by Stoney deGeyter I've been doing a lot of Information Architecture )IA( work for clients over the past few months, and each time, I can't help but think, "Why didn't we do this sooner?" Though I know the answer to that question before it's even a twinkle in my brain's fiber-optic nerve cell ending's eye. It's the same old song and dance, really. The clients come to us and they just want to get optimized. They want rankings. They want action, not reports.

by Stone Reuning The simplest answer that question is no. Any qualified search engine marketer knows that frames pose big problems with rankings. Stand-alone frames with no modifications are not crawlable by the search engines. Any content contained within the frames will not be indexed and thus, not found. While frames look pretty, what's the point if they can't be found? Fortunately though,

by Mike Moran I'm Irish, so I am not often at a loss when someone asks a question, but I was a bit startled at a query I received while doing a recent Webinar: "How do I overcome search marketing's lack of sexiness to convince my CMO to do it?" Now, I've been doing this marketing thing for many years now, and I well remember the days when marketing indeed was about the sizzle instead of the steak. Branding is sexy and sales are not.

by Stoney deGeyter Yeah, yeah, the search engines are getting smarter about duplicate content... blah, blah, blah. It's no longer the problem it once was... yada, yada, yada. Google will get it all sorted out for you. Whatevs. I don't care how smart the search engines are, it's no excuse for laziness. Sure, a maid may clean up your living room for you, but that's no excuse to ask them to wipe your..., er, mouth, too. The intelligence of the search engines is your fall back.

by Mike Moran Not long ago, there was a lot of discussion about whether Facebook was taking over the hearts and minds of the next generation, where Google has owned the previous one. Much discussion ensued about whether using a search engine to find things would be easier than asking your friends. As usual, the future is more complex than we imagine, because we have all decided that the answer between text search and social networking is...both.

by Stoney deGeyter Here we are again, two years after What I Want for Christmas from the Search Engines: The Sequel and eight years since the original, What I Want for Christmas from the Search Engines . I'm back with a new Christmas wish list. I smell a franchise opportunity here! Let's start with some open items from the original wish-list and see how things are coming along from 2008: Build your own technology,

by Stone Reuning Any web copywriter tussles with the question on how long, or short, their headline should be. Those of us in the business have been asking the question for years - is there an arbitrary length for grabbing someone's attention and encouraging them to read further? Of course, this is what headlines are supposed to do. They act as a quick synopsis of what the reader can find below.

by Mike Moran Image by K. Todd Storch via Flickr No, I don't mean that search engine optimization will happen automatically. I am asking if you have considered what the world will be like in the not-too-distant future, when a big chunk of searches will be executed from your customers' cars. Perhaps this strikes you as a bit too much Buck Rogers , but many people thought we wouldn't be searching for things from cell phones not too long ago.

by Mike Moran I received an interesting question the others day from a student in a class that I am teaching on SEO. He's on the process of optimizing a landing page for the keywords "waterproof jacket" )singular( and "waterproof jackets" )plural(, he is noticing that each keyword produces different organic search results across multiple search engines. His question is whether he should optimize his landing page for both of these keywords or just one of them?

by Stoney deGeyter There was no commercial internet in the 80's, but that doesn't mean that we can't reach into the recesses of our past to see that, everything we know now about SEO, we already knew back then. How? From the greatest, most magical music of all time: 80's hair band glam rock! They just don't make music like this anymore, and it's a shame. The sweet sound of rock'n'roll has never tasted better.

by Mike Moran Image by circulating via Flickr Last week, I asked the musical question, " Are you keeping up with Google? " In that post, I tried to stimulate some thinking around the idea that waiting for the ranking algorithm to change is not the best time to begin doing something new in response. If you work that way, you are constantly feeling under the gun, like you can't keep up, and that you are always falling behind. Instead,

by Stone Reuning Anyone whose run a blog knows you get literally hundreds of useless comments from people just looking for a quick link. It's easy to ignore these and many newer versions of WordPress and other blogging platforms do a pretty good job of weeding out those "spammers." With this in mind, it's almost counterintuitive to think you can obtain organic links through blog comments.

by Stoney deGeyter I was thinking the other day about how influencing search engines is like influencing people. Short of brute force and absolute control, you can't force anyone to do your bidding. With search engines, you might make a spam brute force attack, but that will be short lived. And absolute control? Well, no one has that, not even Google engineers, unless they all got together in a drunken binge and decided to reprogram the algorithm collectively.

by Mike Moran Image by stevegarfield via Flickr It was only recently that a number of critics were talking about how Google is standing still and Bing is the real innovator in the search space. I think that Google Instant has quieted those critics, at least for now. Love it or hate it, Google Instant certainly is innovative and it is not the only thing going on at the Googleplex. We previewed it a few weeks ago,

by Stoney deGeyter There are a lot of different ways to say the same thing. Anyone who has performed keyword research knows that people search for a lot of the same things using very different phrases and terminology. For example, if you're looking to build your online business, you could search for: internet marketing, website marketing, online marketing, website promotion, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, SEO, and a dozen other variations.

by Stoney deGeyter Operating an online business has a lot of advantages over brick and mortar shops. But, contrary to what many believe, being online is not the holy grail of business success. Brick and mortar stores have been successful, to varying degrees, for millennia. Comparatively, the web is barely a twinkly in Al Gore's eye. Unfortunately,

by Stoney deGeyter The 12-Step Program, developed by AA, has been used by countless individuals and copied by many organizations to help people get their lives on track. Here, we present the 12-Step Program for business owners when dealing with their online marketing campaigns. Step 1: Admit you are powerless without SEO and that your online marketing has become unmanageable.

by Mike Moran Image by kirainet via Flickr No matter who you are, at some point it is natural to throw your arms up in frustration and ask, "What does Google want from me?" For most of us, no matter how much we know about SEO and no matter what we do, we eventually feel like we've hit a wall. We just can't seem to )pick one( raise our ranking for that keyword, get more search traffic, sell more to searchers, or fill in the blank here.

by Stone Reuning There are many reasons why it's good to develop content for your website. It gives the search engines more reasons to rank your site high. It informs potential customers, answers their questions and allays their fears about ordering products and services from you online. And with the ever increasing importance of social media, developing content that's suitable for distribution through Facebook and other channels is another reason why it's good.

by Stoney deGeyter I've never really been an algorithm chaser. As an SEO, I understand the need to keep up with what's going on with the major search engines as a prerequisite to being able to perform solid optimization strategies. However, there is a point where you start getting diminishing returns from chasing every nuance in the search engine algorithms vs. building a solid,