Search Engine Solutions Blog

Many things are hapeening right under our nose with no pulic attention. Working with Adobe 7 you’re doing text selection and right click. But have you noticed the “Yahoo Contextual Search” option right there? See yourself:

I searched Adobe website and it just laying there:

Yahoo Contextual Searching (part of Y!Q)

“If you select text, either a single word or phrase within a PDF, and right click with the mouse, then you are presented with menu item that allows you to use the Yahoo Contextual (Y!Q) Search Engine. For longer phrases especially, this returns better results than with a regular search. For more information on how Y!Q works, please vis it the Yahoo website at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/yq . ”

Why Google cannot sign nice partnerships like this, or they do? Maybe Google belives in monotheism ?

As someone who’s seating at  SEMPO Research Committee, we have worked hard to develop this survey to gain a better understanding of the nature and extent of SEO market.  Thanks to all SEMPO members and Radar Research LLC who participated in preparing  this survey.

This is your chance to have your voice heard. By participating in SEMPO’s 3rd annual State of the Market Survey, you have the opportunity to share your opinions and expertise. Whether you are seasoned in SEM or still wet behind the ears, your input is valued and needed!

Why should you take the survey?
Taking the survey will actually stimulate you to think about the resources you devote to SEO and paid search - which is a valuable exercise in itself.
First dibs - you will receive the preliminary survey results before they are released to SEMPO’s membership.
Support the SEM industry - this survey is highly regarded as a valuable resource for the industry.
A chance to attend an SES conference for free.

The time that you invest in completing this survey will help show where the industry is, how it has grown, how it is expected to grow, and trends for the future. Not only does this information benefit the individuals and companies involved in SEM, it benefits the industry as a whole. This survey has proven to be a valuable representation of the ever changing, rapidly growing SEM industry.

Please tell all your colleagues and online marketing acquaintances about this survey - participation is NOT limited to SEMPO members. SEM and SEO agencies, online and traditional agencies, in-house marketers all are welcome.

Free Giveaway! As a thank you to everyone who participates in the survey, each respondent will be eligible to win one free full-conference pass to any Search Engine Strategies (SES) event in 2007, valued at over $1,000 USD. The winner’s name will be randomly selected once the survey has closed.

Time to get started! Please click here to complete the survey.

SEO is becoming increasingly important to all who look to do business and use the Internet as a marketing tool.  It is the path in which your market finds your offering.   It has become almost a necessity for businesses to incorporate SEO in to their marketing plan.  Many companies struggle with the decision on whether to hire a firm or conduct their SEO in-house.  Unfortunately many companies lack the knowledge about SEO and assume it will be cheaper for them in the long run to hire someone “in-house”. For some companies this may be efficient while others the overlooking the hiring of a professional firm to SEO can be costly.  It is as critical to your business’ health as if you were to feel that you could heal a fatal disease yourself because you have access to the Internet and books instead of going to a highly trained physician.  Now you laugh and say that would be absurd, but is the growth of your company worth the risk.
Knowledge Versus Cost Versus Time = Your Success
SEO is an ever changing business. Search engines change their algorithm frequently and new rules are put into place.  One has to have the resources to find this information and understand how to implement the changes. An SEO firm is more likely to be aware of changes to search engine optimization protocols than an in-house individual. Many in-house individual will focus on developing and implementing your SEO strategies but typically remain in the dark about what goes on outside your organization due to they do not work with other scenarios. Outsourced SEO professionals must perform these same functions while constantly studying the industry, staying current with changing trends and familiarizing themselves with the latest SEO techniques. It is a part of their day to day business and necessary if they intend to compete in the marketplace and wish to survive.
What about cost? Surely the cost of hiring an individual is substantially less than the cost of hiring a company, right? This is a common misconception.   Let’s look at it this way.  You hire an E-Commerce Marketing Manager whose job is to develop and implements the strategic online marketing plan for an organization. Staying abreast of changes in the online marketing environment to best serve the objectives of the organization and adjusts plans accordingly. They may even be responsible for overseeing other aspects of the website such as the advertising and content components.  In most cases the individual will be wearing many hats spreading them thin.  His or her base salary according to Salary.com on average would be $85,703.  That is $7,141.92 a month and roughly $42 an hour.  This is for one individual with hopes that they bear positive results.  Let’s say they do not.  It will take 3 to 6 months to start to truly see if the individual is an asset or not.  That is $21,425.76 if you decide to let the individual go in just the third month.  Not to include cost of taxes and benefits.  And if successful, your company just paid $85,703 per year for SEO. 
The average SEO firm charges anywhere from $5500 to $35000 to perform the same task with a staff of highly trained professionals in the area of link building, writing, optimizing, web development etc.  Even on the high end you are getting a staff for the entire year for around what it cost you to hire an individual in-house for a quarter.  And if it does not bear positive results and you decide to terminate the relationship you will only have lost less than $10,000 if prorated based on the $35,000.  in most cases you can even get some of that back.  This logistically saves you time and money. 
Would you agree that having one individual do the job of five is rarely a good idea?  Would you feel it cost effective? 
Time is another concern with in-house SEO. Will one individual be able to optimize multiple pages, write content, tags, build links, run reports and perform other SEO tasks in a timely fashion? One person can only do so much. Would you agree that time is money? Most SEO firms can do in a matter of days what might take an individual weeks to do. Many companies who use in-house SEO personnel spend more than necessary to get the same amount of work done in a longer amount of time.  Once again you have one individual doing many tasks versus many individuals doing one task effectively. 
In any case, is outsourcing the right move for you or your company? Whether you choose to outsource or not, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Do your research by performing a simple cost/benefit analysis on what outsourcing versus in-house SEO will cost. It cost twice as much when you do it wrong the first time.
Results are all that matters.  Top rankings for phrases no one is searching for means little, and shouldn’t be used as a gauge of someone’s abilities.   Ensure they can provide you with keywords that work for your business as well as a diverse plan of action. 
What do others say about the company or individual? Ask for references and check them.   But even if they have limited or no reference don’t panic.  They still may know what they are doing.  Just test them on a small project and see if they bear results for you.  This is a true way to measure if they work for you.  There are many variables you may not have privilege to in a reference such as their personal relationship or if they were a part of a team that was successful but they contributed little. 
Remember, SEO is important to your business growth and time is money one way or another.  Do the math and ask yourself what makes sense for you. 

Jeff Beale is a marketing specialist that has worked with planning and implementing marketing strategies for several businesses ranging from independently owner organizations to government and corporate entities.  He is known for saving thousands in marketing dollars and increasing growth with the utilization of a diverse Internet marketing strategy which integrates functional web design with focused SEO. 

Not true. The term “SEO is not an exact science” is using by Search Engines Marketers who do not fully understand how search engines works. It is pure and simple mathematics if you know how to do it. It is also true that the science of mathematics in general and Google in particular includes many grey areas such as Google Algorithm and Axiomatic Set Theory and more, but how do you think Google, Ask, Yahoo and MSN retrieve, sort and score the results sets for a given query? By a theory, or by a guess?! Ah, you might say that “search engines optimization” is not the same as “search engines”, not a paradox?

Trial of Galileo Galilei 1633

It is like the “Surprise Quiz Paradox”: teacher announces to his class that there will be a surprise quiz some time during the next week. The paradox is if you mentioned “search engines optimization” it also includes “search engines”!

One more idiots proof : Show me one webmaster or SEM that will not agree to one (or more) of the following statements. Think of top competive example like iPod or jewlery website and take it to Google’s first page.

1. “I can gueantee the results if I personally had a friend who’s Google engineer”
2. “for unlimited budget anyone can do it”
3. “for a $100,000 I can get you enough quality links to beat any of the top ten winners”
4. “if you buy 4 years old iPod/jewlery website with 600 outbound links - I can do it”
5. “if you buy iPod/jewlery website with PageRank 7 - I can do it”
6. “get me one, just one link from Amazon/NYtimes/CNN… home page and…”

Conclusion: SEO is an exact science, it all depands on what, how, how-much and when you put the things in the formula to work.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060803IABGoogleYahooDefiningClicks.html

The Click Measurement Working Group established by IAB and the member companies who have joined it will develop a series of click measurement guidelines. The definition they establish will help to separate legitimate clicks on advertisements from the illicit ones that advertisers consider to be invalid, or worse, fraudulent.

IAB’s announcement comes in the wake of Google’s $90 million settlement in an Arkansas click fraud case. The plaintiffs in that suit are continuing to battle with Yahoo, Ask, LookSmart, and other companies over click fraud allegations.

Ideally, the adoption of such guidelines will provide more transparency into how search advertising companies measure and charge for clicks. Clicks that do not meet the standard will stand out when an advertiser has an account independently audited against the defined guidelines.

Google dominates the search advertising industry. Its actions impact the other players around it. Recently, Google began to show its AdWords clients more information on invalid clicks, a small step toward greater transparency into its measurements.

Transparency has been a persistent demand of search advertising clients. Search engines have intentionally kept their methods opaque to outsiders, even those who fuel its revenue stream. They claim transparency will educate criminals on how to beat the system.

The development of a click guideline could help people game the system as much as it assists advertisers in identifying legitimate clicks. If the fraudsters out there can come up with a way to meet the guidelines, assuming they haven’t done so already, advertisers may end up paying for illicit clicks unless the search companies can reliably identify them before the advertiser is charged.

Searchability is the art of getting traffic to your website.
Usability is the art of keeping them around and turn them into buyers.