never before – Google sure knows how to make everyone dance!

None of this would matter if Google wasn’t the most dominant search engine on the planet. Google means traffic, Google means targeted customers, and Google means money in the bank for countless online marketers and webmasters who receive all of the above from the little search engine that roared.

What is really frightening, Google almost has a monopoly on the online search market, especially now with Yahoo being powered by Bing. Webmasters and marketers can now only rely on two search engines to supply their search traffic.

While there are numerous sources of viable traffic on the web outside of the search engines… many marketers already have the majority of their online marketing geared to the search engines, especially Google.

Most of these same marketers were instantly worried (some say horrified) how Google’s new real time search would impact their marketing, especially their long-tail keywords which bring in most of the sales?

While the jury is still out on that one, other issues are popping up regarding “paid listings” and how it is now more dominant in search results, pushing the free organic listings down further and sometimes pushing them out of the fold.

Even with the arrow keys now coming into play, many searchers are just too lazy to scroll and will just click the first visible listings.

Perhaps even more important are the results which pop-up when you first start typing in your search query. These are really the golden winners in Google’s Instant Search. Having your site or company listed when a searcher types the first letter – has to be a real traffic bonanza.

Now these results vary from country to country, the results showing for the United States are slightly different from those showing for Canada.

Again, Google is showing why it is the top search engine in the world – the Canadian results are well matched with NHL, Canadian Tire, BMO, Rogers, Via Rail… all showing up.

Below you will find a list of the 26 American and Canadian Golden Winners in Google’s new Instant Search. These first letter offerings will vary somewhat according to your location and as search queries change over time. Plus, if you’re logged into Google, your starred or bookmarked favorite sites will be listed at the top.

United States Canada

amazon…………air canada
best buy……….bmo
craigslist……..canadian tire
dictionary……..dictionary
ebay…………..ebay
facebook……….facebook
gmail………….gmail
hotmail………..hotmail
ikea…………..ikea
jet blue……….job bank
kohls………….kijiji
lowes………….lotto max
mapquest……….mapquest
netflix………..nhl
orbitz…………osap
pandora………..paypal
quotes…………quotes
rei……………rogers
sears………….skype
target…………tsn
usps…………..utube
verizon………..via rail
weather………..walmart
xbox…………..xbox
yahoo………….youtube
zillow…………zellers

As you can plainly see there are some differences in the instant listings for each country, reflecting the search queries which are made. Regardless, those websites which pop up first will no doubt get much more traffic, especially for the commercial sites and companies. These golden winners are smiling all the way to the bank.

One of the great things about the work I do is that I have a bird’s eye view of what’s working and what’s not when it comes to social media. Every so often I like to give sort of a “state of the union” on Facebook and Twitter best practices, because as I am sure you know, social media is constantly growing, changing and evolving.

As you’ll see, some of the strategies I am recommending are tried and true-they have been working since day one and will probably continue to for the considerable future.

However, there may be a few here that you’ve never considered-or may even be surprised by. But they are what I see as being the biggest keys to success and results for business owners on the two hottest social networks on the planet: Facebook and Twitter.

1. Find your peeps.

What this means is that you want to become part of the community you are looking to serve. The first step of course is to be clear on whom it is you want to serve and what problem you are solving for them. Once you know that, the goal is to go where they are hanging out.

There are specific tools you can use to easily find and interact with your target market. Two of my favorites for Twitter are wefollow.com and search.twitter.com.

2. Concentrate on conversing and building relationships, instead of broadcasting and selling.

One of the most common yet biggest mistakes that people make when they are first introduced to social media is to focus on pushing their product or service in a spammy way. That approach fails miserably in social media because most people are there to build relationships and interact.

There’s nothing wrong with letting others know what’s going on with you or your business sometimes–just be sure to intersperse your tweets or Facebook updates with some two-way conversation.

3. Use a Facebook personal profile AND a Facebook business page TOGETHER.

This might be a little “controversial” – and don’t get me wrong, your business SHOULD have a Page — but when you have a personal profile, you are able to interact with other people much more easily.

As a business Page, a Page can’t go comment on another person’s Wall or profile or in their Group or on THEIR Page AS that Page. You are really contained inside the space of your own Page. This might be something to consider because a lot of the magic of Facebook and the relationship-building and rapport-building comes from that ability to interact.

4. Cross-post and cross promote.

Once you’ve decided to make social media a part of your marketing strategy, you don’t want to keep it to yourself.

There are lots of ways to spread the word, for example: you’ll want to advertise your social presence on your blog, add links to your email signature and use one social media platform to post to another.

5. Use a social media dashboard like Hootsuite and other productivity tools to accomplish more in less time.

Hootsuite.com is my hands-down favorite, free social media tool, and the reason why is because it does so many different things. For example, you can use it to update many social networks at once, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; you can use it to pre-schedule tweets and status updates and more.

6. Get them on the list.

In most cases, people aren’t going to buy from you right off of sites like Facebook and Twitter. You need to shift your thinking from “how can I get this person to buy from me or hire me now?” to “how can I bring this person into my community and strengthen the relationship with them on an ongoing basis?”

One of the best ways to do this is to offer people a way to provide their email address via your blog or website so that you have permission to keep in touch and build an ongoing relationship with them.

7. Measure and track your social media results.

Measuring the ROI of social media isn’t exactly cut and dry. I am often asked how you can tell whether the time you’ve spent on social media activities is really making a difference.

Some of the best metrics? Blog comments, blog subscribers, newsletter subscribers, social media profile engagement, number of friends and followers and website traffic to name a few.

No matter who your target market is, you can be sure that at least some segment of them is using social media. The important thing is to understand that social media is a great way to get in front of that target audience.

And remember, you may not be able to equate your interactions to dollars now, but what you are doing is planting seeds which can have big payoffs later on.

Most of the strategies I’ve mentioned here aren’t really “strategies” unless you keep applying them over time-so stick with it to reap those results you’ve been searching for.