From the moment I saw it I new it was cool and had a shot of going viral but these days it is really hard to tell what might work and what might bomb.  I recently came across the video below while doing some research on a stop motion video project for a client.  I just find it amazing that almost 5 million people have watched this over the past 4 years…..

A search for used auto parts Toronto turns up a math website as the number one choice in Blekko, they still have some work to do I think.

Here are a few results I pulled from a client that has been with us for the past two years and it can give you a good idea on the growth potential of inner pages.

The moral of this post is that you should always make sure the search professional that is working for you has a holistic approach to your search engine success.  Focusing solely on the home page will leave a lot of visitors and money on the table.

I found backlinks from porn, coming soon sites and even from a page that was simply 10k+ links jammed full of porn, gambling and rx – I was going to post a screenshot of the page but it crashed my browser twice so I figured I better not push my luck.

Most good SEO’s always check backlink profiles before building links but there are many ‘cut-rate’ services out there that won’t spend the extra time doing this type of due diligence.  So be very careful or your website might just become part of a ‘bad neighborhood’.

“tricking Google or Bing or Yahoo into ranking your particular Web site higher than the competition by reverse-engineering the tricks used by Google, et al to rank sites in the first place.”

and

“It’s killing the Internet if it hasn’t already.”

and his proof of this is:

“Try and find the best cell phone deal on the Internet. Do it by using a search engine. Every hit is some commercial site trying to sell you something.”

So basically he typed in ‘best cell phone deal’ and he was upset that they results that came up were various websites that wanted to ‘actually’ sell him a cell phone. Ummm, ya….if you type in cell phone deals or some hybrid of that query you are likely in the market to ‘actually’ buy a cell phone, ergo the results that come up will be sites trying to do just that.

The real truth is that Google and other search engines encourage SEO as a way of putting your websites best foot forward and they don’t have any problem with this as long as you represent your website and its content in an honest way.  In fact here is a link to Googles SEO starter guide – which by-the-way is available in 40 languages due to its popularity.

After making the above wildly unresearched statements John continues to hoot-and-haw about how everyone is out to trick him but then he gives SEO a little free promo by stating:

“My advice to Web site managers, when you see this sort of result, is to contact THAT site and hire the consultant doing SEO for it. This sort of thing is no accident.”

Maybe he was just spouting off to attract readers but some of these comments, obviously made by search engine marketing folk got pretty nasty:

“I wonder if you have any understanding of business and marketing if you think commercial sites coming up when you are actually looking for a deal is a bad thing. That really made me laugh.”

“You’re right John, if I type in “best cell phone deal” I definitely don’t want to see sites offering me the ability to get good deals on cell phones. What I’m REALLY looking for would be a wikipedia article talking about the future of cell phones followed by a bunch of sites featuring cell phone news and tips on using cell phones to order pizza.”

“Congratulations!! You have created the worst article that I have ever found on the internet.”

“John…seriously???? you just lost all credibility.”

“What a pity to read your post! What a pity for pcmag to let you write about SEO! I do recommend reading some basics SEO before you put up another post.”

“Which is worse? SEO, which you woefully misdescribe, or linking keywords in your article to adverts so that they pop up without warning in a really intrusive way?”

“John, a long long time ago, I respected your intelligence. Today, that’s completely gone.”

Ouch, I hope John does not take all this criticism too hard but I do agree – this article did seem quite ‘light’ on research.

2009 yearly salaries for an individual contributor with 1-3 years relevant experience range from $40,000 to $80,000; senior manager salaries range $70,000 to $120,000; and vice presidents with responsibilities for large SEM campaigns or a team of specialists earn from $160,000 to $250,000.

While the salary range for those with 1- years experience is quite wide I think that the majority of those getting the low range, $40k – $50k are in the 1-2 year experience range.  Once you have 3 years plus under your belt I don’t think you would even consider a position for under $60k.

It seems the spending on SEM will continue into the distant future and that is sweet music to anyone that is involved in this industry!

I know a few SEO’s that were considering leaving the country because a few of their paid directory submissions were in the ‘gray’ area. Now they can remain in the USA and Canada and live out their lives not fearing the long jail term that should be associated with breaking the ToS of companies like Google.

I was recently involved in doing SEO for a company that had a cost per acquisition of $47 through traditional style advertising and that cost went down to $3.85 for those aquired though search engine optimization.

I find the biggest problem with SEO continuing to grow at the pace it deserves is twofold, first there is a lot of resistance from traditional marketing folks because SEO is a much different animal.  With SEO you are spending considerable resources on something your company ultimately has no control over, the search engines.  And to make matters even more complicated the search engines keep their algorithms and methods of ranking a secret.  Secondly, most business owners and traditional type marketing managers don’t really understand SEO and that makes it very difficult for them to justify the expense and risks involved in switching over their traffic acquisition methods to organic vs. paid.

But there is hope and I do see a pattern starting with the largest and most progressive companies as they give SEO a try.  It has even reached  a point where many of these companies are bringing SEO in-house where they can learn, track and enjoy these advantages up close and personal.

-Finally the ‘SEO’s are criminals’ buzz is calming down. After Matt came out and said that SEO’s will be held to higher standards and Google is tracking them there was a long and painful cry of foul across the entire industry. Myself I don’t really think it is such a big deal and the SEO playing-field has never been level anyways.

-As far as the ‘page rank sculpting’ episode I will simply say I feel sorry for the SEO firms that sold this to their biggest clients and now have to figure out a way to get their foot out of their mouths.

What will next months buzz bring….no idea, maybe a new conspiracy theory about Google and Yahoo! planning to buyout MSN to stop BING from conquering the world?