Thanks to a ground-breaking agreement between Dell and Google, SEO may soon be a mainstream topic of conversation. Dell, the world's leading maker of personal computers, has announced that it is testing a pre-installed package of Google software, including a Google-powered Dell home page, Google Desktop Search, and a Google Toolbar.

While the home page and Desktop Search will be an undeniable boost to Google's share of the Search market, and maybe even a threat to Microsoft's desktop dominance, it's the pre-installation of the Google Toolbar that will be of most interest to SE marketers and optimizers around the world.

Currently a specialist 'industry tool' used predominantly by SE practitioners, the Google Toolbar may soon be automatically available to hundreds of thousands of mainstream computer users. As a result, Google PageRank and, by extension, search engine marketing and optimization look set to become part of mainstream vocabulary. (Well, maybe that's a little optimistic... Perhaps they're more likely to become part of the vocab of the computer savvy mainstream.)

So what does this all mean to SEO and SEM? In my humble opinion, the four most important implications of the Dell-Google agreement are:

1) Business decision makers will finally 'get' SEO

Although not overly helpful to SEMs and SEOs, Google PageRank is an ideal hook for busy decision makers. It's very simple (in that it's just a mark out of ten) and measurable, and it's just THERE; you don't have to go out of your way to see the PageRank of a site. It's exactly what decision makers need to get their collective heads around SEO. They don't have the time or inclination to understand the complexities of SERPs, IBLs, spiders, indexing, keyword phrases, metatags, article PR, SEO copywriting, etc. For better or worse, PageRank eliminates all shades of gray, leaving the two colors many decision makers understand best: black and white.

2) Business will become aware of the importance of PageRank

While most business decision makers are aware that a good search engine ranking is good for business, they're not yet aware that a bad PageRank is bad for business. But with the Google Toolbar at their disposal, they soon will be. Decision makers will immediately start to use PageRank as a one-shot assessment of the credibility and authority of every website they visit. And in the process, they'll become painfully aware of what their own PageRank says about their company.

3) Business will be more Search-proactive

Once decision makers realize that a bad PageRank is bad for business, they'll be more likely to be proactive about their search engine ranking.

4) More businesses will dedicate a budget to Search

PageRank will become just a part of 'doing business'. Just like TV, radio, and newspapers, it will be proactively communicating with decision makers, each and every day. While the mechanics of a high search ranking will remain a mystery to most, the Search DOMAIN will no longer be considered a black art, and SEMs and SEOs will no longer be considered witch-doctors. This will make decision makers far more comfortable dedicating a budget to Search (especially as they now have something measurable to grab a hold of - see point 1 above).

Conclusion

It appears that Google has once again made a very astute business decision. For better or worse, they've improved their position in Search and made significant inroads into the desktop software market. Will they threaten Microsoft's desktop dominance? We'll have to wait 'n see. Will they enrich the SEM / SEO industry? In my humble opinion, yes! Google may not be everyone's favorite search engine, but if they bring PageRank into the mainstream, the Search industry will finally attract the percentage of corporate advertising spend it deserves.

(See http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/
0,7204,18080942%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html for further details of the Dell-Google agreement.)

About The Author

Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He owns article submission service Article PR and copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details.

I’m an SEO professional. I spend every morning reading a few newsletters, checking out some hand-picked sites and reading through a sampling of threads at my favorite forums. Then I forget everything I’ve read and get to work. The fact is, everyone is this industry panics when anything changes as if they’ll wake up one morning and find that Google has banned half of it’s index. Instead, the SEO’s that will last are the ones that embrace Google’s algorithm improvements. Besides, is anyone going to miss the tedious outgoing SEO techniques?

If you take the X’s and Y’s out of Google’s algorithm, and look purely at their motivation, it is not hard to see what they are trying to do. They are sick of websites that do not offer the most relevant information for a given query being manipulated to the top of the search engines through “man-made” links. They are continually trying to differentiate between “natural” links and “man-made” ones. Naturally, the masses of SEO’s read this and run for their computers, trying to imitate a natural pattern of links. However, the algorithm will continue to improve and make this harder to imitate. All the while there is a much easier way to rank well under Google’s ever improving algorithm.

I have to profess that there is one webpage I read every morning that I don’t forget, and that is Rand Fishkin’s Blog at SEOmoz.org. He made an excellent point when discussing his questioning of prospective clients. One of the first things Rand asks his potential client is why they feel they “deserve” to be at the top of the search rankings. This is definitely the single most overlooked question in the history of internet marketing, and unfortunately most internet marketing professionals always fail to look at our industry at different angles like this.

Us SEO’s, were a technical group. We love theories and algorithms. We love to speculate and converse based on countless hours of internet manipulation. Sometimes we need to leave those avenues behind and think in a different way. If you forget about all this stuff, you will quickly realize Google wants the best information at the top of their results! THAT’S IT! So instead of trying to imitate the backlink patterns of highly regarded websites, why don’t we simply make a highly regarded website? Of course we will have to tell people about the site. We will have to look at all of the site’s on-page factors. But if this website truly deserves to be at the top of the search rankings, it eventually will be. If it isn’t today or tomorrow, you can rest assured that Google is working on it.

Scan back up through this article. Do you notice a link in there anywhere? Yup, there’s a link to Rand Fishkin’s Blog. I don’t know Rand at all. He didn’t ask me for a link to his blog, I simply find it very useful and used one of his ideas in my article. You know what? If you go there I’ll bet you’ll find it very useful too. You will most likely visit his website more than once. If you have a website or a blog or participate in forums, I’m fairly certain you will end up making a reference (“linking” in today’s internet world) to something on his site. Now do you see the benefit of creating a website that deserves to be at the top of the search rankings?

About The Author

Bobby Heard is a Managing Director of Abalone Designs, Inc., a search engine optimization company based in Vancouver, Canada. You can see their site at: http://www.abalone.ca/searchengineoptimization.html.

bheard@abalone.ca

article compliments of ArticleCity.com

Why Directories Are Important

Directories should play a major role in your SEO efforts, well, at least the big and important ones, for the following reasons:

- Listings within major directories provide "context" to search engines. For example, if your web site is listed in the Open Directory Project under the category Pets -> Weird Pets -> Blue Cats, search engines will assume your web site has something to do with blue cats. Your web site and pages will be indexed faster and might have a better ranking in search results for specific terms (in this case, “blue cats”).

- Major directories (such as Yahoo! Directory, ODP, Jayde etc.) have high page ranks and as long as you obtain a non-reciprocal listing from them, paid or unpaid, your page rank will benefit greatly.

- Major directories are often replicated by other web sites (think of ODP, with hundreds of copies) which means that a listing somewhere in such a major directory will cause listings in all replica sites, contributing towards your link popularity efforts and boosting page ranks.

- The ODP (Open Directory Project) feeds results to Google, AOL, AltaVista, Lycos, Netscape - once again, a presence in ODP can get you quite far.

Submitting to Directories

As with most good things in life, you need to make efforts to get into quality directories. Although detailed instructions on how to submit your web sites are always provided by the directories, there are certain aspects to consider before you start hunting for directories and submit your web sites:

- Start with Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project: being listed in the two of them is worth more than being listed in all other directories together! You will find soon enough that, unfortunately, being listed in these two is the hardest thing to do: Yahoo requires a $299 annual fee for regular web sites (only non-commercial sites qualify for a free listing) and $600 for adult sites, while ODP is free but you need A LOT of luck to make your way into it. ODP is so large yet is strictly human edited, which means the waiting time for a listing can extend to even years! Make your duty as a SEO worker and submit your web site, but don't get your hopes too high, unfortunately.

- Religiously follow the submission guidelines provided by directories: read them as many times as you need to make sure you will not upset its editors by submitting your site the wrong way, with inaccuracies, the wrong description style, or to the wrong category.

- Try to find niche directories if your web site's content is suitable for that. For example, if your web site covers Marketing topics, focus your efforts into finding a Marketing directory (such as http://www.MarketingWHO.com ) and submit your site there: search engines love links from sites relevant to yours!

- You will probably come across many directories with paid inclusions: use your common sense to appreciate if it’s worth it or not. A good criteria is to check their Google Page Rank: if it’s at least 3 levels higher than your site's Page Rank, it's probably worth spending the money for the inclusion fee. However, do look for directories with a flat, one-time fee rather than recurring monthly or annual fees: you'll end up spending less money!

In the end, remember a simple rule: if it's too easy to get into a directory, it's probably not worth the effort to get into it in the first case.

About The Author

Otilia Otlacan is a young certified professional with expertise in e-Marketing and e-Business, currently working as independent consultant and e-publisher. She developed and teach her own online course in Principles of e-Marketing and recently launched a Marketing Links Directory - http://www.MarketingWHO.com. Her current SEO client is http://www.previewcoloradohomes.com. Contact Otilia through http://www.TeaWithEdge.com, her Marketing and e-Marketing articles and resources portal.

article compliments of ArticleCity.com

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