Work in progress…coming soon!

I registered a little while back for a Pay-Per-Post account that I hadn’t really used until today. Apparently they noticed, because in my inbox I got a nice letter informing me that they were adding $100 dollars to my account to get me started. A nice gesture, and one that I’ll certainly take advantage of.

To secure business, I’ve found that a “little break” goes a long way. That goes for both services that I provide and services that I solicit. Cheers to PPP for providing a truly free lunch!

When people ask me what I do for a living, it’s tempting not to say something like: “Well, I manage SEM, SEO, PPC…and…well, other things with three-letter acronyms.”

Seriously. I have to bite my tongue not to have conversations like this with clients:

“Yes, sir. That’s right. We are fully prepared to handle all of your SEM needs. I was looking at the SERPs today and it appears that you could use a hefty dose of SEO to boost your rankings. At the SES convention I picked up some ideas that would be great for your firm. CPC? Oh, you mean PPC? CPC is so 1999. Yeah, I’d consider a revamp. Take a look at your keyword report QTR. I’ve noticed that your CPC is really high, and your CTR is down. Nah, don’t worry about your CPM. If you really want cutting edge I’d look into SMO, that’ll get you some serious exposure. Could you please hold for a sec, I’ll BRB.”

Gulp.

So the blogosphere has been abuzz with reports of Google dealing a hefty blow to Squidoo. The charges against Seth Godin’s web-baby is that it’s too susceptible to spamming. While that might be the case, I can’t help but love this site. It’s addicting, it’s enjoyable and it’s a great way to develop content on the web. You can even make money. Although there are many lame sites that are shamelessly created by clown-college SEO’s and internet marketing spam artists, the cream does rise to the top. To get the word out about your site, service, product, blog, biceps–whatever–take a look into Squidoo. And despite any supposed Google penalization, my lenses are driving great traffic.

So try your hand at creating a lens. You’ll even get a cool title to brag to your mom about…LENSMASTER. And remember folks, as always, content is king.

I have a few friends that are trying their hand at starting businesses. It’s a really scary thing. Recently, my co-worker gave me a great little book called the The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. It chronicles “why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it.” Pretty interesting, I recommend it.

But reading the E-Myth has gotten me thinking about how SEO factors into small businesses. When somebody starts a new company, they often end up “wearing a lot of hats.” They start off as a focused, highly skilled technician, and become a frazzled entrepreneur that is part manager, part accountant, part salesman, part technician, part donut fetcher, etc. That’s where the trouble begins. Lot’s of times, even if they’re blessed with the ability to do all of those things, they simply don’t have the time.

If you throw in “part SEO-expert” on top of all of that, things can get really messy. What I’m saying is that even if a small business can do their own in-house SEO, they might be wise not to. For small businesses it seems best to focus on their product and outsource all the tasks that are not cost-efficient for the company to perform itself.

Determining a good ROI on SEO for a small business isn’t easy, but it’s a task that’s worth the trouble (and perhaps essential).

I’m no prophet, but the credibility of Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) might just experience a fall of Biblical proportions. Forgive the allusion, but if Google is Goliath and David is SEO, then paid links might just be the stone that fells the giant.

Impossible, you say? Let’s begin at Google’s problematic foundation.

This day in age, Google tries to rank results based on the relevance, authority and quality of a site. They do this by, among other things, weighing the number and reputation of links that “point to” a given site. So, if 1,000,000 different reputable pages link to CNN.com, then, theoretically, CNN.com would rank well in a Google search. (Please pardon the overly simplistic breakdown.)

However, for a number of years now people have been able to circumvent the arduous process of building a genuine backlink profile by purchasing (rather than cultivating) their links. Through a number of different methods, any average Joe can go out and buy links that would normally take years of hard work and dedication to acquire. So when Google notoriously declared war on paid links, it was because people were employing them to achieve what Google would consider “artificial relevance.” Since decrying this practice, Google has devalued the paid links they’ve found and even set up a system to encourage individuals to report the paid links of others. Even if it is, as Cutts says, merely to “test out some new techniques” on paid links, it suggests the Google giant is concerned.

And guess what? That concern is certainly warranted. Despite its best efforts, Google will never be able to identify, track and eliminate all forms of paid links. I don’t care how smart their algorithms get; people will always be able to buy links. (And why shouldn’t they? asks randfish)

So here’s the kicker: As long as people can artificially influence the SERPs with paid links, the Google system will be flawed, and its authority will be compromised. Though I am certainly not the first individual to recognize Google’s Achilles Heel, I would like to make a stab at the consequences of its weakness.

Though it will take years (don’t worry, SEO folk), people will eventually begin to recognize that Google’s algorithms can be gamed, and its rankings can be artificially influenced. This will herald the eventual demise of Google’s supposed first-page credibility. This transformation will result in a paradigm shift of epic proportions. People will begin to recognize that paying for links is only evil in Google world, not in the real world. In the real world, visibility has been and always will be, ruled by the mighty dollar, not by a mighty algorithm. So as paid links effectively nullify the credibility of Google’s first page, the SERPs will be owned by the advertisers and businesses with the deepest pockets.

Sound depressing? It shouldn’t. It’s the same capitalistic principle that governs radio, print and television prominence as well. The good news for internet marketers is that web savvy individuals will still be needed to manage the millions of dollars that are pumped into SERP advertising.

So while Google valiantly tries to identify quality sites and combat artificial interference, it’s fighting a losing battle. Though quality sites will always exist, I’m suggesting that Google SERPs won’t last forever as a standard by which they are measured. The stone, it seems, is bound the fell the giant.

I spent a good portion of my morning cleaning house in an Adwords campaign that I’ve recently begun to manage. Besides being terribly disorganized (a pet peeve of mine), the campaign was missing something essential: Negative Keywords. There are a lot of internet marketing novices out there today that manage Adwords campaigns and never take advantage of this crucial tool.

Let’s imagine you’re a business owner that sells pencils. Sadly for you, the majority of people that type the word “pencils” into a Google search are not looking to purchase. Many will be typing things like: “how to draw with pencils,” “test taking pencils,” “how to stop chewing on pencils,” etc. Obviously, you don’t want your ads showing up on those searches because they will not result in desired conversions.

To solve this problem, you must incorporate negative keywords into your campaign. So in this example, you might add negative keywords in the following manner (one per line, preceded with a dash):

-how to

-draw

-test

-chewing

This will ensure that you get a lower cost per conversion because you are weeding out potential “clickers” that aren’t really interested in purchasing your product.

Low cost/click=happy camper. Go rock those campaigns.

I get all kinds of people asking me about whether they should create a Flash or HTML-based website, whether Flash is SEO friendly, whether I would I ever create a Flash website, etc.

So in response to these questions, my answer is collective no…for the most part. Though flash certainly can be cool and aesthetically pleasing, it just simply can’t compare to the SEO compatibility of HTML. Each designer must consider the pro’s and con’s of Flash and HTML when creating a site. To learn how, where, and when to use flash, check out this great post on the Best Uses of Flash. I think it breaks down the concepts pretty well. Enjoy!

It’s amazing how often Yahoo! Answers Q’s and A’s are popping up on SERP’s these days. I’ve become (admittedly) a little addicted to this service. They do a good job motivating you to post quality answers by using a points-based system for those who have the best answers selected. I don’t know how it would help you to be rated highly as an answerer, but I do know that once a “best answer” is chosen, it is archived as the sole response to that question. For all of you who would like to use Yahoo! Answers as a SEO or internet marketing resource, this is an important point. If you manage to write a “best answer” to a question that includes a link to your site, your post will have considerable weight and staying power. Try having some fun with it this weekend!

Let’s say you’re the owner of a company that provides great services or products on the internet. Wouldn’t you want an internet audience to know about your site and trust it enough to buy items from it? One way to accomplish both of these goals is by setting up and promoting affiliate and feeder sites. Here’s a great affiliate site idea for clever internet marketing:

Purchase a new domain name that is relevant to the area of your product or service (i.e. if you sell sponges, try something like”spongeinfo.com”). Develop this site with information about your product/service, as well as like information about your competitors. Maintain an objective tone while subtly highlighting the positive differences between you and your competitors. Make sure to provide contact info for not only your site, but your competitors sites as well. If you do a good enough job highlighting the positive differences about your product/service, it will sell itself and people will click through to your site over the sites of your competitors. So no, people won’t know that you–the owner of the site you’re trying to drive people to–created this affiliate/feeder site, but if you’re honest, it won’t matter. To the average consumer it looks like one more credible source attesting to the quality products/services that you promote on your business site.

Remember three things:

1) Be honest. Don’t deceive people and use this as a tool to trick consumers. I guarantee that it will come back to bite you. Besides, it’s bad karma.

2) I’ll say it again, be objective. If you’re too subjective or biased, people will sense it and your affiliate site’s credibility will be compromised. Consumers are smarter than you think.

3) Create original content for your affiliate site! There was a post recently about Yahoo! penalizing affiliate sites. If you read further, however, it was only because people were filling them with duplicate content that they copied and pasted from their other sites (yes, even their own). I can’t say it enough, duplicate content=trip to Google hell (a.k.a  the supplemental index).