These days are good days for SEO professionals as SEO has again become one the hottest internet marketing topics. Companies from various industries are looking to improve their search engine visibility by implementing best SEO practices. Implementing title tags, meta tags, and alt tags is a must these days. Sure, some of these techniques are rather dated and do not offer much benefit but not implementing them is a bonehead move.

Unfortunately, executives, who by the way don’t know anything about anything, think of SEO as a magic pill. I have personally dealt with a few executives who believe they can go from let’s say 10K visitors per month to 10M by implementing the right title tags. In most industries, traffic is not really the KPI that you are looking for, conversion is. So, that would even make it more difficult to get a huge boost from just putting the right title tags.

What SEO can do, if done right, is give you more visibility through search engines. But you need to consider best practices + emerging techniques (e.g. SMO, ORM) to make it happen. But landing optimization, web usability, and magnetic content also need to be considered if you expect to get anything out of your SEO efforts. Implementing title tags, optimizing your URLs, and taking advantage of other best practices are nice and will give you a little boost. But don’t expect to go from zero to a million just by doing the minimum.

The thing about Google is that they constantly test so many features that sometimes it’s difficult to find them all. The one that I just noticed today was the search box that you get when you search for a few plural terms such as Banks or Restaurants. You all probably know that Google showed search boxes for terms such as Amazon a few weeks back, but I wasn’t aware that they did that for plural terms. It sort of shows that Google is thinking more about consumer behavior to enrich the user experience for its audience. Someone who is searching for banks is most likely searching for a bank (location, information), so it does make sense a lot to have the search box ready and handy for these searchers. Here is a screen shot if you have missed it:

The last time Google did this, other companies claimed that Google was getting greedy and the search box was taking something away from their listing on the SERPs. This time, I don’t think anyone can complain.

I am sure you all have heard this piece of advice about how having keywords in your domain will help you get ranked better on Google. That is partially true, but it really all comes down to branding and what you do with your domain. It is true that if you run a credit card site, creditcards.com fits your business better than a flyingbird. But there is a chance that Flyingbird could get ranked higher than creditcards.com if they get the SEO right. Now, I am not suggesting that registering strange domains can actually help your SEO. What I am suggesting is that the domain name is one of many factors that search engines take into account when ranking your site [Besides, you can always add a keyword to your directories names (e.g. Flyingbird.com/creditcards) which will help a bit with the overall ranking of the site. ].

Search engine optimization really about the audience first and search engines second. You can’t optimize for search engines and expect to keep your readers happy as well. I know a bunch of people keyword stuffed the heck out of their sites, but not only they got banned, the practice was not an audience friendly one. I understand why James Martel believes that an affiliate site is better off if it has keywords in its domain name, but if you have a paragraph as your domain name, your users won’t remember it. So you’ll lose a bunch of traffic that you would’ve gotten with a shorter, sweeter domain name. Search engine optimization firms are focused on getting you the best rankings possible, but the better ones take your audience into account. You can’t and shouldn’t sacrifice everything for the sake of reaching No. 1 position on Google. Ranking won’t matter if you don’t convert.

Now I can’t tell that for sure as Google needs to either verify or deny this, but I have not been able to get to Google.com for a few minutes now. If that doesn’t mean servers are down, I don’t know what is. It could be a maintenance that is going on @ Google, but I have never been seen Google go down this long. When I tried Google, I received a message from Comcast as following:

Registration Currently Unavailable

We are currently upgrading our systems. As a result, the feature you have requested is temporarily unavailable. Unfortunately, our Customer Service Representatives have no additional information and are unable to assist you with this matter at this time. Please be assured that we are working diligently to restore this feature as quickly as possible. We apologize for this inconvenience. Please check back shortly, and thank you for your patience.

This is definitely strange. But I doubt it’s an ISP problem as other sites show up easily. Very strange!

After Microsoft failed to woo Yahoo! folks in order to acquire and integrate Yahoo! technologies with those of  their own, some have claimed that Steve will invest the money he had set aside for Yahoo! in search technologies that could allow Microsoft to challenge and dethrone Google as the leader of the pack. Now that is all exciting but who really believes that Microsoft will actually do that. Will Microsoft buy a few small companies to fill some small gaps? Absolutely. But at this point, I think even Microsoft doesn’t believe that they have a chance to effectively challenge Google without Yahoo!

Microsoft has not really been a front runner in industries that its involved in. Microsoft loves to play catch up, and that is what it has done for the past few years in the gaming industry, the search industry, and a few others. So we can be sure that Microsoft will not come up with a revolutionary search technology that would upstage Google. It’s not as if Microsoft has been gaining a lot of ground on the top two anyway, so the most logical thing for Microsoft will be to wait for Yahoo! to stumble again and come back to the table with another offer.

For Yahoo! it’s pretty much the last chance right now. Jerry Yang can’t fail in his mission to bring value to Yahoo! shareholders or he will be forced out. Yahoo! shareholders are very nervous these days, and who knows if they can resist another offer buy Microsoft (not that they did the first time).

Now this feature may have been in place for quite some time, but frankly I have not used Yahoo! for so many months that I haven’t noticed many features that they have been implementing (expect SearchMonkey that is). But I noticed today that when you search for a keyword phrase on Yahoo!, you get a highlight feature on the YRP. Basically as you are scrolling down through results on YRP, Yahoo! highlights the search result you are hovering over with your mouse. Now I don’t necessarily know how useful this feature is to search savvy individuals, but is the first time I have seen it on Yahoo!. For me it’s a pretty neat addition to a mediocre engine.

Still does not mean I will be using Yahoo! anytime soon.

Search Monkey of course! I don’t personally have any affection towards yahoo, but since they announced the search Monkey project, I have been desperate to see what I can really do with it. I have just received the beta invitation from Yahoo! and can’t wait to get my hands dirty with the API. Now, I am not suggesting that Microsoft would’ve killed this project, but you never want to commit to a technology when the company that owns it is about to be bought. Of course, Microsoft will eventually buy Yahoo! but not for another few months anyway.

Interested in search monkey? Sign up for it here.

I am sure you all have heard this piece of advice about how having keywords in your domain will help you get ranked better on Google. That is partially true, but it really all comes down to branding and what you do with your domain. It is true that if you run a credit card site, creditcards.com fits your business better than a flyingbird. But there is a chance that Flyingbird could get ranked higher than creditcards.com if they get the SEO right. Now, I am not suggesting that registering strange domains can actually help your SEO. What I am suggesting is that the domain name is one of many factors that search engines take into account when ranking your site [Besides, you can always add a keyword to your directories names (e.g. Flyingbird.com/creditcards) which will help a bit with the overall ranking of the site. ].

Search engine optimization really about the audience first and search engines second. You can’t optimize for search engines and expect to keep your readers happy as well. I know a bunch of people keyword stuffed the heck out of their sites, but not only they got banned, the practice was not an audience friendly one. I understand why James Martel believes that an affiliate site is better off if it has keywords in its domain name, but if you have a paragraph as your domain name, your users won’t remember it. So you’ll lose a bunch of traffic that you would’ve gotten with a shorter, sweeter domain name. Search engine optimization firms are focused on getting you the best rankings possible, but the better ones take your audience into account. You can’t and shouldn’t sacrifice everything for the sake of reaching No. 1 position on Google.

So much for not going a dime above the original offer, as Microsoft claimed when Yahoo! rejected its initial offer. Major news sources are now claiming that Microsoft has upped its offer by “several dollars” in an attempt to finish the deal with Yahoo! as soon as possible. Yahoo! turned down the first offer, considering it to have undervalued Yahoo!. However, it will be hard for Yahoo!’s board of directors to turn down the second offer as Yahoo! has not exactly been setting the world ablaze with their performance in the past few quarters.

For Microsoft, this shows a high degree of desperation to compete with the almighty Google in the search market. Google has singlehandedly dominated both Yahoo! and Microsoft over the past years, and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that will change, regardless of Microsoft-Yahoo deal. At the same time, Microsoft can not lose this opportunity to mount a meaningful challenge against Google. Steve Ballmer has claimed numerous times that he could do without Yahoo! if Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo is rejected, but deep down he knows that without Yahoo! Microsoft will have a very small chance of challenging Google. But here is the catch. Even with Yahoo!, Microsoft will not be able to kill off Google. Besides, one has to think about the challenges that this acquisition will cause for Microsoft (e.g. integration, employee retention, clash of cultures).

For what it’s worth, it’s more intriguing to see Yahoo and Microsoft combine forces against Google. It will probably push Google to be even better than they are today. But with only two major entities going at each other, we are left with almost a duopoly. More competition always help, so it’s a shame to see the likes of Ask! throw in the towel.