Over the last couple years Google has been moving more towards a universal search model that provides searchers more diverse results than simply listings for related static pages on the web.  Over the course of the last year and a half you have probably noticed YouTube videos, Google Shopping results, book results, blog posts and many more different types of results returned for certain search queries.

The most recent addition to Google search engine results pages is related forum posts.  Google introduced these types of results on September 30, 2009.  For certain types of search phrases, you may now find a series of recent (or in some cases not so recent) forum posts.

Here is an example for a recent search for “cooking chili in a crockpot”:

I have also noticed that the same exact thing is happening with Yahoo! Answers posts for several “How To” types of questions.

Google has made mention of placing more emphasis on returning relevant “real-time” results for search queries… this seems to be a step in that direction.

This opens up an additional reason for webmasters and Internet marketers to add forum marketing to their overall strategy.  Not only does having an active forum presence in your market beneficial for ranking easily in organic search results as in the example above, it provides a great opportunity to establish a voice of authority and build some nice backlinks from high page rank authority sites.

Google Docs, the free suite of online office tools will start being crawled and indexed soon.  According to a post made by a Google employee on the Google Docs help forum, “This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people.”

Google Docs, which is being used by millions as a free alternative to the pricey Microsoft Office suite, currently offers programs for creating and editing word processing documents, spreadsheets, slideshow presentations and forms.

How To Keep Your Docs Private

It is important to note, due to Google Docs being crawled, if you create a document that you do not want to potentially show up in search results, make sure you choose the “stop publishing” option under the “publish / embed” settings under the “share” tab…. especially if you are one that keeps a spreadsheet of  usernames and logins for websites and software programs.

It will be interesting to see whether or not organizations will be able to benefit in terms of SEO from this change.  PDF documents have been crawled and indexed for years, and in my experience tend to rank even higher than standard html or php pages for certain types of keyword phrases…. looks like it’s time to run some tests!

In the current search engine marketing climate, it’s no secret that a large number of relevant (or semi relevant) external links pointing back to your website can help give you a leg up in organic search engine rankings.

Unfortunately, it’s not exactly easy to secure a large enough number of relevant links, so creativity is a must if you plan to edge out your competitors in organic search rankings.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have been known to reward sites for certain types of backlinks one day and then “slap” the sites the next day, causing a significant drop in search engine rankings.  In order to ensure that your website’s traffic is not solely at the mercy of particular algorithm change, make sure you take time to plan out a link building strategy ahead of time that utilizes various link types.

How Is This Achieved?

To make sure your backlink profile has enough variation to weather search engine algorithm updates, one should keep a few things in mind:

1. Stay away from individuals or companies that offer to submit your site to several thousand website directories.Not only is directory submission rather pointless in my opinion (aside from about 50 solid directories), companies that offer these types of services rarely vary anchor text, page titles and descriptions which is essential to developing a natural looking backlink profile.
2. Be creative! One of the most important keys to successful link building (and online marketing in general) is creativity.  It pays to secure links from sites that aren’t linking out to hundreds of other sites.  Step outside the box and think of ways to get links from these authority sites and your rankings will thank you.
3. Always be ready to leave a link!Some of the best opportunities to leave a backlink come when you least expect (and most likely don’t actually have time to drop a link).  Keep a spreadsheet of potential places to drop a backlink and make sure to check it weekly so you don’t get behind.