Use Google Social Search results to get top rankings for impossibly competitive keywords Posted by Mark Nunney on 11 March 2010

Ian Howie’s name and company appear on page one of Google’s search results for searches with Google, AdWords, PPC, Wordtracker, Google website optimizer, Yahoo and SEO. They are organic listings with wonderful copy and they’re free. Let’s find out how he does that...

First an invitation:

You, dear reader, are invited to join me on Google Mail and on Twitter. The Gmail address is marknunney followed by @ then gmail.com (you get the idea). On your Google Mail menu, find ‘Contacts’ and add my email address. Shall we go wild and connect on Google Buzz too?

Back to our narrative …

There are over 2 billion results on Google for a search with Google. See image:

On the first page of that search I see this listing for Ian Howie:

If I search for AdWords training I see Ian again:

And I see Ian for three of those ‘related searches’ suggested by Google.

Who do I see if search for website optimizer work?

What about SEO? Hiya Ian. And there’s Lyndon too:

My favorite ‘Ian result’ is when I search for Wordtracker (for which Ian gets two listings):

These aren’t just any listings. They are for appropriate pages on Ian’s website and contain relevant text.

What’s going on? The clue is in most of the grabs. It’s Google showing "Results from people in your social circle..." As the text suggests these are results from people I’m connected with (via Gmail in this case) in my ‘social circle’ and ‘public social graph’. This includes the following in three groups:

• People I’m directly connected to e.g. because I follow them on Twitter, or they are Google ‘chat friends’ from Gmail.
  
• The people to whom I’m directly connected and are in turn connected to.
  
• Sites I follow using Google Reader.
  

None of this works unless you have a Google profile.

So you won't the see the same results as me. And Ian won't get a million visits to his website. But the results I’ve shared here might also be seen by anyone Ian is connected to - like clients, prospective clients, friends and colleagues and (this is where things get interesting) the people they are in turn connected to.

Those people might see Ian’s name, picture and details of his services for these powerful searches. And this network is a great source of new business.

That’s some powerful branding and a good way to get some business, I think.

Google explains more in these two videos...

How you can get some of the same action as Ian

• Start a Google profile.
  
• Get a Gmail account.
  
• From your Google profile, add links to your blogs, websites and social networks.
  
• Add content to the same places (your blogs, websites and social networks) about the subjects you want to be found for. E.g. for Ian this is Google, AdWords training, etc.
  
• Connect to your friends and make more friends i.e. build your network.
  
• Connect with Google chat.

Which brings us back to my invitation. Shall we connect and share our networks on Google Mail and Twitter? That Gmail address again is marknunney followed by @ then gmail.com.