How many of us have known for how many years that Google cares about user experience )no matter what others might argue the contrary(? Earlier this year, in one of my conference presentations, I put it this way: "SEO is about understanding user experience as seen through search algorithms". Well today, Google took yet one .

Google announced today they're going to take a step toward user privacy by hiding keywords used by searchers signed into their Google accounts. We'll leave the discussion regarding their real reason for doing so for another day or someone else to blog about. Me, I'm going to talk about what I think this means for the industry and why I think so many people that are freaking out over this change are missing the bigger opportunity here.

Hi there! This is an odd situation for me - as this article is being published, I'm attending SMX Advanced in Seattle - and tomorrow morning, I'll be speaking on the Google Survivor Tips panel. In my presentation, I'll be showing people how to weather the Google roller coaster, and how to dramatically increase organic search traffic beyond Google. So I felt bad that you all couldn't attend, and would have to wait til afterward for me to do a full article on it.

So last month, I posted an article here entitled "You think YOU have a duplicate content problem?" where I described a duplicate content nightmare of epic proportions. Essentially, I found a site with hundreds of replications of every page on the site, and outlined steps I was going to need to task to the developers to fix it. Well since that time, I did some more digging, in order to provide the full tasking plan for implementation.

Okay so you do a pretty good job at SEO. Your clients /employer seem to be happy with your work. Overall, you're happy with the results you get. Yet maybe you've asked yourself from time to time - "How can I go even further?" or "What are some possibly easy things I could be doing to go even further?" Or maybe you just figure it's time to go from "good enough" to "great". When clients come to me,

Duplicate content. We all know about it. Countless posts have been written on why it's bad, how to avoid it. But maybe you've got a duplicate content problem and don't even know it's there. Or your duplicate content problem is bigger than you realize. So big, it's epic. That's what I discovered recently when auditing a client site. We're not talking about content replicated across multiple sites. Not scraper sites, or ripoff sites. One site.

www.searchenginejournal.com www.searchenginejournal.com/wp-admin www.searchenginejournal.com/wp-admin/post.php If you've worked in the SEO industry for any significant length of time, you've inevitably had a situation arise where a brand new site was being planned or an existing site was being overhauled and you were brought in to ensure the new )or new version( site would get SEO. And unless you have magic fairy dust at your beck and call,

For many years I operated in a bubble performing audits on client sites. Coordinating and providing consulting in the implementation of my findings, yet not ever having an open dialogue with other professionals in the industry regarding what commonalities or differences we had in our approach. As I began writing blog articles on my approach, and fielding questions from others regarding how I went about the process, I began to learn of two typical approaches.

Content farms are dead. Long live content farms. Well not really. May they never bounce back again. Please. Yet like every major update Google rolls out, some innocents were harmed in the making of this one. Don't expect the ACLU or any human rights groups to come to the defense of them. It's going to have to be us. People who know better. People who understand why they got hammered. You know - SEO professionals. What a crazy notion huh?

I've had many discussions with others in the SEO arena over the years regarding the value of long tail SEO. But until this weekend I've never had anyone in our industry tell me that long tail is NOT SEO. So when I read that, I had a big WTF moment. The ensuing discussion essentially got nowhere as far as anyone changing their minds. For me, it's because I believe there are various forms of long tail,

People like things easy. The easier the better. At least it's a common trait here in America, where the common perception is that life is hard, and we "deserve a break". Work is hard. Relationships are hard. Saving money is hard. Having to get up, clean your body, get ready for work, drive to work, work all day, drive home, remember to eat, remember to pay the bills' Rebelling against all that hard stuff is expressed in many ways. Procrastination, self sabotage,

Happy new year everyone! Welcome to 2011 or MMXI to all of you Romans and movie producers! 2010 was a mixed year. The economy continued to sputter along, some things were quite memorable, others forgettable. In my last article for 2010 here at SEJ, I documented some of the ways in which 2010 was an epic year for SEO . In that article, I invited readers to offer up predictions for what you thought would be epic changes to the search marketing arena in 2011,

SEO is a special field of endeavor. We don't just get gifts for the same holidays as everyone else. We get them all year long. And while some people might consider them anything but gifts, I see them as some of the best gifts I've ever gotten. So rather than my typical technical article, or one of my more opinionated rants, this week's article, my last for SEJ in 2010, is going to be something different altogether.

When performing an SEO audit, one of the most challenging issues comes when reviewing the competitive landscape. Quite often it can seem overwhelming - competitors who have thousands, tens or even hundreds of thousands of pages already in place. Sites with tens of thousands of inbound links, some coming from thousands of root domains. This is even more of a challenge for me lately, as I perform audits on sites with hundreds of thousands or even millions of pages.

I have many reasons to be grateful this year on many fronts for many reasons. One area happens to be the fact that I'm blessed to be working in such an amazing industry, with such amazing people. Thanks to all the people I get to work with, to my clients, to all the amazing friends I've come to have in the industry, my life is richer, more complete. Yet none of this would be possible if I didn't work in an industry as blessed as Internet marketing.

So by now you should know how the search industry landscape completely changed overnight with the integration of Place Page results into the organic results for local search. If you don't think the change is that radical, I suggest you pause and really comprehend the possibilities . Just one issue that's being talked about is how it is possibly going to hurt businesses with multiple locations .

User mind models matter when it comes to keyword research. They matter when you write the copy for Meta Descriptions, PPC Ads, on-site content, link names, and link placement. They matter when you're creating that next viral social media piece, and when you're establishing that Twitter usage policy. They matter in every aspect of the online experience, so they should matter to you. Football or Soccer? Windshield or Windscreen? Lunch bag or sack lunch? Soda or Pop?

Well this one has been a long time coming. Thanks to the brilliant minds at Google, WebTV has been resurrected from the ashes, and transformed from surfing on the web over your TV to, well, surfing on the web over your TV. Except instead of a really crappy web experience on your TV due to design limitations, you're now going to have a, well, really crappy web experience due to design limitations. Google is saying otherwise, of course,

I had a meeting today with a prospective client and the account manager at one of my agency clients. The prospect was coming in to talk about her need for a web site for a new product she wants to sell and where she had heard that SEO was something she needed. I had almost no information going in - no previous site to refer to, no insight into the products, or the market. Yet as soon as I heard the domain name she had chosen,

Our industry is chock full of advise about how the best approach is to go for phrases that aren't necessarily the most competitive - to go for the lower hanging fruit. Concepts in this area usually emphasize the notion that if you have to choose between two phrases that you'll optimize for, if you go for the one that has less actual search volume and less competition you'll be doing your client justice, and you'll make your job easier.