SEO vs. PPC – Will Use of One Increase with Demand of Another?

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As companies begin using more and more online marketing, SEO is only going to get more difficult to do well.  In some cases, businesses are worried spammers are going to get the organic listings more readily and are starting to look to PPC marketing for their search result answers.

This is something that’s come to notice mainly from Google’s real-time search results that were recently added.  This addition favors fresh topical content, over quality results Google’s algorithm can find.  This is something that spammers can get into very easily, and this is why more companies are starting to consider PPC and AdWords, where spammers are not able to get into at all.

HighPosition.net has more detail on this story.

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SEO Jobs: Demand is Going Up For SEO Skills

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It looks like holiday shopping this year has moved even more heavily online.  As companies are realizing that more people are actively searching online for their commercial searches, they’re starting to see the value of search engine optimization.

Because of this, the IT industry is starting to anticipate a high demand for SEO skills in 2010.  (Yay for us professional SEOs!)  In Great Britain alone, demand for SEO and online marketing skills went up by 40% last year.

The skills of SEO, pay per click management, social media marketing and web design are all being looked for, ideally in a combined package.  SourceWire has all the details in an article based on this story in the UK.  (And I have to add a little something something here – Tulsa Marketing Online does in fact do SEO, PPC, social media and web design.  Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

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Social Media and SEO: How They Tie Together

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Social media’s been the big thing lately.  Mainly because it’s something almost everyone uses.  Not that many people know what search engine optimization is and the difference between on page optimization and off page optimization, or what PageRank sculpting is.  But you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t have a Facebook account.

Well, social media is very effective for business promotion – but the key to using it well is knowing how to make it tie into SEO.  Doing good social media is building relationships, and this fits in with SEO by making sure that these quality relationships help build your site and site pages’ reputation (in a good way, hopefully).

Adam Stafford from TechRadar has a great article on how these two things tie together and how to make them work, plus some great examples on how some companies have made them work well.

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Keywords Meta Tag Testing on Video

I’ve talked about how much it bugs me that so many people still think the keywords meta tag is the “secret trick” for SEO.  Well, back in October I put together a video demonstrating a test I did on this tag.  I tested Ask.com, Bing, Yahoo, and Google.  Does it work?  Is it really the secret to SEO?  You can see the results of how this turned out below.

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Basics on Quality Score – What It Is

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Just a quick post.  I put a tip on DailySEOTip about Google AdWords’s Quality Score.  I tried to make it short and sweet, although you do need to understand all of the acronyms (CTR, CPC, etc.) to understand it fully.

I do think it’s worth understanding because of the fact it can make a difference between a $0.30 click and a $5.00 click (seriously).  So if you use AdWords at ALL, learn about it – if not from me, then somewhere else, but it’s definitely worth investigating.

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Demographics and SEO – Targeting Your Pages

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Most SEOs look at the keywords for their research – but what about focus on the demographics?  By looking at the actual PEOPLE that visit your pages, it can make a big difference beyond the search positions.

Sure, doing solid SEO will get you into position.  But will that always be the best way to bring your best traffic?  Doing full research on your market and the people searching for your material can often bring to light details that, if focused on properly, can help convert visitors to business.

So many SEOs I see don’t ever think of their visitors past the search engine results page.  By looking at who is doing the searches and making the whole experience a better one for them, you’ll get better results (and Google will likely like you more for it).

Carrie Hill at Search Engine Land has a great article detailing how to do this, and more suggestions on how to make it work.

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Is Yahoo Selling Out? A Possible Sign…

It appears Yahoo’s performance is declining, and their deal with Microsoft (Bing is going to become the Yahoo master of services) is impending.  So they’re taking their “Hot Jobs” section – and selling it to the highest bidder.

They apparently need some extra money (not a strange thing to hear in these economic times).  I don’t blame them, since they expect between $350 million and $500 million.  The money they need as Google (and apparently Bing) are pushing their lowering search numbers.

For other details, check out Brafton’s story on this.

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I Saw CNBC: Inside the Mind of Google

I saw it – and it was good. It really was pretty good. They covered quite a bit in an hour, about the development of the company, how it got started, the main people involved. What impressed me was their coverage of some technical details (cloud computing, PageRank) while still keeping it easy to understand.

Naturally, the part I liked quite a bit was their coverage of AdWords.  According to CNBC, Google makes 98% of their profit from AdWords, although I’ve heard differently.  I don’t know for sure what percentage of their profits comes from AdWords – but right now, they’re averaging over 4 billion dollars a year.  They’re doing okay with it.

They did talk briefly about AdWords, talked about how anyone can advertise, and touched on how it operates.  They mentioned PageRank and how it affects positioning for ads (and how quality of a site affects it), but that was about it.  It was impressive coverage for the limited time they had.

They did also talk about Google Goggles – the funny thing was that they mentioned it probably wasn’t ready to go into production for a while.  But they did go live a few days ago – guess it’s in beta.  Although that’s a safe bet for anything Google.

Hopefully this publicity from “Inside the Mind of Google” is something that works out for them.  I really want to believe that they have truly good intentions, and that all of their machinations are to enhance the lives of their customers.  We’ll see what kind of responses come from this extra bit of attention.

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Be Found Online! By Best Buy?

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For those of you who don’t know who Danny Sullivan is – one, if you’re an SEO, shame on you.  Two, if you want to learn about SEO, learn who he is.

At any rate, Danny Sullivan is one of the most respected SEOs on the planet.  He knows his stuff.  He works diligently to learn about search engines (in particular, Google) and how they operate.

SEO is something that is becoming more and more well-known, as people and businesses realize this is how sites are to be found online.  Because of this, there are a lot of gimmicky SEO plugs (“Pay only $200/month and 1st page listings in 90 days!” types of stuff) going around.  They really annoy me.

Apparently Best Buy is getting in on this.  And they’re including social media in their “be found online” mix.  It’s through a company called “CloudProfile”.  And it’s FREE.

The best part?  They pitched to (of all people) Danny Sullivan.  And he’s taking them up on their offer.  See his word on it here.

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Google Hits Back Against Scammers

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Google’s changes lately have been quite thorough.  They’ve made changes for AdWords, they’re changing the way the search engine itself operates, and now they’re coming out to take a stand against online scams.

In particular, the schemes for how to “work-at-home” to use Google and make a ton of money are starting to get shut down by Google.  Google is starting to file lawsuits against these companies to bring them down.

For most people, these are familiar schemes – you see them in banner ads, with text like “Use Google to make 1000s of Dollars!”.  They generally operate by having a kit you send out for and then have you set up for automatic billing once a month (and many people don’t realize there’s automatic billing).

CNN has a bit more detail in this story.  I did find it rather amusing that under this story in their sponsored links, one of the ads said “I’m glad I lost my job! Jobless Dad makes $6493/month working online from home. Read how he…”

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