It continues to amaze me that web site owners insist on thinking their business, their service, their products, are unique and different, somehow SEO-special. By SEO-special, I mean outside the regular rules of best practices, as if those rules don’t apply to their site.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The process remains the same independent of the services being offered and the products sold.  Search engines work the way they work – - they don’t work differently depending on those services or products, and there are no “special” algorithms for “special” web sites.

So, the first advice I offer to clients who think this way is to get over themselves.  Their products and services just aren’t that SEO-special, SEO-different, or SEO-difficult to promote, and they need to stop thinking that way. So, let’s have that discussion again here.

The first, and frankly the only, purpose of an SEO strategy is to make your web site easy to find when people are searching for what you sell.  That’s it, plain and simple.

I’ve offered on these pages in past columns the self help test worth taking, and perhaps you read that earlier piece.  Imagine for a moment you are in need of the product or service you sell.  Imagine further you don’t know your web site exists.  While imagining these two things, go to Google and enter how you would search for those products or services.

If you sell blue-fringed widgets with yellow stripes, search that term.  Review the results and see how your site ranks.  If it has been optimised for that keyword and the optimisation has been done well, your site should rank well.

Remember, now, it’s not how you “want” people to be searching for your products and services that matters; rather, it is how, in fact, people are already searching for them.  That data is available to know, if you look in the right places for it, and that research is crucial to the success of your SEO strategy.

So, what is it you’re selling?  How are people likely to be searching for what you sell?  What keywords are they using?  What are the most appropriate keywords to optimize your site for?

Again, it’s not how you want people to be searching for you – - it’s how they already are or are likely to search for you, and when you accept this, you are well on your way to developing an SEO strategy that will work.

If you are selling service “ABC,” and you’re selling that service in geographical area “XYZ,” your first piece of research is the search inventory for “ABC in XYZ.”  Research tools available online will be able to tell you not only how many searches have been conducted historically, but also the keyword variations searchers have used, and even predictive numbers on how many searches will likely be conducted per day ongoing.

Imagine that!  How you think people are searching, and how they are, in fact, searching, can be separated, and in doing so, your SEO strategy becomes far more effective and more highly targeted.

So, get over yourself.  Never mind what you think; find out what’s actually happening in search engine world.  From that will come your list of keywords already being searched, and with those keywords will come your web site copy optimised for them.

One other thing, too.  Web sites are perpetual works in progress, and an effective SEO plan never ends.  That web site copy can always be changed, and quite easily, too.  Watch your site, measure its performance, analyze your analytics data, and make adjustments to that copy as appropriate.

People’s search habits change over time, and search engines re-tool their algorithms three or four times per year.  Keep up with those changes and you can maintain high ranks your work may have achieved for you.

There’s a lot more to SEO than this stuff, to be sure.  But, you first have get past yourself and let hard numbers and hard facts, all ascertainable beforehand, guide your decisions.

Google’s new “Instant” is an interesting and not surprising addition to the online search world. Some have gone so far as to suggest it makes search engine optimisation (SEO) irrelevant. I wouldn’t go that far, and consider the notion a bit extreme, but it does raise a few issues worth considering.

For those not familiar with Google Instant, it’s pretty much what the words imply – - as you enter your search term in the little window on Google, results will be presented with the addition of each individual letter, even starting with the very first one.  That’s pretty instant, to be sure.  In a world that demands immediate gratification for just about everything, a world filled with folks whose attention spans get shorter with each passing day, it satisfies everyone’s search fix.

If you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize this will tend to favor big brands over small.  If you think about for another moment, though, you’ll realize that the big brands were already likely to be favored in pre-Instant times, too.

However, locality, surfing and search habits factor into the results one will see in a Google search.  You may not know this, but search engines keep track of what you do online – - and yes, I mean you, and you, and you.  The results presented in your searches take into account your previous activities and your locale.  In other words, Google knows what we’ve been doing, each and every one of us who uses it.  Yes, it is possible to wipe that slate clean, but how many of you even knew it was happening in the first place?

The impact of this practice means that we, you and I and all of us, are each seeing a different Internet every time we search.  We are all seeing an Internet based upon what we did yesterday, the day before, and last week.  Our individual experiences in the world of search engines is unique to us and different than everyone else.

Let’s put those several thoughts together and see if we can make just a little sense of this Google Instant thing as it relates to SEO.

First, the big brands thing – - it was already happening anyway.  Big brands advertise across the media spectrum.  We all know the big brands because we see them on television, we hear them on the radio, we read about them in the newspaper or see their fliers or their boxes on the shelves of our markets when we shop.  We know them, so we are already searching for them online.  That Google Instant might tend to favor them doesn’t change what is already happening in searches.

Small businesses were already going to have to work harder to elbow their way to high rank positions for their most appropriate keywords anyway in order to compete with the big brands.  So, that doesn’t really change.  Secondly, if consumer searches historically tended more toward the local, then local small businesses might have the edge in results presented.

Yes, SEO has been effective when implemented well and carefully measured periodically, in part because we were all seeing the same Internet.  But, it’s also true we all haven’t been seeing the same Internet for a while now.  As for the debate between SEO and PPC (pay per click, those advertisements appearing the “Sponsored Results” sections on search result pages), Google Instant might tend to favor PPC as the better choice.

However, SEO still matters today, and will into the future, Google Instant notwithstanding.  Its effectiveness, though, will require more careful research and analysis with a more frequent regularity.  Small businesses will need to know their market better, and become far more familiar with their customers.  However, knowing your customers better isn’t a bad thing.

For instance, it would behoove a small business owner to know what other searches his or her customers are likely to have conducted (think local here) to understand and anticipate how the Internet looks to them.  Perhaps easier said than done, but I think this will prove to be valuable knowledge, right up there with search inventory numbers.  And, it does tend to force small business owners at least to consider PPC.

Of course, time will tell us the full and true impact of Google Instant.  That’s no different than time telling us how impactful one’s SEO strategy has been when we analyze a site’s performance.  It does mean more frequent analysis, though, in order for that strategy to be effective.  Instant means instant, and perhaps bi-weekly temperature taking on site stats is the rule to follow now, instead of monthly.

In short, though, here’s the first thing you need to know:  if you’ve had an SEO strategy in place for a while, it’s time to evaluate it and evolve.  If you haven’t, well, all I can say is shame on you.

Let’s spend a few moments discussing, or at least contemplating how the Internet is used, and how someone is likely to find your web site It comes as a surprise to people still that launching a web site is not the end of the story, merely the beginning. After all, the purpose of your web site is to make is easy, or at least easier, to find you, your product or your service, and the finding does not come by accident.

Past columns have talked about making sure your web site is ready to receive visitors before you spend your time, money and effort inviting them, and that concept is so important.  You have only the one chance, probably, to make that favorable first time impression, and if you don’t grab them in the first three seconds or so of their initial visit, you’ve likely lost them to your competition.

This is not the same thing as saying your web site needs to be beautiful – – really, it means only that it can’t be ugly.  Purpose and process are far more important than pretty, something I have written of often, and yet folks still get hung up on the pretty.

Attention spans are very short in real life today, and shorter, still, on the Internet.  If a user has spent time and effort searching for something in particular, they want that particular something quickly once they find it.  Your “call to action,” what to do and how to do it, is far more important than your pretty, so if you need a definition of “purpose and process,” there it is.  Tell your visitor what to do and how to do it, and then get out of their way.

Graphical works better than words, and if your product or service lends itself well to a graphical call to action, put it “above the fold,” where the visitor will see it as soon as the page opens.  Purpose and process – – give your visitor what he or she wants.  Make it easy for them, and stay out of their way.

But, let’s get back to how the Internet is used. It’s a single word – – searches.  People use the Internet to search – – for products, for services, for news, for answers.  What do they use for their searches?  Search engines.  Google, alone, is used for 1 billion searches per day world-wide.  The average Internet user conducted about 33 searches online per month in 2009  and that number is expected to grow to about 50 in the next five years.

Google represents about 67% of the searches conducted every day, more than any other search tool.  Last year, both Google and Yahoo began incorporating real time search from Twitter and blog feeds.  This will contribute to the growth of searches per month because it makes the results of those searches more relevant.  Search tool bars for Internet Explorer and Firefox will contribute to the growth of searches, too.  But it still comes down to searches.

How does your web site end up as one of those search results?  By its content.  Searches are still word value-based, irrespective of the search tool used.

What does that mean from a practical standpoint?  Do your research, find out what the inventory is for every conceivable word or phrase someone might use in a search for which you want to be found, and then make sure there’s enough of a search inventory to warrant having those words on your site.  In other words, find out what people are already searching for that has to do with your product or service, and then make sure your web site content is crafted around those keywords.

When you’ve done that research and have your list of keywords you know users are already searching for, then and only then are you ready to create content.  Without the knowledge aforehand that comes from solid research and well-conceived plan, the chances of success that come from a carefully coordinated strategy among all of the resources and online tools is diminished greatly. And when I speak of content, I mean content on your web site, content on your Twitter page, content on your Facebook business page, content in your blog.  If you haven’t done your research, assembled your Plan, and coordinated all of that content before you undertake its creation, you’re really just wasting your time.

Everything in its place, in proper order, all aspects correctly interwoven.  This is the best practices approach to the development of an overall Internet Marketing Plan, and is far more likely to achieve the success you hope for – – not high follower numbers on Twitter, not high friend numbers on Facebook; rather, visitor traffic to your web site with a high conversion rate.

“Followers” and “Friends” are nice, but a good conversion rate is the brass ring.  Get your web site ready first, make your Plan first, create your call to action first, craft your unified content first.  Then, you’ve maximized your chances for success.