Much noise was made recently about Google taking a whack at so-called content farms - sites which apply industrial production techniques to the creation of content targeting the long-tail of the query distribution. This is a subject of huge interest to many Internet businesses, either because they advertise on the AdWords Content Network )and, by extension, on content farms(, because they compete with content farms on particular searches,

When your boss/client asks you why your web site can't be found in Google, what are you going to say? You should prepare, because, eventually, that question will be asked. Should you cross that bridge when you come to it? Employ an SEO specialist to "do some stuff", after launch, in order to get the site ranked? Isn't SEO just another marketing function, like buying advertising? In this article, I'll outline why it's a bad idea to treat SEO as an add-on.

There's not a complex mathematical formula that is needed for one to understand the basic math associated with SEO. It boils down to something like: Traffic + Conversions = $ That's a pretty easy way of looking at it, and it sort of ignores some of the variables that might go into it like: targeted traffic no so targeted traffic conversion rate volume However,

Pretty basic question for an SEO right? It would be nice if the answer were equally as basic or simple. It's an important question, even more so since a sweeping update by Google knocked out unsuspecting webmasters. Beyond the stuff we know got hit )some RIGHTLY so(, we probably will never know the true ramifications with respect to how many "little guys" had their livelihoods or potential livelihoods destroyed by a heartless, unforgiving, and sometimes inaccurate algorithm.

SEO on your own site is straightforward, at least in terms of the politics. SEO'ing a site that a team works on is another matter. You will come up against barriers. These barriers are often put up by designers, developers, copywriters and management. Frustrating as it is for the SEO, this is the reality of working on a site alongside other people, all of whom have agendas and requirements that may differ markedly from your own. So how do you navigate this space?

I just saw this Google snippet while trying to fine one of our old posts and it was *so* awful that I had to share it. This is an area where Bing was out in front of Google & used a more refined strategy for years now before Google started playing catch up last fall . Google ignored our page title, ignored our on-page header, and then use the 'comments' count as the lead in the clickable link. Then they follow it with the site's homepage page title.

You can learn a lot about how search has improved over the years by reading Matt Cutts. Recently he highlighted how search was irrelevant in the past due to a lack of diversity : Seven of the top 10 results all came from one domain, and the urls look a little' well, let's say fishy. In 1999 and early 2000, search engines would often return 50 results from the same domain in the search results. One nice change that Google introduced in February 2000 was "host crowding,

Majestic SEO has long had great link data, but their biggest issue has been usability. They sorta built with the approach of "let's give them everything" as a default, and then allowed advanced filtering to be done over the top to generate custom reports. For advanced users this type of set up is ideal, because you are able to slice and dice it in many ways on your own terms. It allows you to spot nepotistic networks, pinpoint strategies quickly,

Value Systems Many broken belief systems that exist do so because of a misinformed understanding of how the world works through naive idealism, with various special interests paying to syndicate misinformation that coincides with their current business model to foster culturally constructed ignorance - agnotology . It is not a bubble. This time is different. The internet changes everything And then of course we had "Real estate always goes up!" Who was behind that lie?

We are all aware of the importance Google has been placing on local search over the last couple of years, we touched on it in a recent blog post . Google also has some interesting statistics on local numbers pertaining to small business stats and Google's local stats ) 20% of searches have local intent (. As a local advertiser, starting an SEO campaign in your local market is typically built on the strength of your keyword research. Say you are an insurance agent,

We have certainly seen a trend over the last one to two years where Google is focusing on more personalized search and an increasing focus on providing local results . As you know, a searcher does not even have to be burdened with entering a local modifier anymore. Google will gladly figure out, for you, whether or not your search has local intent. :( Google's Investment into Local Late last year Google moved one of their prized executives over to local services,

Humility When I graduated high school one of my teachers gave me a card stating how they appreciated my humility. My mom read that and was proud, and I felt a bit embarrassed because I didn't know what the word meant and had to ask. It turns out it is easy to confuse ignorance for humility! :D Marketing is chuck full of humbling teachable moments. One of the most important concepts is the importance of humility.

If you live outside the United States and were unscathed by the Panda Update, a world of hurt may await soon. Or you may be in for a pleasant surprise. It is hard to say where the chips may lay for you without looking. Some people just had their businesses destroyed, whereas the Online Publisher Association sees a $1 billion windfall to the winning publishers . Due to Google having multiple algorithms running right now, you can get a peak at the types of sites that were hit,

What is Search Assist? Yahoo! announced search assist , a new beta product launched in the United States which is similar to Google Instant , but extends a bit further. It works by extending the search interface to include a layer before the results come up.

Firefox 4 was just released. It is much smoother & faster than prior versions of the browser. And the persistent memory leaking issue seems to have been tamed, even with many extensions installed. Overall an awesome upgrade. I can see this once again becoming my main web browser while also remaining my primary SEO research browser. With the upgrade I only had 2 major issues I needed to install the newest version of Roboform By default there is no status bar in Firefox 4.

Guidelines are pushed as though they are commandments from a religious tome, but they are indeed a set of arbitrary devices used to hold down those who don't have an in with Google . When Google nuked BeatThatQuote I guessed that the slap on the wrist would last a month & give BTQ time to clean up their mess. As it turns out, I was wrong on both accounts. Beat That Quote is already ranking again . They rank better than ever & only after only 2 weeks! And the spam clean up?

This infographic highlights how Google's cat and mouse approach to SEO has evolved over the past decade. One of the best ways to understand where Google is headed is to look at where they have been and how they have changed. Click on it for ginormous version. If you would like us to make more of them then please spread this one.

Conversion optimization is an ongoing concern for serious businesses. When viewed in the shadow of a big change like Google's recent Panda Farmer update, optimizing your site's existing traffic streams becomes even more attractive - or necessary - to remain competitive. A book was released recently by O'Reilly , authored by Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy, the co-founders of Invesp - a leading conversion optimization company.

Do You Really Want That Indexed? On-demand indexing was a great value added feature for Google site search, but now it carries more risks than ever. Why? Google decides how many documents make their primary index. And if too many of your documents are arbitrarily considered "low quality" then you get hit with a sitewide penalty. You did nothing but decide to trust Google & use Google products. In response Google goes out of its way to destroy your business. Awesome!

I received this book in the mail. It's nice to be sent books. And it's by Seth ! The book is called Poke The Box . It's about making a start. Seth encourages us to just jump in and do things. It doesn't matter if they go wrong, the important thing is to make the start. To break out of conservative patterns. It's a scatter-shot rant about the death of the industrial revolution, with Godin inciting us, over and over again, to take action. Gotta say,