Below are a few of the more important ones all websites should keep an eye on:

• Image Search – Many search online everyday through image searches to find what they need. If you have a website or blog that uses a great deal of images it is important to optimize those images so that can rank in image search as well. Make the URL of the image friendly along with your image alt tag. Over time you will notice in your analytics information how many people will make it to your website just from using the image search feature.

• Video Search – This is an area that has seen explosive growth over the last few years and will most likely continue to see even more as time goes on. Take the time and make an effort to put out some sort of company video for your business. Prospects will enjoy seeing the video appear in search results. There are ways to get this done on a budget.

• Social Search – You know social search? The thing that everyone is buzzing about now? Well search engines are starting to really index online conversations so it is time to take your online conversation to the next step. Get your audience bumping into your conversations online.

• Real Time Search – Real time search is happening right now! The search engines are getting super fast so they index material very quickly. Are you adding useful material everyday for the search engines to gobble up?

These are just some of the more important areas of search to be visible in. The search engines are starting to evolve and offer much more to the end user so it is important for your brand and your business to be visible in all the different areas of search not just the organic. A few years from now we will most likely see this list grow even more so take advantage of it while it is just beginning otherwise you could find yourself spending a great deal of time and resource to make up for lost time down the road.

• Emails: The good thing about emails is that they are all yours. Nobody can take them away from you and you can reach out to them however you like. A nice email list is something that can be leveraged also when trying to form any partnerships. Most importantly an email list is tangible and very valuable. It takes a lot of effort to build a list of people who actually wish to hear from you on a regular basis.

• Facebook Fans: It depends on your industry but Facebook fans are always going to have some sort of importance. Facebook is not going anywhere any time soon. Facebook is most likely only getting started. As time goes on more demographics will start to make their way into the pages of Facebook and it will be important for your brand to at least be there waiting for them. It will be a place for them to get together and communicate at the very least. It is a website that will be an important force to be part of for a very long time.

• Twitter Followers: It is difficult to make an opinion on the future of Twitter but for the present time all businesses should be applying it in someway. When you have followers someone is bound to see you yelling so for the time being there is a certain level of importance to have a presence along with followers on Twitter. Be vocal, say something every day and visitors will migrate to you over time.

Rick Harris from Visibility Magazine had this to say about the issue:
“So, if one business said they had 10,000 opt-in email addresses and another said they had 10,000 followers on Twitter, then to me, and I believe the majority of the internet marketing industry, the opt-in email addresses are a whole lot more valuable to you as a business and make your business more credible.”

Each type of contact has a unique level of importance. Just remember that down the road if Twitter or Facebook shut their doors they take their fans and followers with them to the grave. All those years of hard work down the drain, whereas your email contacts will be quietly sleeping in a spreadsheet somewhere nobody can touch.

Source Code: By right clicking on a page you will have an option that reads source code. This will show you all you’re coding for that specific page. If you look at the top of the coding you will be able to see your meta title tag, meta description and meta keywords targeted for that specific page. Take a look at your keywords, do they seem generic? Are there more than 5 or 6 keywords in this section? Does your meta tag look like it could use improvement? If you answered yes to any of these questions is might be time to optimizing your website.

Content: Do you have enough content on your website? Typically the pages that are most important should always have 150-200 words of text to make them sticky in the search engines. It is always important to write this content for humans, your visitors and audiences reading your site. DO NOT WRITE CONTENT FOR THE SEARCH ENGINES! Additionally your content should always have a handful of targeted keywords spread tastefully throughout the content in order to be fully efficient and optimized. If you want to be found online you will need to have ample text on your website.

Images: Take a look at the URL of where your image is being hosted. Is it a sloppy URL structure? You always want the URL structure of your image to be describing exactly what your image actually is. Don’t try stuffing it with keywords that don’t apply to your image just keep it natural to what is occurring in the photo. When you hover over your image what does your alt tag show? It should always be a description of what is occurring in your image as well, this way your images will start to rank in the image search section for when people search for images.

URL Structures: Avoiding your URL structures could lead to very poor SEO results for your website. Same principals should apply to your URL structures as they do throughout your website. They should clearly label what is occurring on that page. If you’re URL structures linger with many different characters and numbers you are not maximizing the potential of those URL structures.
For example:
A web page dedicated towards red sneakers should look like www.websitexyz.com/red-sneakers.

These little areas often times get over looked by business website owners. If these areas of your website are not yet fully optimized to their potential, your website is not going to run as optimal and efficient as possible for your audience.

Here is the video from Mike Grehan taken at SES Last Month:

The search marketing industry moves very quickly and businesses need to harness the power and potential now rather than later. Evidence for this is already here, and as states by Mike Grehan it will become increasingly important for business owners to become visible in all areas of search not just rankings.

Ecommerce websites need to create a stimulation in your audience and make them want to act and create an action your website. Let’s take a look at a Website like Wal-Mart. Why do you think they are so successful? Yes, partially their name but their website has a series of components and factor built into it that are vital for online website conversions.

Categories – Make your categories very easy to find. They should all be clearly labeled on the home page. If you can’t fit all your categories you should have at least your most important high level categories on your home page. Don’t make your audience look for anything.
Seasonality: If you visit the Wal-Mart home page today you will see exercise equipment on sale. With spring around the corner many people are trying to shed some weight for the spring and summer. If your industry has this type of seasonality you should be showcasing your most important products during that specific time of year and creating that call to action. Feed off the emotions of your audience during each season.

Newsletter – You have to have a newsletter sign up that gives your audience a reason to give you their email address. You will want create a call to action if you want your audience to submit their email address. “Sign Up for Discounts” or something to this effect will get many more people submitting their information than just a sign up form.

Call to Actions – If you want people to do something on your site you need to entice them. With e-commerce websites you want your audience to be able to make it to almost any page possible in your entire website. They need to know they can trust you, so having things like privacy policies and return pages visible creates confidence in your user. It takes a lot for a person to be able to pull out their credit card and make a purchase.

Other Trust – Build trust in your visitors by highlighting your industry association logos such as Hacker Safe, BBB, your local chamber of commerce, etc. Also, consider live chat and promote your phone number accordingly. All of these types of elements actually help build trust in your audience.

Before you can think about bringing visitors to your website through search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay per click advertising, etc. always make sure your ecommerce website is build to last and built to sell!

Search engine optimization also requires a certain element of experience. An SEO software product can not by substituted for experience, but experience can play a role to help utilize an SEO software product. The experience of doing certain online efforts and analyzing the results only to tweak and refine to streamline even more. This is only acquired over time. This type of experience is invaluable and SEO software just doesn’t have the capabilities to analyze what works and what doesn’t. If your website generates only a small number of visitors but your conversion margins are very high does the software understand this? Who is to say something works over something that doesn’t? Every business will have their own tools and benchmarks for measuring their own success. If you are thinking about trying to use software to market your business think again, if you have a good amount of SEO and/or internet marketing experience as a business owner, marketer or web master, then there are software products out there that can help automate certain tasks to make you life easier, but it will not do the work for you! For instance, I use several excellent products to do my job, (Keyword Discovery, Compete, Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, etc.) I don’t only rely on these tools alone to make important mission critical SEO and internet marketing decisions for my clients. When you are evaluating SEO software products out there, just think of this: If it was that easy everybody would be doing it. Reaching out to humans and developing and executing a comprehensive strategy requires a human touch and always will.

Please share your stories and thoughts with our readers about what SEO, SEM and internet marketing tools and software products you are currently using, or if you have found better results without using an SEO or internet marketing software product?

There is plenty of room in the school yard for everyone to get along. Is it because I am a threat to them or the industry? Sometimes I feel like this industry is a lot like high school all over again. You got your cool kids that think they are too good for everyone else and you got everyone else trying to shine in front of their eyes. I by no means want to break into the “cool” click and become one of those has to have their ass kissed by everyone else.

Why is it so hard for people in this industry to come together and work as a team? I understand that everyone is trying to grow their own business but there is no reason why so many internet marketing professionals have to have such a cold shoulder towards each other. We are all in the same game and we do the best we can to provide our clients with great service.

If you are an internet marketer or SEO person do you feel like our industry is heading in this direction as well? Please leave your comments and any related experiences or stories below!