Archive: September, 2007

One of the finest but most subtle curses ever leveled against another is the ancient Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times”. Interesting times are the stuff of history books and history is generally considered far more fun to read about than it is to live through. That’s how it is for most people at any rate. For search marketers however, interesting times almost always bring more business. Today is proving to be a terribly interesting day.

The first of three major environmental shifts that will change the face of search engine marketing comes from Facebook. Earlier today, a message titled, “Check out your Public Search Listing” was appended to the top section of the personal home page of every Facebook member.

Check out your Public Search Listing
Now people can search for this listing from Facebook’s Welcome page. In a few weeks, it may also be found through search engines like Google.

You can control whether you have a public search listing, and where it appears, from your Search Privacy page.

Read more…

The work-in-progress of keyword based search engine optimization is divided into two distinct areas. The first is the immediate hard work that goes into the initial weeks or months of a contract; the research, alteration and implementation time. The second is the planned or piecemeal work supporting and sustaining website placements achieved at the start.

Maintaining a search active website is the most important yet most overlooked aspect of effective SEO. While plenty of articles have been written about the initial phase, less attention is paid to the second phase. That’s unfortunate considering the second phase might run the life-time of a website.

Acquiring relevant incoming links and keeping a site updated with fresh content keeps an active SEO busy enough but there are several other webmaster or website related tasks that take a great deal of time.

Websites grow and creative content proliferates. As new links and pages are added to a site, its “SEO profile” is subtly altered. Though generally beneficial, keeping track of these changes is a critical part of the SEO process. Jill Whalen once wrote about SEO and the Zen Factor, a sense of balance experienced SEOs feel when contemplating a website. A part of that Zen factor is the feeling of things being off kilter. As a site changes, SEOs often perform subtle tweaks to title tags and site content to maintain whatever sense of balance they feel works for each important document in that site.