One of the first steps in the long and arduous search engine optimization plan is the research of keywords. Keywords are center of all SEO programs, your content is written around keywords, your titles should be keyword optimized and your link building program relies on keywords as anchor text.

Here are ten keyword research tips to help you get started:

Misspellings and Typos: use common misspellings or typos such as double strikes, letters close to each other on the keyboard for example yahpp instead of yahoo. The classic example has been John Cow for John Chow.

US spelling and UK spellings: labour/labor, colour/color, cheque/check – there are plenty to choose from. The ‘or’ and ‘our’ are common as is the use of a ‘z’ in place of an ’s’ – optimization/optimisation/

Plural and single: don’t forget the plurals – and I don’t necessarily mean the adding of an ’s’. alumnus/alumni.

Acronyms and abbreviations: our society is full of acronyms especially when it comes to the online and IT world. PC, PDA, MSN – there are a lot to choose from. Abbreviations are just as common. 1st/first, Dec/December.

Verbs: play with verbs. If you are selling shoes your options could include walk/walking, run/running, jog/jogging

Adjectives: descriptive words are often used by searchers. These could include new; used; old; free; cheap.

Hyphenated and merged words: the most common one these days is email/e-mail, pay per click/pay-per-click/PPC/payperclick.

Geographic: geographic data is particularly important if you want to rank well in local search. Town names, suburbs, states, counties. It may be useful to include local terminology as well.

Domain names: you would be surprised at how often users do a search on a domain name or part of it. Use variations including the www.

People’s names: people’s names are often used in search queries. Again, look at misspellings. My name is often used in a search engine with a variety of misspellings.

Once you have developed a set a keywords, go through the above list and see if any of these tips help to add variations. Keywords are the central key to any search engine optimization program. Don’t just concentrate on the obvious – everyone else is so they will be highly competitive.

Google is the dominant search engine and has been for many years. There has been a lot of hype surrounding the recent release of Cuil. The founders certainly have the credentials to develop a top search engine. There are two former employees of Google along with Tom Costello from IBM and Louis Monier, a founder of Altavista. Will they challenge Google and if so, will we need to rethink our search engine optimization strategies?

Cuil is different in four areas; web index, algorithm, results display and privacy. Privacy is possibly the one big selling point for Cuil given Google’s appetite for knowing what everyone is doing, where they are spending their money and how long they stay on various sites.

The results display is different. Three columns by three rows, a total of nine results per page. Each result has more information than most of the major search engines. Cuil boast that they have more pages indexed than any other search engine, a big claim given their brief existence.

Where SEO may be affected long term is the algorithms used to rank pages and return search results. Cuil is trying to rank pages based on content rather than popularity. It has been tried before with little success. Perhaps Cuil will be different. However, with the brief tests I ran today the results returned where less than favorable. Even searches based on website names tended to deliver sites that link in rather than the website itself.

If Cuil does take off then we may need to rethink some aspects of our search engine optimization strategies. At present, I am not rushing in to any changes. There are too many issues that will need to be addressed if Cuil is going to make any sort of impact on the search wars.

A question on WebmasterWorld has brought up a few interesting comments. As part of a search engine optimization program you may decide to include your own business blog – an activity I highly recommend. The question was, “What are the problems associated with getting
loads of blog links?”.

There were a wide range of views presented during the discussion. The general feeling was almost one of placing blogs as the second or perhaps even third class citizens of the online world. This can be an error in the thought processes as well constructed blogs can significantly improve the search engine positioning outcomes for any web site.

Links are an important component of any SEO program so a discussion such as this can be important to clarify some of the issues surrounding the topic. This discussion has not really addressed any of the real issues surrounding links from blogs. On the contrary, the general consensus was that blog links are fairly worthless, particularly once they ‘fall of the front page’.

Spam links can come from anywhere and blogs are certainly not the only source. A well constructed blog with good content and a sensible linking strategy adds just as much value to a sites search engine optimization program as does any other strategy.

Links from blogs certainly add authority to a website. They may not add as much value as .gov or .edu link, however is has long been assumed that they add more value than any other link.

Blogs are now part of the online world and they represent a good pathway for businesses to connect to their customers and interact with them. If your search engine optimization program is well prepared and conducted properly, blogs will not be only the only source of links. What is important is to develop a variety of authority links from a range of online entities. Having a balanced link building strategy will enhance your authority and search engine rankings so blogs, as just one of those entities, should not be seen as harming your long term search strategy.

Newbies – the new kids on the block. Fresh young websites that are still in diapers. These sites often show an unranked Google PageRank so is there any value in linking to, or more importantly from a search engine optimization perspective, getting linked from?

There are many quotes that come to mind, however, in plain terms, what may appear useless today could prove to be powerful down the road. The real art of search engine optimization is just reaching the top of the SERP’s, it is also about staying there, going the distance.

The only way you can plan for the future is by looking for related sites that are growing, developing their own inbound links and slowly improving their position. While they may have only a minor effect on your SEO outcomes in the short term; in the long term they will be valuable.

Obviously a little common sense is required. The pages must be relevant to your pages and the site itself there for the long haul. It is a waste of time and energy to build links from a site that will be gone tomorrow. Over time you can come recognize sites that are going to be short lived. The content is sparse, the site full of ads and they often provide little or no value.

Avoid those sites at all costs. On the other hand, sites that have good content and have been optimized for the search engines are, over time, going to acquire their own inbound links. As this happens their rankings will grow stronger and with it yours.

Young sites should hold no fears when it comes to linking so long as you do your home work first, but the key to remember is only partner and link with sites that you have a business relationship with, this will be valuable for everyone for sure!

The fact that Yahoo! is including ‘breaking news’ in the search results is probably no longer news, however some of what they have written on their Ysearch blog is rather interesting.

Every user will cheer when a search engine tries to improve the quality and relevance of the data returned for a search query. The improved to the search include:

Based on the newsworthiness of each query, we’re now displaying the News Direct Display (DD) in the most relevant position(s) on SERP

We’re also better able to detect queries that are newsworthy, which means we’re showing more fresh News DDs than before

Including news is not new, rather following the leaders. One little statement may be worth following up:

….so putting the News DD at a slightly lower position makes more sense.

I would like to how they determine where they put the news and when Yahoo! says slightly lower – what does that mean? Obviously they are not going to put it page two.

New and relevant information will always be a draw card particularly if it drives the opposition over the fold. If that occurs, you may be able to take advantage of the situation.

Most SEO consultants pay little to the importance of Google PageRank these days and its relevance to ranking a website naturally in the search engines. However, the data used to determine Google PageRank can often be an indication of what direction your overall search engine optimization strategy should take.

Search Engine Roundtable has picked up on a thread from Webmaster World on the Changes Made To Google PageRank. The observations that they make in this post are interesting and the points made are thought provoking for sure.

The Webmaster World forum is still arguing many of the points. Looking at the points that were raised are:
1. Internal links and external links on the same page may not be splitting the Google PageRank vote equally.
2. Depending on the location of the link, Google PageRank may be weighted differently.
3. Multiple links to the same URL from the same page may not each get the same piece of the Page Rank vote.
4. “Run-of-site” external links, like Blogrolls, may now have diminished PageRank.
5. Links between domains that Google sees as “related” may have their PageRank significantly damped down. Possibly the same goes for sites that link to sub-domains.

These points all revolve around links and how the link juice is spread. It has been known for a while that Google doesn’t treat every internal and external links equally. Blogrolls have always been a little suspect when it comes to link value often being seen as a form of link exchange. Good search engine optimization programs now try to concentrate on content links with effective anchor text.

From the forum came an interesting comment on content and the relationship of duplicate content and how it affects Google PageRank for a website. Good white hat or clean SEO is aimed at getting pages rated highly within the search results pages. You can achieve a top 5 or top 10 placements and still have a low or even zero Google PageRank.

The danger when looking at factors that affect your PageRank is that you comprise your search ranking by altering your search engine optimization program. What affects PageRank may have a marginal effect on your search ranking, but obviously the two are determined separately using different algorithms. If they the same data was used for each calculation then the Google PageRank factors would be a strong indication of search rank – and it isn’t

If you are a celebrity that lives a risky life style there is only so long before your habits are exposed online. What do you do when you are photographed stepping out of your Bentley surround by cop cars because you just ran a red light? To make things worse your about 3.5 minutes away from a DUI.

Your livelihood can be seriously affected and yopur face soon to be seriously tarnished online regardless of how powerful you are or how much money you got in your offshore account. Your personal brand is everything and you can never take that for granted. Celebrity Reputation Management is a growing industry and it is only going to grow more with the power of the internet. Have we seen everything the internet has to offer? I highly doubt it. A celebrity doesn’t necessarily have to take a reactive approach. You can start by taking a proactive approach. By releasing good positive info surrounding your name you can create a sort of buffer zone between yourself and negative press to find its way into your life. You can definitely kiss those endorsement deals good by if you find yourself in a sticky situation. Can you afford to have your mug shot showing up under your searched birth name if something gets hairy in your life? Reputation Management is the answer that will help you out from under all the negative weight. There a few things you can do help create a friendly buffer for you:

1. Launching a myspace or facebook account and creating groups so that fans can follow and comment.

2. Setting up a blog dedicated to your name and leeting your fanbase into the progress of your career as a celebrity.

3. Setting up a LinkedIn profile and allowing connctions to be made easily.

If you are a celebrity with a spotty online reputation it is time you let a professional clean things up a bit for you.