Google Instant changes *everything*

Now SEO gets really interesting.

With the launch of Google Instant (take a quick look, if you don’t know what I’m talking about) SEO changes, yet again.

For too long, “dubious” “SEO experts” have pretended that SEO was a dark art, not to be understood by mere mortals. Well, to some degree that was true – it’s incredibly-complicated when done well but I’ve always thought that it was a sign of protectionism when an expert can’t explain what they do in simple English.

So, in plain English… Google Instant works by attempting to guess what you’re searching for based on the words you’ve already typed. As you add extra words to your search term it refines the results over and over again, instantly.

Quick example: I type the word “hotels”, not only does Google suggest “Hotels in London”, “Hotels in Bath” and “Hotels in York” as possible search terms it shows me results based on its suggestions.

As I continue to type adding “in Leeds”, the suggestions change to “Hotels in Leeds city centre”, “Hotels in Leeds with parking” etc.

If I then add “Kent” (Leeds Castle of course), then the results settle down, providing this as the only suggestion and a list of suitable results.

So, if you’re going to SEO a site to the hilt, you need to start thinking more about partial search terms. Don’t just rely on completed searches that are performed after people press “Search” but all the possible combinations that could be used to find you.

Like all best explanations, it’s probably demonstrated best in practice. To fully-use Google Instant, you need to have an account with Google and be logged-in to the site. Neither are particularly onerous demands and having a Google account already improves your searching – and now even more so.

And now, here’s a funny video…