Instead of always returning standard search results as indexed within Google – the search giant now displays a total of 9 additional places that a searcher (aka prospective client) can find your company.

Nine!

Just when you thought that SEO was a snap and all you had to do was throw a few hundred keywords up on your firm’s home page – the game is suddenly changed.

Actually the game has been changing for years. Blogs have emerged as relevant research tools. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have enabled our customers to reach out to their friends for recommendations as opposed to relying upon raw searches through Google or other easily gamed Internet search engines.

Is there a way for you to keep up with all these changes? I think so – and it’s been right in front of your nose all along.

Here’s The 10 Ways Your Customers Can Now Search Google

1. Traditional search
2. News
3. Blogs
4. Images
5. Videos
6. Maps
7. Shopping
8. Books
9. Updates (social media such as Twitter)
10. Discussions

Most of these different search venues have always been available to Google searchers. The re-design of Google’s search layout now emphasizes them making them more valuable than before.

Will customers use a news or blog search to research their purchase decisions?

Yes. And they’d already doing this now – just not in as great a number as they will in the future.

What does this mean to your company’s search engine optimization efforts?

Welcome To The Land of Quality Content = Good SEO

For companies who have always focussed on creating great useful content online across multiple types of media (organic keywords, blogs, images, social media)  - the changes won’t mean much of anything.

For those who’ve increased their web presence via deceptive links from unrelated but highly ranked sites this Google change means that they’ll have to focus much more on quality content and less (if at all) on spammy back links meant to artificially bolster their presence on the main Google engine.

Where To From Here?

You know all those social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and Blogs that you’ve laughed at as “not really business oriented”.

Surprise.

Under the new Google search – which will likely focus more attention  on those services – you can expect future customers to increasingly research via what we once considered non-traditional sources.

That means blogs, social media, quality content and sharing ARE the new SEO.

Out are spammy back links from overseas server farms and link shares with unrelated but highly ranked web sites.

In are content rich helpful links, posts, and video. And this content now needs to be spread across multiple types of sites and not only our web site hosted on our domain.

The game has changed for search. It’s 9 times harder – but also 9 times more rewarding for those who play it smart and embrace the new SEO with content and sharing across multiple sites.

From Intacct SVP of Marketing and Business Development Dan Druker’s Post:

In the fourth quarter of 2009, we started to notice our Software industry customers provisioning more users in large numbers and subscribing to more modules too – which I took to mean they were coming out of the recession. This trend only accelerated in the first quarter of 2010 – leading to Intacct putting together record quarters for both Q4 and Q1, dramatically exceeding our plan.

Around the first of the year I was talking about this trend with MR Rangaswami, the CEO of Sandhill group, who is an old friend from past lives at Oracle. We thought it would be interesting to put together a formal research project to understand whether the resurgence Intacct has seen in its software customers is more broadly true in the Software industry as a whole.

They’ve commissioned a study by Sandhill Group of 100 software company executives after noticing improved new Intacct user (seats) license demand in the fourth quarter of 2009.  The results of  the survey, as well as a copy of the data, will  be unveiled in an April 29 webcast. Follow the link below to register and read Dan’s full post.

Bye Bye Recession – Led by Cloud Computing, Software is Roaring Back

UPDATE: December 1, 2010 – Sue Swenson announced her retirement from Sage North America effective mid 2011.

Three possible replacements were mentioned by analysts in an FT.COM article – with one of them being Sue Swenson, currently the President of Sage North America.

There will undoubtedly be more candidates than the three above  as other publications have reported that executive placement firms will be retained to locate additional candidates.

Sue Swenson was brought in to replace former Sage North America President Ron Verni shortly after a massive Sage North America shakeup that saw Verni and two other  top Sage executive ousted unexpectedly in October 2007.

Sage North America has  grown largely by a series of acquisitions. This growth in recent years has slowed as the market for ERP software licenses has stalled and the company has worked to integrate their many acquisitions into a cohesive product lineup.

In May 2009 Sage cut 900 employees in North America amidst a 9% decline in earnings. Most recent earnings showed 10% revenue decline in North America with increasingly important support contracts flat at 601,000.

Since her arrival Sue Swenson has re-organized the North America business units and made key leadership appointments to run each.

Source: FT.COM

Of course that statement and one stinky quarter alone is not enough to draw a conclusion that the company’s Microsoft Dynamics, Navision and Axapta are on the chopping blocks.

A quarterly earnings report where the analyst revenue estimates were missed by over $1 billion is nothing to sneeze at. And judging from this article online in Bloomberg – the company expects to be making permanent changes that have in the past included cutting non-essential divisions. So the question is whether the ERP division could be on the blocks? Bloomberg

Well meaning consultants have this habit of giving advice about things they sometimes know nothing about. If you’re foolish enough to follow it you may end up like they  do – out of business, unemployed or working as an employee.

Here are my five favorite lies  consultants have tried to lay on me over the years

You Must Have a Live Person Answer The Phone

Not only don’t I have a live person answer the phone – nearly 90% of my support is  via email.

That’s right – almost all of my support starts and finishes via email.

Clients don’t care whether they reach me via tin can and string or smoke signals — provided the response is fast and solves their problem. Whoever floated the rumor that you needed a live receptionist must have never called into a consultant’s business where the bored receptionist made it sound as if your call was interrupting their Perez Hilton or TMZ web browing session.

You don’t have to pay a live person to juggle phones and take messages. Hardly anybody does this anymore. I use grasshopper for outsourced PBX and my BlackBerry for incoming email.

And while your outsourcing technology (which I strongly recommend) – take your Microsoft Exchange email system and throw it out the window.

Google Apps for Domains is cheap ($50 per mailbox per year) and provides 25 GB of storage and tight integration with BlackBerry. Point your company’s domain name to Google’s Mail servers and clients are never the wiser. The benefit to you? If the email or phone service breaks – it’s someone else’s problem — not yours! You can stay out consulting with clients where you make ALL of your money – not fixing your internal technology which  costs you money.

Customers Will Only Pay Hourly For Phone Support

We stopped doing hourly phone support about 10 years ago. So much for this piece of advice.

With over 60 clients subscribed to a prepaid phone support plan (we charge $2,800/year) there’s never a fear on the client’s behalf about getting a bill for a quick question. And we don’t  argue over whether a call for support should be billable because it only lasted three minutes.

Does this mean we turn away clients?

Absolutely.

There are anywhere from 6 to 12 suspects that we refuse every month because they don’t see the value of going onto a prepaid phone support plan. Over time I’ve learned that customers who are only interested in a per call fee arrangement are most likely to use your services for one call and then never be heard from again. They just don’t turn into what most of us would call a client.

Don’t sell your services  cheaply. The people who want to pay less than going rate will only draw your attention away from  companies willing to pay an annual fee to be covered under your support plan.

The key to success with phone support? Stick to your guns. Have a plan already written up (here’s mine) so  when you go into a meeting you’re ready for the question. Without a plan to offer you’ll often wind up backing down and entering an hourly support agreement.

Offer More Than One Accounting System

Don’t do “onesies and twosies”.

What I mean by this is if you cannot get reasonably proficient with an accounting system – don’t get involved with trying to sell it to your clients.

Don’t get suckered into installing an industry (aka niche) software program to a client who will be your only user of that system. This is a recipe for disaster. If you only have one client on the system how on earth will you get proficient at it?

Installing only one or two systems per year won’t give you enough experience to be profitable offering (and more importantly supporting) the system. It’s a total waste of resources to make a big profit on an initial software sale only to have to refund the money or offer a hundred free hours to make the software work.

Chase Every  Sale And Win  Sales Awards

The fastest way to lose money and possibly go out of business is to pay any attention to the annual or quarterly sales goals set by the software publisher.

Unless you’re on their payroll it’s not your problem whether the publisher makes their quarterly sales goal or not.

So don’t stock product because you’re a few bucks short of some arbitrary sales goal.

Certainly never push a bad sale just because you need to make that same arbitrary number.

It’s the worlds worst feeling to walk away from a sale.

It’s even worse not being paid — or “eating” time put into a job that cannot be billed or collected.

Stick to your guns and only offer your solutions where they are a good fit. It makes your clients fiercely loyal and develops your  reputation as reliable consultant. Top notch clients seek out the reliable consultants while the company’s who want to pay $20 to $30 for a quick support question will take the first name that appears in their Google search.

Turn Your Cell Phone and BlackBerry Off After Five And On Weekends

I smile deeply and for a long time when I hear a competitor brag about how they turn off their BlackBerry at night and on weekends.

Suckers!

Little do they know that the weekend and after hours is when most decision makers are working.  The people sending you urgent emails are also the people whose hand makes the signature on the checks. I’ve won more multi-year support clients just because I’ve responded to an after hours email or two. This goes down in the all time book of lies that consultants tell.

My BlackBerry gets turned off at 11pm (usually long after I’m in bed) and turns on at 4:30am.

How often do I get calls on the BlackBerry after hours? Maybe twice a month. But for clients just knowing that they can reach you after hours is a major psychological boost that helps them decide to hire you.