Google’s new privacy policy says that once a user signs into a Google account, the company will use that user’s data across its services, resulting in a more personal online experience for users. In fact, Google recently started requiring new Gmail users to create Google+ accounts, so its data resources will continue to grow.

Here’s what Google had to say about the new privacy policy change: “The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”

In other words, if you’re signed into Google, it will suggest search queries and personalize your search results based on the interests you previously expressed in Google +, Gmail and YouTube, etc. Google claims this will allow it to better understand your queries and serve you the best results. If you don’t like it, you can sign out of Google.

Impact on Google Ads: Google’s new privacy policy and its expansion of Google+ with Google Search Plus Your World have implications for paid search because these changes allow Google to target ads directly to consumers rather than to queries.

Up until these recent changes, ads were targeted to queries. If a consumer searched for a Gucci designer handbag, the intent was explicit and marketers could target their ads based on queries. When queries aren’t clear enough, Google has to work harder to serve relevant results.

Now, with all the data collected on Google, YouTube, Gmail and Google+, the company has the means to enhance relevance by putting interests and relationships together in your Google profile.

User Behavior: Google has been leveraging its network of AdSense partner sites to create behaviorally based user profiles, as stated below.

“When a user visits an AdSense partner website, we analyze the content of the page and site to show contextually relevant ads. We use these page topics as well as data from third-party companies to associate interests with a user’s cookie, taking into account how often users visit sites of those categories, among other factors.

Google may use the websites a user visits, as well as third-party data, to infer the user’s gender, age category, and other demographics. For example, if the sites that you visit have a majority of female visitors (based on aggregated survey data on site visitation), we may associate your cookie with the female demographic category.”

User Emails: For a while, Google has been personalizing ads based on the emails people read in Gmail, as it states below:

“For example, if you’ve recently read a lot of messages about cameras, maybe you’d like to see an offer from your local camera shop. On the other hand, if you’ve reported these messages as spam, or marked them ‘not important’ you might not want to see that offer. Soon, some of you will start seeing fewer ads overall, and focused on subjects we hope will be important to you, at the right time.”

User Relationships: We all know word-of-mouth is the most powerful advertising medium. When people you know and trust recommend a product, you are more likely to believe that more than any marketer’s ad. By using the data based on relationships in Google+ and Gmail, Google can prioritize ads based on what users recommend with+1. Google Search Plus Your World will encourage adoption of +1, which is a part of AdWords.

The benefits of using all this data to make ads more relevant are tremendous. It can result in satisfied users and more clicks for advertisers. And yes, more money for Google.

As Google aggregates more data about who their users are, what they do, what they like and who they like, it is creating a treasure-trove of valuable data that contributes to its dominance of the web. And that’s why legislators are scrutinizing Google’s every move.

Tip for Marketers: The takeaway from the above: create a Google+ Page and connect to your Google AdWords campaigns. That allows all your +1s (from your Page, website, ads and search results) to be summed in a single total. This new AdWords feature is called Social Extensions.

With Social Extensions, consumers will see all the recommendations your business has received, whether they come from viewing an ad, a search result or your Google+ Page. This means your +1’s will reach not only the over 40 million Google+ users, but all the users who go to Google every day.

Larry Kim of Wordstream analyzed Google AdWords spending to see which industries and companies spent the most on Google advertising last year. Kim created an infographic listing the results of his research and also published some insights into what he believes his findings mean for the U.S. economy in his report, What Industries Contributed to Google’s $37.9 Billion in 2011 Revenues?

In his report, Kim offered an analysis of commonly used keywords and their corresponding cost-per-click, viewable in the infographic. Below is a listing of the industries and amounts spent by the top ten big advertising spenders.

1. Finance & Insurance – $4.0 Billion
2. Retailers & General Merchandise – $2.8 Billion
3. Travel & Tourism – $2.4 Billion
4. Jobs & Education – $2.2 Billion
5. Home & Garden − $2.1 Billion
6. Computer & Consumer Electronics – $2.0 Billion
7. Vehicles – $2.0 Billion
8. Internet & Telecommunications – $1.7 Billion
9. Business & Industrial – $1.6 Billion
10. Occasions & Gifts – $1.2 Billion

Advertising revenue from the above ten industries accounted for 60 percent of Google’s $37.9 billion 2011 revenue, while the remaining $14.4 billion came from other industries.

Retailers & General Merchandise Industry

In the retail industry, Amazon.com led the pack at $55.2 million spent on AdWords in 2011, with eBay ($42.8 million), Macy’s ($35.6 million), Sears ($34.3 million and JCPenney ($30.9 million) following. Commonly used keywords and cost-per-click are shown on the infographic.

Analysis of U.S. Economy Based on Google Ad Revnue

Kim made some conclusions about the economy based on Google AdWords spending. His reasoning is that we can learn a lot from Google’s 3 million advertisers and 2 billion daily queries. Among his conclusions:

1. Concerns of Occupy Wall Street are legitimate since the finance and insurance industries were the biggest spenders despite the financial meltdown. They wouldn’t be spending big if they weren’t making money by acquiring new customers with PPC ads.

2. Consumers are spending despite the weak economy and high unemployment. While Kim did not mention the disparity between the poor, middle class and rich, I suspect that is a factor, with the affluent doing the majority of the spending.

3. High unemployment has created opportunities for education and training. Unemployment continues to remain high, prompting people to get retraining or college degrees. That has created a boon for online universities and schools. However, there have been complaints on misleading ads that do not result in jobs.

4. Home & Garden ads beat Real Estate ads since the housing recovery has been slow. That means more people are spending money fixing up their homes and gardens rather than buy a new home.

5. Business and industrial spending was soft compared to other industries and based on the industry’s GDP. It appears corporations are holding back and are slow to invest. While this is typical of a recession, it does not help the slowly recovering economy.

Based on his research, Kim predicts the U.S. economy “will be OK in 2012.” Let’s hope he’s right, and that businesses starts hiring, investing and flourishing in 2012.

Last week, Google introduced some new features in search results that make search more social and tie in with its Google+ social network. This latest change is called Search Plus Your World. The new features will display personal results in the SERPs, mostly from the Google+ network. Search Plus Your World is available to users who are signed in to Google and searching on https://www.google.com in English. The following features will now be integrated into your search results: People, Pages, and Profiles.

Google says it wants to enable its search engine to not only understand content, but also people and relationships, making it more social. Below is a brief description of the three new features.

1. Personal Results: Lets you find information that’s only relevant to you, such as Google+ photos and posts. You will see your own and those shared specifically with you.

2. Profiles in Search: Available in autocomplete and results, this feature enables you to immediately find people you’re interested in.

3. People and Pages: This helps you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic, enabling you to follow them with just a few clicks.

These results will contain data from the Google+ network rather than Facebook or Twitter. Google says the reason for this is due to their terms of service with social networks like Facebook and Twitter that do not allow them to crawl those networks deeply. However, Google is open to crawling other networks in the future. Below are some examples of what you can do with the new features.

Personal Results: Say you’re in the market for a big ticket item and want to know what experience others had with various brands. Of course, you can search the web; but who can you trust? That’s why most people prefer to learn what their friends think. Here’s what you can find with Search Plus Your World.

• Google+ posts. You can find relevant Google+ posts from friends talking about the car they just bought, or a home entertainment console. You’ll likely find links shared by your friend talking about their buying experience with various brands.
• Photos. You might find great photos of your friends’ car or some other product right in your search results page. You can also find your own private photos from Google+ and Picasa, based on captions, comments and album titles.

Google+ Profiles in Search: Google states in its blog: “Every day, there are hundreds of millions of searches for people. Sometimes, it’s hard to find the person you’re looking for. Once you do find him or her, there’s no quick way for you to actually interact. Starting today, you’ll have meaningful ways to connect with people instantly, right from the search results.”

When you type the first few letters of a person’s name, Google autocompletes it and displays their own search results page, which includes their Google+ profile page and “other relevant web results.” Once you’ve found the person you’re looking for, you can see every single web result for them, excluding others with the same name.

People & Pages: If you search for a topic like [music] or [soccer], you might see prominent people who frequently discuss this topic on Google+ appearing on the right-hand side of the results page. You can connect with them on Google+, strike up meaningful conversations and discover entire communities in ways that simply weren’t possible before.

Control: You can control your results on Google Plus Your World with a prominent new toggle in the upper right of the SERPs where you can see what your search results look like with or without personal content. By clicking the toggle, users can view search plus your world results or non-personalized results.

Security: Last, but not least, Google says it sets a high bar for Search Plus Your World when it comes to security and privacy by providing SSL encryption. Therefore, when you’re signed in to Google, your search results, including your private content, are protected by the same high standards of encryption as your Gmail messages.

Suppliers and Retailers have heard about the advantages of rich snippets and what an informative, detailed SERP listing can mean for traffic and conversions. While it can be a lot of work to use the correct formatting that results in these rich SERP listings, those who use WordPress can get a variety of free plug-ins that create the code for you.

Rich snippets allow users to decide whether or not they want to find out more about your products from the search results page. They can be used to show more information on Events, Products, Business Listings, reviews, Videos, etc., on your site.

Rich Snippets make it possible to label this information within your website source code through the use of Microdata, Microformats or RDFa formats to show Google that this information represents a certain type of data. Google has a Rich Snippets Testing Tool you can use to ensure you have entered the code correctly on your site.

By telling Google exactly what you offer searchers, you are helping them better recognize and display your information in search results. Rich Snippets are an excellent way to provide complete, optimized data to the search engines in order to enhance your listings in organic search result.

You can help Google by inserting Rich Snippets in your content with structured markup (schema microdata, microformats and RDFa). Below are some free tools for implementing this code on your documents if you use Word Press.

Microdata for WordPress: This free plug-in developed by Internet marketing company Optimum7 adds a button on the TinyMCE Editor (located in the Media Buttons Editor area) to help you generate HTML5 microdata code in your WordPress documents. You merely have to choose the type of data you want and the properties of the data type and then fill in the values. As you know, the types of schema data are: Event, Person, Organization, review, Place and Product. You can get more information on this microdata plug-in here, and you don’t have to know how to code to use this plug-in. You can download the Microdata for SEO plug-in here.

Schema For WordPress: This plug-in will mark up the existing content in your WordPress blog. After installation, activate the “Schema for WordPress” button in front of the place where you wish the code to be placed, choosing appropriate items from the drop-down menu for the properties. For more information on Schema for WordPress, click here.

SEO Ultimate WordPress Plug-In, Rich Snippet Creator Module: SEO Design Solutions created a very popular SEO Ultimate Plug-In that has a module for creating rich snippets. However, it only applies to the Event schema data type. For more information, click here.

Another tool that is not specifically for WordPress and can be used on any website is described below.

Raven’s Schema Creator: Raven released a new tool for easily creating HTML with schema.org microdata called the Schema Creator. Structured data helps search crawlers make sense of the content in your HTML. If you find schema.org a little difficult to understand, Schema Creator can help you build structured data. Once you create a schema, you can copy and paste the code to your site or add additional item properties to it. For more information on Schema Creator, click here.

You can use any of the resources above to implement rich snippets on your pages, which is particularly advantageous for suppliers and retailers. Buyers can get a lot more information on their product queries and you can get a lot more traffic and conversions by using rich snippets, microdata, RDFa and any other type of structured data.

While Search Engine Optimization tactics evolve over the years, the good old basic tactics remain valid. That means keyword research, search-friendly URLs, Title tags, Meta descriptions, headers, great content, images with Alt tags, optimized videos and linking. As Google and other search engines continue to tweak their algorithms to benefit users, wholesalers must think about satisfying the needs of their users as well as search engine robots. This article will review traditional SEO tactics that can be used to create great pages for top rankings.

Keyword Research: Keyword research is the foundation of SEO. Even though search algorithms are highly sophisticated and complex, you basically get found by your keywords. For an explanation of the value of keyword research see the SEO Moz Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Research.

Search Friendly URLs: While URLs are not a huge ranking factor, search-friendly URLs are important because they provide a good user experience as well as information for search robots. Put relevant keywords in your URLs as this provides anchor text when people use your URLs to link to your pages.

Title Tags: The title tag is the main text that describes an online document. It is the single most important on-page SEO element and appears in three key places: the top of a browser, search engine results pages, and on external websites as link anchor text. Best practice is to use no more than 70 characters in the Title and to use strategic keywords.

Meta Description Tags: The Meta description tag draws readers to a website from the SERPs; thus, it is very important for gaining user click-through from search results. As a short paragraph describing the content on the page, the description tag should be compelling, contain strategic keywords and contain between 150 and 160 characters.

Headers: Headers are handy for scanning content and they provide clues search engines. Use keywords in your headers wherever possible.

Content: All copywriting gurus say to write great content, but what does that mean? Write accurate, descriptive and compelling text about your products. Use the thesaurus in your word processing program for synonyms to keep from being repetitive. Have your keyword list handy for use whenever it’s relevant. Use tools like ubersuggest to get ideas for improving your content. Use keywords in the beginning, middle and end several times throughout the page. The old adage is to write for the user first and search engines second, but keep both in mind when creating content.

Images: A picture is worth a thousand words and can be used to good advantage by wholesalers. There’s even a possibility that the image and its associated Alt text can help boost your rankings. However, use relevant images and accurate, descriptive Alt text.

Videos: Videos have been displaying in search results since Universal Search; yet, many wholesalers don’t use them. Featuring videos on your web pages can help you upsell, drive traffic and make your site sticky. Make sure your videos are relevant and optimized.

Inbound Links: Authoritative inbound links are links that can help your site become a subject matter expert in your niche. Google rewards authoritative links in its algorithm. An example of an authoritative link for a wholesale jeweler might be a link to its site from The Fashion Jewelry & Accessories Trade Association. Outbound links to pages of interest to your readers are also helpful. For instance, a wholesaler might want to link to pages with basic information about drop shipping or other topics of interest to its target market. Lastly, it’s good practice to link your inner pages to each other for relevant content throughout the site. It takes time and skills to gain authoritative links. For a primer on linking basics, we refer you to the SEO Moz Beginner’s Guide on Linking.

Sitemap: Create a sitemap of all the pages in your site to reveal the link structure so search robots can find all relevant pages of your site for crawling.

Site Validation: Last, but not least, you’ll want to ensure your pages are indexable and links can be followed with the free W3C Markup Validation Service.

In conclusion, SEO basics never go out of style. These tactics will help you create rich web pages that get good rankings. You can combine the above tips on SEO with usability, marketing and psychology principles to create pages that will do exceptionally well in 2012. Just remember to satisfy users and search engines at the same time while implementing the elements above.

The way we search on the web is changing as new search engines make social networking a part of the search experience. New search engine Blekko allows searchers to use their Facebook friends to filter web queries. Montage from Microsoft’s Future Social Experience Labs (FUSE) allows users to gather recent web content on a specific topic, making a digital album of their links for sharing on Twitter or Facebook.

Web search is becoming more interactive as people continue to find ways to share information online. When Leslie Stahl asked Mark Zuckerman on “60 Minutes” last month if he wanted to take over the Internet, he replied by saying that “…people don’t’ want to be alone when they search, they want to share information with their friends.”

Internet search engines have become indispensable in everyday life; in fact, people take them for granted. However, as Zuck pointed out to all on TV, search is not social, it’s a solitary experience. You can share the results of your query by pasting a link into email or a tweet on Twitter, but there is no way to immediately share the information you find while searching.

Meanwhile, people have taken to social networking in a big way. Facebook, which just got $500 million funding and is said to be valued at $50 billion, is becoming more search-engine-like with its “Posts By Everyone” search feature that works like a search engine. Two new search engines, Blekko and Montage, are trying to put the social interaction into search as well.

Blekko, a search engine based in Redwood City, CA, uses human editors to select authoritative websites and wants to screen out spam and the links promoted by SEO techs trying to influence search results in behalf of their clients. One million spam pages are created every hour according to Blekko’s “Spam Clock” showing the total spam pages created since January 1, 2011.

Blekko also allows users to customize their search results by using their Facebook friends to filter their web queries. When Blekko users enable this feature, the search engine collects the large database of websites and pages that have been “liked” by the user’s Facebook friends. So it’s like your friends provide the algorithm instead of Google.

The reasoning behind filtering queries this way is that when a friend “likes” an article or a website, that person is providing a quality vote; especially since it’s someone the user knows. That vote is saying “this is a quality site, it’s not spam.” This can be a powerful tool if you have a lot of Facebook friends.

Another new social search engine is Montage, an experiment by Microsoft’s Future Social Experience Labs (FUSE). This is a 30-person Microsoft team working on making search a real-time, media-rich experience where people can share with friends.

Montage allows users to gather recent content on the web on specific topics of their choice, including news stories, videos and tweets, even providing analytics to track interest on various topics. Another feature is the ability to make a digital album of your links for sharing on Twitter or Facebook. FUSE Labs contends the search experience should include the capture and rebroadcast of what you find while searching and not be a single, goal-oriented experience.

Microsoft’s Bing will soon start showing whether a user’s Facebook friends liked a particular link displayed in its SERPs, a first step toward making traditional search more social. However, Montage is where you can immediately share with friends.

Did you know that over 70% of Internet users go to a search engine before they buy a product or service? Since we have over 220 million Internet users in the US, you can’t afford not to be exposed to these potential buyers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique used to optimize your website’s on-page and off-page factors in order to rank more favorably in search results. You can use SEO Best Practice techniques to drive more business to your site from customers who never heard of you before finding your site in the search results pages.

Did you know over 80% of website traffic comes from search engines? That means SEO is a vital marketing strategy if you want your business to grow. While it might be expensive to hire an SEO agency, it’s possible to do it yourself. However, it takes a lot of time, effort and know-how. Below is a brief review of the on-page and off-page SEO factors that are necessary to achieve top rankings.

On-Page SEO has to do with the text and content on your web pages. Compelling content is the foundation of the ongoing process of updating your site to make it user-friendly for both users and search engines. When you create persuasive content about your products/services and use the keywords people will use to search for your offerings, the search bots crawling the web will index and rank your pages favorably in their databases.

• Webpage URLs: Your inner page URLs should consist of your domain name and a description of the page content.
• Meta Tags: Optimize your Title and Description Tags. Title tags should be short (65 characters or less), forming a sentence that begins with your primary keywords. Use enticing, descriptive copy and create unique Title tags for every page. Your Description tag will grab the click as snippets truncated from your Description is displayed in search results. Use keywords in the beginning and write concise, compelling copy (150 characters or less).
• Headers: Include primary keywords to spark interest with headers. Keep them short and relevant. Use only one H1 tag per page.
• Body Text: Write pages that have a purpose for your visitors and are focused on 2 or 3 primary keywords. Include your primary keywords at the beginning and the end of the page. Support primary keywords with related keywords to establish context on the page and to facilitate spidering. Close with a call to action. Write in conversational style, focus on customer needs and be mindful of search spiders. Write concisely as web users scan pages quickly. Let the headers organize your copy, using bullets and bold text for emphasis. Allow plenty of white space for readability. Use anchor text for internal and external linking and vary your anchor text by using related keywords.

 • Internal Links: Create relevant links between the pages within your site. Link your major pages to your homepage, ensuring keyword-focused anchor text is relevant on the destination page. Use navigation text links rather than images or JavaScript. Use breadcrumb links, subject/topic group links and sitemap links.
• Images: Use images for content credibility and to create interest. Keep image size to a minimum for fast display. Use relevant ALT text.
• Sitemap: Create a sitemap of all the pages in your site to reveal link structure. This will ensure all your pages are indexed by search engines.
• Site Validation: Ensure your pages are indexable and that links can be followed with the free W3C Markup Validation Service.
• HTML Code: Ensure code is free of errors and warnings.

On-page Factors to Avoid: Using the the techniques below can get you penalized.

• Hidden Links or Text: Avoid using hidden or invisible text in a font color similar to the background color of your site for the purpose of getting listed on search engines. This will adversely affect your rankings.
• Cloaking: Avoid publishing two different versions of your site, one for search engines and one for users. This will get you penalized.
• Duplicate Content: Avoid posting duplicate content. You must display unique, original, useful content.

Off-Page SEO refers to the technical work that must be done off the pages of your site. Off-page SEO is more difficult than on-page SEO and includes the following:

• Anchor Text: Use relevant keywords in anchor text links, and don’t ignore the text surrounding the links.
• Quality Links: Build quality links, considering relevance, page rank and authority sites.
• External Links: Get listed in DMOZ and quality directories in your niche. When looking for one-way links, search your primary keywords to identify competitors, and then find out who is linking to them. Create a list of possible candidates and be prepared to offer something of value in return for a static link with relevant anchor text. Start a business blog and post valuable information on other blogs relevant to your business. Write hot content in your area of expertise and submit to relevant publications or post on your blog. To fast start your linking program, hire a link expert.
• Increase Link Popularity: In addition to the above, you can attain links by using social networking sites, logging comments on these sites, posting on forums, writing articles/press releases, submitting your site to directories, creating link bait, posting classified ads and exchanging links with relevant sites.

On-page and off-page factors are two different aspects of SEO, and both must be implemented to bring qualified traffic and conversions to your site.