Is Google Instant Affecting Your Small Business?

When Google announced that it will change the way users get their search results, there was one question on everyone’s mind – Will Google Instant kill SEO? But, the fact is that the new arrow from the quiver of the Internet king can improve results for small businesses that optimize their local sites for the search engine and make the most of this change.

What is Google Instant?

Google Instant delivers predictive search results, enabling people to search faster as results for queries are instant and change based on every character typed. Even before you have entered the entire phrase, Google starts showing search results. This advancement will definitely influence searcher behavior.

Is Your Target Audience Tech-Savvy?

An average user likes his/her experience on the web to be simple. Constantly flashing and changing text is not something that a user will adopt quickly, especially if they know how to turn off that functionality. Even many tech-savvy people are ignoring the instant results. So, the impact of Google Instant on your business will directly depend on your prospective customers. Their response to technology will determine the change in their searching behavior, thereby affecting your business.

Should Businesses Change the Way They Do SEO?

Among the existing considerations taken into account by Google for giving the search results are the location and individual search patterns of the user based upon the IP address. With Google Instant joining the scene, a local search engine optimizer has the opportunity to widen the range of key phrases. This will help local businesses to boost their lead generation.

Small businesses must try to optimize their web pages for the keywords suggested by Google. Now, since some keywords will have more impressions than others, evolving the way a business does SEO has become a prerequisite for using Google Instant to your advantage. Businesses can spot whether this change is taking place in their market by studying reports from analytics.

How to Capitalize on Google Instant?

Speed. Yes, that is exactly the value Google Instant has added to the process of searching. Businesses, too, need to be fast enough to start acting on this. With Instant, as a user types, the results will keep changing. If you are targeting a particular key phrase, the next way to go about optimizing your web page is by going through the exercise of typing that keyword and observing the changes.

Optimizing for shorter (i.e. broader) phrases will benefit more as many users who would have previously typed in a long search term will now find what they are looking for before putting in the complete search query. As a business owner, you must question your SEO consultant about how well your site is optimized for more general key phrases.

Will Google Instant Change the Way You Advertise?

Google has always strived towards enhancing user experience. By introducing Google Instant, the company’s purpose is nothing different. The ability of users to search the results closest to their query will increase as they will be able to change the search query on the fly. This will improve the quality of clicks on the ads sponsored by you.
Since the results will keep jumping as the user’s mind does from one word to another, it has become extremely important for the ad to catch the eye of the user. It should not only capture the attention of users, but also entice them to click on it.

So, be it for paid campaigns or attracting organic traffic, local websites will have to update their online marketing strategies to maximize the results of their investment as Google Instant enters the market to change it for the better.