This article is a really good overview of the whole Overstock.com situation. If you haven’t heard, Google penalized Overstock.com and JCPenny’s website because of some grey and black hat search engine optimization techniques, which means illegal or not-totally-legal methods. The Forbes article points out what Overstock’s offending technique was and how Google dealt with it–and has judged that getting penalized by Google is the worst thing that could happen to a company, as far as SEO goes.

In February, the Sale Lake City-company was penalized by Google for trying to out-smart the Internet company. Overstock’s transgression? It offered discounts to college kids who linked their “.edu” pages to Overstock.com. Because .edu pages don’t normally drive commercial traffic, Google considers them to be important sources of information and ranks them high in Internet searches. Overstock’s attempt to exploit this insight helped increase its visibility on Google.com.

The whole idea of gaming search engines is hardly new. There’s an entire industry based around the idea, SEO, as many of my Jacksonville based friends know. Overstock seems to be being punished for something that was rather harmless, but I guess Google found it pretty objectionable, because in terms of SEO, they’ve basically received the death penalty.

Search engine optimization is an industry that has grown by leaps and bounds over the past couple of years. This is because more and more people are seeing a need for it these days as the Internet becomes more and more relevant to commerce. Content is king on the Internet because it drives traffic, but having tools to use is important too, as this article points out.

Quality content is the heart of any search engine optimization campaign – and any website, for that matter. But producing good, optimized content is just the first step to SEO. Marketers have to analyze how content impacts their rankings, traffic and conversion. Specialists can offer custom consultancy and analytics, and there are a number of free tools on the web that can help marketers understand the benefits of their organic search campaigns.

The tools suggested include the Google Keywords Tool, Rank Checker for Firefox, and Google Analytics. All of these tools are worth considering, and much of what the author says it true. Certainly people should not be afraid to use tools to aid them in what they are doing. Jacksonville SEO professionals and aficionados should make use of the advice in this article.

Alex Cohen over at SearchEngineWatch has given us a look into the future of paid search–one that he says will not include keywords. He claims that many trends set into motion last year will bring this to pass. He’s right about one thing, the evolving complexity of the online marketing industry means that it will inevitably become much more fluid. It will, in the future, be harder to identify what is an advertisement, and what represents organic search results.

For most of its history, too, AdWords been presented in a text format even as the search results morphed into a multimedia experience. The result is that attention was pulled towards organic results at the expense of ads.

Google countered that trend with their big push for universal paid search in 2010. It was, perhaps, the most radical evolution to the paid search results since the introduction of Quality Score.

New monetization methods combined with the more stealthy advertising methods being provided by Google and others will soon make online advertisements look nothing like they have in the past. Cohen even suggests keywords will be entirely a thing of the past–which seems a bit far-fetched to me, but maybe. Jacksonville SEO experts and amateurs alike should peruse this article and see were the industry might be headed.

As 2011 approaches, it is important to consider how the search engine optimization industry might change in the coming new year. One of the most popular trends right now is access to the Internet through mobile devices. The rise of the smartphone has resulted in many people using the Internet through their phones more than ever before. This means mobile search has become an important new variable for SEO professionals to consider in their work.

Currently, mobile phones only account for about 8.3 percent of search click-throughs. However, this number is expected to jump to 11 percent during the first three months of 2011, and will account for 16 percent of clicks through by the end of the year.

Mobile search will continue to rise in the coming year because it is so incredibly convenient. When people were trying to think of an actor’s name, or the capital of Iran, they used to have to wait until they got home to answer the question. With smartphones, which now come equipped with various search capabilities, this is no longer the case. Convenience has expanded the industry of search.

If one Google’s “Jacksonville”, you will find website listings for cities or towns called Jacksonville in Florida, North Carolina, Illinois, and Arkansas. Jacksonville, Florida, is the subject of most of the top links on the first page–which is certainly good for them. Of course, this poses a problem for the other Jacksonville’s and their web presences. It means that went people type in “Jacksonville” looking for Jacksonville, Illinois, they are instead finding information on a different city.

This is not an unsolvable problem. Search Engine Optimization can make these other cities in disparate states turn up more prominently in searches for Jacksonville. Of course, Jacksonville, FL, could do the same thing in order to cement itself as the most popular of the many “Jacksonvilles”. Neither group is likely to, because especially in the midst of a recession, municipalities have bigger things to be concerned with.

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