If Danny Sullivan’s report over the weekend that Google is in fact reducing the PageRank for sites that are suspected of selling paid links isn’t enough to send the entire paid links industry underground, then I don’t know what is. Add to this the storm of controversy that recently occurred over Rand Fishkin outing sites that sell paid links.
We are having a discussion over at Small Business Ideas Forum where Dale King starts things of by questioning the effectiveness of reciprocal linking tactics. He basically says that once upon a time, reciprocal links were one of the number one ways webmasters acquired links from other sites. However, in current times, reciprocal links have been greatly devalued by the search engines, at least as far as helping a SEO effort. So are reciprocal links a thing of the past?
I wish Movable Type had something better than Akismet which does a pretty good job filtering spam but still very quickly populates Movable Type’s junk folder. While this keeps junk comments from ever appearing on your blog, it still takes time to sift through them in order to locate any good comments which end up in there (which has happened). So late last night, with a little searching, I found an awesome plug-in developed by Jay Allen simply called Comment Challenge plugin.
Automating the SEO process has been a hot topic of late. Loren Baker stirred up the conversation with his post “Can SEO Be Automated?” where he talks about the fact that search marketing agency, Commerce360 is developing proprietary software to automate SEO. As of today, his post has received 41 comments, mostly from people defending the fact that SEO cannot be completely automated. I agree! Then Lisa Barone published an excellent post defending the fact that SEO still needs the human element. This leads one to wonder if search engine optimization can actually be accomplished with software or in other words, can monkeys do the jobs of humans?
Ian McAnerin, current president of the two plus year old Search Marketing Association of North America (SMA-NA) has announced that he will be dissolving the organization as of today mostly due to lack of resources. The association was originally founded out of concern that SEMPO, one of the major associations related to the search marketing industry, was not properly serving the needs of everyone. Since then, according to Ian, SEMPO has solved those issues.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of enhancing your web site with the goal of increasing your visibility in the top search engines when specific keywords or phrases are searched for. Every web site that wants to be found in the organic search results of engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask and the like need to incorporate some type of SEO strategy. Some take it to far though as in an example I recently found with a national computer services chain.
Press releases submitted online are a good way draw attention to your products and services. They also provide opportunities to increase the amount of inbound links that are pointing to your site. However, as the post explains, “understanding who will find this information intriguing enough to call you to investigate a little more and create a story out of your information is the key to creating successful press releases.”
Net Neutrality – the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user, is under attack once again. The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department has come out in opposition to the idea of Net Neutrality and endorses the idea that Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic. This in light of several telecom and cable companies stating that they want to have the ability to charge select users for the right to access certain content on the Internet or to do so at higher speeds than others.
This is the second part of a recap of what I spoke on in a session entitled “So You Want To be a Search Marketer” at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose where we look at how budding search marketers can network with businesses as well as peers, how they can effectively brand themselves, how to stay on the cutting edge of this fast paced industry and some things not to do.
I recently had the opportunity to speak on a brand new session introduced during the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference entitled “So You Want To be a Search Marketer.” The session explored ways that budding SEMs can educate themselves as well as get started in the industry. I approached this topic from the perspective of one who learned and applied SEM techniques to one of our own sites before ever deciding to take on paying clients. I thought I put together a post on what I spoke on as well as include the actual PowerPoint slides for those who would like to view them.
