It’s been a while since I’ve last posted, but it sure has been busy. That’s a good thing, and from what I hear, many a good SEO company is getting more business. I’m happy that the industry is flourishing, but what I’m not happy about is all the misinformation that’s getting communicated to potential clients. I posted about SEO myths a while back, but something I didn’t touch on was SEO for small businesses.

SEO for Small Busineses

Here’s the deal: Google is almost definitely looking at a brand’s presence — online and offline — in their search rankings factor. Nearly 100% of the time, it’s much easier to rank for an already-established brand than it is for a new one. Essentially, small businesses have it even tougher in the online world. Here are some reasons why:

1. Google Sandbox: Nobody knows if it really exists, but we’ve surely experienced some of its effects for small, new sites. According to Wikipedia, “Google temporarily reduces the page rank of new domains, placing them into what is referred to as its “sandbox”, in an effort to counter the ways that search engine optimizers attempt to manipulate Google’s page ranking by creating lots of inbound links to a new web site from other web sites that they own.” To sum it up, you’ve got to earn your keep these days and start at the bottom of the ladder.

2. Inbound Links: Partly due to the sandbox effects, inbound links are tough to build for a new business. As an SEO, you can’t build up 1,000 links in a few months for a new business — especially a small one. We’ve found that Google takes a good look at your link profile if you’re new and if it’s fishy, you’re going to get penalized.

3. PageRank versus Public Relations: In my view, it’s pretty much the same thing these days. Bigger brands that continually push offline marketing efforts inevitably rank faster because there is more natural linkbuilding occurring. In the long run, that is less effort and better quality. If a brand reaches out to a major media outlet like the Chicago Tribune and gets a story published, it’s likely that the content will also be pushed to the website — with a link. Even if it’s a no-follow, the brand gets rewarded with a boost in site traffic. For a small business, that’s a huge win.

4. Quality Content: In very few cases do I see new businesses allocate enough resources to creating quality content. Content is the thing that will get you out of the sandbox, and it’s also the thing that will position you as the industry expert. If you’re a new site and a new business, the worst thing you can do is to throw up crap SEO content, have Google review it and deem you unworthy because they think you’re a spammer. It happens — just don’t let it happen to you.

When it comes down to it, the message is simply that it’s not easy for small businesses. Some small business owners think that SEO is the pot of gold (it can be over time), but many don’t understand what they’re up against. My suggestion? Invest in SEO, but make sure you’re doing your part in getting your brand out there.

It’s pretty inevitable that any SEO company — ours included — is thinking about Google Buzz and wondering how in the world it’s going to affect SEO. Anything that Google releases is bound to send tremors of its presence through the Web. It’s no stretch to think that Buzz will affect the social media space — but what about SEO?

If you’re still not familiar with Google Buzz, check out their video to get the basics.

Just the Good Stuff
Buzz’s recommendation feature is likely going to have the biggest impact on SEO. According to Google, “Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip.” It is essentially Page Rank within Buzz, and it will be interesting to see if Google funnels everything through social search. My bet is that they are likely to do this. Google’s overarching mission is to organize the Web’s content based on relevancy. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t push highly rated content within Buzz into social search.

What Does This Mean?
This means that Google Buzz is another gateway for something to go viral — with bigger implications. Buzz is already hooked into Gmail and its millions of users, plus Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, etc., and because it’s all centralized, a great relevant post is going to get a lot more airtime. If social search enters the mix, it basically means there’s another form of SEO, except it’s not based on backlinks or optimization techniques. Rather, it’s strictly focused on how many people like and share the content (a.k.a. Digg).

This means that strong, quality content is going to be the best way to drive rankings. Really, this is the way it should be. The better and more relevant the content is, the more it gets shared, the higher it rises in Buzz’s “Page Rank.” Buzz gets implemented into social search, and your piece of content gets ranked right up there on Page 1.

What do you think? Any other predictions out there?

The video review below is the best I’ve seen and from the comments I read, most people agree. I have to admit Windows 7 looks good but I haven’t actually used it yet. In fact I may never use it.

Yesterday, Search Engine Journal posted an excellent article by Matt Leonard about why (larger) companies need social media guidelines for their employees.  Now at SEO Group and The Ocean Agency, we have some basic guidelines, but ours are more along the lines of Zappos - “be smart about what you put on the web”. 

Everyone in the SEO and web development world has likely read multiple articles on the Yahoo/Microsoft deal today, and if you’re reading this you’ve likely developed your own opinions on whether or not it was a wise decision for either company.  However, we (meaning the SEO team at SEO Group, not the royal we) are more concerned with how this will effect our search engine optimization process.

Hello all, and happy friday!

Around the office we use delicious to internally share and comment on interesting news and opinions in the internet marketing world. Here are some stories that got our office buzzing this week.

Everyone is talking about Google’s new operating system, but our search overlords have also recently rolled out a real estate search function that our SEO company finds pretty interesting. 

Happy Friday everyone. As the week comes to a close, we have some wonderful SEO  links for you all to contemplate over the weekend (and if you’re in Chicago like us, check out the fabulous entertainment guides from a nearby community of Chicago apartments - yes, one of our writers compiles those).

From Read  Write Web, the HowCast Iphone application has surpassed 500,000 downloads.

It’s Friday, so as always, here are our favorite blog posts and articles from around the web:

Men with Pens covers optimal blogging frequency and how not to burn yourself out by posting too often - blogging is a marathon, not a sprint!

It’s Friday! You know what that means - our SEO company’s favorite articles and blog posts of the week.