Affiliate programs are some of the best sources of inbound links online. By providing your affiliates with a link back to your website, you increase your link popularity, which in turn leads to higher search engine rankings. It can also increase your sales.

Since many of your affiliates will be people in your niche the inbound links from your affiliate program will pass search engine relevancy tests. Also, if some of your affiliates have high PageRank because they are trusted sites within your niche then that will give you an additional boost. And get a bunch of those types of links … well, the story just keeps getting better. That’s why affiliate programs can be such good sources of links.

While it is true that affiliate program links are good links, you don’t want to rely entirely on affiliate links. You also want to build links in other ways. The key to inbound link building is to be consistent over time and build solid links through a strategy that encourages other webmasters to link to you freely without you requesting them to. A blog can do that in so many ways. But so too can article marketing, forum posting, and other forms of link building and conversational marketing.

Organic search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your site using content that is effective, smart linking strategies, and by adding value through interaction thus providing your user with a great experience. The end result is being well placed in unpaid search engine result listings. The question is, is it worth the effort?

An article by Jason Lee Miller on WebProNews takes an interesting look at Universal Search and the drop in paid clicks. Grabbing a chunk from Miller’ final paragraph:

…..means that organic SEO becomes all the more vital, especially when it comes to video and images. Better, more inclusive results might mean fewer paid clicks,…..

Organic Search Engine Optimization is a time intensive specialist process that involves constant research and a thorough knowledge of what is needed to optimize a site, on a day by day basis as search engines play with algorithms and other factors.

Miller’ point about video and images should not be ignored either as search engines start to rate these factors.

Given the current economic conditions, getting placed highly in the non paid search results pages is becoming a necessity. The question should now be asked, “can I afford to not implement organic search engine optimization strategies”?

Over at Sphinn you can witness a real live cat fight - yep, the old-fashioned kind. Jill Whalen and Lisa Barone, two of the hottest Search Engine Optimization chicks in cyberland are brawling over whether or not there should be Search Engine Optimization standards. Personally, I dig fighting chicks.

It all started when the infamous Jill Whalen came out slugging with her “We Don’t Need No SEO Standards” cat chant. Then, Bruce Clay’s own decided to pop a jaw with a solid left hook and an awesome yell: Muahaha!

Jill Whalen’s reasons for not needing Search Engine Optimization standards boils down to four main points:

• There are too many ways of skinning the Search Engine Optimization cat.
• We can’t even agree on the definition of search engine optimization.
• There are already laws to protect people from Search Engine Optimization scams.
• There’s no such thing as “cheating” in Search Engine Optimization.

And she does a good job of defending her position. But Lisa Barone countered pretty well with her headlock followed by a drop kick (she’s no lady in the ring!).

According to Lisa, just because you can cook a pork chop doesn’t mean you don’t need a recipe. And that made me wonder how Emeril got in there. So then she followed through with one heck of an uppercut by countering Jill’s “no common definitions” argument with, “Yeah, but we need them!” Good comeback. I wish I’d thought of that.

After that saucy taunt, Lisa did a slideback and came around Jill’s sexy little hindquarters and whopped her a good spaghetti sauce chop in the collarbone:

I think Jill needs to understand that the best practices and standards we’d be creating aren’t meant for the black hats. I’m not trying to bring anyone over to the light here. What I’m interested in is helping upcoming search marketers learn the ropes and to give them the tools they need to learn to do things right from the very start. We’re creating standards so the next generations of search marketers get a head start and have more than just SEO blogs and forums to learn from. We’re trying to cut back on the amount of disinformation.

Are you kidding me? Disinformation is what makes the world go round Baby!

Seriously, though, I have to agree with Jill Whalen (which doesn’t happen all that often). Search Engine Optimization standards will only help the politically savvy and the dirty, greasy, grimy black hats. Teach people how to look clean and everyone will take a bath just before the preacher drops by. Leave them to their own devices and eventually all their spots will show. The beauty of free enterprise (and who can argue that the Internet is the last bastion of free enterprise?) is that people are free to succeed or fail. Consumers are free to research the products and services they are buying, or choose not to. If Lisa Barone gets her way, we all might be bowing down to worship the Goddess of High Search Engine Optimization Standards (Who Killed Freedom And Creativity For A Chance To Grab The Throne). Can anyone say “Anne Boleyn”?

Well, I might be overstating it a bit. But standards inevitably lead to one group of insiders having control and authority over everyone else and I’m against that.

We all know that new web sites take time to get indexed and appear in search results. However, once established, getting your newly created content indexed quickly can have hidden long term benefits when it comes search engine optimization and rankings.

If you create content and can get that content indexed quickly, then, provided you have followed basic search engine optimization techniques, your content will appear towards the top of any search results for those keywords.

There is the expected bonus of increased traffic for as long as that content appears on the front page. There is also a hidden benefit that will aid your search engine optimization program - and you do not have to do anything yourself.

One of major factors in ranking a web site and an important part of all search engine optimization strategies is the development of external links coming in to your pages. Obviously, while your content is appearing in a high position in the search results, individuals are going to be reading your content, and, if relevant to their interests, writing their own content linking back to yours.

Why will they link to your content? There is an assumption that if you appear in the the top of the search results then the search engine must rate your content highly and is worthy of reading and linking to. Their search engine optimization strategy is to hopefully get a trackback and ride on your successes. Naturally the content needs to be well written and worthy of linking in itself.

You may only appear on the front page for a few hours, however those few hours can potentially give your search engine optimization program a real boost. How do you get your page indexed quickly? That is a topic for another Search Engine Optimization article.

It seems there’s a new search engine in town. Quite frankly, they’ve got some work to do.

SearchMe is a visual search engine that let’s you scroll through screen shots of web pages based on your search query. Right now it’s in beta, which means it is totally incomplete. In fact, they’ve only got about a billion pages indexed right now. Google has that many pages indexed for some search queries. So you can see, they’ve got a long way to go.

The site is basically all Flash, which means it won’t rank in the other search engines and they’ll have to rely entirely on viral marketing and word of mouth not Search Engine Optimization. But due to its deficiencies, I don’t see too many people recommending it to their friends. For one thing, because it is done in Flash, load times are slower than for normal search engines. That’s a big point because if you are really looking for something then you want to find it fast.

Some other failing points are these:

1. With SearchMe, you don’t get the number of results returned for your query. I’d like to know that.
2. Also, the scrolling from page to page is a little sluggish (again, it’s Flash).
3. On the positive side, you can scroll through titles and descriptions just like with other search engines, but they don’t all appear on one page at a glance. You have to scroll, which is another awkward feature of Flash.
4. Each screen shot shows a good picture of the page result, but you don’t always know what page it is. You can’t see the URL. There is a little pop up at the bottom of each screen shot that shows you the title and description for that page, but the URL is so small you can’t really see it. It needs to be bigger.

Here are a few suggestions for making SearchMe a better search engine:

• Make the scrolling easier by allowing users to scroll through the pages by mouseover when they move over the pages left or right. The scroll bar at the bottom of the screen is too awkward.
• Put the URL of each page above the screen shot and make it bigger so that it is easier to see.
• Show me the number of results returned for my query.
• Let users know up front what the criteria for the search results are.
• Tell me what the “flag as inappropriate” button is supposed to be for - is to flag results not appropriate for my query or to flag results as inappropriate for viewing?

Even if these changes were incorporated, there’s no guarantee that SearchMe would survive. There is no reason other than pure curiosity for a searcher to use the search engine when the existing search engines do such a great job of returning results. Even with their faults, Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, and Ask have much more to offer.

The most popular form of advertising over the last decade has been Pay-Per-Click or PPC and has generally been dominated by Google through its Adsense program. Yahoo is a more recent player in the search engine advertising market place and while there are many other players trying to attract advertisers, Google still dominates.

Google’s click rate and subsequent revenue from PPC has fallen in recent months again raising the question as to whether or not search engine advertising is a viable form of advertising. This comes in the wake of the introduction of both audio and video as advertising vehicles together with a general downturn in consumer spending.

The jury is still out on these as viable long term replacements for the current forms of advertising. The reality is, most advertisers do not have budgets that would allow them to include either audio or video in their marketing plans. Audio and video will also have several obstacles to overcome before be able to really make an impact.

Pay per click does have its own obstacles that need addressing if it is to continue to dominate. These include click fraud and the low conversion rates with often high per click costs. PPC will always per popular as a traffic generation campaign where advertisers can find low keyword click costs.

Pay per action has been discussed as both an alternative to and as an addition to search engine advertising. Affiliate marketing has been around for many years as a form of pay per action, however the action has always been related to a sale. Pay per action now includes any activity designated by the advertiser including successful telephone calls, newsletter subscriptions and of course sales.

The biggest problem for advertisers when it comes to PPC and search engine advertising is that the balance falls heavily in favor of the publisher. Pay per action swings the pendulum the other way and heavily favors the advertiser. In the meantime the middle men are happily collecting their hefty commissions.

Therein lies the future of most forms of online advertising. What are the middle men, and at present that almost always means Google, going to promote tomorrow. Google have been playing around with Adsense quite a lot over the last 6-12 months and have now introduced video ads. If revenues in the PPC area continue to fall then Google will undoubtedly look to other areas to prop up its income from search engine advertising.

Neither publishers or advertisers seem satisfied with PPC althoug it remains as the major force in online advertising. PPC and search engine advertising will maintain this standing until advertising agencies such as Google can deliver reliable results driven advertising that satisfies both the advertiser and the publisher.

There has never been a better lesson in reputation management than that highlighted by the recent demise of Bear Stearns. Could they have been saved? We will never know. The one thing that is becoming clear is the lack of effective reputation management strategies to overcome any negative publicity.

Many business houses seem to feel that they are immune to any negative publicity or, at worst, they will only suffer minor bruises when a situation arises. Bear Stearns are not the only company to suffer from a negative rumor that became viral and they wont be the last.

I wont comment on the Bear Stearns strategy itself, that has been done to death already. Rather, I think this serves as a timely reminder to check our own reputation management strategies, if indeed they exist. Size has become irrelevant. Any business, be it online or offline, can potentially be crippled by a few careless words, or the inability to negate a damaging rumor.

Online businesses have a plethora of channels including social media sites, forums and blogs where they can develop trust and respect. When a negative story appears, these same channels can then be used to counter some of that negativity.

Whilst Bear Stearns was a complex issue, any company caught in this tide of negativity needs to be able to respond quickly, over a broad area and in such a way that every negative issue is addressed in a manner to restore confidence, and, ultimately, their reputation.

As business, website owner or blogger, have you thought about your search engine reputation and how to (a) manage and develop it now and (b) counter any negative attacks when they occur?

Reputation management is often but aside as something to think about later - until it’s too late. Plan now, don’t score an F in search engine reputation management when good planning can see you earn an A+ — and so keep your business.

If you’re a new webmaster or you have a new website that you are trying to get ranked for some important keywords, don’t get discouraged if you don’t see your website in the rankings right away. Search Engine Optimization takes time. New websites typically don’t rank well for any pages for quite a while. Some people call it the Google Sandbox. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called. Google does have a supplemental index where pages are indexed, but they are designated as supplemental, meaning that Google has not yet approved them for full indexing. If you have a lot of pages that are listed as supplemental pages then you’re on your way. You just have to wait it out.

Yahoo! and MSN also take their time indexing new pages. Because there is a lot of spam online, the search engines take their time evaluating new websites. They want to be sure that you are a valid site and not a spammer. So they take their time evaluating the content on the pages, links pointing toward the site, and how quickly you put up content and build links. If you do it right you’ll build a steady content stream and maintain a steady link building strategy. Too fast and you could be flagged as a spammer; too slow and it might take longer to rank. So you want to be sure that you build inbound links steadily over time and keep the good content pages coming - again, steadily over time.

How long does it take for a new website to begin ranking? Search Engine Optimization and ranking really depends. It could take anywhere from 3 months to over a year. It depends a lot on how many pages you have indexed, what kind of Search Engine Optimization techniques you are using, whether or not you are able to convince them you are a trusted site, and whether you are linked to from important sites within your niche. There are other factors as well, but it all boils down to how well you build trust with the search engines.

Website copywriting and Search Engine Optimization is not easy to do. But if you decide that you are up to the task be careful of the following things they are a dead turn off for prospects. Missing these things will make your visitor a prospect for your competition versus a covert for your site!

1. Double-check for errors-nothing is more embarrassing than finding a typo in your copy after its been published and viewed by the public. Worse still is the transposing of numbers. We all do both but double check and make sure that they stay in the email to your friend not in your sales copy.

2. Avoid overselling – assume your audience is hesitant, they have read other sites and direct mail campaigns. Pitch your messages in more modest and honest ways. Give readers enough credit to make up their own minds.

3. Don’t be bland - keep the copy engaging, invite your readers to continue down the page.

4. Turn negatives to positives - we all know that bleaching products for teeth will remove the age from teeth. Saying that teeth look older is not going to keep the reader engaged, but if you instead remark that the product will make them look years younger….they are intrigued.

5. Remember the medium - four out of five web users will scan rather than read pages. All this means that applying special writing disciplines to the Web will pay off.
Following up in making sure that all of these items are carefully monitored will give you a leg up in the marketing arena. While they take out the typical marketeze, they bring the visitor in and will entice them to read more.

When you start to think about Search Engine Optimization during this process, please always think to write your content for humans first and search engines second!

There are often conflicting opinions when it comes to internal linking and site layout. Back in February we wrote a post on internal links using a tiered structure. I have also read articles that state, amongst other things, that ’sidebar links are actually harmful to your site when it comes to search engine spidering’.

I am not going to argue with the last statement, rather, I believe you can optimize your internal links to to get the most benefit from a search engine whilst still publishing a site that is easy for your visitors to navigate.

A quick recap of the February article. Building a 3 tiered page structure where you have a ‘home’ page as tier one, dedicated pages A, B and C as tier two and sub pages on each of the dedicated pages, A1, A2, A3 etc. The tiered approach sees links to pages A, B and C only on the home page. Each dedicated page would then cross link to its own sub pages. The sub pages would not link from the home page. Thats the design in a simple nutshell.

If, as some Search Engine Optimization experts state, linking from a sidebar for as well as from within a pages content may harm your site you are left in a quandary. Your site is well optimized and appears in the top five results for keyword searches. You are receiving a ton of traffic from those searches. The least you can do is make easy for those visitors to navigate through your site with clear and easy to understand menus.

Sidebar or menu links are not worth a lot when it comes to Search Engine Optimization practices. Linking from the content is worth far more. The simple solution is to include a side bar or menu system with links leading to your A, B and C pages. If you include the noFollow tag on each of these links then the search engines are not going to follow them.

By restricting the movement of the search engine spider the only links with relevance will be the links withing the articles. The nofollow and noindex tags can be very useful when it comes to controlling what areas of your site you want followed and indexed. This includes areas like site wide links that may clash with more important in content links.

An article SiteProNews got my attention when I read a headline about the best 3 - count ‘em, three! - SEO tips for this year. Here’s what the author suggested:

• Subscribe to Google Alerts
• Search Engine Optimize your 404 page
• Build links - seriously

Notice he didn’t say “optimize your content.” I wonder why.

Seriously, everyone serious about search engine optimization knows that optimizing your content is important, but can you over-optimize? Can you under-optimize it? Can you optimize it optimally?

It’s not a joke. You can use too many keywords for your content pages. You can also use too few. And you do it just right and still not get ranked well for your important keywords. That’s because keywords are not the only elements the search engines look for in order to rank your website against your competitors. Other factors, which you don’t have control over, are the age of your website and the age of your competitors’ websites, how well your competition does at optimizing their websites, and other related ranking factors concerning your competition. Let’s face it, Search Engine Optimization is competition.

I think Google Alerts is a wonderful tool. I also like the suggestion about optimizing your 404 page, but even if you don’t, it’s not a deal breaker. Neither of those two suggestions will make or break you. Even mediocre content won’t necessarily kill your business. But not building links will.

There is a lot of emphasis on optimizing your content, and rightfully so, but truth be told, you can spend too many hours anally going over every word to get the best optimization you can get when you could be doing something much more productive with your time - like building links. You can actually write mediocre content and build links to your website and see your search positions rise just on that alone. Rarely will you ever see your search positions rise on the basis of improving your site’s content without doing anything else. If you do, it’s likely because your content sucked in the first place.

So what it really boils down to is this: Would you rather have mediocre content and darned good links or kick a$$ content and hardly no links at all? As for me, I’d rather have awesome inbound links and mediocre content. Though it can’t be said enough that content that doesn’t sell, now matter how well optimized it is, isn’t going to do you much good at all even if you have the best linking strategy in the world.

Hello, I am the sales manager here at Brick Marketing and to all the sales managers out there that deal with the public directly in the world of Search Engine Optimization and sales you can all understand where I am coming from when you read this.

Non-April Fool’s SEO Joke#1:
The last time I checked my name was Maciej Fita not Encyclopedia Britannica so I apologize if I cannot write your business model for you. It’s amazing how many phone calls I get where the attempt to bleed me dry for search engine optimization information is so obvious that I should change my job title to personal consultant and slap an “I work for free” sign on my forehead. Its unbelievable how many people out there think SEO should be the same price as a Starbucks latté? And we all know where those prices are going.

Non-April Fool’s SEO Joke#2:
You have spent an exuberant amount of money on a thousand plus page website, filled with content and video, but it kills you to optimize your site to get sales?

Non-April Fool’s SEO Joke#3:
When you call me and I ask you what the URL to your site is I don’t expect to hear papers shuffling for 45 seconds. If you answer me with a series of numbers dots and dashes you need to go back to the drawing board and rethink your ink and purchase a new url, one preferably that doesn’t sound like a handful of spoons falling down a flight of stairs.

Non-April Fool’s SEO Joke#4:
How on earth can you possibly attempt to start an online business if you do not have a computer! Folks this is real. A potential new Search Engine Optimization client called me a few weeks ago and claimed she didn’t have a computer and she was not too familiar on how to use one but somehow this individual has an online travel business! Don’t make travel arrangements on that site unless you want to end up in Darfur sucking sand.

Final Non-April Fool’s SEO:
I realize that society is learning and baby boomers have finally found the on switch to their computer so I apologize if I am being harsh but you have to do some homework before starting an online business and for some people it obviously starts with the hardware. The internet is an amazing tool for communication but with its progression comes a learning curve that should not be approached lightly.

If you want to discuss this (along with your Search Engine Optimization needs :o) please feel free to give me a call at 877-295-0620.

Perhaps that title should read Search Engine Optimization and the Long Tale. Long tail keywords seem to be the fashion these days and not without good cause. It is often easier to get well ranked using a long tail keyword than it is using a short keyword and it all comes down to competition.

When you start your Search Engine Optimization efforts keyword research can be quite daunting and fairly disheartening. It is fair to say that unless you have invented something completely new and invented a new name for it, then every keyword you can think of will be well in use. You could of course use your brand as a keyword but that is likely to have variations already in use as well.

The future in keywords and keyword research will not be the singe word. The future is going to lie in long tail keywords and how they relate to the everyday internet user. Humans are inquisitive by nature. They are also information hungry. Future web sites will need to place heavy emphasis on these traits if they are to attract traffic and sales.

Searchers are not going to type in single search terms, many are not now. Instead they are going to enter in sentences. Often these sentences take the form of ‘how to’s’. ‘How do I …..?’ To capitalize on this your Search Engine Optimization program needs to incorporate two things.

First - Search Engine Optimization adjusted content - the right content. Web site owners now need to include information for their prospective customers. Gone are the days where you could just publish a catalog and expect sales. Sure, you will get customers buying off a catalog, but not a lot. Catalogs are now best left to marketing mail outs and the like.

What is needed is information. Not just your regular description of your product. FAQ sheet, information sheets, how to pages. Web sites that include comprehensive information on their products and services are now starting to reap the rewards.

Second - long tail Search Engine Optimization program - optimizing the long tail keywords that internet users are likely to use when searching for your products. These long tails may well include ‘how to’s’. If you sell a coffee grinder, then you may well find term such as ‘how do I blend my coffee’ rates quite highly in search terms.

The key to surviving in the future is by planning your Search Engine Optimization strategies now. Including well written information for your customers and then optimizing those long tail keywords to get prime search engine placements. Your customers will thank you by buying. You will be thankful when your profits surge at the expense of those who got left behind in the long tail keyword challenge.

This morning I blogged about Google lobbying the FCC for nationwide free wi-fi. The implications of this, if it ever happens, are astounding. Here are some things that it could mean for Search Engine Optimization experts and for the general population:

• A person could use an internal GPS navigation system within their automobile to map coordinates to a destination mid-travel. Let’s say you are lost on a road trip from New York to Los Angeles and you want to get back on track. With free wi-fi available from anywhere in the country, you could have access to Google Maps 24/7 right from your own automobile. The implications for travelers go far beyond that, however. You can change your planned itinerary without having to stop for the night, plan each leg of your travel as you go, and even find eating establishments up the road while you travel.
• With Google Universal, Personalization, and Social Marketing getting more sophisticated, Search Engine Optimization will become more difficult. Targeted marketing online would be a totally different animal than what it is now. And changes within Search Engine Optimization that currently take a few days will with ubiquitous and continuous online activity take just a few hours.
• Bloggers will have a much wider audience and I think you will see a proliferation of more Twitter-like microblogging.
• Google’s PageRank will be completely obsolete, much like Alexa rankings, as online advertisers flock to get a bigger piece of the pie and website owners “sell out” for the advertising dollar.
• Search may very well become more specialized and localized a lot quicker. With more people online in every local area within the country, you’ll likely see regional search engines and search engines that specialize in single or multi-state areas, counties and cities, and other regions. This will literally take place over night.
• Internet marketing will become more fragmented and you will likely see Internet marketers succeeding online without ever knowing a thing, or having on their payroll anyone who knows a thing, about Search Engine Optimization.
• The number of active blackhat Search Engine Optimization gurus will skyrocket.
• Pay per click fraud will get out of hand and the search engines will virtually be powerless to stop it.
• A new model of advertising could likely replace pay per click as the most desired form of advertising. Possibly, it could be pay per action.
• There will be an increase in the number of websites unlike any growth seen to date and most webmasters will be able to build websites with no knowledge of HTML or Search Engine Optimization - and succeed in getting their websites noticed by their target markets.
• Television and Internet will marry up in ways never imagined and the average homeowner will be able to watch Internet TV in any room in the house simply by voice command or as easy as flipping a light switch.
• Can you say ad-free Internet TV and subscription-based Internet entertainment available on your TV screen?

Of course, not all of these developments will occur overnight, but you’ll see them happening. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Free nationwide wi-fi will revolutionize communications in a way that Wilbur and Orville Wright revolutionized air travel. And no one will escape its influence.