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Recently I read identifying yourself as an SEO was tantamount to painting a big Google target on your back. It seems that Google has decided to punish anyone caught helping the other (not so SEO savvy) kids in class. They want a ‘natural order’ to the Net, not an artificial one that has been augmented by skilled practitioners of the SEO arts…

Lest we forget Google despises system tampering so it was really no great shock to hear Google will apply a penalty to your PR rankings if you are found openly flaunting your SEO skills for hire.

Actually it’s a shame the news got out. I’ve been sitting on that priceless piece of information for a while now. In fact, if you are a regular visitor to my site, you would have noticed I changed my site slogan and basic words/branding. I dropped the SEO nomenclature when I figured out this was happening back in the Summer.

So for all you SEO experts out there, keep waiving the SEO flag for the search engines to find, raise your profile - and your chin - as high as you can. Let Google see you coming a mile away and watch what happens… *dastardly chuckle*

Me… I have other plans and I’ve been silently working them for a while now. And yes, it’s quite a paradox we face - how do we market openly and yet not get marked for punishment for offering our services. Quite the conundrum…

Wouldn’t it be good if someone had an answer *wink*

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Internet Marketing are evolving. Every day more and more websites appear on the Internet touting their wares. Each month, advertisers commit more and more resources to the new frontier of online or Internet Marketing. Certain directories and other ‘classic’ information sources are losing ground - and losing it rapidly as this new medium picks up speed.

– What can be done? Plenty actually…if you know what to do. But first…

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SEO is an important aspect of Internet Marketing, and what many people don’t understand is how time consuming and laborious much of SEO actually is. It’s not sexy, it’s not easy, it’s detailed, deliberate and some times down right dull. Woohoo! Did I ever pick a peachy career *wink*

But seriously, the analysis of information and how it connects to other clusters of information is a fascinating subject to some - and I’m one of those odd folks that gets a major kick out of helping others market themselves and their business online…

Which is why I’ve been tracking the chatter online about this new piece of ‘killer SEO’ software called Market Samurai. (click image to enlarge)

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Authority, advertising and effective search. That’s what google is offering with Knols. Google Knol’s are new. They offer the apparent ease of unprecedented publication and distribution for your content. But what are they, how will they ultimately get used and will they survive long enough to make it into the mainstream of Internet Marketing? And for those interested in SEO/SEM there’s the million dollar question… do Knol’s get indexed by the search engines?

“What is a knol?”

A Knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic. It’s a single web page and it resides within the protected walls of Google’s dominion. Some experts are crying “foul” and claiming Google is a media company rather than a search company and is doing ‘this’ for the money, but frankly all the noise is somewhat moot. Google has already done it. The Knol is here, what we do with it, and what the implications are is still unfolding.

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Knol SEO is a popular new search phrase, and at the time of writing this post, I hold the #1 spot on Google for the phrase “knol seo“, and just in case Google sees fit to make a liar out of me, here’s a screen shot I just grabbed as proof

Why are Knols important?

It’s the old truism ‘content is king’ and Google proves making Knols to promote your business, products and services is a great way to achieve enhanced Internet Marketing exposure.  And unlike Wikipedia…

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I always believed this time would come: the web experience polarized into two distinct camps: (1) the grazers and (2) the ruthless researcher. A recent article by usability guru Jakob Nielsen seems to share my opinion too.

According to Mr Nielsen, web users are “getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online.” Nielsen’s annual web habits report also shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online too. Here are the report findings…

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Remapping Your URL and Safeguarding Your SEO

In the last article I discussed the merits of actively designing your website URL to support SEO. At the end of the article I promised to explain how we can change or remap the URL and how we can do this to avoid losing our search engine ranking

Since the focus of this article is to show you how to do things right, I will not explain how to use the 404 not found page, or the less than helpful “We’ve moved” redirection pages. Nope, I’m going to go straight to the heart of the matter…

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Successful SEO and Internet Marketing is always in the details, so what has the design of your URL got to do with anything? A heck of a lot actually… But first I should begin by explaining what a permalink is.

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another blogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn’t change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent and in a perfect world, pretty…

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Which is better: a 100% custom website or a customized “stock” solution? I’d vote for the customized stock solution over the 100% custom solution any day. And here’s why…

I have a strong aversion to Version 1 code installs. I’d rather version 2, and 3 is better - 4.5 is better still. 100% custom coding is always V1 and first generation code sucks. It’s buggy. It’s usually incomplete. It has user interface issues. The error trapping is rubbish. It locks up. It crashes. Want proof?

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SEO Services for the UK from Canada? Yes indeed…

Recently when I was reviewing my web stats, I noticed a new stream of traffic about SEO and SEM and this time it was coming in from over seas - the UK to be precise.

In fact I noted seo services in the UK was a popular term for my site and a bit of digging revealed partly why this was true.

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