SEO Recap-5 August

This SEO recap centers around the Yahoo and Microsoft merger as well as some interesting observations from Rand Fishkin about what makes an SEO.

Photo by Edgeworks Limited via Creative Commons

Why Buy The Milk When You Can Get the Cow for Free?

Aaron Wall discusses the Microsoft & Yahoo deal. In terms of SEO he raises the following questions. What happens to:
1. the Yahoo Directory?
2. Yahoo link data (site explorer)?
3. Yahoo SearchMonkey & BOSS?
4. Yahoo’s paid inclusion?
There is the possibility that all will disappear!

Only 1/6th of Online Video Marketing is about Advertising

The business use for Online Video consists of at least 6 elements: Advertising, Branding, Communication, eLearning / Training, Promotion and Social Media. As the title states only one sixth of online video is used for advertising.
A recent study conducted by Sally Cole, Marketing Director for Google’s DoubleClick, in conjunction with Dynamic Logic MarketNorms shows that video with rich media builds brand online better than Flash.

Top 10 Things the Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal Changes for SEO

• SEO for Bing is Worth Your Optimisation Effort-15% of search market share is worth the optimisation effort
• We May Lose Yahoo! Link Data-Microsoft killed their link calculator, might do the same with yahoo
• PPC Consolidation-Adwords not the only PPC player on the block anymore, Rand suspects more people will buy ads from MSN AdCenter, which is likely to increase ad relevancy, quality and competition
• Bing’s Webmaster Tools Are Important
• Yahoo! & Bing Local Become More Essential
• Bing Will Get more Spam-loopholes open in Bing that spammers will find
• Bing Will Get Lots more Data
• Important Yahoo! Properties May Disappear
• Yahoo! Will Become a More Powerful Content Competitor

What Makes an SEO

Rand sees three ways a professional can be categorized and assigned – technical, Self constructed and peer validated.

Technical: An SEO is one who practices search engine optimisation.
Self-Constructed: I practice search engine optimisation as a significant portion of the professional work I undertake and am, therefore, an SEO.
Peer Validated: A community of peers in the SEO field has recognized this individual’s achievement and views them as qualified for the title.
Rand goes onto say he would not classify someone as a SEO unless they have these 3
Qualities:
• Knowledgeable in the Basics of Search Engine Operations (not just SEO, but the fundamentals of how search engines work)
• Actively Practicing SEO by Influencing Change to Websites & Pages and Measuring the Impact
• Consistently Formulating & Testing Theories About Metrics/Variables that Influence Search Engine Results

See Bruce's author page for links to connect on social media.