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It’s a common question that companies who are considering hiring a search engine optimization company often face - is this something that we can do in-house? More importantly, can we do this in-house and get the same results that an expert search engine optimization company would provide?

As this article will demonstrate, clearly the answer is “yes” to both questions. However, as this article will also demonstrate, getting the types of results that an expert at search engine optimization can provide will cost you - often more than outsourcing.

For the purpose of this article, I’m ignoring the multitudes of companies that decide to dump the job on somebody already in their organization (usually an IT person who already has too much to do) rather than hiring a search engine optimization company. It has been my experience that while some of these people eventually provide decent results, they are the exception. More often than not, the project never leaves the ground, or the effort is halfhearted at best. In a worst case scenario, your internal person may embrace tactics that no expert search engine optimization company would ever use because they can put your site at risk of penalization or outright removal from the engine indexes.

My company often works with firms after they have used non-expert internal talent to optimize their website, and most of the time we are actually doing more work because much of what has been done is ineffective or dangerous. We have to take everything apart and put it all back together, often while making requests to the search engines to have penalties lifted.

The real goal of this article, however, is to assume that a business has decided to embark on a search engine optimization campaign, and that it is also committed to using a proven expert in search engine optimization. The choice then is simple - does the business hire an experienced resource to work in-house or should it instead go with an outsourced search engine optimization company?

A recent study by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, published in the January 2008 edition of DM News (”Healthy SEM Salaries Rule: SEMPO Survey”), points out that experience in search engine marketing carries a high price tag. For instance, if you were looking to hire someone with more than five years of experience in search engine marketing, you could expect to pay between $100,000 and $200,000 per year. For somebody with experience but not five or more years, you can expect to pay anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 per year.

If nothing else, these real world figures should convince discerning companies that expert search engine optimization and marketing is not something that you should dump off on an existing employee without any experience in the field. The free market has determined that expert search engine optimization and marketing is worth at least $60,000 per year for a full time position, and up to $200,000 per year.

On the other hand, most reputable search agencies have many more than five years of collective experience in the search engine marketing industry. In addition, a high percentage of these agencies offer SEO services that cost considerably less than $60,000 per year, to say nothing of $200,000 per year. It should also be noted that this figure neglects to include any of the additional costs associated with hiring - benefits, training, and so on. In addition, an expert search engine optimization company will have a broad range of sites from which to draw knowledge, while your in-house expert will likely only have one, or a handful at best.

To be fair, there are certain advantages to hiring an in-house expert. First of all, experts will have their feet to the fire, so to speak. A search engine optimization company isn’t likely to go out of business if it underperforms on your site, but an in-house expert in search engine optimization is likely to lose his or her job. It’s also much easier to get the whole team together to discuss your SEO initiatives at any time you choose when you are working with someone in-house. And hey, when you’re paying someone $200,000 per year, you can be pretty certain that you’re going to get top-notch work. But can an expert search engine optimization company give you that same level of work for a lot less money? Probably.

Conclusion

There are many compelling reasons why your business should hire an expert search engine optimization company rather than bring in an SEO expert internally or simply give the SEO project to an existing team member. Financially, it makes sense. But more so, you’re more likely to get the results over the short and long term with an outsourced company for all of the reasons noted above. I’m not saying you have to hire an SEO company - at first. I’m saying eventually you’ll probably want to.

(C) Medium Blue 2008

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld in 2006 and 2007. Scott’s articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

If you are a merchant that processes credit cards, then you are probably already well aware of PCI compliance, but you may not be sure how web application security fits into the picture. You may also have heard that starting in June 2008, section 6.6 of the rules for PCI compliance will go from a “best practice” to a mandatory requirement (if not, it’s time to pay attention!), but you might not know what this means for your business. The fact is, in a perfect world you already have in place what is necessary to be compliant with not only section 6.6, but PCI rules as a whole. This is because ideally, you would have handled your web application security practices from the start, as the applications are built, so that you are not scrambling to add security to existing applications. Unfortunately, this is often not the case – which makes now a great time for businesses to reevaluate their web application security processes overall.What PCI Compliance Means

A bit of background regarding PCI compliance - as credit card use has become more widespread both offline and online, and as consumer concern about security has understandably grown, the credit card industries have made an effort to ensure that sensitive information is protected. To that end, in September 2006, the major credit card companies (American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International) formed the PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) and established a set of rules for what they called PCI compliance. These rules have to be followed depending on the size of a business and the number of credit card transactions handled, and if done properly will help protect consumers’ data from theft. The Rules for PCI Compliance There are six major categories within the standards established by the PCI SSC, which are as follows:

· Build and maintain a secure network
· Protect cardholder data
· Maintain a vulnerability management program
· Implement strong access control measures
· Regularly monitor and test networks
· Maintain an information security policyWithin these six categories are 12 requirements that address particular issues and that are directly related to web application security:

1. Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
2. Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters
3. Protect stored cardholder data
4. Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks
5. Use and regularly update anti-virus software
6. Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
7. Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
8. Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
9. Restrict physical access to cardholder data
10. Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
11. Regularly test security systems and processes
12. Maintain a policy that addresses information securityEach requirement for PCI compliance is broken up into a variety of subsections that go into detail about the process, the full list of which can be viewed at www.pcicomplianceguide.org. Section 6.6 – the most important subsection regarding web application security because it is coming under scrutiny this year - states the following:

Ensure that web-facing applications are protected against known attacks by applying either of the following methods: · Having all custom application code reviewed for common vulnerabilities by an organization that specializes in application security
· Installing an application layer firewall in front of web facing applications

As a result of this upcoming change, it is important for companies to have a game plan in place for web application security. Until now, companies may not have taken PCI compliance very seriously. No major fines have been levied for noncompliance so far and the entire process may have been seen as something nonessential. But with this new change to 6.6, IT teams around the world are evaluating the strengths and weaknesses between web application firewalls, code reviews and application assessment software which all satisfy the requirement. What It Means for Your Business

There are two mistakes that many organizations make related to web application security. First, many businesses and government organizations have historically focused their attention on network security rather than web application security, and it may seem that the June 2008 deadline is coming out of nowhere and that businesses will be scrambling to achieve PCI compliance. But the fact is, your business should have ensured that all of its web applications were secure from the beginning. PCI compliance shouldn’t be viewed as a checklist, because then all that will happen is that unreliable fixes will be applied to problems. Instead, the concept of web application security needs to be implemented within the web application itself. When web application security is implemented properly, the PCI compliance requirements related to web application security are automatically met.As a result, the development and QA teams at businesses need to be focused on web application security. It may be that businesses will need to take their web applications and break them down from the start, rather than trying to install patches and fixes for PCI compliance.

Another section related to PCI compliance that could cause problems in the near future is 11, which states that security scans must be done on a regular basis. If instead of fixing web application security issues internally, patches had been installed as an afterthought, these scans could become nightmarish because they will identify hundreds of issues that will need to be fixed. Better to take the time up front to build in web application security measures and avoid this problem altogether.Conclusion

Businesses that process credit cards are likely already aware that they must be PCI compliant – but they may not have worked very hard to make sure that they are. In 2008, one of the subsections of PCI compliance will become mandatory, and businesses are going to have to evaluate their web applications very carefully. By ensuring that web application security is built from within, rather than by adding on fixes that will only work in the short term, businesses will find that not only are they compliant with one part of the PCI standards, but that they are compliant with all of them, and that their customers’ data is secure across the board. About the Author Michael Sutton is a security evangelist for HP Software. Michael is responsible for educating audiences on the importance of integrating web application security best practices throughout the application development process and works closely with the HP Software Security Labs team. The co-author of Fuzzing: Brute Force Vulnerability Discovery, Michael has his CISSP and CISA designations and is a member of ISACA.

As any good search engine optimization company knows, in search, more so than any other medium, you have a very short window of opportunity in which to engage your prospect. The only way to get a solid competitive advantage in this arena is to utilize various techniques in order to make sure that you are giving a prospect exactly what it is that he or she is looking for. Otherwise, your prospect will simply click the back button and visit one of your competitors - a process that only takes seconds.

One way to gain a competitive advantage, of course, is to work on the website itself. Any search engine optimization company worth its salt will also be involved in conversion testing on your website - in other words, making certain that the visitors who arrive on your site are likely to take a point of action that eventually leads to a sale. Split tests, modifications in content, different color schemes, and numerous other variable elements can all have a measurable impact.

There is also another way that a quality search engine optimization company will seek to maximize the value of the prospects that find your website through search engines. In this case, however, it is using your company differentiators in the keyphrases that they target to make sure that the traffic that comes to your site is of a very high quality.

Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Differentiators

As more and more companies turn to organic search to gain a competitive advantage while promoting their products and services, it can be increasingly difficult to achieve high rankings for the generic terms that everyone in your industry is pursuing. While any ranking is ultimately attainable, eventually a search engine optimization company has to decide whether the effort involved is worth it, especially when it recognizes that you can get overall better results from the campaign by making sure that a very high percentage of people that are typing keyphrases into search engines are looking for exactly what you offer.

This is why your search engine optimization company should be able to leverage differentiators in your keyphrases to give you the best competitive advantage available.

What Keyphrases Will Work Best for Your Business?

Suppose that you are in an industry where companies can have a wide array of prices, approaches, customer service levels, and so on. Instead of targeting, from the outset, the general keyphrase that defines the industry (for example “email marketing”), a good search engine optimization company will take the time to help you gain a competitive advantage by realizing what is different about your company in order to a.) attract very highly targeted prospects who know what they are seeking and b.) reduce the competitiveness of the keyphrases they are choosing.

Let’s take a look at a high-end provider of email marketing that has advanced web-based functionality and focuses on the B2B market. This fictional business is seeking a competitive advantage by working with a search engine optimization company. We can safely assume that the percentage of people that type “email marketing” into a search engine who are looking for this exact type of company is anywhere from between 0 and 100%.

By looking into the popularity of other variations, however, we can see that it is nowhere near 100%. Phrases like “cheap email marketing” or “free email marketing” are very popular, demonstrating that many people seeking “email marketing” are not looking for exactly the service that the provider is offering.

Imagine that instead of targeting “email marketing”, a daunting task (that, even if achieved, assures that a high percentage of visitors that come to the site are not looking for the provider’s particular type of solution), the search engine optimization company takes advantage of the provider’s differentiators. In this case, the search engine optimization company would instead target phrases such as “business to business email marketing” and “web-based email marketing”. Suddenly the two objectives have been achieved - the provider knows that a much higher percentage of visitors that are typing these terms are actually looking for the right kind of company and the competitiveness of the phrases has also been reduced, leading to faster and higher rankings.

Using Modifiers to Give You the Edge

There are hundreds of modifiers that can give a competitive advantage by reflecting a company’s differentiators, including words such as “free”, “affordable”, “high-end”, “full service”, “proven”, “turnkey”, etc. The point is that by making use of your unique differentiators in the search terms you target, your search engine optimization company is already setting the table for your prospect before he or she even clicks over to your website. When the message that is seen on your site then supports the keyphrase that was typed, you now have an engaged visitor. This can mean more leads, less site abandonment, and better overall website performance.

Conclusion

Remember, your company is better than the others out there. Ask yourself why, and then tell your search engine optimization company to take advantage of these differences in your keyphrases to give you a competitive advantage in your industry. The subtle addition of a few seemingly minor modifiers can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

(C) Medium Blue 2008

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld in 2006 and 2007. Scott has contributed content to many publications including The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008), Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

If the buzz is to be believed, Sam’s Club is now a search engine optimization company that is targeting the local search market aggressively. The fact is, this isn’t something new; it’s just recently come to the forefront. Sam’s Club has partnered with a company called Innuity to offer a program that is primarily targeted at small businesses looking to get noticed in the local search results.

Many people are screaming that this is a “worthless” service - but I disagree. It’s not worthless, but it also isn’t close to the service a comprehensive search engine optimization company can offer. Let’s take a closer look - with the caveat that I am assuming that the service listed on the Innuity page for LeadConnect (leadconnect.innuity.com) is the same service being offered through Sam’s Club (also called LeadConnect).

What They’re Offering

For $25 a month for Sam’s Club members (and $39.95 a month for non-members), you can sign up for the LeadConnect service from Innuity. You’ll get access to a dashboard that you can update with all of the necessary details about your business - name, address, phone number, types of products you offer, and so on. Once you’ve completed your dashboard, Innuity will submit your site to various local search engines such as Yahoo! Local, YellowPages, Pricegrabber, Google Local, and more. Then, if you update your dashboard at any time, Innuity will update your information at all of those local search sites, just like any search engine optimization company being paid a retainer fee might.

Innuity also claims on its website that this program includes having them submit your website to the major search engines (not to be confused with the local ones). This part is largely window dressing, as any good search engine optimization company knows. The major engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) all find sites on their own, and “submitting” sites won’t do anything to influence rankings.

My Opinion

If you don’t have the time to do it manually and you don’t have the budget to hire a search engine optimization company, paying $25 a month for a company to handle the submission to the local search sites isn’t a terrible deal. The ongoing fee also makes sense if your business changes frequently, as again it will save you time from needing to update your listing on each local search engine each time you make a change.

The big question is what happens when you disengage from the service. Will your results remain on the local sites after you stop paying the monthly fee? Or will they be dropped the day you stop paying? In my opinion, it would be somewhat unethical for them to actively remove you from local search sites if you disengage, and I’m betting that they don’t. I tried to reach them directly to ask but was unsuccessful (well, I called twice and was put on hold for an inordinate time in each instance without ever reaching a human being - you can draw your own conclusions from that).

Why This Is Good for the SEO Industry

Having a large, recognizable chain like Sam’s Club acting as a “search engine optimization company” and offering this type of service has several benefits for the SEO industry. People in the SEO industry often forget that most people do not even know what SEO is, so this initiative is bringing awareness of the industry as a whole, even if it is focused on local search.

Additionally, the Sam’s Club name gives SEO a bit of respectability. Search engine optimization has long been considered some voodoo science or, at best, a fringe discipline - but with this offering by a household name, it’s now something that the average person might want to investigate. This may help the mainstream accept the idea of hiring a search engine optimization company in general.

Why This Could Be Problematic for the SEO Industry

The problem with this offering is that it is rather limited in scope, focused only on local search initiatives for local businesses. Because it is more common for people to use the general search engines over the local search engines, this may not bring in a large volume of new business. Yet at the same time, it is advertised in such a way as to seem to the average person as full-service search engine optimization. Nothing in the description online or in any of the literature I’ve gotten my hands on indicates that Innuity is letting people know that local search is just a part of a larger, more disciplined approach that another search engine optimization company might provide.

As a result, businesses that use LeadConnect rather than a search engine optimization company may find the results are not what they were hoping for. And they then may dismiss SEO in general because they don’t understand that the LeadConnect service is limited. Local search is important, but there are many other ways to target a local market online that this service is not tapping into.

In addition, to see really great results from a local search initiative, your business must appear in the top few results in the local search engine - because those are the ones that will also appear on the main search results page. Any result beyond the top several will be more difficult for the average searcher to come by, whereas a first or second-page result on a main engine, which a full-service search engine optimization company might be able to garner, can be of great benefit to increasing exposure.

Conclusion

What Sam’s Club is offering cannot directly compete with the services provided by a search engine optimization company - and it’s not supposed to. This program is reasonable for a company with a small budget looking to boost its local exposure. Plus, it can bring the SEO concept to the masses. Unfortunately, it could also give people a false sense of what SEO is and what it can do for them. And it remains to be seen if people really want to buy an SEO package from the same vendor that sells them giant jars of mayo and bulk toilet paper.

(C) Medium Blue 2008

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.

Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider commands and instances in which you might want to use them.

meta name=”robots” content=”index”

This meta command is one of the most common ones used - and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their index. However, all search engines do this by default anyway. Basically, if you want to put it in there for fun, be my guest, but this command is not giving you any special treatment. All search engines are going to index your page, unless you specifically tell them otherwise.

meta name=”robots” content=”follow”

The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page, unless otherwise directed.

meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”

The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It’s important to note however that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.

When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don’t want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.

There are however some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site and you’ve created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.

As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center:

“Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages.”

In cases like these, it is acceptable to use the “no index” command on the dynamic version of the page, so that your content will not be treated as duplicate. You are not tricking all search engines, you’re just redirecting them.

meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”

This tag tells search engine spiders that it’s OK to go ahead and index a page and list it but that they shouldn’t follow any of the links that are on the page. This can be useful if, for example, you had some partners that requested a link on your site that you felt obligated to give, but you wanted to hold onto as much Page Rank as possible. Now this is of course between you and your own personal god, but you would be able to in effect have a partners page, add the nofollow attribute to the meta tags, and basically not pass on any of your Page Rank to any of the sites to which you are linking. The nofollow command in effect tells all search engines that this is the end of the line.

meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”

Obviously, noindex and nofollow are powerful tags - and in combination, they can make a page and the subsequent pages to which it links invisible to nearly all search engines. This combination command tells search engine spiders, “Do not read this page; do not follow any of the links on this page; do not include this page in your index.”

This command has its beneficial uses. For example, it can be placed on pages on a site that have duplicate content for legitimate reasons. A website might have both a page for the United States and a page for England that cover the same product with exactly the same content. However, nearly all search engines would see this as duplicate content and could devalue both pages. So placing this command on one of them means that search engine spiders will walk on by and you won’t be penalized.

meta name=”robots” content=”noarchive”

Finally, almost all search engines today, including Google and Yahoo, offer a cached version of a site alongside its listing that provides a snapshot of what the page used to look like. The noarchive tag, therefore, is available to be used in circumstances where there is content on your website that is of a timely nature and therefore that you might not necessarily want search engine spiders to cache for people to have access to moving forward.

For example, a business might run a one-time special that has a ridiculously low price to drum up some business while things are slow. The business will want to be able to shut that sale down as soon as sales are back up to a solid level. However, it is conceivable that someone could click on the cached version of the business’s site, see the old deal that was out there, and insist on getting it for themselves. By using the noarchive tag, you are telling search engine spiders, in effect, “This page is subject to frequent changes, and I don’t want my visitors to have access to some of this content at a later time.”

Conclusion

The commands discussed above are just a few of the ones in existence, and new ones are being added frequently. While nearly all search engines support these commands, there are still some that don’t. The ones in this article, however, are fairly universally understood by search engine spiders, no matter from where they originate. As more universal commands are introduced, I will write about them in future articles.

(C) Medium Blue 2007

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit Mediumblue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

In response to the proliferation of other frameworks used to create rich Internet applications such as Flex from Adobe (formerly from Macromedia) and AJAX-based frameworks, Microsoft Silverlight was recently introduced. All three of these applications, as well as the others on the market, enable a web developer to create an interface on a web page that is much more robust than traditional HTML-based pages once were. Extending the limits of HTTP/HTML, these technologies use proprietary rendering engines running within the browser, and XML as the major language with which to communicate with servers. Microsoft’s entry into the arena of rich Internet applications represents the company’s desire to create its own version of the technology that extends the reach of their .NET framework.

What Are Rich Internet Applications?

Rich Internet applications provide an end user with an interface that is more responsive than traditional applications. Many of the frameworks used to create these applications, including both Microsoft Silverlight and Flex, bring more of the processing to the client rather than leaving it on a centralized server. The user’s browser does not exchange large, monolithic blocks of information, but rather sends small pieces of data at a time, usually asynchronously. And this means that only relevant pieces of the interface need to updated, allowing users to do more, and do it more quickly, than traditional web applications allow. For this reason, more and more web applications use rich Internet technology of some type to give the end user an optimal experience.

There are of course many other frameworks for rich Internet applications in use today, but Flex, AJAX, and Microsoft Silverlight are three that are more commonly known, and each merits a more in-depth look.

Flex

Currently, Flex has the largest market share of any other framework for rich Internet applications, with a penetration of around 90 percent, something that Microsoft Silverlight is challenging. Flex is built on Flash technology, which was originally designed to manage multimedia functionality. The Flash plug in, which is supported by most major browsers, and is freely available for download, runs its programs in what is known as a “sandbox” - a separate entity from the browser itself, and a secure environment that protects the user. When used properly, Flex enables a website to behave like a thick client application (one that exists solely on a user’s computer rather than on the Internet).

As with any client-side technology, there are drawbacks. Not all browsers start out with the Flash plug in installed, and Flash is also updated from time to time. In either case, the end user is required to download a new version if he or she reaches a page that requires it. Other frameworks for rich Internet applications have the same issue, which is seen by some as a drawback since not all users will (or are permitted to) download the plug in, and in many cases will navigate away from the page entirely.

Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight was created to compete with Flex and with other frameworks for rich Internet applications that are already in use. It is based on .NET technology and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which is a part of .NET 3.0. While .NET is a Windows-centric technology, Microsoft Silverlight offers a lightweight version of .NET that is cross platform (running on the Mac OS as well as Windows) and that runs in a browser sandbox.

AJAX

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It is a programming interface that is slowly gaining acceptance by some of the larger web presences, including Google (which leverages AJAX heavily in its Mail and Maps applications). As with the other frameworks for rich Internet applications and technologies in existence, AJAX gives a developer the ability to create a web page that behaves like a thick client application. However, it requires an understanding of the JavaScript language. In addition, not all browsers handle Javascript in the same way, and many users disable JavaScript in their browsers, both drawbacks of AJAX when compared to other frameworks.

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Microsoft Silverlight

The main drawback of Microsoft Silverlight at the current time is that it is not as widely used as Flex, and therefore could cause users to leave a web page using it rather than download the necessary plug in. Using Microsoft Silverlight would require a developer to leave behind the application with the greatest number of users and embrace a newer, untested application (with, admittedly, a well-respected and trusted company - Microsoft - behind it).

However, Microsoft Silverlight is very appealing for developers who already know .NET. While a developer would have to learn Flash and Flex from square one, he may already have an in-depth understanding of .NET and could therefore jump right into using Silverlight. Since .NET is already very pervasive in the web development world, Silverlight could easily grab market share in the future.

Conclusion

Even web developers that are comfortable with AJAX or Flex (or other frameworks used for creating rich Internet applications) will soon need to immerse themselves in Microsoft Silverlight, while new developers will want to learn about Microsoft Silverlight from the start. Because of its foundation with .NET, Microsoft Silverlight has a smaller learning curve than many other frameworks used to create rich Internet applications.

While it may take the average user some time to warm up to the technology used with Silverlight, Microsoft is a formidable company and is likely to make inroads with its product in the near future and to establish it as an important application to know over the long term. Anyone wanting to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to rich Internet applications will do well to learn about Silverlight now rather than later.

About the Author

Charlie Fink is the vice president of product development and delivery for WestLake Training and Development. He has been designing and developing leading software solutions for over 15 years and has also developed client training focused on use and support of custom software systems. Prior to joining WestLake, Charlie was the vice president and chief product architect for the Arlington Group, as well as a principal of AEC software. To learn more about information technology training, please visit www.westlaketraining.com.

Adobe CS3 (Creative Suite 3) is a suite of products that combines traditional Adobe programs with programs that Adobe acquired and has since rebranded from Macromedia. The suite includes Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks, as well as Illustrator and Photoshop. All of the programs in Adobe CS3 that were formerly Macromedia have been streamlined and given Adobe-like functionality. The entire suite now works seamlessly as a complete family of Adobe programs for designers and developers.

Dreamweaver

Adobe CS3 includes an upgraded version of Dreamweaver, formerly a Macromedia program. Not only is Dreamweaver now more readily compatible with other Adobe programs, but it also has the addition of the Spry framework providing Ajax capability. This enables designers to incorporate sophisticated functionality without the need for complicated programming skills by simply taking advantage of the built-in features of Dreamweaver CS3. Dreamweaver CS3 also has new standards capability with cascading style sheets.

In addition, Dreamweaver CS3 now has Adobe Device Central incorporated within the program. This allows users to preview and test Web pages on multiple devices with ease. The Adobe CS3 program also has advanced integration with Photoshop CS3 and can support multiple layers. Finally, designers and developers using Dreamweaver CS3 can perform easy browser compatibility checks and can check for cross-browser cascading style sheet rendering issues.

Flash

Another one of the new Adobe programs acquired from Macromedia is Flash. Flash CS3 is now using Action Script 3.0, an update and modification of Action Script 2.0. While 3.0 is backwards compatible, this portion of Adobe CS3 is also 30 times faster and has more object-oriented capabilities than 2.0, which is of great benefit for developers.

For designers, Flash in Adobe CS3 is easier to work with and has more streamlined panels. The program incorporates new drawing tools, including a new and enhanced pen tool that is more like that used in Illustrator. Flash CS3 also allows more control with corners when creating rectangular objects and easier creation of pie and donut shapes. The program as a whole is more intuitive and is easier to control with new object primitives. Additionally, Flash CS3 works with other Adobe programs and allows designers to copy and paste filters and motion tweens from one object to another without the need to reapply them. Flash CS3 also offers nine-slice scaling, offering users the ability to scale objects more intuitively and without distortion.

Finally, Flash CS3 incorporates Adobe Device Central and allows users to check applications on different devices. And Flash now has import support for Adobe programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator, which can lead to enhanced image fidelity and editability that designers may have wished for in the past.

Fireworks

Fireworks has also been given a makeover as one of the new Adobe programs. The new Adobe CS3 version makes it easier to control and share symbols, to give them more robust attributes with Javascript, and to swap them. Plus, scaling has been enhanced in Fireworks CS3 so that you can now intelligently scale symbols with a nine-point system.

Additionally, in Fireworks CS3, you can add multiple pages to a single document for ease in mocking up Web sites. You can also have hierarchical layers in much the same way as is allowed in Adobe programs such as Photoshop. And it is much easier to bring files between Fireworks and Flash or Illustrator and Fireworks than ever before.

Photoshop

Photoshop CS3 has also been given a makeover and upgrade. The new version of one of the best-known Adobe programs now offers the ability to export an HTML file that the user can zoom in and out of (the “zoomify” feature). It also has new smart filters that can preserve data integrity and allow for nondestructive flexible modification of the images. Designers using Adobe CS3 can also convert images to monochrome with more control than before.

Plus, Photoshop can now analyze images and make recommendations for settings. It also offers an enhanced version of cloning and healing and also has updated color correction options. And there are many new tools in Adobe CS3 that designers can use to more finely tune images, from photo merge with advanced alignment bleeding to a refined edge feature. Photoshop also now has DICOM support and allows users to open, edit, and annotate single frames of radiological images. Finally, as with other Adobe programs, Photoshop also incorporates Adobe Device Central for easy previewing and testing of images on other devices.

Illustrator

Last but not least, Adobe CS3 includes an upgrade of Illustrator that offers important new features for designers and developers as well. As previously mentioned, Illustrator CS3 now has seamless integration with Adobe programs such as Flash CS3 and includes Symbols for easy animation. The program also offers new, upgraded drawing tools and a new vector tool. Illustrator CS3 also features “Live Color,” which allows the designer or developer to edit colors directly within the image.

Conclusion

Adobe CS3 is an important upgrade for designers and developers who were users of previous versions of Macromedia and Adobe programs. It brings all of these well-known programs together in a single package under a single brand. Users are likely to see immediate benefits with Adobe CS3, and the new features of the individual programs add even more functionality than existed in previous editions.

About the Author

Ramon M. de la Paz is a full-time instructor of information technology training courses for WestLake Training and Development. In his 20-year career in the computer industry, in addition to delivering training, he has handled Web design and multimedia production for a number of government and non-government agencies. For more information, please visit www.westlaketraining.com.

If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or even if you’re just hoping to better your search engine placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition frenzy that took hold among the major search engines. Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, Microsoft paid $6 billion for Aquantive, and Yahoo paid $680 million for the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own and another $300 million for BlueLithium. The companies purchased are all intended to help widen the advertising range of each of the engines in question, and to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated behavioral-based ad-serving technologies that the acquired companies owned.

What many people failed to realize was that when Google purchased DoubleClick, it now was also the owner of a very large search engine optimization company called Performics, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of DoubleClick.

This fact is of course raising some eyebrows in the industry. Google has consistently maintained that there is no way that people can pay for better search engine placement in the organic index, a stance that the company still claims applies despite this recent purchase. In fact, a portion of Google’s published guidelines about SEO says, “While Google doesn’t have relationships with any SEOs and doesn’t offer recommendations…” In another portion, Google says “While Google never sells better ranking in our search results…” However, anyone who hires search engine optimization company Performics is of course now paying Google for better search engine placement. It seems like a pretty black and white issue, but Google would obviously prefer that it was kept delightfully blurry.

A Serious Conflict of Interest

One would think that Google, aware of the controversy that would come from the fact that it now owned a search engine optimization company, would be eager to spin Performics off quickly in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety and of selling search engine placement. Not so, says the official Google/Doubleclick acquisition FAQ:

Q. What will Google do with Performics?
A. Performics is part of DoubleClick, and we are acquiring it as part of the transaction. We have no plans to dispose of it at this time (1).

All right, so Google owns a search engine optimization company and seems prepared to hold onto it for a little while at least. Yes, there seems to be a huge conflict of interest. Yes, there appears to be a large double standard. Yes, Google appears to have abandoned its long-standing principles regarding organic search engine placement in the interests of profit. But surely, the search engine optimization company that it bought will quickly be forced to follow the guidelines that Google has published for companies that are looking for a search engine optimization company. Right? Well, no.

Here is a verbatim quote from the guidelines that Google provides to people thinking about hiring a search engine optimization company:

• Make sure you’re protected legally. For your own safety, you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee. Don’t be afraid to request a refund if you’re unsatisfied for any reason (2)…

On the surface, this advice seems solid enough, but as an owner of a search engine optimization company, I can tell you how impractical it is. What would prevent a company that achieved fantastic search engine placement using my service from asking for its money back, claiming that it is unsatisfied? “For any reason” is a very slippery slope, and apparently Google agrees - Performics does not offer a guarantee of any kind. How do I know? Simple — one of my employees called and asked. We also have it in writing from an email we received from one of their sales reps.

What Are Google’s Options?

Let’s be charitable and assume that in the heat of the acquisition Google has forgotten to update the page of advice that it has created for website owners. This leaves only four things that can happen:

1. Status Quo: Google keeps this advice up on the page and Performics continues to offer no guarantee regarding search engine placement. We’ll call this the “hypocritical” scenario.

2. Performics gets in line: Google leaves the advice up as is and forces Performics to offer an unconditional money-back guarantee. We’ll call this the “free SEO from Performics” scenario.
3. Guidelines change: Performics maintains zero guarantees for search engine placement but Google modifies the advice to remove the inconsistencies pointed out in this article from its advice section. We’ll call this the “shareholder’s delight moneygrubber special” scenario.
4. Google spins off Performics and removes itself from the search engine optimization industry. We’ll call this the “sanity over dollars” scenario.

I’m not betting on which of these scenarios is most likely. Some time back I would have picked #4, but as I pointed out in a recent article, Google has already crossed an invisible line by offering free advice about organic search engine placement to its biggest pay-per-click spenders.

Google owning a search engine optimization company — a slippery slope, indeed. What does this mean for those hiring other companies and looking for great search engine placement? We will just have to wait and see.

References

1. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-will-google-do-with-performics/4720/

2. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

(C) Medium Blue 2007

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue’s latest exclusive whitepaper, “Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix,” at for more insight.

“Chinese Wall - The ethical (not physical) barrier between different divisions of a financial (or other) institution to avoid conflict of interest…”

Investopedia.com

“While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results.”

Google’s Webmaster Help Center FAQ

“NO pay for inclusion, and a complete separation of the search index part from the money part.”

Google Chief Engineer Craig Neville-Manning, Search Engine Strategies 2004

The good people at Google have long maintained that there is a Chinese Wall between paid search results and organic results - that is, the department responsible for advertising is completely separate from the department responsible for organic search engine placement. The company insists that Google Adwords is a completely separate entity than the Google search engine, and never the twain shall meet. This all sounds very good, in theory. But do they live up to this ideal in practice?

You don’t hear Google talking much about Chinese Walls these days. This is certainly in part because they have had great difficulty gaining traction in the literal and very competitive Chinese market (headlines such as “Google Hits Chinese Wall” or even “Google Advance Halted at Great Wall of China” were commonplace). But might there be other, more nefarious reasons? Is there a reason why we hear less and less from Google about the virtual wall that separates paid search results from organic search engine placement?

What Is Google Really Doing for Its Big Spenders?

It has long been rumored that Google will offer technical assistance in achieving better organic search engine placement to those who spend more for paid search results. I know for certain that these rumors are true in at least two instances. In fact, I actually have the minutes from one of these technical assistance meetings after the company met with Google engineers. While the identity of these two companies is irrelevant, suffice to say that they are companies that you have almost certainly heard of and that they spend millions of dollars on paid search words each year.

To be fair, based on the meeting minutes I have, the advice that the engineers gave to the company does not include anything groundbreaking. It is mostly common sense advice that a good search engine optimization firm already knows about organic search engine placement and other issues, and much of it is already covered in the publicly-available Google Webmaster Guidelines. This, however, is beside the point. Google has obviously decided that it must offer perks to its big paid search spenders to keep them happy (or rather, happy enough to not pull their advertising). Clearly, one of these perks is access to Google engineers and the ability to glean information about organic search engine placement, a luxury that smaller advertisers do not enjoy.

Organic Search Engine Placement for Sale - The New Google Reality?

From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense, of course. Big-dollar advertisers make up the bulk of Google’s revenue for paid search, and any intelligent business will take whatever steps they deem necessary to hold on to their most valuable customers. This is why larger advertisers already have a designated account representative from Google. I am willing to bet that this perk was not Google’s idea. Rather, it almost certainly stemmed from the sense of entitlement that those spending large sums on paid search felt and the fact that technical help with their organic search engine placement is what they demanded.

Unfortunately, this reality leaves an advertiser with a small budget for paid search at a disadvantage. If Google is willing to offer this secret perk to larger advertisers now, what might they do in the future? Offer price breaks to larger paid search spenders? Increase the minimum monthly spend to squeeze out smaller companies and please the larger ones? It certainly has the potential to become a slippery slope, and I am interested to see where it goes next.

One final point - since Google is willing to give advice about organic search engine placement to companies that spend a great deal of money on Google advertising, is the phrase “While Google never sells better ranking in our search results…” truly accurate? I suppose this is open for interpretation. It may be technically true, but offering advice regarding organic search engine placement straight from the horse’s mouth in exchange for millions of dollars in money for paid search results isn’t far from selling rankings, in my opinion.

Conclusion

Please don’t get me wrong - I still believe that Google is the best search engine out there, I greatly admire the way that they are continually reinventing themselves, and I think they are still the target for those seeking the most benefit from organic search engine placement. They have the folks in Redmond constantly guessing and always three steps behind, and I love how they have started from humble beginnings to take on one of the biggest corporations in the world (and consistently win). I simply believe that they have played the underdog, anti-corporate card for too long, and that even if it has not outlived its usefulness, it has outlived its truthfulness. Google is now a huge multinational corporation that answers to its shareholders. To pretend anything otherwise is silly, but it seems that, for now at least, the charade will continue.

Google’s overriding principle, one that they have been happy to espouse to the media, has long been “Don’t Be Evil.” Whether they still adhere to this principle since they have become a public company is another question that is open for interpretation. If you are a smaller advertiser and feel that Google’s favoritism toward larger paid search customers regarding organic search engine placement is evil, it probably seems as though the “Don’t Be Evil” principle no longer applies. You may conclude that the principles of “Don’t Be Evil” and “Keep Shareholders Happy” are mutually incompatible, and that the latter has gained the upper hand.

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue’s latest exclusive whitepaper, “Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix,” for more insight.

It’s an unfortunate fact - no matter how good your search engine optimization company or in-house talent is, brand new websites have a more difficult time achieving search engine success for competitive phrases than their older counterparts, particularly on Google. However, the worst thing that a new site owner can possibly do is presume that they are “too late to the game” and decide not to pursue this marketing channel at all. A good search engine optimization company should be able to effectively work with a new website; setting the foundation for a remarkable success story while still achieving steadily increasing short-term benefit.

The Issues

There are many reasons why new websites face an uphill battle. What follows are only a few of the major stumbling blocks:

The Google Sandbox

There is much debate as to what exactly the Google Sandbox is, and even debate as to whether it actually exists. However, recent patent filings on behalf of Google would seem to confirm that one of the factors that Google will take into consideration when deciding how websites should rank is the age of the domain name. More than one search engine optimization company has noted that there seems to be a penalty assessed to new websites, especially those that seem to gain too many inbound links, too fast. This is all conjecture, but this would make sense. Inbound links factor largely in Google rankings, and therefore many sites that were already popular in Google began selling links from their sites based upon that popularity (a practice that goes against Google’s terms of service). However, text link buying is very hard to police. The Sandbox makes sense in this scenario, because Google seems to be saying “we may not be able to stop people from buying text links, but they are going to pay a pretty penny for them before we’ll give them any ranking boost because of them.” This is more conjecture, of course, but it is a popular theory in numerous search engine optimization forums.

Lack of Links

Unfortunately, here, a new website is faced with the opposite problem. Links to new websites are called into question, but without incoming links, a new website has a slim chance of performing well on Google. This Catch-22 is obviously a sore spot for many owners of new websites.

Trustworthiness

For many years, a common search engine optimization company strategy was to set up numerous new websites all for one company, each geared toward targeting a different search term. This was largely due to the fact that search engines used to place a much higher importance on the home page of a website, rather than interior pages. Over time, search engines caught on to this trick, and as a result new domains are now looked at more skeptically. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that while it is relatively easy and inexpensive to set up a new website that targets a certain term, a website that has been around for much longer and has a breadth of content has much more to lose and is less likely to attempt to “game the system”.

The Solutions

Does this mean that you shouldn’t hire a search engine optimization company to work on your new website? Not at all. In fact, it is in the very beginning of your website planning that a long-term strategy should be put into motion - a strategy that still offers positive results in the short term.

Before You Build

It is important to get your search engine optimization company involved as early as possible before you build your new website. Not only are there many technical issues that you should be aware of before you begin design (such as linking architecture, types of text to use, and balancing your SEO efforts with your brand), but there are also strategies that can be set in motion at the outset that will counteract some of the stumbling blocks listed above. If you involve your search engine optimization company after you have built your new website, much of the work you have done will likely need to be redone with a long term strategy in mind.

Targeting Appropriate Phrases

A good search engine optimization company will tell you that targeting highly competitive phrases with a brand new website can be an exercise in futility. However, this does not mean that you cannot achieve initial success on search engines. The trick is to target less competitive phrases at the outset, and to begin tackling the more competitive phrases later. For instance, let’s assume that your company makes custom widgets, and that “custom widgets” is a very competitive search phrase. A search engine optimization company working on your new site might recommend that you instead target less competitive variations of the term, such as “custom made widgets” or “custom widget manufacturing.” Since these terms are less competitive, you will be more likely to obtain high rankings for them with your new website. You can thus enjoy highly targeted traffic in the beginning of your campaign and eventually target more competitive and popular phrases as your site gains traction, quality inbound links, and a reputation for usefulness.

Make Your Site a Resource

A quality search engine optimization company will encourage you to turn your new site into an industry resource. You can do this by providing educational content about your industry in the form of articles, whitepapers, and other forms of non-biased content. There are many benefits to this approach, one of the primary being that such content attracts inbound links without any effort on your behalf. In addition, such a resource area builds your credibility in the eyes of your potential customers and serves to educate them in all stages of the buying cycle, so that when they are ready to make a purchase, you will likely be first in mind.

Build Links

While making your new site a useful resource is a great way to attract inbound links, this does not mean that you shouldn’t also be seeking them out. Your search engine optimization company should get your site included in many general directories (such as the Yahoo directory and Business.com) but, even more importantly, in directories that are specific to your industry. Not only do these links help to boost your search engine rankings over time, but they are also a quality source of targeted traffic.

Keep Your Content Fresh

A search engine spider will revisit your site frequently if your content continues to increase and evolve frequently. A site that has been optimized for three years with no changes to its content will usually not fare as well as a site that has content which is consistently updated. It’s as if the search engine is saying “Well, this old stuff still looks good, but it certainly isn’t the newest stuff out there about this topic.” This so-called “freshness factor” can have a large impact on rankings, particularly with new websites.

Although it may seem that achieving search engine success with a brand new website can be a daunting prospect, it needn’t be if done properly. Hiring a skilled search engine optimization company is a good first step. There’s little use in lamenting the difficulty before you, or feeling that you have already fallen too far behind to begin. As an old Chinese proverb reminds us, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott’s articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue’s latest exclusive whitepaper, “Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix,” for more insight.