By Barry Schwartz
Over the past few days, many webmasters and SEOs have been noticing an update to the PageRank score found in the Google Toolbar. Usually PageRank updates aren’t that noteworthy, but it seems something is different about this PageRank update

In particular, it has been a really long time since I’ve witnessed such widespread discussion about a PageRank update. I have been writing about PageRank updates since 2003 and been discussing them with other webmasters years before that. The last time I have seen this much discussion was in the times of the Google Dance, when toolbar PageRank updates actually coincided with ranking changes. Those days are long gone, but yet, SEOs and webmasters seem to be even more obsessed with a toolbar PageRank update. (FYI, I am one of those that believe we should not obsess about PageRank, let alone new toolbar PageRank updates).

I have asked Google for a comment about this PageRank update, since this is sparking such discussion. I will leave it open to discussion at our Sphinn forums, where several threads on the subject have started, such as this one.

My advice remains the same as always. Do not worry about PageRank. Try on focusing on building out a better site, with better content and a better community.

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By Jill Whalen

Is your website sick?

In many ways, SEO consultants are like doctors, only instead of analyzing your personal health symptoms, we analyze the overall health of your website. It’s true we’re not working with life or death situations the same way doctors do, but having a website that is not receiving all the targeted search engine traffic it could be, is a sign of a sick website.

When working with a new client our first task is to research their website’s symptoms of underperformance. Once we diagnose what the problems are, we can provide a “cure” that will make the website perform better. As with human health, there are varying degrees of website unhealthiness; for people it might range from those that just need to get more exercise to those who have an all out deadly disease. For websites, it can vary from those that can’t even get their pages indexed by search engines (and thus are not able to receive any organic search visitors), to those who are receiving lots of organic traffic, but could be obtaining more.

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By Stephan Spencer
One of the first jobs I have to do as a consultant going into an SEO engagement is to debunk the myth that SEO is “free”. SEO has never been, nor will it ever be, free traffic. It takes work, and that comes at a cost. You need to hire staff or allocate internal resources to manage your SEO efforts. You need to enlist an SEO firm or consultant to help identify the opportunities and prioritize them, navigate the minefields, and up-skill your internal team. You need to outfit your in-house team with on the tools of the trade (SEOMoz Pro, Internet Marketing Ninjas, etc.), send them to the conferences (all the SMX conferences, of course!), provide them with training intensives (e.g. SEOClass, SEOTraining), and various other professional development and networking opportunities.

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Maybe it’s just me, because I’ve spent years ingesting the Purple Cow Kool-Aid. But I can never get over the number of cookie-cutter, copycat businesses that spring up online. Choosing the exact same business model as someone else almost appears to be a favorite pastime in North America these days. Kind of a macho, or at least masochistic, thing. Like training for a marathon, or riding in the Tour de France without Lance Armstrong’s genetics.

And that tough situation leads to an expectation of optimizing implementation of things like paid search campaigns to an almost suicidal level of detail. As I pointed out in an earlier column, this race is damn competitive. By choosing to copy a competitor’s business model exactly, you make the competition that much tougher on both of you.

But for the sake of a frank discussion of the most optimal forms of optimization that a mad optimizer should pursue, I’ll put aside my trepidation about cookie-cutterism and go forward today on the often-true premise that if you really do manage to place first or second in the mad race to optimize everything perfectly, you can make a pretty decent living.

By Andrew Goodman
And when you’re trying to win an Olympic sprint, along with training and eating right, what’s the thing that typically pushes you over the top? Yes, that’s right! Cheating!

In our world, that’s where spying on your competitors comes in. Maybe some of the tools are on the IOC banned substances list, but I don’t expect that to stop you.

Based on a recent experience with Keyword Spy, I thought I’d share with you a few of the things I learned to improve in an account, and a few things that reminded me just how screwed up many of your competitors are. Copying them is a bad idea because many of them are making the same old boneheaded mistakes.

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Okay we know that Google is divesting itself of Performics…. well the search arm anyway. They are keeping the affiliate marketing arm.

Google had started their version of affiliate marketing some time ago with their CPA ads. Sign up through AdSense and you could use the creatives and get paid on conversions, while advertisers could offer amounts for conversions and Google tracked to see if it was a better financial deal for them…. this has not taken off.

But grabbing experienced affiliate marketing consultants could turn this into the hope they once saw in it.

Unfortunately it is a move similar to the push into analytics and ad serving - if it works Google will provide some serious competition to all other affiliate programs. They have the ability to be the nexus between a lot of publishers and a lot of advertisers and to really make an impact in the space.

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