Yesterday, Google announced a new feature called Instant Preview. On the surface, it is a simple addition to their still fairly new feature , Google Instant. For anyone who hasn’t noticed this yet, Google now presents search results as you type, guessing ahead about what your going to type and showing results on the fly.

They have also added map results to the equation. If you are searching for something location based the first half of the page is taken up by map listings, which are taken from Google Places. If you own a business and have not yet listed yourself there, follow the link and do so immediately. No really. Stop reading and go add yourself to Places, then come back.

Anyway… Back to the latest change, Instant Preview.

What is Instant Preview?

Instant Preview adds a screenshot of every site to the search results. You do not even have to leave the page to see every website in the results.

Look at the search results and you will see a small magnifying glass icon.

When you click on that magnifying glass, you get a visual preview of the website.

Why it Matters

Think about the audience searching for a photographer. If I am searching for a photographer, I can complete a search and instantly get a glimpse of all the results without even clicking over to the site itself.

Here is where it gets interesting…

Any site based in Flash, any element of a site based in Flash is hidden by a grey box.

Like this…

Identity of the websites has been obscured to protect the innocent

Here is a site with partial Flash like a Flash header…

How does this effect me?

First, do a search where you know you will show up. Just search for your site. What does it look like? If your current site is in Flash, you will find that grey box. Now do a search that you want to rank well in and see what your competitors look like.

Now imagine a potential client searching and quickly looking at results page. It is now possible to very quickly judge a site based on these previews. Are you one of the sites that looks like a grey box or can I quickly see some of your images? Can I see a broken site or a nicely designed site that focuses on your images?

PhotographyBlogSites in Instant Preview

As you might have guessed, the point of this little article is that our sites are 100% HTML so they look exactly the way you want them to in this new feature.

Here are some examples…

Be Seen

Search results have always been about getting found. Being seen. Now more than ever, is your site visible to search engines? To mobile phones? To iPhone and iPad? Most importantly, is your site viewable to as wide an audience, to as many potential clients as possible?

Once upon a time, it was only necessary to have a website. Then blogs became important. Now you need to think about social media with tools like Twitter and Facebook.

If your business has a second or third off-shoot with its own site and own blog, you could easily have 4 or more places to login and update. Add to that an order fulfillment service or payment gateway and all the social media sites… That’s too much.

You should no longer consider these things as separate entities but should consider them different pieces of a web presence. The more we can consolidate the management of that web presence, the easier your life will be.

Our Goals

There a few things that we aimed to accomplish for our All-in-One BlogSites:

• They must be easy to use.
• They need to handle any type of content – video, photos, text, etc.
• They must have great search engine visibility.
• They should allow visitors to connect:
  • Ability to leave comments
  • Accessible links to social networks and other sites.
  • Feeds from twitter, etc.
• They should publish an RSS feed, which:
  • Allows people to subscribe
  • Can push content to directories and aggregators (great for building links)
  • Can push links to Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Some technical considerations:

• No Flash allowed.
  • Search engines can’t read Flash sites.
• They must be HTML and CSS based.
  • Makes it crawlable by search engines.
  • Makes it visible to iPhone (and now iPad) users
• It would include a Content Management System (CMS).
  • Allows a user to update content
  • No need to know anything about HTML code
  • No need to call a web designer every time something needs updating.

WordPress is all of those things.

Google Loves WordPress

Perhaps the biggest reason to use WordPress is that it takes care of most of the on-page SEO issues right out of the box. With the right plugins and settings, it can be made to work even better and is in fact recognized by Google as the #1 CMS to use for SEO.

Matt Cutts is the head of the spam (actually anti-spam) department at Google, which makes him basically THE authority on SEO. Why is the head of spam the authority on SEO? Because to combat spam, you need to know the difference between good content and spam and then tweak the Google process for discovering good content. There is probably no one more directly connected to the process of how and why sites rank or don’t rank in Google.

In this video, he does a great job of explaining what Google looks for, why WordPress is ideal and why he uses it himself. He gets into some tech talk but makes it very accessible. It is well worth watching for anyone interested in blogging and/or improving their site’s SEO.

Easy to Sign Up & Easy to Use

Best of all, unlike the standard WordPress site or a standalone theme that you might purchase and download, our sites require no download or installation of any kind and you can get one in less time than it took to read this article.

Our sites are created using a networked version of WordPress known as “Multisite”, making it possible to run an entire network of sites, all managed and hosted in one place.

You can sign up for a site in seconds. No downloads. No installation. No upgrades or backups to worry about. Ever.

This Wednesday I spoke at the Los Angeles Pictage User Group (PUG), a monthly meeting of photographers who are users of Pictage. There are PUGs all across the country, where photographers gather to share industry tips, network, and learn from guest speakers.

I was asked to speak about some basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the idea of what is involved in building a web presence. This is meant as a guide for someone working on their own site. All sites through photographyblogsites.com have all this SEO work built in from the start.

Based on some great discussion during and after the talk, I have added some extra information to the slideshow I used. It is available here as a reminder for those that attended and as a quick guide for those that were not able to make it.

Please feel free to share it anywhere you want.

Visit the Pictage Blog for  more info on Pictage and the PUGS.