Last week, Google introduced Instant Previews, “a new search feature that helps people find information faster by showing a visual preview of each result.”

Now, every page of your website that gets returned in Google search page results (SERPS) will have a preview displayed as you see above. The display appears when the searcher clicks on the magnifying glass. Once the magnifying glass has been clicked, scrolling up or down through the listings will trigger the display for each listing. In other words, some or possibly many visitors will be making decisions based on appearance rather than solely  on the text “snippet” displayed.

What does this mean to you? Well, the importance of a visually appealing web page just got ratcheted up another notch. Nearly everyone knows that a poor website design and layout will not retain visitors. You have very little time in which to present your case.  Now, website design is a factor in the decision to click on a Google search result listing. A bad first impression may keep potential visitors (read: customers, clients, members) from ever getting to your website.

You will certainly want to look at your list of most important keywords, or search terms (You have determined what they are, haven’t you?), and do some searches to see how your web pages are displayed. Check out how your most important pages look. You will likely be surprised. On some pages, possibly all, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Others, may not look so hot, either visually, or from a search term (keyword) perspective.

Most people will likely think only of the visual depiction of the web page. With a closer look, you’ll notice Google will use orange highlights to indicate highly relevant content on the page, and text call outs show search terms in context.

As always, you need to have pages that are visually appealing, and have compelling, search-engine-friendly content. Please remember, the keywords searchers use will be displayed in a call out. Of course, if you don’t have well-written content containing keywords your potential visitors are using in their search, you won’t show up at all.

Here is what Google says about Google Instant Previews.

Really good Search Engine Optimization is a complex process. That said, effective SEO can be as simple as one, two, three….and four. Do four reasonably simple things, and you can see your rankings in Google Search Page Results, aka SERPS, improve considerably.

So you want your web pages to get found well, and you don’t want to spend a lot of money or time to make that happen? Well, look no further.

If you have a webmaster, provide him or her with a title for each of your pages. The “title” should use keywords  describing the content on the page (that is, keywords that potential visitors would search for hoping to find what you offer). Also provide your webmaster with a good headline (that is similar to, and contains the same keywords as the title) for each page. And of course you need some text describing what you offer. Obviously, that text should contain the same keywords near the start of the first paragraph. Your webmaster should be able to take it from there.

If you maintain your own website, then you should pay attention to this list.

1. Title tag
2. <meta> description tag
3. Page header <h1> tag
4. Well-written text

For those of you who don’t know what those four items are, I’ll describe them.

1. The <title> tag defines the title of the document.

The title element does the following:
Defines a title in the browser toolbar (displayed at the very top of your browser)
Provides a title for the page when it is added to favorites
Displays a title for the page in search-engine result

2. The <meta> description tag provides a description of the HTML document (your web page). The <meta> description will not be displayed on the page, but Google will display (most of the time) the information in search results, and just as, if not more, importantly uses it as one of the “signals” in determining how highly your page will rank.

3. The header <h1> tag contains the “headline” for the page (also used as a Google “signal”)

4. The first sentence of the first paragraph should contain the same keywords. (also used as a Google “signal”)

As I said, basic SEO is as simple as one, two, three….and four. Do remember to do them for each of your pages. Of course there is much more you could, and should, do. If your webmaster isn’t doing those basic four things for you, tell him you would like to pay him or her for doing so, as it does take some time to do it right. In this case a little time and or money spent will reward you with higher search rankings.

1. Use Google AdWords

We always suggest to our new clients that they use Google AdWords to jump-start the new web presence. (It is also a good marketing tool for a redesigned website or doing a new product launch, among other things.)

An inexpensive Google AdWords campaign gets your name, along with a description you control, at or near the top of search results pages and can keep it there while your individual pages get indexed and, if they are created properly with good content, starting earning their way up the organic listing rankings in Google.

2. Use Twitter

We announce all new websites we launch for our clients. Those “tweets” show up in Google very quickly. In fact, it happens sometimes in seconds and always in a very few minutes. The URL in that tweet gets indexed as well. There is no waiting for Google to “discover” your website from a link on another website or from your sitemap.xml (ask your webmaster if you have a sitemap.xml). In the example, I did the search about 70 minutes after using Twitter to annouce the launch.

Even though we tweet about our client websites, we highly recommend that they, and others, use Twitter to get news of their website, not only to those in the Twitter universe, but to Google as well. It only takes a quick tweet and delivers a lot of benefit.

Summary: Google AdWords and Twitter, Two quick ways to jump-start your new website in Google search engine results pages.