For some reason there are some people out there, that automatically classify SEO professionals as spammers but when done correctly all we really do is clean up search results and allow search users to find exactly what they are looking for. When you proceed with your SEO efforts the right way you will get much more out of your search engine optimization program.

Here are few tips below to keep in mind when to always try to get the most out of your SEO campaign:

1. Find and Know your Audience – I know this might sound crazy but you have to make sure you are not spinning your wheels where your audience does not exist. Whenever you decide to focus on spending time on a specific website you have to truly put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself if your audience is there. If you sell insurance and you just randomly follow people on Twitter you might not be hitting your target quite right. Find the follower of major insurance companies and follow them. You have to put this thought process into every website you decide to target when marketing yourself.

2. Title Everything! – Titles for almost anything you do online is a great way to get your social networking profile, article or press release ranking. I know that sometimes you might want to put a more cutesy type title but you have to ask yourself the purpose of you effort. You want people to find it right? So incorporating some keywords you might be interested in targeting in your title is very important to get that specific marketing effort ranking. Cute titles work once you have a large brand built and visitors look for you regardless. If you are just starting off and getting going it will be important to do anything you can to get search engine traffic to find you naturally.

3. Use Everything at Your Fingertips – If you are under the impression that something might not work don’t be. The name of the game is to have as many connecting points or links pointing to your website through a variety of different sources. You might think that launching a video for your business and pushing it through all the social networking websites might not work for you but the truth is that it will. Every effort has the potential of being found by your audience. This is why it is important to have as much lingering out there as possible.

These are just a few important tips when ever executing your ongoing search engine optimization efforts for your business or website. Each little improvement can make a very big difference when it comes to your websites long term SEO.

Let’s take a moment to analyze what or who I should say makes up the entire SEO industry. If you are going to compare one vendor to another it is important you are apples to apples with the companies or consultants you are comparing. Let us take a moment to compare some the individuals and companies that you put your trust in every single day to help build your business online.

1. Fly by Nights – With the economy the way it is right now you are going to see more of these random “SEO” websites popping in the search results. It doesn’t take much to get a website up and running. Don’t let some trust badge or Google logo on their website fool you. Many are taking one day training courses maybe a webinar and all of a sudden they are an expert. Search for their name and see what you find online. Are they good at marketing themselves? They should be. Do you they have some sort of client list or resume? If someone is classifying themselves as an expert they will be more than happy to go over their resume with you if it is a matter of getting you as a client.

2. Web Designers – Many web designers are starting to offer SEO on their websites but that doesn’t mean they know search engine optimization. Web design and SEO are two very different things. That is not to say that every web designer out there is not capable of properly executing search engine marketing efforts but it is a different type of animal that requires a different type of experience. A web design company that decided to throw up an SEO page during slow economic times should not be your first choice unless they clearly have a department that knows what they are doing and is established.

3. Software – Software does not grow a business. I cannot stress this enough. A large portion of SEO is marketing which requires some sort of human element or touch. You need to be able to put yourself into the shoes of your audience and no a software program. There are some programs that can shed light on certain holes in your marketing approach but that is most likely the extent of how the data should be used. There is no magic pill or easy way out with SEO. It takes time and patience along with human brain monitoring and executing all efforts.

4. Offshore – It is ok to work with someone offshore if your website is targeting the audience where that person exists. Why would you want to hire someone to conduct SEO in a foreign country for your business if you are targeting the U.S and they have English as maybe a second or third language? There will be some disconnect on what types of words should be used when conducting keyword research and optimizing your website. You want to work with someone that is English speaking if you are targeting a U.S audience. Yes the inexpensive prices of going with someone oversees can be very appealing but you will pay for it in the long run.

5. Experts – These are the individuals and firms that have been around for quite a while. They have a generous amount of visible clients, come with years of experience, and clearly offer a healthy organic approach to search engine optimization and marketing. These are the entities that clearly offer their resume for potential clients to view along with client references that have nothing but good things to say about them. They also know how to market themselves. Have you seen them in multiple areas online? Are the search results for their name filled with nice juicy related content? Is their address clearly visible portraying that all work is done on U.S soil? These are the individuals and companies that stand out and very well should from the above type of SEO’s.

It is important to take the time and analyze what type of SEO person you might be speaking with. Make sure you get it right the first time because the last thing you want to do is have to switch vendors six months down the road when it could have just been avoided right from the start.

Matt Cutts, the voice of Google search makes some interesting predictions for 2010 about websites in general along with Google search and what we can all expect to see during this year. One of Matt’s biggest concerns will be website safety and security. Matt Cutts expects to see much more hacking type activities occurring in 2010 and recommends that everybody has the most up to date security features on their websites so that nobody gets their fingers on your websites and do any harmful activities that could affect your livelihood. 2009 saw an uptick in websites getting hacked from a variety of new and strange sources and he expect this trend to increase for 2010. Don’t wait to secure your website when you get hit because the reactive costs could be much higher than just taking a proactive stance now.

Here is the Google Search Predictions Video by Matt Cutts:

Predictions for Google stem mostly around speed and relevancy. Google is always on the prowl to really keep their search results clean and relevant so users are completely satisfied with the end results. Google will also be making the distinction between black hat and white techniques much clearer and really focusing on eliminating anybody who attempts to take a black hat technique when marketing a website. Google is always strengthening and improving their search tool. It seems like each year Google makes a very strong effort to eliminate all the bad apples in the SEO industry. If you teeter on black and white hat SEO techniques I would make it a 2010 new year’s resolution to persuade yourself to land in the white hat territory. Yes, it takes longer, but when it works it is well worth the wait!

There are many different ways to achieve good quality search engine optimization results online. When SEO was first introduced about ten years ago the approach was a very technical one. It came down to things looking like a science project rather than true marketing. Over the years there has been a slow transition. The search engines are not supposed to be manipulated by a mathematical approach in order to get things to rank well. As the transition occurs it will be important to figure out what type of SEO you are. Do you like to market a business and build it through a variety of online marketing approaches or do you like to take a much more technical approach with your links?

Whichever approach you chose it is important to realize that the search engines are constantly evolving and moving away from a technical approach. As they grow their focus on offering the cleanest and most relevant information this will only become stronger. The search engines are already showing signs of rewarding those who market a business with the means of growing a business through a variety of quality online marketing and branding efforts rather than just putting a number value on how many links one can achieve. A technical approach is what the search engines are really trying to move away from. If you are an online marketer the search engines want to see you build rankings from building your brand online not through finding loop holes. Things like online PR announcing newsworthy topics and positioning yourself as an industry expert through proactive article marketing. Things a real business would do to market themselves if the internet never existed. Search engines want to see a heavy focus on social media marketing as well. Social media marketing takes time with a quality approach so no fly by night who wants to generate a specific number of links is going to take their time to actually communicate with their audience online through a series of conversations. The technical SEO approach has a shelf life that will soon expire. Those ridiculous promises of thousand of directories or “article blasters” will soon be a thing of the past.

Being an internet marketer for many years now I have heard some really out of whack misconceptions when it comes to SEO and how it helps grow a business online.

Here are some of the most important misconceptions of SEO that I think should be called out:

1. It is all Technical – Search engine optimization is only about 15-20% technical. The rest requires a marketing approach. Think about it, if you are trying to get rankings in the search engines don’t you have to put yourself in your audiences shoes and anticipate what they search for, what they read and what they want to see on your website? That requires a marketing hat.

2. Rankings Happen Quick – Search engine optimization is time and labor intensive. It takes time to get things moving in any direction. Nothing happens over night or even in one month or two.

3. I Only Need to Do It for 2 Months – SEO does not have a finish line. When you take a marketing approach to your SEO it is something you never really stop doing. Why would you stop marketing your company? You wouldn’t and that is why your SEO should never stop either. Rankings are not the only goal for search engine marketing. Building many relevant one way links is also a goal. This can only happen over time.

4. SEO Costs $39.95 – When it comes to search engine marketing you really get what you pay for. That doesn’t mean it should cost an arm and a leg but price should be appropriate to amount of work and man hours put into a certain effort in order to get it right. Prices that sound to good to be true usually are. Do you really think you can grow a business online successfully for the same cost as a cup of coffee per day?

5. SEO Software Should Do the Trick – Search engine optimization cannot be put on auto pilot by some software program. Some software’s are capable of isolating gaps or errors in your website or campaign but that still requires you as a business owner or marketer to make the necessary changes to get things moving in the right direction.

There are many misconceptions in the SEO industry and over time they should all be cleared up as the industry continues to mature and evolve. I only highlighted several that came to my mind, please feel free to share any that you may have heard.

A friend and fellow search engine optimization expert asked if I knew of any good link building tactics. I thought he must know the same thing that I know. That is, that relevant link building is getting harder and harder…it has been over the last 3 to 4 years. We both agreed that the best way to get links is to simply write great content and over time, people will then link to your great content. But what about beyond that? Directories? Articles? Blog comments? Online Publicity?

The search engines always seem to be playing this never ending game of cat and mouse with links and search engine optimziation folks trying to build them. Truth is, link building is not for the faint of heart. A good link today may turn sour next week or next year. Then what? Reality is if you develop a blended white hat (by the book or following each search engine webmaster guidelines), then you should not have any issues in the future. Meaning, if you know a link source is not the best, for instance, not relevant, link exchange or paid link, then stay away from it. Also, never abuse any type of link building activity. If a particular source of a relevant link is generating visitors to your website then continue, but don’t overdo anything. The reality is the search engines always change things because SEO folks (or black/grey hat ones) tend to abuse a certain link building activity. I remember 6 years ago, link building consisted of some of the same things as it does today, but you could have a site with good content and good site optimziation and then exchange links and do very well. This is NOT the case today!

But that doesn’t mean link building is a fruitless activity. I still believe in the power of good links even if they’re getting more and more difficult to find. But what makes for a good link?

Based on my experience and various industry sources that I have seen in recent times, the criteria still come to:

• Relevance
• Authority
• Anchor Text
• Age

Not necessarily in that order, but those are the important factors to locating a good quality link. So now that we know what kind of links to go for – relevant links from authoritative sites with strong anchor text that have aged – how do you get them? First, what you should NOT do is run out and start spamming directories and social bookmarking websites. That will get you nowhere. What will get you places is to write great content and market that content to your target audience in the places where your target audience likes to hang out. If you’ll do that on a consistent basis you’ll see the links. But a moderate submission strategy to top-notch authoritative websites within your niche is a nice augment. And don’t sweat the small stuff. The most important advice that I can give you is do your research and plan out your link building activities in advance, not only does this make it manageable, but keeps your link building program on track.

I just found this excellent video by Google’s Matt Cutts that has great and useful information about the state of Google’s search index. The video is about 25 minutes long, but take a break and give it a watch