Google recently announced that the new look they’ve been testing since last year was rolled out to everyone. There’s a new mobile look too. And there’s one important thing you as a business owner should know about what most are announcing as a change to the Google search engine results pages.

It’s not just a facelift.

The New Google has implemented fundamental yet subtle shifts that they’ve been making over the past few years, including features from successful beta testing they did.

This can affect your business in one of two ways. Either you can lose traffic to competitors who may not even know what they’re doing right to get extra traffic, or you can educate yourself about what’s different, then position yourself to take advantage of the changes.

In case you don’t know my philosophy about getting better exposure and rankings in search, here it is in a nutshell: work with the search engines, not against them. Instead of trying to cheat with spammy methods that don’t provide any real benefit to people who may find your content, find out what the search engines need most and provide it.

Therefore, these tips aren’t going to include anything black hat or prohibited in any way by Google.

1- Fill out your Google profile.
http://www.google.com/profiles

At first glance, this probably seems like a strange thing to suggest. But your profile in Google is increasing in importance. I’m not claiming that this is a ranking factor, not at all. However, it can help you get additional exposure and not just through Google Buzz.

Google Social Search, also a Google Labs graduate, is live in the main Google search when you’re logged in to Google. When you fill out your Google profile and include links to your site, your YouTube account, Twitter account, etc., you will begin to get suggestions Google has found from the relevant content of friends and acquaintances you’re connected to online through social media, and vice-versa.

That means a site you referenced in your Google profile can appear at the bottom of the first page of results for a logged in user of Google. Not necessarily a huge bump if you have a small network, but not a bad bit of free traffic in exchange for a few minutes of work.

2- Sign up for Google Places – even if you’re an entrepreneur or micro-business.

http://www.google.com/local/add/

Google Local results have been showing up in Google results for some time now, but with the revamped Google Local Business Center, now renamed Google Places, have come some important enhancements that are smoothly integrated in the new Google.

Not only that, the new version includes not just basic information such as location and phone number, but photos, audio, video, coupons, real-time updates, even Product Listings.

There’s not enough space here to detail all the great new things you can add to enhance your business presence for free on Google, but even if it didn’t help you show up properly under the “Maps” or “Nearby” section of relevant searches in Google, it would be worth it.

Extra tip: No matter what size your business, as long as you have a location with a street address outside your home, it is likely worth adding to Google Places. Do some keyword research and try out your search in Google to see if the free listing would be worthwhile.

3- Re-purpose content you already have to fit into more spots in the New Google.

In past years, perhaps it made sense to focus most of your efforts on the text-based version of Google search. After all, not all searchers are savvy, and most of the focus at the time was placed on the main Google web search.

Fast-forward to the age of dynamic information, with images, blogs, status updates, podcasts, videos, RSS and Atom feeds. Now there are all kinds of ways you may be discovered in search, and many of them may not even be on your site.

Take video for example. Even the camera-shy can benefit from the easier, faster rankings videos often get in Google by using video screen capture, animations or slideshow presentations converted to video.

Take that article you wrote, turn it into a PowerPoint presentation, set it to music, or better yet, narrate a presentation. Then publish it as a video, pop it on a few video sites, add it to your podcasts, and track your traffic. You may see a measurable difference in traffic or rankings that’s worth the extra bit of work.

Participate in some Q and A sites and get your answers ranked under discussions.

Write a blog post or submit a press release to get a ranking in the News or Blogs section. The more content you have available in more formats, the higher your chances of discovery.

4- Make sure you’re aware of every opportunity to get on the first page or rank number one.

While you’re re-purposing content to show up under the other menu sections in the new Google search results pages, consider this: there are now a multitude of ways to get ranked on the first page in Google, and they vary from listing to listing.

Sometimes the top ranked content is a video. Others don’t have video at all, but they do have the latest tweets scrolling on the first page.

Sometimes an image would help – it may not be the top ranking, but on the search results page it’s the easiest one to get. Other times it may be a news story, or a well-linked blog post. Pull up the terms you want to rank for in Google and see what the top content is.

Evaluate your competition and see what you could do better – or how you could buy prime advertising spots on their web site- not every keyword competitor is a market competitor. Some sites offer content instead of products, in hopes of getting business people like you to advertise.

Next time you’re at Google, do a quick search on your name, your favorite hobby, and the keywords you want your business to rank for – you may or may not like the new look to the results page in Google.

Just remember that the real issue isn’t whether you find the new Google style aesthetically pleasing – it’s how you can make these changes in Google benefit you.

Here’s an oldie but goodie that I recently re-did and split into two videos. It’s all about examining basic information about your site in Google, but without logging into Google Webmaster Tools.

Hope you find these useful.

Part One:

Part Two:

Here’s the description that’s on the YouTube page:

“Did you know that Google has a page about your site that you don’t have to log into Google Webmaster Tool to use? This video shows any webmaster how to tell what Google knows about their site. You can learn when the Google spider was last at your site, what pages are indexed, what sites Google thinks yours are similar to, what high quality links are pointing to your site, and how many times your site is mentioned in external pages that Google has indexed.

Not only is the information itself valuable, not to mention handy in a pinch, there are things you can learn from what Google knows about your site that you may not even have thought of before.

This video is a sample from the 2009 version of the Hidden Google Traffic Tricks series.”

Someone pointed out a blog post they found in Google Blog Search, showing that you can get traffic from Google Finance and wanted to know if it would work.

Short answer, yes. Long answer, use intelligently.

There’s a bit more to it than mentioning public companies in your blog posts, as I talk about in the video series on hidden sources of Google traffic that came out this June. I’ve been using this method for a while and admitting to it since January of this year.

So if it works, what’s the problem?

Well, do you want traffic that will click, buy or subscribe, or do you want junk traffic? If you don’t blog about Google, but just mention them in hopes of showing up on the stocks page, the browsers won’t click through or stick. What good is it to get an extra 300 visitors if they just turn around and leave?

On the other hand, when it works, you can get decent traffic, and you then only need to be set up to process it properly. So make sure you’ve done your research and really have informative posts for the people who click through that is line with what you blog about on a regular basis.

I already have an update planned for the Facebook (Un)marketing release that came out on Thursday (you still have about an hour to act before I start cleaning up the sales page and raising the price to retail.)

From earlier tonight to the next 36 hours or so, if you’ve been a client of mine in the past, you’ll be getting a notice telling you what list to join for free updates of my products and special client freebies.

They’re for clients only and I’m emailing you the initial notices out one at a time. After tonight if you want an update, you’ll have to be on one of the lists – manual updates are just too time consuming. We’re talking several thousand emails here.

This includes PDF, audio and video updates to The Blog Optimization Package, Free Traffic Tips, the book, the 2007 versions of any of the guides from the 2006 version of the Get Them All Special, Blogs that Sell, The Art of Speed Blogging and Hidden Google traffic tactics.

High Profile Article Marketing and Marketing Success with RSS are legacy products that will only be available as part of larger packages.

If you have resale rights to any of my products, make sure you’ve joined the list from the original package — this gives you a good reason to contact former clients to say hello and remind them that you can help them!