Still. it is said that every cloud has a silver lining it seems and for SEO it may be that people are seeing Organic Search  in a new light. Compared to other forms of online marketing, SEO is seen as a cheap, effective way of getting the message across. According to recruiters we’ve spoken to recently (and others with less of an axe to grind) demand for good SEO professionals is on the increase. Hooray for our side!

But the loser in this may well be Pay Per Click advertising (not that we expect Google to throw in the towel any time soon). As cheap as a well-run PPC campaign may be, some website managers look at the number of clicks which DON’T end in a sale and think of it as wasted money.

What is only partly appreciated is the link between effective SEO and PPC. In essence, web users are more likely to click on a PPC link — or indeed any brand-related link — if they associate it with good organic search results.

This is because SEO is as much about “Reputation Management” as it is about anything else. That includes quality backlinks — everyone wants to link to the “world’s favourite website”.

In other words, sites that give good attention to organic search can expect other benefits too.

It’s right that SEO is getting more attention, it simply makes sense. But treat it as a FOUNDATION of your whole SEM effort, not all of it.

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Around three-quarters of the world’s search traffic comes through Google and many people have it as their home page. Getting your site high on Google’s index is important, and every SEO professional claims they are best at improving your Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) score.

But there is an alternative “search engine” with just as much clout as Google and which is probably more widely seen.

Google News is a regularly updated index of top stories from news sites across the Internet. Google News is still Google, but getting your site indexed by it is a much trickier prospect than ordinary search. Nevertheless, if you’re producing “news”-type items on a regular basis, it’s worth a try.

Succeed and you’ll find yourself listed on XML feeds used by some of the planet’s most-visited websites via plugins for popular CMS platforms such as Google News for WordPress, or Google’s own targeted feed APIs.

So how do you get in? Google’s official rules for inclusion are …

• Sites that have news content that is original to the site
• Sites which do not solely promote their own activities
• Sites which are written and maintained by a clear organization, one that has multiple writers and editors

Most candidates fail on that last requirement since many news blogs are one-man (or woman) bands. But if you can turn your blog into a “community of newshounds” there is hope.

Having said all this, a quick trawl through Google News throws up all sorts of sites which seemingly flout these rules.

Once again, the mystery of Google is preserved.

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JWC was set up in mid 2007 as a blatant exercise in self publicity and good SEO, but after other work took priority in early 2008 it fell dormant with few updates.

But JWC was more than just a blog: there were tools including keyword density counters, character converters and readability engines, the latter appearing in Google’s top five for the keywords “readability analyser” right up to its sudden disappearance and a few weeks beyond.

The intention is to ressurect JWC as part of the Scene on the Net blog, including the popular tools.

Watch this space

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There are many reasons why a client may not wish their website to be “high profile”, from the private and personal nature of its contents to not being directly or indirectly linked to another site or even an individual.

At Scene, we have helped many clients to take the discreet route with otherwise legal, honest and ethical websites. It partly explains why our client list is not represented completely by our on-site portfolio.

We’re happy to take on other similar operations in a sensitive way and as a result we’ve developed some expertise in using SEO to promote discreet sites in the best possible way.

Even “hush, hush” sites get to appear in Google.

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