If you a smart marketer, it probably isn’t. But many companies are cutting their work force these days, and I have been personally surprised that in-house SEOs have been let go. A few folks that I know have been let go due to the economy “not cooperating.” But is that really a logical approach in these tough times?

Now, this doesn’t happen in all industries. Industries that in general have been skeptical towards SEO and Internet marketing in the past are more likely to take such a rash decision. Companies are scared. They want to cut costs and ride this economic tsunami out. But cutting SEO budget in these times is a stupid decision.

SEO helps many companies manage their CPAs more effectively. After all, you are not paying a fortune to just get clicks, and you are not really getting into bidding wars. And now if you cut SEO, you are probably going to cut PPC as well. And that’s when you should be investing in these areas. You tell me! Is that really smart?

A lot of companies are used to hiring folks from outside (consultants) and paying them a fortune to get their search engine optimization done. But in-house SEO can be just as effective and show a company’s dedication to a long-term SEO strategy. But as someone who has worked as both in-house SEO and a SEO consultant, I can tell you that working as an in-house SEO is not so much fun that you may have come to believe.

I remember when I started my 9-5 job as an in-house SEO. I had so many plans, and I wanted to achieve so much. What I did not realize at the time was a lot of those plans wouldn’t work out too well in a corporate environment. Working for a big company is like being a on huge boat. You can’t just change directions and introduce a new path like you would in a start-up. There will always be organizational resistance to new plans, and let’s not forget that the agility may not be there after all.

The biggest challenge for an in-house SEO is getting other business units involved and show them why SEO matters. I remember my plans were questioned all the time, and folks were asking if it was “necessary” to change Title Tags and so on. If you can’t have your IT team on board or get support in other business units, it will be hard to get anything done. Implementing SEO changes can be as simple as just adding tags or as complex as doing major redesigns. But regardless of what changes you have in mind, you should always try to get all internal stakeholders involved to make sure they understand why your proposed changes need to be done. Now I wish that were easy

A few years ago I got my first break in the Internet industry. I was introduced to the whole field of search engine optimization, and I had a great mentor that thought me how to get started in this field fast. But even then there were folks who were delving deep into the black hat world. These folks pulled off cloaking, door ways, and even artificial traffic. But I always hated folks who were spamming blogs. Now fast forward a few years and folks are still doing it.

If you own a blog, you probably know exactly what I am talking about. I am not just talking about those vicious “Viagra Cialis” comments. I am talking about folks who insert a 5 word keyword phrase and link back to their own blogs to reap rewards from your hard work. It’s true that you can no follow all these links, but according to my tests, these links still provide some juice for spammers.

I don’t mind spammers if they actually provide valuable comments on my blog. But if you are just thanking me and sending my visitors to your site, that is unacceptable. Besides, you stand much better chance of attracting my visitors by sharing something valuable with them. Unfortunately, spamming blogs will continue to be used by these folks, and there is no end in sight.

I have been preaching about how the current SEO as we know it will end soon. The way folks are searching is changing fast. Folks are hanging out in social networks, and we have more than text to deal with these days. SEO won’t be dead anytime soon though. It will change for the better. I have bashed Google in the past for their double standards and their buggy algorithm. The fact that a domain with no useful content can get ranked in top 10 on Google for the keyword phrase it contains is simply unacceptable in this new age.

In truth, search engines were designed to deal with text. With the emergence of video and audio, we have seen companies introducing universal search and other ways to allow searchers to search for the multimedia content. But folks are searching for things on Twitter and Facebook. They are asking for recommendation from experts. They are sharing info with others, and content is being created in the speed of light. Search engines simply haven’t kept up with these new developments.

Search is changing, and algorithms will change too. Whether it’s universal personalized search or a new form of social search, change is on the way. SEO will survive. To borrow a passage from the mathematician in the Jurassic Park, SEOs “will always find a way.” SEO professionals will adapt, but SEO 2.0 (or 2.5) will raise the bar higher for search engine professionals. The future is all about value + engagement. Those  who find creative ways to provide value and engage more visitors at the same time will survive? Others? They will probably join the dinosaurs.

Now that’s the million dollar question. Let’s say you go to 1&1, and you decide to register your domain for $6-7. Should you pay for extra years upfront to get more love from Google? I first heard about this very issue a few years ago at a conference. A SEO professional was claiming that the length of your contract was very important to Google as longer contracts showed your dedication to build online assets and provide value to your visitors on a long-term basis. Well, that sounds like a noble idea.

Guess what? It’s not! I have seen sites that have a 6 year contract and are parked using Adsense for Domains or Sedo. That doesn’t sound like providing value to visitors. This is one of the myths that have been circulated by fake SEO consultants to justify those big pay checks (believe me, there are crazier so-called “ranking factors” out there). Google does care about you providing the best experience to its users, but it is not going to penalize you if you decide not to commit to a long-term contract for your domain. A lot of folks claim these things without properly testing them out (Testing doesn’t just involve creating two sites and choosing a different contract length for each but also isolating variables as well). By testing things, you can not only figure out what doesn’t work, but you may also stumble on what actually does work with search engines.

Getting banned on Google is one of the most painful experiences that one may go through in life Not literally, but if you have taken time to really optimize a site and get links to it, falling off the face of Google can be painful. But there is a difference between Google banning your site and your IP. If you do cloaking or use door ways to trick search bots, your site will be banned, and you don’t show up for Google searches.

But your IP can get banned if you are deemed to be doing something nasty, like running an automated script to ping Google’s DBs. I remember a year ago when I saw Google leaking out advertisers Max CPC by mistake. I started searching for thousands of terms to gather some information on my rivals. I was also refreshing my searches 10 or 20 times to make sure I wasn’t missing anyone. After a while, Google started asking me to fill captcha boxes to prove that I was not a bot.

The same thing happened to me with Web Position. The software is very powerful and it allows you to track your search engine rankings easily. But, I did go overboard with the software. First I added way too many keywords to track. I added thousands of keywords to Web Position, and I was running the report three times a day. That’s when folks from my company started seeing the captcha box. Needless to say, I was reprimanded for my troubles.

What you don’t want to do with Google is give them any indication that you are a web-bot trying to gather information from Google by pinging it 100 times a minute. Google can also mistake your efforts as a DNS attack. Either way, I don’t recommend doing it from your corporate network. Also, don’t go overboard with tracking software packages. Do go on extremes, and there is a good chance you won’t have to deal with Google IP ban ever! At least that’s true in my case.

It is a nice trend. I got to admit. I like it very much. A couple of years ago, in order to have the best SEO tools you’d have to spend a fortune every months. But Google Adwords toolset is a beast of a tool. MSN has some decent keyword research tools as well, and Yahoo! is still hanging around. But the wave of open source SEO tools is truly changing the game. Who doesn’t like free tools?

Giving away simple SEO tools is nothing new. Folks have been doing it for years. It’s a great link-bait and can help you get that extra push you need to climb the rankings. But as more folks started to give tools away, something had to give. After all, people are not going to use your tool if it is identical to 1000 of other free tools on the Internet. Fast forward to 2009 and we are seeing Firefox toolbars, plug-ins, and all kinds of free crazy tools that pretty much do most things you can do with premium tools.

Premium tools may not die on us, but the pressure is on their owners to improve them dramatically. You simply can’t get away with having a mediocre product these days, and we are all better for it.

What’s your take: what’s your favorite free SEO tool?

One of the biggest mistakes that newbie SEOentists make is assuming that quantity actually matters in your link building process. Well. I am not going to tell you that quantity doesn’t matter at all, but search engine optimization is played by slightly different rules.

Most sites that are dominating popular niches on the search engines have thousands of incoming links. So, it’s simple to look at TechCrunch and come to believe that those guys are ranked number 1 because their millions of incoming links. I’d like to think of backlink quantity as a tie-breaker. If I go against a site identical to mine, as far as SEO is concerned, I should be able to beat it if I have more backlinks. Now I am assuming that everything is equal between the two of us, and I just happen to have a bunch of links from sites that are not that important (assuming we both have the same number of quality backlinks).

I am really simplifying this whole thing, but one link from a PR 10 site is more important than thousands of links from PR 0 or 1 blogs. There is just no comparison. Now, keep in mind that a quality backlink will also have a quality anchor text. But whatever you do, don’t ever assume that you can just overwhelm your organic search competitors by getting crappy PR 0 links from thousands of Weblogs.

Aaron Wall has done it again. The guy is known for creating some of the best SEO tools available on the Web, and SEO toolbar is no different. A few days ago, I was on Twitter talking about this new service, and I thought maybe it was just me. But after hearing what others had to say about this tool, I can now call this tool a smash hit.

The tool allows you to analyze a web page’s qualities (PR, Yahoo links, Dmoz,…) on the fly. But my favorite feature is the compare sites feature. You can compare your site against those of your competitors to figure out where you need to focus on to climb the rankings.

If you haven’t downloaded SEO Toolbar, please DO NOT do it. I am a bit greedy when it comes to tools, and I want to have this one to myself

Being a hypocrite has become a talent in the SEO industry. A lot of folks go to all these conferences and learn all these cool new techniques, and they somehow become preachers for the cause. But how can you be a SEO guru, if you do not take time to optimize the title of your own website (which by the way you are sending folks to get search engine consulting).

Being a search engine guru is more than just knowing what might work. You actually have to put things in practice and have results to show for it. Nobody is going to hire an SEO that doesn’t have results to show for it. But the self-proclaimed gurus are not out to be SEO professionals. They just want to make quick cash, and some of them are not too smart either.

If somebody is claiming to be a SEO expert, check their website. See what terms they are getting ranked for. Most of all, see if they are doing basic on page SEO optimization for their own sites. A site that does not have a decent title is often managed by a person who doesn’t know much about SEO.

Am I wrong?