Many business owners are now turning to the web to gain an online presence in an attempt to remain competitive. Search engine optimization has become a requirement if you want that presence to be successful and many business owners are simply outsourcing the task to consultants. Engaging a search engine optimization consultant is often a sensible move as, in the long run, it saves time and money and can bring results relatively quickly.

The web is getting bigger and search engine optimization is getting bigger with it - and more complex - at least according to Melissa Fach in her article on Marketing Pilgrim yesterday. Melissa wrote about the new search engine optimization role that includes, amongst other tasks, SEM and SMO . A little web design thrown in along with the ability to communicate and inform clients adds to the daily toil.

A vast majority of web sites rely on a steady flow of traffic, much of this coming from organic search engine results. If you don't have a search engine optimization program in place, you can forget the traffic. New research results published on Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog reveals that 41% of users will only look at the first page of results; a further 27% would only look at the first few results. That is 68% of users only going to page one of the results.

The field of search engine optimization experts is growing on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Like everything web related, these experts are starting to develop niches, whether is traditional search engine optimization consulting, social marketing, or search engine marketing to name just a few - and yes, former SEO 'experts' are now claiming to be marketing experts as well. Perhaps they are! With so many search engine optimization experts,

As search engine optimization consultants we are often asked to get a web page to the number one ranking for a particular keyword. It's not easy - and that is not an understatement. Getting to number one in the SERP rankings requires far more than just the basics in search engine optimization. It requires a high level of investigative skills to try and determine what your competitors are doing and what it is we can do to outrank them.

In the world of online public relations making sure your image is portrayed correctly is just as important as it is having the right employee that is capable of managing a client's image. What good does it do when you finally bring aboard that client you have been reeling in for 6 months only to look at the back of their head as they walk out of your board room with a ripped up contract in their hand?

Landing pages often annoy me. I am left wondering on the search engine optimization and page design strategies of these webmasters. And I am not alone on this. In fact it is strange how, in researching one topic, another loosely related article appears, almost to reinforce the original line of research. I was originally researching Google's new attack on poor performing advertisers by undertaking tests of their landing pages amongst other things.

Generally speaking, search engine optimization and the 'no follow' tag don't live in the same home. In fact, mention 'no follow' and many search engine optimization experts will ignore you. There are times when the 'no follow' doesn't hurt. A thread on the DigitalPoint forum has been following the question about buying 'no follow' links. It has been an interesting discussion with some rather wise comments. However,

Andy Beard wrote a great 'how to' article on Indented Listings using simple search engine optimization steps. The idea is fine and would sound attractive to most web owners. There is one caveat I make to that statement: if you are not on the first two pages of the SERP's then it this tactic will probably do little for you. If you are ranking in the top ten for your keywords then a search engine optimization strategy such as this is ideal.

Matt Cutts of Google fame has a 10 minute video from the Web 2.0 conference where he looks at what Google considers spam. Not only that, he also admits that Google doesn't hate search engine optimization. You read right - Google does not hate search engine optimization In fact, Google does not consider search engine optimization to be spam, it is just that some methods could be considered spam. Along with the ten minute video,

Don't put all your search engine optimization eggs into one basket. Well not yet anyway. Despite Yahoo! gaining a small increase in search volume, Google is still the one that is way out in front and not slowing down, at least, not yet. Google also increased their share of search volume leaving the other players to continue their downward slide. On present volumes, search engine optimization should focus on Google and Yahoo! and forget the rest. According to Compete ,

When I was growing up I had a newspaper round, delivering newspapers, now I am and adult and I am doing the same thing, kind off anyway. Search engine optimization is similar to delivering newspapers. As a publisher, you put together a wonderful newspaper and print off a couple of thousand copies and sit back and wait for people to read them; and for advertisers to come knocking to place their ads. You wait, and wait, and you wait. Nothing happens. No advertisers,

The search engine optimization mantra has often been, 'content is king', followed by keywords and inbound links and''. I am sure you have heard it all before. I recently read a question that caught my attention, the question being 'how often does Google update the SERPs'. The answer I assume was looking beyond the page crawling and wondering how long it took for crawled data being reflected in the SERPs. I have seen pages being indexed within an hour of publishing,

Search engine optimization was looking rosy. With organic searches taking around 85% of Google clicks and the economic downturn shifting the focus from PPC to organic, I thought perhaps a shift towards organic results would be on the cards. No, Google are throwing another spanner in the works. Following an article from Search Engine War on Google's Previous Query, things may change yet again. I am not sure if I like the new changes.

Search engine optimization starts with a good keyword research program where you try to identify the best possible group of words for each page. Sometimes we can be trapped into a type of tunnel vision where we only think of the obvious words or phrases - there are alternatives that can sometimes be considered to bring in extra traffic. Earlier this week I wrote a post on the use of plural keywords in your search engine optimization program,

Search engine optimization is all about getting your pages as close to the top of the SERP's as possible. But why? If you use a PPC campaign you can get as much targeted traffic as required. I read an article on SEO Speedwagon on Organic SEO that really puts the issue into some perspective. They quoted possible statistics relating to the percentage of clicks through organic search compared to paid search. Only 14% of Google clicks were through paid search,

A recent post looked at search engine optimization and flash where we discussed how flash could be used if you really had to use it. Today I want to take that theme just a little further and look at one option to improve your page's crawl success. Web designers often resort to techniques like Flash and Java to improve a pages look and feel. there are times where Java is the preferred script for certain actions like mouse overs. Unfortunately,

It's a long title, but then Google's latest blog post by by Udi Manber, VP Engineering, Search Quality, is not exactly short either. However, after reading what he had to say I had a reread wondering what lessons it might hold for search engine optimization consultants - and there were a few. The first little tidbit that struck me was the comment about search terms: " We also need to understand the queries people pose, which are on average fewer than three words' ".

Search engine optimization is all about one page and off page tactics to get your page listed as high up in the search engine results pages as possible. Having said that, for most DIY optimizers there is always one step that they forget, and it is the first step for ongoing search engine optimization. We select keywords which we feel we can get good ranking for. We then use all of our search engine optimization knowhow to get that page well ranked.However,

Every now and then the topic of search engine optimization and meta tags rears its head for debate. Should you bother with them or simply ignore them? The argument was picked up by SE Round Table quoting a legal judgment that declared META keywords as irrelevant and no longer used. To quote from the article : a US court has decided that META keywords don't matter " they are "immaterial." There are two issues to look at from this debate. First,