Article marketing is one of the most overrated but still underused tactic when it comes to search engine optimization. If you check sites such as Article Dashboard, and e-zine articles, there are many low quality articles in there that are posted for the simple reason of getting a link back. Not many people really do article marketing right. But does it even matter anymore?

I think it does. But if your do justice to your articles. A lot of people put together a few sentences, add a few keywords, and expect articles to do wonders for their sites. But the truth is, if you do not provide a unique value with your articles, you are pretty much wasting your time. Think about it. Why would anyone want to waste a click on your footer link if your article offers nothing of value?

So what do I mean by providing unique value? That really depends on your target audience. If you have a website about recipes, you can talk about ways to find new recipes, or difference between Texan and Floridan foods. Now I am no chef and don’t know much about recipes, but you can find millions of article ideas by going through forums and even Answer sites such as Yahoo! answer. A successful article is one that not only has the right keywords but is compelling enough that makes people want to click on your links. Anything short of that, and you may get more out of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy than writing articles.

That’s got to be the lamest claim that I have heard during my career. There seems to be a whole lot of folks (underground marketers) who believe that advertising on Google as No. 1 actually pushes you down in search engine rankings. Now, I am all for fascinating conspiracy theories such as governments hiring UFOs and things like that. However, just because you are ranked No. 1 on the paid section of the SERPs doesn’t mean that Google will penalize you.

Google makes a lot of money from folks that are obsessed with the No. 1 position. Their business is built around maximizing the amount of money they snag from advertisers. However, for Google to think that it can create even more hunger for the No. 1 position in the paid section but penalizing organic listings, the folks there should be smoking something.

Google does talk about how being in No. 1 position is wonderful for your business. However, they simply have no interest in pushing people down in the rankings for no reason. At the end of the day, the organic search is very volatile and you can move from position No. 1 to nowhere in matter of days with no apparent reason. Believe it or not that happens to a lot of people (including top SEO pros). So my answer to this question is, stop blaming others and start looking at what is it that you are doing wrong. Maybe it’s that the competition is growing stronger. Maybe you are leaking page rank, or your site-map is broken. But if you don’t believe me, just turn your PPC campaign off and see if you can recover your organic position. Can’t get more simple than that, can it?

That’s the most burning question that people who are new to search engine optimization often ask. “How can I get up to speed with SEO fast!” That’s really the nature of the game. People who don’t know anything about search engine optimization don’t want to waste their time reading multiple books and training packages to come up to speed. It takes time and is not the best way of using your time to read the same things over and over again. So I am going to use this post to talk about how I would go about learning Search Engine Optimization:

• Read Books: SEO books may not be as important as they used to be. The industry is too volatile now to get a snapshot of it in a book. Having said that, books are getting updated every 6 months or a year. You should at least get a new SEO book every quarter to read on the new topics. Of course, if you are a SEO pro, you can keep up with the latest developments with blogs, forums, and so on, but if you are VP of marketing and just want to know enough to be dangerous, books are the way to go (SEO Bible is currently the one SEO book that is updated with social media and other new developments in the industry).
• Read Blogs: there are not many SEO blogs out there for beginners, but you can use blogs such as “search engine watch” to keep up with the latest developments in the industry. You may not understand everything that is going on, but you wouldn’t look baffled when someone talks about, let’s say, “local” search.
• Advanced Training: a lot of SEO gurus used to have books, white-papers, and things of that nature for those who were interested in SEO training. Guys like Aaron Walls created digital SEO training packages that were much more comprehensive and cutting edge than ordinary books. But they also understood the nature of industry, so that’s why we see membership sites such as SEO Book and Immediate Edge. I would focus on these training packages after reading a book or two on SEO. These are not for everyone but those who want to stay on the edge of the search industry.
• Seminars/In-class Training: Bruce Clay and SEMPO both have in class training and certification program for SEO. Once again, these are not for everyone as they are expensive. Having said that, a lot of people prefer going to seminars such as SES to learn things than actually taking time to read up on stuff.
• Paid Subscriptions: I talked about subscription-based training courses (e.g. SEOBook) above. But sites such as SEOmoz offer subscription based information (similar to Economist’s service). You get the latest industry analysis and premium news using such services. If you can afford it, these sites are worth looking at.
• SEO In Practice: practice makes perfect, and one way to do that is by buying a software package such as Web Position or SEO-Elite. These packages have comprehensive manuals that show you how to do things with practice (given with their software). I personally learned a lot of what I know from playing with these software packages.

As you can see by now, there is no short-cut in this process. It does take time, and if you don’t know anything, it will take even more time. But reading a book usually is the fastest way to get your feet wet in the SEO industry.

Search Engine Marketing, Inc. - Driving Search Traffic to Your Company’s Web Site, 2nd edition will finally be released in less than a week. Bill Hunt’s first book was a huge success and needless to say, it was one of the best search engine marketing books in the world. Now the new book will have content on Social media, widgets, and other new media channels. The table of content for the new book is finally available on Amazon, and the book does look promising. But I guess we will find out in a week how valuable these 672 pages are.

Ladies and Gents. The Yahoo! deal saga enters a new chapter today as Yahoo! board agrees to restart talks with AOL about a deal of some sort. It is interesting that Yahoo! is opening itself up for another assault by Microsoft, and I am sure Mr. Icahn would do anything to get Yahoo! into Microsoft’s hands. Having said that, I don’t agree with Icahn that Google will kill Yahoo! if a deal is not reach with Microsoft. I believe Google has already cornered both Microsoft and Yahoo!, and even a joint effort would not lead to Google’s demise. Google is the top dog in the search industry for now, and something drastic needs to happen for that to change. I guess the real question now is who will end up with AOL.

You may have noticed that Ask.com has unveiled their latest service, their search engine portal for kids. We did hear a while back about Ask.com’s new strategy on focusing on portals (e.g. women, kids, …), so this could be just the beginning of the new direction that Ask is taking to search. The portal is OK for what it is. Kids can search for movies, games, and … with this portal. They can also draw on the front page canvas. So it is entertaining. It’s too colorful, and will probably attract small kids. I also liked the school house for kids though I am not sure how many kids will give it a try. Here is just hoping that Ask will continue to innovate in the right places. Ask Kids is a good start.

So I was sitting on my chair late at night thinking about how far we have come since essentially 2000 (that’s where my memory really ends…). We have a super-pimped Google algorithm which gives you decent results, we have Microsoft trying hard to catch up with Google. And we have Yahoo! which is stuck in a time wormhole and doesn’t know which direction to go. But then I thought to myself, what happens if we took away search engines for one month. How would the world change without search engines? My theory is that a whole lot of people wouldn’t think of it as a big deal. While a whole lot of people search for things on Google, Yahoo!, and other sites, they can still survive without search engines. What do you think? Can humanity survive a month without search engines (assumption here is that MSN, Google, Yahoo!, and all their services go down for a month).

Let’s say you pick up a book about search engine optimization and read it from cover to cover. You probably read about a lot techniques that don’t work, and those that do work are not easy to implement. One of these techniques that you are surely going to read about in any book is the concept of creating linkbaits to get incremental links to your website. While linkbaiting is very pleasing to the ear and we all want to read more about, implementing a successful linkbaiting campaign can be very difficult.

The gurus tell you that you should focus on How-tos or reports with pretty graphs on them, but I can tell you from the experience that nothing sell like contorversy. But if you add my secret ingredient, outside-the-box, to controversy, you can get a whole lot of links and attention on the web. Now here is where I go and take credit for coming up with this method, but the truth is I found out how powerful it is when I read a story about a wild solution to stop illegal immigration in the U.S.

It’s a very simple concept. If you talk about controversial things, you either get to offend a few people, or rose the interest of those who are bored with their daily dose of news. Add the wild idea to the mix, and you are going to get people who are in the middle and want to show they are smarter than you or they see flaws in your approach. If you follow search engine optimization books, you end up taking approaches that have been done before, and that doesn’t set you apart in your market, now does it? Controversy sells! Whether we like it or not.

We all want to rank high on Google, right? A lot of people believe that signing up for a service such as WordTracker is all they need to find their way to the top of search engines. While it’s true that having the right keywords can help you get to where you want to get, you simply can’t expect to keep Google happy if you don’t pay attention to what Google is telling you. Google’s Webmaster guidelines are often ignored by webmasters and that is simply unacceptable in this day and age.

More importantly, if you read all the documentation that Google provides you with on its site, you can get a good understanding of what Google likes and what Google hates. For instance, if you read the documentation online, you should know that Google does not like cloaking or thin affiliate sites, and it’s not just for pay per click. I have had many of my thin affiliate sites penalized by Google for no reason, and the only possible for that would be the massive Google slap put on thin affiliates.

But when it comes to keyword research, Google Adwords Keyword tool is so powerful. It’s a hidden treasure really. Google not only tells you what it regards as relevant to each page on your site, it also gives you the LSI keywords that you should use to make your pages look more relevant to Google. It is simply amazing how many people do not use the Google Adwords Tool and settle for WordTracker or Keyword Discovery alone. Those tools are powerful but they don’t give you an indication on what Google actually likes to see on your sites. Who knew the best keyword tool was free?

If you have been paying attention to the latest SEO agency rankings from major reports such as that from Jupiter Research, you are probably familiar with names such as iCrossing and iProspect. These companies have been consistently ranked high on the reports from Jupiter and Forrester. But are these guys overrated?

It really depends how you define overrated. These companies are great at what they do. They have designed sophisticated SEO processes to achieve the best rankings possible for your company. They employ and test some of the best and brightest marketers around, so there is a good chance that your company ends up getting a marketing genius to manage your SEO. But here is the kicker. Not everyone gets the A-team with these companies. Not every marketer is a genius, and at some point you are going to be assigned a team that is not worth the large sum of money that you will pay to these companies. In addition, some of these companies are often behind by 6 months or so in their approaches to SEO. So don’t expect these companies to do guerrilla marketing for your business.

The plus side is that these companies have a lot of awards and if you have to sell them to the CEO of your company, you can easily use their awards as the selling points. But other than that, I find these services to be expensive for most small businesses. I personally rather pay a young bright solo marketer a quarter of the money these guys usually ask for to do the job, but that’s just me.