Google just recently announced Google TV. What is Google TV? This was posted on the Googleblog to offer some explanation.

“Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more.

Google TV uses search to give you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. For example, already know the channel or program you want to watch? Just type in the name and you’re there. Want to check out that funny YouTube video on your 48” flat screen? It’s just a quick search away. If you know what you want to watch, but you’re not sure where to find it, just type in what you’re looking for and Google TV will help you find it on the web or on one of your many TV channels. If you’d rather browse than search, you can use your standard program guide, your DVR or the Google TV home screen, which provides quick access to all of your favorite entertainment so you’re always within reach of the content you love most.

Because Google TV is built on open platforms like Android and Google Chrome, these features are just a fraction of what Google TV can do.”

Should Google TV take off as a product of Google, here are a few things to consider.

Optimizing video content is going to be more important than ever. Not just optimizing the content itself, in terms of quality, but making your videos visible in search results in Google and YouTube. This is one area where whenever possible I try to get local business owners to create or optimize already created videos that can be ranked for local search.

Consider how much people watch their TVs. Now Google is right there, accessible from their TV remote. If you thought Google had a great deal of market share before, imagine how many more searches Google would get from the TV set, if this thing really takes off.

As Google TV was only announced Thursday, we really don’t know the full effect it will have on the industry, or on search, but it has the potential to be a huge deal for online businesses of all sizes. A game changer in a variety of capacities and something early adopters will definitely benefit from.

Every so called “marketer” with a system to sell emails me the pitch. This is not by accident. I am on some of the top marketers email lists. I like to keep up to date with the new SEO, Social Media, online marketing products and services being offered. Most of what I receive is over hyped, over priced junk that has been rehashed from other previously released “systems” and programs that promise riches and instant Internet businesses.

The only people getting rich from these offers are the guys that develop and sell these products.

One of the latest of these over promising offers caught my attention today as it deals with something I know very well. Local SEO.

A new product is being offered as a push button approach to providing local SEO to small local businesses across the world. The sales pitch says you will be able to make four to five figures a month in this new and expanding business. The cost? Six payments of $547.00 or one payment of $2,997.00. Yes for only $3K, you can learn to be a local SEO specialist like me.

Now I am not going to go into all of the details the 30 minute video on the site touches on. I want to get to the meat of the matter. By looking at the search result for “la jolla house painter” you can see some of the tactics this “system” uses. Utilizing social websites, especially video sites, is one way to rank for local search results for your local business or service. However, this approach is not going to work for every local business wanting to rank online.

Google’s emphasis on more localized search results means that local sites that have been online for many years are not going to be pushed aside by a handful of these community/sharing sites that may rank for a few days or weeks but will have no lasting place in a local search result. Yes, video is a great way to send traffic to your site and some local search results will list a You Tube video for the types of local business searches this program sells. However, that will not work for every local business.

If you really want to learn Local SEO, my SEO training is about 1/3 the price and does not rely on tactics that are hot now but really just a Google update away from being useless.

That’s my perspective. Feel free to comment below if you agree or disagree.

Yes, I said, the absolute best article spinner!

I provide content for many of my SEO clients. This content is then distributed to blogs, article directories and other websites that provide an opportunity for content distribution. To get the best use possible for the articles that are written, they need to be spun so that each article is significantly different than the original. I have tried every article spinner available online. Most are a waste of money and time. However, I have tested and approve of what I consider the absolute best article spinner available.

If you need a good article spinner, you need to check it out. I am confident you will be pleased with this article spinning software.

Just a quick post to praise my long time web host.

This week I had the misfortune to have to deal with a new clients web host. Yes, I will name the company. Network Solutions is a joke. The client has a content management system website through their hosting service. There was a problem creating new pages so the client contacted the support department inquiring about the issue. The next day there was a reply that in no way addressed the question that was asked. A second attempt to find out the problem failed when the reply back again did not address the question that was asked.

As I said, Network Solutions is a joke. At least their support department is a joke.

Anyway. Back to the reason for this post. I have used Hostgator for almost ten years. I have never had a problem with their hosting services. I have had some issues with some of the blog sites that I host with them but the problem was with my sites, not their hosting of the sites. Every problem I have ever had was addressed by a confirmation email instantly and a reply by a knowledgeable support person within an hour at the most.

The best part, the support person in every instance fixed the problem I was having without any further communications with myself. Obviously the support staff at Hostgator is well trained. Never have I ever received a reply to my inquiry that did not directly address the problem at hand. Something Network Solutions might want to work on.

GeoCities, a longtime Internet destination and web space provider is being shut down by Yahoo. The online destination which was bought by Yahoo in 1999 for a hefty $3.6 billion apparently has no value at all according to Yahoo. Although receiving over 10 million unique monthly visitors as recently as last month, Yahoo is closing the doors.

I say this to emphasize the joke Yahoo has become as a online “business”. I am frequently asked by small business owners wanting to rank their business websites, “What about Yahoo?” Well, ranking for Yahoo is hit and miss and there really is no real search volume  there anyway. Yahoo Local has some value but if no one is searching in Yahoo, Yahoo Local’s benefits are minimal.

You can read the full story here.

Google delivers ranking results based on relevancy above all else. The most relevant result for any search in Google will be pulled from sites that are geographically tied to the country of the search origin as a default.

This has been tested and proven by SEO professionals around the world. It can be a little more expensive but it will be difficult to rank a .com in the majority of the search results where a .co.au or .co.uk populates the results.

How many foreign websites do you see in the search results for searches done in the US? I do not see many, unless searching for foreign websites or topics.

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