The debate over White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO is in the National spotlight with an article in the NY Times entitled “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search.” The ultimate goal of any SEO, whether using White Hat or Black Hat techniques, is to get their client’ website to rise to the top of the organic results.  An added burden of the Black Hat SEO is not to get caught using their deceptive techniques for fear of Google’s consequences.

As the story goes, JCPenney  was dominating the top of Google’s search results. They were occupying the #1 position for keywords such as “dresses”, “furniture”, “area rugs”, “skinny jeans” and a myriad of others. The question came up about how they are accomplishing this amazing feat! Through some investigative reporting by Doug Pierce, it was determined that JCPenney’s SEO company was utilizing Black Hat SEO techniques described as “the most ambitious attempt to game Google’s search results that he has ever seen”. (more…)

You may have heard this phrase circulating within the SEO World … “Likes are the new links”.  Let’s explore this briefly and ultimately show you how it plays into your Search Engine Optimization campaign. It is well known that an incoming link has contributed ultimately to your rank within the search engines. A quality incoming link demonstrated that your website was “popular” or “active” or “liked” and therefore served as a recommendation to the search engines who would then determine if you were worthy to be ranked highly within their index. As part of any seo campaign, “link popularity” was a major factor. Attracting a link exchange, submitting to free and paid directories, releasing press releases or even buying a high PageRank link all had to be part of your strategy. (more…)

How would you like typing a serious question about international politics, for example, into everyone’s default search engine — Google –  and see in the suggested search box ‘france is set to concede that it is aware of an alien presence on earth by no later than Friday’? In the world of internet marketing, these small eccentricities amuse and confound.

That is what the two authors of Whoogles have encountered. They started compiling screenshots of Google search suggestions as of January 2010, and not even a year later they have a few thousand compiled in both blog and book. (more…)

So. A few members of the Mannix Marketing SEO Team attended the Search Engine Expo East  in NYC. As part of my experience, I chose to attend the Bruce Clay SEO workshop on the day after the expo ended. I had mixed feelings about it – to be quite honest, I’ve seen Bruce Clay at nearly all the conferences I have attended, and the truth is that I was never very impressed. (more…)

On a daily basis we get calls from businesses looking for help with their Internet marketing, and without fail at some point in the conversation they say, “I want to be found on Google.” It seems that Google has been a part of everyday life for so long now that many people feel that if they don’t get found on Google, their business won’t succeed. Apart from the fact that there are many other ways to get found on and off the Internet besides search engines, Google isn’t the only player out there. And as the Summer winds down the importance of other search engines has become a hot topic once again.

And what has brought other search engines back into the conversation? (more…)