Internet Marketing SEO Advertising Blossoms
By
Joel Leyden Jerusalem----October 7.....The Internet has gone through several revolutions but has always come back to the same place. Your monitor. That plastic monitor be it a desktop screen, your TV or a mobile handheld device. But you are still staring at a glowing electronic device. And that device is helping you to decide today, through Internet marketing SEO, who you meet, what you purchase and how to stay healthy. Back in 1995, I had the privilege of helping to create the first commercial Website in Israel - NetKing - and many of the first Web sites worldwide. The Israel advertising firm Tamir-Cohen in Tel Aviv had the foresight. They hired Internet pioneer and creative genius Arnon Katz to head their new "interactive" division. Though back in 1995, I don't think that we had used the term "interactive" yet! Internet advertising budgets for which we secured to create Websites and banner ads from some of Israel largest and most respected companies were "experimental" and the billing numbers were very small. Hours after Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Arnon called me and said that we had to do something. That "something" became the first interactive condolence memorial site on the Net. But how did we get it out? Yes, Internet marketing and SEO search engine optimization is not something new. Its been around a while, with and without META tags. Back in 1995, META tags were not used, but we knew that our headline had something to do with SEO. And it still does today. Those pioneering days of the Internet were filled with fun and anxiety. One did not know how long the Internet "fad" would last. That meant you did not know how long your job would last. Someone once suggested to me to buy domain names back in 1996, but it didn't really sink in then. Register.com and Network Solutions were in the right place at the right time. I regret not buying their stock or the stock of Amazon.com, E-Bay, CNN.com and USAToday. But I still had a hunch about the future of the Internet and how SEO advertising and Internet marketing would revolutionize Madison Avenue. All one had to do was look at how and who created the Internet. It was US intelligence. The US military insuring that if a nuclear attack took place it would not knock out Washington's national defense system. It all started back in 1957 with the former Soviet Union launching Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In response, the United States formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military. In 1962 Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation, a government agency or better put - an intelligence think tank, was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military could still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack. So the US government, in getting out information to their various military and academic network actually became the first SEO. In 1972, the first e-mail program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN. The following year development began on the Internet protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other. So now we have Ray and Vinton to thank for "spam". And guess where Vinton is working today? Google. Yep, one of the founding fathers of the Internet and Internet marketing today serves as Google's "Chief Internet Evangelist." Vinton finally received the credit for whom he is well due. He could have created or joined an Internet Casino and made millions, but as a purist he held out for something more conservative. Google is to be commended for honoring this man and his achievements. Now what is Google? One can say a "search engine" - for which it is. But as one who has worked in international public relations and advertising for 25 years, let's call a spade a spade. Google is the largest advertising agency on the face of the earth. After all, if you want to find something, over 85 percent of all Internet users from the US and Israel to India and China rely on Google to find it, buy it and use it. As such Google which states that it does not work with SEO or Internet marketing and advertising search engine optimizers, does declare how they do relate to them. Let's take a look at Google's Web site and comment on Google's policy regarding SEO. All you need to do is perform a search on Google for the word SEO. Google ranks its own advice to global Webmasters and SEO professionals in second place. I believe that it is only in second place just to assure us that they are being objective. Google states that SEO is an abbreviation for "search engine optimizer." So far we are on the same page. Then they state" "many SEOs provide useful services for website owners, from writing copy to giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted." We are still in agreement with Google up to their next sentence. "However, a few unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results," says Google. C'mon guys, who defines what is ethical and what is not? Google? Then Google comes out with a stern warning: "While Google doesn't have relationships with any SEOs and doesn't offer recommendations, we do have a few tips that may help you distinguish between an SEO that will improve your site and one that will only improve your chances of being dropped from search engine results altogether." How can an advertising SEO professional be "overly aggressive?" This is highly subjective. Billions of advertising dollars are now pouring into Internet advertising SEO. Please notice that I do not make a distinction between Internet advertising and SEO as SEO is Internet advertising. With billions of ad and Internet marketing dollars at stake, there is going to be competition. Fierce competition at that. And those who are the most creative and work the hardest should reap the rewards. But what is defined as "overly aggressive?" How I would define it would be illegal activity. Such as placing spyware on your computer to track where you are surfing on the Net and what color underwear you are wearing. Let alone the illegal activity of stealing credit cards and other personal information over the Net. Google states: "Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue." That my friends is called direct mail marketing. And even though I hate going through a 1,000 e-mails a day, I have the choice to filter out the mail I want to receive and don't want to collect. That is called freedom of speech. Don't get me wrong. I have don't collect e-mail lists and spam the citizens of France, Brazil, Turkey, India, China and Japan. But that is a democratic right for which we should preserve with our non-virtual and virtual mail boxes. The only problem here is that sometimes the junk or e-mail filters censor important mail along with all of the Viagra, Cialis and so called "charities" and "Nigerian banks" who are seeking to defraud us. But as the Net continues to grow and develop, Internet marketing and better SEO solutions will be found. An immediate solution is not to place your e-mail address on a Web page where a robot will spider it (collect it). There are many areas where I concur with Google's advice including on how to select an SEO. "No one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google," states Google. Beware of an SEO that claims to guarantee rankings, alleges a "special relationship" with Google, or advertises a "priority submit" to Google." Nobody can decide what enters any newspaper except for the publisher and editor-in-chief. The same holds true for Google. Even Google has a difficult time ridding itself of racist and or violent Websites for which it has indexed in a top position. But now of greater consequence, are we about to witness SEO wars? As the competition gets stronger to go for the gold number one SEO Internet marketing ranking, how many SEO companies will try to destroy the credibility of a fellow SEO competitor? How many false complaints will Google receive from truly unethical SEO's who lie about their competitors and pray that an unsuspecting Google employee will buy it and drop that SEO off the Net? Google has much credit coming to them. And as such they carry a very heavy burden in setting and implementing an ethical code for SEO's. Google's greatest challenge will be finding the proper balance between what they define as "overly aggressive" and truly illegal. For now, as Google wrestles with many in-house and external community issues, we SEO's do have a responsibility to get your name out there. Some SEO say be completely honest and tell your client and the world how SEO advertising and marketing works. I respond: "does Coca-Cola give out their creative recipe to the public? No they do not. But those few tips that I will be happy to suggest is the following. When selecting an SEO or Internet marketing, advertising professional seek someone whose background is in marketing, public relations and or advertising. The best would be a combination of a firm which has professional copywriters and former journalists who also have a programming background in HTML, JAVA and other Internet programming languages. Second, if your SEO themselves are not ranked high in the search engines, and rely only on sponsored links, then you must ask yourself how they are going to have you ranked high when people perform keyword searches for your product or service. Third, your Website is not a printed brochure. A printed brochure must be "clean" with plenty of "white space" to be effective, while your Website needs at least 200 words of SEO copy. That copy might destroy the English language and other languages a bit as key words are optimized for Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL - not Webster's. Be sure to have META tags placed on your Website. META tags were the SEO Internet marketing standard back in the late 1990's and then died. They became completely useless as the rules of SEO changed. And changed again as META is now back providing vital copy to Websites which use flash or just an image or two on their home page. Never use invisible text. Although this was one of the most common SEO tricks used a few years ago, Google for example will drop your site like a stone from a tall building if they discover this method. Again here, my advice to Google is to be tolerant of those ancient SEO's like myself who once used invisible text when the Internet was still in it's Wild West days. I might still have some of that text on a page back from 1997! Another common no-no is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. Lastly, be patient. The Internet was not created in a day and your new Website may take up to 30 days or more to be indexed by many of Net's search engines. But the wait is well worth it. Both Google and Yahoo reported record revenues last quarter, income that is expected to grow rapidly over the coming years. As the leaders of the search advertising SEO pack, Google and Yahoo represent the wide end of an expanding wedge. According to Safa Rashtcy a senior analyst at investment bank Piper Jaffray, SEO Internet marketing search revenues will increase by a staggering $18 billion over the next five years. Projected revenues are expected to surpass $10 billion in 2006, $13 billion in 2007, $16 billion in 2008, and $19 billion in 2009. By the end of the decade, revenues generated by search are projected to be in the $25 billion range. So why has the world suddenly awakened to SEO Internet marketing? Because it took the traditional advertising and public relations agencies ten years to adjust from print to digital. And that adjustment is still in its infancy. One must give credit to the on-line casino and adult content industries which today are securing millions daily from having optimized their sites back in 1996. They were the true SEO pioneers. Also the Telcos are now creating a potent push by providing Internet VOIP, SMS and MMS messaging to fixed line and mobile handsets. According to Reuters and Wireless Intelligence, an information service set up by industry body GSM Association and consulting firm Ovum, the number of mobile phone subscribers in the world has surpassed the 2 billion milestone. That's a lot of Internet! SEO Internet marketing is like fishing. Make sure you have a solid reel, a good line, attractive bait and follow through when you get a bite. And don't forget to keep the coffee nearby.
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