The SEO world has always had its supporters and its detractors, and it’s never made a great deal of difference. The bigger battles often waged within the community between the whitehats and blackhats. The whitehats would rant and rave about how the blackhats could get clients in trouble and how blackhat tactics generally junked up the SERPs. The blackhats would fire back with, well, not much really. I suppose they were mostly busy with maki

Internet Retailer has released their latest survey on the state of search engine marketing: oh, the beautiful data. Of the merchants surveyed, the largest group (37.9%) said that over half of their online marketing budgets are spent on SEM. Also in the good news category, the largest group (30.2%) said that more than half of their online revenue is attributable to search engine marketing.
The survey asked the merchants for a general status chec

Back in 2005, SEOmoz tried to assemble a list of all the possible search engine ranking factors out there and get various experts to rate them. I say tried to because while they had a list, and ratings, no one knows all the factors or exactly how each individual search engine chooses to use them. But I admired the determination. SEOmoz is back at it, with version two of the list now out. Some background about it
here; the list is here, and

Over at SEO Refugee, “Skitzzo” posts a bold proclamation that “SEO is Dead” (linkbait anyone?), and I agree, to an extent.
While at Search Summit Australia, I was asked to name the winners and losers for 2007. I chose the title “search engine marketer” as a loser - not for the skills, just the name. You see, search marketers have grown their talents tremendously over the past few years, and to say that we focus

…side by side on my computer keyboard, oh Lord, why don’t we?
Ok, so maybe you’re didn’t enjoy my butchering of the McCartney/Wonder classic, but you might like to know that iCrossing has found great synergies between organic and paid search.
According to Rob Garner…
When appearing in both natural and paid search for the same keyword impression, clicks lifted 92 percent, actions lifted 45percent, orders lifted 4

Neil Patel challenged Jason Calacanis, who said last month that SEO is bull, that SEO can improve traffic to his site. Jason accepted the challenge and the early results have now been posted. Neil shows that by making “white hat” recommendation, he has increased Jason’s search traffic by 21 percent. Note that Neil also said that so far, only 10 percent of his recommendations have been implemented.

Neil Patel has provided an update on his challenge to show Jason Calacanis that SEO is not “snake oil” and can in fact help a site increase its search engine traffic.
Here’s the latest from Neil…
Currently SEO changes are still being made and around 10% of them have been made so far which has resulted in 7,449 search engine visitors between March 14th and March 19th. This proves that there was a 21.14% increase in sea

Have you ever looked at a set of very competitive search results an wondered how in the world a certain website was ranking so well? The link profile just didn’t support the position they were in. There’s a chance that website was using link cloaking to hide some of their links and prevent fellow SEOs from reverse engineering their rankings.
Link cloaking is the practice of linking to one site, an intermediary if you will, while sendi

If you’ve been following Gareth Davies ECommerce Rocks video series, you’ll already know that he produces some fantastic stuff.
I recently worked with Gareth on a new video that has just launched. In it, I discuss recent developments with keyword suggestion tools and then discuss some basics of keyword research.
Now, I may be biased, but wouldn’t you agree this is one of the best produced SEO tutorial videos ever? (emphasis on the “produced”).
Enjoy and please share.

BTW, Gareth’s looking for more experts to join him on future videos and is also providing his video producing talents to clients, looking to “jazz-up” their content

Michael Gray put up a nice post yesterday about Finding Your Inner Jerry McGuire. Not a goal I aspire to personally, but the point of the post is that you need to take chances to get to the top of your profession, whatever it may be.

Hat’s off to Kelly Spors for helping to keep WSJ readers up to date on the latest marketing buzz. In today’s weekly roundup of news, she explains the art of link baiting…
Here’s a new catchphrase in search-engine optimization these days: Link baiting.
The term may sound shady, but link baiting is an aboveboard tactic that calls for generating new or particularly interesting content on a Web site in hopes that a popular Web site links to it

Ladies and gentleman, presenting the heavy-weight battle for the reputation of search engine optimizers.
In the red-corner, we have Jason Calacanis, who blogs a whole bunch of criticisms of SEOs, without backing up any facts or responding to reader’s comments and questions.
…the truth is that 90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman

Understanding the way search engineers think can help you decide whether or not a new idea is worth trying. Knowing when you are taking risks, or making the decision to avoid them, can help scale your search engine marketing strategy to new heights. Eric Enge assumes the role of search engineer in today’s SearchDay.

Over the past year there have been many discussions about duplicate content and how it can affect a website. Both on and off site duplication has been discussed in great detail on forums such as WebmasterWorld & SearchEngineWatch. Even MarketingPilgrim has covered duplicate content for blogs.
It’s to the point that some people are almost obsessed with the issue and swear there are penalties associated with it

An important part of search engine optimization (SEO) is link building.  As it relates to rankings, off page factors have become more and more important, which means link building and link popularity can pretty much make or break a site within the search engines.
Link popularity, put simply, refers to the number and quality of the incoming links that are pointing to your site.  A link from another site is like a vote, and the more votes you can get, the higher you will rank in the search engine

[Editor’s note: With this article, we’re welcoming guest contributor, Gareth Davies of GSINC, to the Marketing Pilgrim team.]
How come some ECommerce websites flourish but many just drift along or even fail altogether?
Having worked with many websites that have grown to turnovers of £1m GBP (and more) we have been able to observe common traits that apply to almost all of them

Karri Flatla has given me a good topic for a future article in the business coaching series. She argues that B2B firms should publish their prices on their web site…
What is worse is that business owners will rationalize their choice to not list prices until they are blue in the face, claiming they want their visitors to shop value, not price

Best practices for search engine optimization are constantly evolving, and are starting to look more like conventional business plans. Following best practices can greatly contribute to the success or failure of your SEO efforts.

Today’s best practices fall into four main categories:
Subject-Matter ExpertiseInformation ArchitectureTechnical ImplementationMarketing

Check out today’s SearchDay to get the details on today’s SEO best practices from Eric Enge, president of Stone Temple Consulting.

Getting a WordPress blog up and running is easy. However, getting the best search results from your WordPress blog has typically required more than a little creativity.

Thanks to Ross McKillop at downloadsquad.com, this task has been simplified for experienced as well as new users. In his helpful article, WordPress: The Complete Post-Install Checklist, Ross provides 23 clearly illustrated tips for WordPress users

[The following is part of the continuing series of advice for marketing agencies. Andy Beal offers various business coaching services]
I know what you’re thinking. You’ve read the title of this article and you think Andy Beal must have lost his mind. How in the world can you increase the size of your marketing firm by actually saying “no” to a client? Isn’t that counter-productive, you’re asking? Surely you need to find ways to say “yes” to your clients, so you can get their business and grow your agency

The "Is SEO Overrated Or Rocket Science" debate continues. Sigh. OK, I give
up. I guess we have to have this every two or three years. All the arguments I’m
reading, I’ve read (or made before). But maybe that’s healthy in an industry
where you always have new people coming in. I’ll give you the rundown on the
latest leaders that are weighing in

There is a reason that smaller agile companies and entrepreneurs will always have a place on the web. Big corporations just don’t get it sometimes.
Take for example Apple’s iPhone launch. Both Cingular and Apple where in the perfect position to dominate the free market for the product. After all, they are the source and in the end, it all comes from them

Everyone and their dog (yes, there are a few dogs out there with their own blogs) have started up a blog these days, but many people just aren’t taking the steps needed to optimize their blogs for both readers and search engines. While blogs can be business related (another blog about mesothelioma anyone?) they can also be personal where you talk about the great ham sandwich you had for lunch today or the crappy service you had at that trendy restaurant last night

It seems like every other week, someone will come out with a story that just catches fire in the SEO community. After all, we SEOs need something to gossip about don’t we? The story of the week has been Google indexing CSS & JS files. From there Threadwatch & Wolf Howl picked it up.
I think most of these people have it wrong though

Andy has covered how to make your SEO company more profitable, but understanding the inner workings and personnel management of an SEO firm is also an important facet of owning an SEO firm. In light of the recent acquisitions of SEO companies, here are some tips on what to do after acquiring an independent SEO company.

SEO requires a certain amount of creativity, flexibility and uncertainty—pretty much anathema to the corporate world

The new SEO Book sales letter has been live for a little while now. (I’d love to know how it’s doing so far!) Although I think pretty much all Internet marketing sales letters are eerily remniscent of Kevin Trudeau infomercials, this is a definite improvement.
Brian Clark at Copyblogger, who rewrote the page for Aaron, unveiled the letter with an explanation on why the copy is so long (emphasis added):

This is not a John Grisham paperback

When I wrote “The Top 10 Business Mistakes Search Marketing Firms Make”, I included a few of the items I commonly discover, when working with marketing firms, especially search marketers. The advice, if followed, would certainly help any marketing firm (not just search marketers), hoping to grow their business by avoiding the mistakes and pitfalls so common in the industry

Search engine optimization for small market sites and businesses just got a bit easier with the launch of SoloSEO; a web based self service project management tool for SEO campaigns.
Is SoloSEO the replacement for an expert SEO staff member or agency? No. But for those businesses which want to try and tackle basic SEO themselves or learn from the ground up, or for the private SEO contractor looking to consolidate multiple tools into one all around simplified project management offering, SoloSEO could be a Godsend.
SoloSEO.com service provides professional SEO tools and reports for finding and managing keywords, tracking website and page ranking data, and managing the link building process from start to finish.

I’m excited to bring you news of the launch of SoloSEO, a brand new project management solution for search engine optimization. I’ve been working with founder, Michael Jensen over the last few months - consulting on the development and launch - and I am blown away by what SoloSEO is able to offer.
While software for search engine optimization has existed for years, there really hasn’t been a solution that allows you to set-up, track, manage and progress your SEO campaign…until now (see screenshots)

Whether it’s white hat, black hat, paid links or just straight up spam, Matt Cutts is the man with the answers when it comes to search engine optimization and marketing. WebProNews caught up with Matt at last week’s PubCon in Las Vegas, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of SEO/SEM and Google’s move toward becoming a comprehensive social media portal and also offered further insight on his specific objectives when attending events such as PubCon.

With all the hype recently concerning BMW.de’s de-listing and subsequent reinclusion in Google’s web index, here’s a link to Matt Cutt’s guide to submitting a reinclusion request to Google. If you want to jump straight to the reinclusion form, here it is.