Organic SEO Blog

Google has stepped in to get rid of so-called Google Bombs, the manipulation by mass linking to create a search result. Type in “miserable failure” and you no longer get the Googlebombed return of the US President’s office, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter or Michael Moore. Danny Sullivan, for it is he, has all the details at Search Engine Land.

Read more about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Google_bombs… During the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, the google bomb was used to further various political agendas. Two of the first google bombs were the “Miserable Failure” google bomb linked to George W. Bush’s Whitehouse biography and the “Waffles” google bomb that linked to John Kerry’s website. At different times supporters and detractors of these political candidates were able to shift around the results so that searches for “miserable failure” and “waffles” would return links to the particular targets of the groups trying to influence the search.

In an attempt to eliminate spamming, Wikipedia has added “nofollow” tag to all outbound links. The “nofollow” tag was introduced a while back for webmasters to tell the major search engines to ignore the specific link. When Google sees this tag, the outbound link is passed by as if it were regular text.

Thus, if you have links pointing in from Wikipedia they will be lost, at least in terms of helping with your SEO campaigns. Links come and go all the time, but to lose a Wikipedia link is a big deal as it is a highly regarded site in the eyes of the search engines and its credibility with Google would mean the link would have a significant ranking value.

If you are looking to sign a deal with someone to do your SEO, I hope you have your BS meter set to high, and are willing to call people out for stuff you don’t think is accurate. Don’t fall for the smooth salesguy pitches from people that don’t actually DO any of the search optimization work. Here are a few resources thay might help you in finding a perfect SEO.

• SEOmoz - Recommended SEO, web development and support firms.
• topseos.com - Ranks the top 30 SEO firms world wide each month based on competitive advantages, services and pricing levels support, unique attributes and performance.
• SEMPO - This is the leading search engine marketing industry association web site. You can submit a project request and SEMPO members will reply. There are currently 500+ members world wide.
• Marketing Profs Vendor Selector - A list of the top SEM and SEO firms with additional information on each. There are 48 world wide SEO firms listed.
• SEO Consultants - Strict inclusion guidelines for this directory of search engine optimization specialists and companies makes sure vendors do not engage in search spamming. They claim to reject 70% of the consultants that apply. After 7 years, there are only 140 SEO consultants and firms currently included so the process of inclusion is indeed selective.
• seopros.org - This is an older list and somewhat like seoconsultants.com.
• semlist.com - This vintage list was recently revised and is part of Incisive Media’s Search Engine Watch web properties.

Being into Search Engine Marketing for more than four years, I’ve been thinking about posting a blog on search engines for quiet a long time; and in this New Year 2007, its time now to start sharing my thoughts on Search Engines; and optimizing websites for better rankings.

Internet marketing has rapidly grown over the years. Businesses big and small are trying to reap the benefits that an online presence offers. And an online presence for an existing business, regardless of what it may be, does often mean increased return on investment. And given increasing competition, with everyone having logged on, in a manner of speaking, just having a website is not enough.

Thus, each and every website requires presence in a search engine result page to get noticed. SEO is a process of arranging a website’s content to obtain high rankings in various search engines, and includes tailoring on-page text as well as choosing the proper keywords for a page’s meta tags. And it is a lot more than this…