We all know that Google owns the world of online search and we all know that we must do what they want in order to keep on good terms with them. One Google slap can set your website and business back a few notches so you need to do what you can in order to not get slapped with penalties.

In the past few years, there have been so many illegitimate websites and blogs that have been set up with the sole intention of making a dime online. Most of these are either made for Adsense websites or affiliate websites crammed with nothing other than banners, affiliate links and other methods of advertising to make a quick dime.

With all of these types of websites that have been popping up over the past few years, it’s starting to cram the search engines, especially Google since they are the big dog! Owners are doing whatever they can to drive people to these sites in hopes they will get someone to click on an advertisement and they will make a few bucks. Owners are primarily doing this through black hat SEO (illegal search engine optimization) and pay per click advertising on Google Adwords. This is making it so much harder for legitimate companies to compete online because they have to deal with all of the garbage websites that are cramming up the online world.

In an attempt to cure some of this online spammy mess, Google rates websites on something they call quality score. Quality score will be utilized to the maximum moving forward to try and eliminate these made for Adsense and affiliate sites. It’s no longer the day where someone can create a web page, throw up some advertisements and allow people to click away. Webmasters and site owners are now going to have to develop their websites with quality score in mind. You might be asking now, what is quality score exactly? Quality score is a metric Google uses to measure how relevant a web page or website is in regards to the keywords they are using to advertise the website in paid search such as Google Adwords. So, you can assume that you would get a low quality score if you have a web page or landing page about making money online but you are trying to drive people to your landing page with the keywords computer resources. These really don’t go hand in hand. In order to receive a higher quality score by Google, you will need to have your web page or landing page content reflect your keywords. So, if you have a web page about making money online, you ideal content for that page should be something about how to make money online by selling XYZ and you should try to drive traffic with the keywords, make money online or how to make a living online, or learn to make money online. These keyword phrases directly related to the landing page content and Google will reward you for this. Google also rewards you with a higher quality score for uniqueness. Provide unique and valuable content and they will raise your quality score.

So, you are now asking, why do I need a high quality score? You need a great quality score because a high quality score will allow you to pay less for Pay Per Click advertising while allowing you to rank higher in the results. If you are familiar with PPC advertising, you know that it’s basically a bidding system where you bid on keywords and in return people do searches on Google for these keywords you bid on and you rank depending on your bid and quality score. Web pages and landing pages with a low quality score will have to pay higher bid prices in order to show up in the results. The more relevant your landing page is to your Google Adwords keywords and ad copy, the less you will pay for each bid or click and the higher Google will rank you in the paid results. This is Google’s way of rewarding your web page or landing page for being relevant. So, in reality, you might bid less than one of your competitors and you might rank higher. Why? Because you have a better quality score than they do. It’s simple, create a quality web page or landing page and use relevant keywords and ad copy when you are driving traffic to it from Google Adwords and you will be safe. Throw up a crappy web page or landing page with keywords and ad copy that’s not relevant and you will be penalized and you will not rank so well. You also run the chance of being banned. You’re better off doing it the right way, the first time around. It will pay off in the end when you are sitting pretty in the top of the results and paying a low cost per click and your competitors are paying an arm and a leg to even rank on the same page.

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Move over Apple, iTunes and iPhone, you have just been outdone.  This is seriously one of the coolest technologies that I have seen yet.  You’ve got to give props to Microsoft for taking the lead with the lastes touch screen technology.  How you like them apples, Apple?

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Next week is the SMX West Expo in Santa Clara, California.  For those of you who are not familiar with this event, SMX West is one of the premier expos for the search marketing industry.  This industry as a whole does not have too many of these events to look forward to, so several days devoted to the changing search engine market is pretty exciting for me.

This will my my first SMX West, but hopefully not my last.  I expect to sit in on some educational seminars, meet some interesting web marketing guru’s, and take in all the networking parties.  Most of all I hope to get a good feel for how this industry is going to take shape over the next few years.  There are some exciting new search technologies I have heard some whispers about, and I hope to hear more about them.

This change to “web 3.0″ may really change the way we surf the web forever, and I think that will be the theme at this event.  More personalized, more intelligent web surfing is the way of the not so distant future.  How do the major search engines plan to accomplish this without breaching personal privacy? And how can we, as industry professionals, use this to best profit our clients?  We will find out soon.

If I were to sit in on an SMX event a few years back, would I have been able to predict some of the exciting changes we have seen in the industry lately?  Probably so.  There will be several seminars and key-note speakers that might shed some light into the future of Search Engine Marketing and how it will evolve with web 3.0/web 4.0.  I will make sure to keep you up to date with what I learn, and blog directly from the event.

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Oh, no, the BlackBerry email server was down today for a few hours and my world ended! I guess you can call this my rant for the day. It’s pretty sad that people can’t function for a couple of hours without their BlackBerry lifelines.

Seriously, just because your freaking Blackberry goes out of service for a couple of hours, life is not over! If you’re that busy of a person that needs to be connected 24/7, then get a backup phone. If not, then stop pretending that you are that busy and get over it. I have a BlackBerry and as nice as it is to be able to check my email and browse online, if I REALLY need to, I can find a laptop with a wireless connection if need be.

I guess this is just something you can add to your list of addictions.

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Following up on a previous entry, Yahoo has said “no thanks” to Microsoft’s bid to buy them for $44.6 million.  They plan to outline the issues with the initial bid on Monday.  Expect to hear that yahoo is asking another $12 billion for a buyout.  Somebody should tell Yahoo executives they should have been flattered by this offer.  Below are a few reasons why I think Yahoo should have taken the deal and ran to the bank.

1) Their brand name is not getting any hotter- Yahoo was at their hottest back in the 90’s.  Since then they have always seemed to be a few steps behind other engines.

2)Their email service took a huge hit when Gmail was unveiled- Many Yahoo users were intrigued by Gmail and never came back.  This may be because Gmail has been cutting edge with updates and Yahoo email has moved along slowly.

3)Yahoo Messenger is not that hot- I represent a small segment of the population, but I don’t know many people using Yahoo Messenger.  AIM, Gchat, and MSN Messenger seem to be a more popular choice.  Messaging services are a huge way to suck new users in, and Yahoo doesn’t have the “messaging appeal”.

4)Internet News is watered down now- People can get current events online anywhere now, their news services are not gaining value.  MSN, Google news are both just as strong when it comes to news.

5)Average Online Advertising- They thought the roll-out of the “Panama” pay per click interface would let them compete with Google Adwords.  They are still playing second fiddle to Google in paid advertising revenue.  If less people are searching your pages, less paid clicks will be coming Yahoo’s way.  They will really need to find a new way to generate ad revenue if these trends continue.

Even with my Yahoo negativity, there are two reasons (in my mind) that Yahoo has value

1)Yahoo Finance- They are still one of the best finance resources on the Internet.  They have some of the most active message boards for stock research.  Google has tried to get into the game, but Yahoo still holds the lead. This bring Yahoo LOTS of traffic and revenue from financial advertisers.

2)Fantasy Leagues- Yahoo has a stronghold on free fantasy leagues.  This keeps people coming back to their site many times a day and also great advertising revenue.  There are other free fantasy services out there, but Yahoo has loyal fantasy clientele.  They have also done a great job updating the functionality of their fantasy portals.

I really think Yahoo and MSN needs to join forces and make a run at Google together sometime over the next few years.  They are both in the same boat and can offer each other some really valuable support.  We will have to wait and see if this deal is dead, or maybe there will be a fair counter offer on the table sometime soon.

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