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,

About a week ago I was sitting at my desk doing what I normally do when I received a very interesting call. Now this part is not the abnormality as I receive interesting calls all day long. Everything from individuals who want to sell outdated Nokia cell phones manufactured in 1995 to people brushing their teeth and flossing while they inquire about our services. I will leave that for an entirely different blog post.

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' ".

All businesses need a presence online today if they plan on staying competitive in their respective markets. Even without a website, it is in company's best interest to place their business' info within local listings. Each day, consumers search high and low online for businesses to fit their needs. For companies that rely primarily on local business, is it vital to get in front of customers eyes and by getting yourself out there online, you're doing exactly that.

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,

If you are looking for a search engine optimizing manager or an online marketing assistant than eMarketingSilo should be your starting point. With the amount of clutter in the search engines these days it truly gets a bit more difficult each day to find the right people for your company. At times of need individuals will put anything on a resume in order to secure employment.

Do plurals make any difference to keywords and your search engine optimization strategies? The short answer is, it depends on the search engine and it depends on the word in question. The long answer, it depends on the - oh - I have already said that. The reality is, there is no long answer, just a lot of work. Search engine optimization works at optimizing a page and keywords are the focal point, even for link building.

Sometimes your search engine optimization strategies need to take either a back seat or a sideways step. I have noticed a slight trend to displaying product results in Goolge SERPs. If this continues to be a trend then perhaps some of your search engine optimization energy needs directing towards submissions to Google Product Search. You can enter your product details in the form of an XML file which Google will read and add to its database.

With the internet growing so quickly and search engines like Google aggressively buying smaller internet related businesses, it raises a question: will search engine optimization go through another change? Google now own Feedburner so Google now has a good idea as to how many people subscribe to your sites and which pages/articles or posts are more popular. With Google analytics Google can see how many visitors you receive,

And Google keeps search engine optimization alive. One of the reasons that helps Google grow stronger each day is the strange relationship that exists between Google, advertisers, publishers, users and search engine optimization activities. Because Google is number one, advertisers want to see their ads on that network. Publishers want traffic and the number one search engine is, Google.

Search engine optimization for product pages is not that difficult particularly if you follow a few guidelines. To get the most out of your search engine optimization program for your product pages you need to concentrate on three aspects. Your site structure, your internal linking, and the product pages content. Your site structure should be fairly simple and easy to follow. We wrote a post in February, The Best Internal Link Structure For Your Website ,

Search engine optimization and flash do not go together and at present search engines cannot read and index these files. This doesn't mean you cannot use flash files within your web pages, what it does mean is that you will need to act carefully. Flash is popular for making web pages look dynamic, exciting and attractive to visitors. However,

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik is the ultimate step-by-step guide on all things web analytics. With this book, you will learn web analytics the correct way as it's a modern guide to today's web analytics questions and challenges. It gives you a thorough guide on how to implement a successful web analytics strategy and the author offers such information with thought-provoking style. Kaushik's book will discuss qualitative data and its importance,

Yahoo! have released their developer platform, SearchMonkey, to enable developers to begin building applications that enhance the usefulness and relevance of search results. Will search engine optimization consultants now have to work harder? The potential to providers users with a lot more information in their search results will be appealing to a lot of web owners.

Link building is a tough business and many webmaster use a technique known as link baiting as part of their search engine optimization strategies. Many webmasters who are new to search engine optimization may wonder if link baiting is white-hat or black-hat in the eyes of Google. Google's approach to links, while a little complicated in their approach, can be summarized fairly simply. If links are natural and not in any way 'bought',

I actually planned on discussing some things you should do to make your page rank well when I started this post. But between the time I opened it and the time I started typing I got another one of those emails just guaranteed to make my blood pressure explode! The email began with a subject line that got my attention so no sky-rocketing blood pressure on that one, but the rocket booster was in the first paragraph'.