This latest dictation from the Ivory Castle has got the web community railed again as people accuse Google of being more than a little deceitful in their endeavours of late. Looking at the evidence it would seem that Google are only seeking to publish smaller sites using ad-heavy pages. This is fairly obvious after all the major sites hit by Panda were readjusted one by one. Not to mention that sites such as Yahoo!, MSNBC, WSJ, Forbes, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Mashable, The Huffington Post, and Techcrunch to name just as few, are all ad-heavy, and it’s hard to see Google penalising any of these sites.

Another contradictory aspect to Google’s latest plan is that they currently allow 3 blocks of Adsense (the Google ad network) on any page. So is the search giant going to punish its own ad users? I doubt it, and many have speculated that sites displaying Adsense on their homepage did pretty well out of the latest Panda update. Coincidence?

The principle of more useful content and less advertising would be welcome by all, I am sure. But let’s face it, the majority of websites require some monitisation to stay afloat, particular the big operations like newspapers and major industry expert sites. So let’s get real, advertising is a part of the web that is here to stay. So rather than having Google dictate, “We are going to penalise sites that we think are overusing advertising”, how about the web community collectively work on some standards regarding the use of advertising banners and links, and then submit recommendations to Google. The entire dictatorial approach by the monopoly that is Google is getting a bit tiring. The ambiguity behind rules, changes and random statements is frustrating for the web community, not to mention excludes the very people that should be consulted regarding these things. Did someone say union?

1. Can you tell me exactly how you conduct SEO?
   This might sound like a simplistic question, but a good consultant should be able to reel off a list of SEO techniques that have proved successful in the past.
2. What are you going to need from me to be successful?
   This question will help you determine if he/she is going to take your money and run. “Nothing, just give me your URL and we will do the rest”, is the wrong answer!
3. Do I control access to all admin accounts?
   It is vital that you control admin access to all your accounts. The last thing you want is to be locked out when you part company and take up with a new search engine marketing firm.
4. What is a typical return on investment for one of your clients?
   Here you should be looking for proof. Most consultants will be able to quote you an average based on the median across their roster – a simple 100% answer is a random figure quoted to impress someone very gullible.
5. How do you measure your effectiveness?
   Establishing success indicators at the start will help you to determine performance levels and monitor effectiveness.
6. How will you communicate effectiveness to me?
   A good search engine marketing consultant will provide weekly or at the very least monthly reporting showing changes in your rankings and conversion ratios.
7. Who will be my point of contact?
   You need to be able to contact your consultant with reasonable demand. If you are dealing with an intern all the time who has little if any knowledge then forget it and go somewhere else.
8. If we part ways, will you remove all your work from my website and the links you have secured?
   This is majorly important. Establish at the start of the relationship what will happen when employment is terminated. Under normal circumstances you will own all the work.
9. Can you give me some client references?
   When you hire an employee you check their references so why should hiring a search engine marketing consultant be any different? If possible get on the phone to one of their clients rather than relying on email.
10. What sets you apart from any other search engine marketing firm?
    If the answer is #1 Google spots then be very sceptical. No one has a perfect record and what you should be looking for is answers like, “measurable and sustainable results, performance guarantees and a personal service”.

Before hiring a search engine marketing agency ensure you use this handy list to vet potential services.

1. Asking the Right Questions

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If a company makes you feel like you are questioning their integrity then you don’t want to hire them anyway. Ask things like:

• “How will you know who my competitors are and how they are marketing their products?”
• “How will you know the best keywords to secure for my PPC campaign?”
• “What key performance indicators will you be using to measure success?”

2. A Small Test To Gage Skill

Conduct a small test by asking each SEM company on your list to devise two small adverts for your business using just 15-20 words. This could be for a sale item or general advert for your URL.

3. Determine Exactly What You Are Getting For Your Money

Ask what alternative marketing channels the company will use outside of PPC and CPC. For example, do they look at localised search listings, directories and business listings? Make sure you know what is included in the package and what they offer that other SEM agencies don’t.

4. Use of Free SEM

SEM isn’t just about paying through the teeth for clicks; there are a number of free activities that can drive huge traffic and increase conversions. What free methods of advertising will each SEM company use? Do they run social media campaigns or at least advise/help you with a Facebook and Twitter campaign. What other suggestions do they have for marketing initiatives?

5. Take a Look at The Portfolio 

Ask to see examples of campaigns they are currently or have previously worked on. What spike in conversion rates were they able to achieve and are clients for whom they conducted previous campaigns still on board or did they jump ship?

6. Don’t Get Lumbered With The Intern

Try to ascertain the experience level of the individual who will be handling your campaign. Are you being palmed off to the intern or will you be getting an employee who has marketing experience both across branding and advertising.

You might well be desperate for more clicks but don’t throw your money down the drain. SEM is a competitive market so make sure you choose the search engine marketing agency best suited to the needs of your company.

So how does a search engine optimization agency know where to start when it comes to optimising your website? Well, as a community we kind of know that there are around 50 factors that haven’t changed in a very long time, factors that remain static no matter what Google does. Then, on top of these 50 factors we have our own personal trade secret techniques derived through research, analysis and experience.

As a given, we know the following 8 aspects of SEO are considerations factored into Google’s search algorithm:

1. Search term in HTML title tag
2. Search term in HTML body copy
3. Utilisation of header tags around search term
4. Utilisation of bold around search term
5. Search term in anchor text leading to page
6. The PR (PageRank) of a page
7. Domain authority
8. Website loading speed

That said, a search engine optimization agency recognises that Google responds differently to different types of website, and SEO needs to be implemented accordingly. Believe me, the work of a search engine optimization specialist never stops, once I leave the office I am constantly keeping abreast with breaking search news and scanning the web looking at search trends and user behaviour.

A large part of being a search engine optimization specialist is understanding how a user behaves within the search engines and how search engines in turn respond to the user. If you can start to understand this process and implement the 8 SEO tips listed above, you are almost half way to understanding how to achieve higher rankings.

It is natural to gravitate towards advertising on the most popular mediums, Google remaining the most obvious choice. But surely the best places to advertise are the places in which users spend the most time. Think about it like this, the longer or more regularly a user visits a platform the more time they will have to view an advertisement and consider following the link.

With this in mind, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney compiled some very interesting data for August 2010, showing that Facebook has passed Google in terms of time spent online. Mahaney observed:

“Looking at % of Total Time Spent by the top 5 sites in August, Facebook, for the first time took the top spot with 41.1B minutes followed by Google with 39.8B minutes. Yahoo! fell to the 3rd spot with 37.7B minutes. Also, Yahoo!’s share of time spent in Q3 QTD slid to an all-time low of 9.3%. On a separate note, Google’s management noted that its number of global users crossed the 1B mark for the first time”.

Facebook is becoming an increasingly attractive online marketing service – not just a mere community network. Just look at the accompanying visitor statistics below (Source: Hitwise)

I said it earlier on in the year and I will repeat myself again but this time with the back-up of the hard evidence set out above. Facebook should be a weapon of consideration for all online advertisers. As we spoke about in yesterday’s post on “creating change”, the importance of being versatile, flexible and willing to evolve is paramount to online success. Hedging all your bets on one online marketing service is complacent and silly. Facebook is still relatively cheap, and with its users spending an increasing amount of time on the portal, why would you choose to ignore such an obvious advertising opportunity.

Humans react strongly to change, even subtle change. Whether a web site undergoes a complete redesign or removes a previous function, your regular visitors will have a reaction – possibly positive or negative – but a reaction either way is good. Not all search engine optimisation and SEO in general need be about positive reaction. Users may hate the change, but at the same time Tweet about it 5 times encouraging another 100 people to discover your site and hate the change, too. Think of this as free SEO outsource work. Some users may enjoy the new experience so much that it warrants a full blog post on a very popular site. Either way, a change will almost guarantee a traffic boost and follow up user reactions will ensue.

If you run a community based website with regular followers then those users will naturally feel like part of your online family. A change to the set-up will stir up a buzz again, refresh interest, provoke a response and cause emotion. It is easy to ignore a website when it becomes stale. The novelty wears off after a few months and like family, your regulars may only visit you on Sundays or public holidays. Therefore you need to stir up a bit of a fuss occasionally to entice your family back to the roost to give you their opinion and hopefully their business

It’s easy to say that people are resistant to change, but that is just a cop-out statement for lazy people who can’t be bothered to evolve or address the needs of their customer/user base. I am not saying to implement search engine optimisation and SEO activities that change the face of your web platform to the point that it forces users to say goodbye to something they like, just inspire existing users to create a buzz for you by becoming emotionally moved enough to comment or share your link (again, think free SEO outsource work).

Encourage the stale users who used to love you so much to come back and view the new family dwelling bringing new friends with them. A change is as good as a holiday, so they say, and when we go on holiday we always meet new people (traffic)…get my drift?

For those who don’t know, Google Instant is a new feature that predicts what a user is searching for and shows results as they type. It uses Google’s auto-complete technology to show predicted search terms in a drop-down box and begins to display search results below the box.

In my opinion, there is no chance of SEO being affected here. Humans are still typing search queries looking for information and that information will need optimising – it’s the same process but with a helping hand from Google. In fact, a solid content development strategy will benefit from Google instant. Good search engine marketing specialists are always on their toes knowing how users search and what they search for; Google Instant facilitates the process rather than affecting it in any way.

Rankings wise Google have stated that nothing will change, and I am inclined to believe them as there is nothing to suggest otherwise.

“The basics of Google search are the same, including how results are ranked and how Google determines relevant results”.

As search engine marketing specialists, it is our job not to be scared of change but to adapt and innovate with the times. Search will consistently be made easier for the user meaning that search engine marketing specialists need to become more aware of the relationship between the content a user requires and the query they use to find it. By studying Google Instant this will become more apparent to the seasoned SEO consultant.

The question you need to be asking is whether or not your organic SEO company is capable of adapting to such changes and are they responding to Google innovations in the appropriate manner. As a client you should receive updates on such changes and be given assurance that a strategy is being implemented to counter any negative effects on your SEO campaign.

Google made a huge booboo when they launched Google Buzz back in February by automatically including users’ frequent Gmail contacts on public Buzz profiles. As the world’s biggest search provider you really have to get ‘privacy’ right, but then aren’t lawsuits tax deductable? This could be a small blessing for the Google accountant.

Who gets to keep the interest on the fund is my question, perhaps they can slice it up between the rest of the Gmail account users who may have divorced, lost business or been caught lying in the debacle of the Google Buzz launch. Or better still, allocate the money to search engine marketing company initiatives to help us protect against Google privacy slips….wishful thinking.

The FTC commissioner ruled that the mistake was a case of “irresponsible conduct”, you don’t say. Google apologised profusely and government agencies scrutinised the Buzz platform. My heart goes out to the poor man/woman responsible for the mistake, if one of my search engine marketing company employees landed me a lawsuit of epic proportions I wouldn’t be best pleased, to say the least.

As for Buzz, Google has refused to disclose how many people are actively using the service, yet it doesn’t seem to be drawing too much attention. Is Buzz, in addition to Google Wave, the next epic failure for the search giant, it certainly looks that way.

It is anticipated that Yahoo paid search in the US and Canada will be fully powered by Microsoft adCenter come the end of October. In the interim Yahoo are advising advertisers to prepare. “ We encourage you to transition your account before the ad serving transition begins, so that you are ready to reach more than 159 million searchers in the U.S. and 15 million searchers in Canada* on Yahoo! Search, Bing and our partners”.

For those concerned about making the account transition more information is available at both the Yahoo Advertising Blog and the Microsoft Blog. Basically you need to prepare your account, transfer your account and then continue managing your account as usual. For an SEO services company like mine this will create some extra work on behalf of my clients, but let’s hope it isn’t too painful.

Emails always drop in order of delivery, so if you send enough marketing emails to a person you can guarantee a top spot or two in your target’s inbox at one stage or another during the campaign, yet what if there was a force working against you that not only made sure you never made the top spot, but made sure all your targeted emails were way down on the list?

Enter Google Priority Inbox. This intelligent little monster uses algorithmic techniques to automatically capture and organize “important” emails and de-emphasize other email. It is not a spam filter, but an automated organization tool that could very well upset your web site promotion internet marketing strategy. Google had this to say about its new baby:

Gmail’s servers look at several types of information to identify the email that’s important to you, including who you email and chat with most, how often you email with these people, and which keywords appear frequently in the emails you read.

If Priority Inbox makes a mistake, you can use the buttons to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important, and Priority Inbox will quickly learn what you care about most.

So, you can see just how targeted web site promotion internet marketing emails will get pushed to the bottom of the pile as the priority system relegates promotional emails. Rather than simply reading emails in order as most people tend to do, the unimportant stuff will get pushed into the “everything else” category and may never get read.

See for yourself here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nt3gE9dGHQ&feature=player_embedded#!