By Bob Heyman

Someone’s trying to trademark the term SEO, which has roiled the SEO community. The someone is named Jason Gambert, and he has filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office, claiming to have coined the term “SEO” (for Search Engine Optimization). SEOMoz and others have moved to challenge Gambert’s claim. As the person (along with my partner Leland Harden), who actually did coin the term Search Engine Optimization back in 1995, I feel uniquely qualified to weigh in on the validity of Gambert’s claim.

Jason Gambert asserts that he was the first to use the term SEO, in a 2007 email. The actual origin of SEO happened this way, as recounted way back in 1997 in the book Net Results that Leland and I wrote with Rick Bruner. Here’s an excerpt from page 137:

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By Danny Sullivan

In the old days, getting listed on Google just meant having a web site. These days, you can get in by selling products through a virtual store, by having a book, by having a small local business that’s listed in a yellow pages directory and many other ways. To help centralize submission and inclusion information, Google has updated its Submit Your Content page to make it more into what I’d call Content Central, a guide to the many ways of being listed. Google’s also launched an actual Content Central blog, to coincide with the update.

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By Mark Jackson

A company that’s redesigning its Web site recently called me to discuss the possibility of my firm assisting them with their SEO efforts. First, I congratulated them on being one of the few companies to consider SEO prior to re-launching their site (that’s the way it’s done, people!). Then we talked about their domain name.

This company was planning to move their site to a new domain because the old domain (and by “old,” I mean 10 years old) no longer represented the company. As many of us do, they typed in about 100 different domain names into GoDaddy’s search and eventually found an available domain name that was more in line with their core business.

One problem: their domain name choice was absolutely horrible. It had five keywords crammed together. It was confusing, hard to recall, and terrible for branding, SEO purposes, and any other measurement that you wanted to put to it.

But, the domain name only cost $9.99 per year. What a deal, right?

With a little searching, I discovered an unused domain name that was an exact match to their “most important keyword phrase,” was originally registered in the 1990s (good domain age), and had an overall clear history. However, it would cost $20,000.

Their reply probably won’t surprise you: “We can’t afford $20,000 for a domain name!”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

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By: Justin Pinkus

Something as basic as your web site’s site map could have more of an effect on the success of your web site than you originally may have thought. So why is it that site maps are often taken lightly or overlooked altogether? Most graphic designers, webmasters and even Internet marketers don’t grasp the many uses and purposes for a site map. And the ones who do might only incorporate one version when there is a strong value to having multiple types for different “audiences.”

In this article I will be reviewing the benefits of incorporating a site map, its prime positioning and the different types that should be considered for optimal success.

So What Exactly is a Site Map?

The simple definition of a site map is a page that contains an organized listing of links to all pages within the web site. You will usually find links to these pages somewhere on the home page of a web site, and on more proactive sites, every page. Often site maps are found at the top right or bottom navigation links, away from the main components and natural site navigation, but still positioned in areas of high visitor focus, based on eye-tracking tests that have been performed by knowledgeable Internet marketers.

There are of course many ways to structure the site map itself, taking into consideration a company’s brand colors and the special look and feel of the site itself. Some may choose to list links alphabetically while others choose a category-based approach. While the design layout choice is insignificant, an organized and easy to read and follow site map structure is.

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By Aaron Wall

Three years ago Todd Malicoat published a blog post titled Balancing the Link Equation, which offered conditional tips about how to improve the link profile of a website. I think of that post nearly every time someone asks for SEO advice because the field has grown so complex that both yes and no are often mutually wrong answers. The correct answer to most SEO questions is “it depends” followed by a whole bunch of qualifications like brand size, site age, content quality, site size, and marketplace competition.

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By David Roth

So what’s the ROI on this SEO program you’re recommending? How much revenue upside is there? What will it cost? How does this stack up against the fourteen other projects we’re working on right now?

Are these questions familiar to you? They are to me. I hear them in my sleep. I have had to answer each of them at some point (and most more than once) when making SEO recommendations both in-house and to clients. As SEO continues to grow as a viable marketing channel, you need to be prepared to answer these questions as well. Why?

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By Jill Whalen

As I’m reviewing company websites to prepare for our August SEO Training Class, I’m struck by how often I see the same website mistakes.

Since we’ve been offering the SEO classes over the past 7 months, we’ve reviewed over 40 websites. In each class of 6 online marketers, there’s never a dearth of problems to point out to them. I’m not talking about minor glitches here, but stuff that prevents the website from reaching its full potential with the search engines. In other words, as long as these problems exist, they’re not going to be able to gain all the targeted search engine traffic that they could be.

To put it into terms that anyone can relate to–the company is basically losing money every day they don’t fix their website.

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By Stephan Spencer

Whenever you make changes to a web site, one of the most important considerations should be how to use “redirects” to alert the search engine to your changes, to avoid having a negative impact on your search rankings. Whether you’re moving pages around, switching CMS platforms, or just wanting to avoid duplicate content and PageRank dilution, you’ll want to employ redirects so as not to squander any link juice (PageRank) that your site has acquired. There are multiple ways of redirecting, and it’s important you get it right if you want the SEO benefit without risk of falling outside search engine guidelines (such as is the case with “conditional redirects”).

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By Aaron Wall

What is the difference between an unremarkable no value add thin ecommerce site, and a top ranked site? In some industries the difference is simply site age. Sites that were around a few years ago had fewer competitors, so it was easier for them to rank. As they aged they got trusted more, and some of those top rankings lead to many self-reinforcing links.

If your site is brand new and you want to compete against established sites directly on their most important keywords then you need to be good at public relations, have a better brand strategy, or have some remarkable feature that makes people want to talk about you. Without conversation and links it is hard to pass up sites that have been accumulating links for years.

But what if you could roll back the clock, and quickly grab market leading positions? You can.

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By Greg Sterling

When Microsoft made its investment in Facebook I always had thought that Live Search would come to the site, together with search monetization. Later it appeared that search wasn’t part of the deal. Facebook’s competitors all have web search, including Google’s much publicized deal with MySpace.

Well today Microsoft announced that Live Search will be coming to Facebook, together with paid search ads.

Here’s the note from Microsoft PR:

Microsoft’s yearly financial analyst meeting, Microsoft SVP, Satya Nadella announced the extension of Microsoft’s U.S. relationship with Facebook to encompass search.

As part of the deal, Microsoft will work with Facebook to bring its customers Live Search-powered web search and search ads by the end of the calendar year. Facebook will work with Microsoft to design the best search experience for Facebook’s customers and advertisers.

This is a big deal for both Microsoft and Facebook, which had no web search prior to this. If Facebook eventually drives a good deal of volume it can help Microsoft gain exposure to users and potentially additional market share over time, but also will drive search revenue. Facebook now has in excess of 100 million users globally.

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