To begin with, as we have had in our contracts since we began, SEO is not a science, but an art (or words to that effect). There are definitely known factors which influence ranking - the <Title> tag, <H1> tag (and through H6), bolding text, keywords in the first sentence and a bunch of others.  That's on-page SEO and it's somewhat quantifiable.  I say somewhat, because, with Google, the goal posts are continually moving.  Content "above the fold" is a hot change this year. Many sites have rightly recognised this as prime advertising real estate and jammed it full of ads.  Google says, "No, our surfer came to learn about <search phrase>, why should they be assaulted with ads?"  So these sites have received a penalty.

Off-page SEO is as fluid as on-page. Link farms and link sites were hit hard this year. The traditional reign of back links has been diminished somewhat (though are still important) with more weight going onto social bookmarking.

Magician or artiste?

What is your expectation of your SEO person? Have they set your expectations properly? Do you see them as Merlin, ready to wave a magic wand (knowing all the "inside" secrets), and, "poof",

Or, how to be safe on the Internet

Doing what I do, I come across all manner of passwords from clients.  Some are good passwords, and some are bad passwords - some are SERIOUSLY bad passwords.  There are lots of articles around the 'net telling you what you should and shouldn't use.  For me, what you shouldn't use is a complete no-brainer and takes one sentence, not a whole article.  If you can type it into Google and find it on the 'net DON'T use it!  It's that simple.  So, that includes the really dumb ones like your name, your spouse's name or your kid's or pet's name.  1-2-3-4-5, password, admin or any other password shipped with your equipment.  For bad passwords, that's it.

What is a much better question is, what is a good password?  Another simple answer, one YOU didn't come up with!  It's hard for a human to come up with truly random ones.  When I'm securing websites, I use an online password generator.  There are many of them, and a Google search will get you to one you like.  Include lowercase, uppercase, numbers AND special characters, and, in my opinion, it should be at least 8

Was it ever alive?  I think we can easily answer, "Yes" to the second question.  But why would I ever even consider it is dead?  Recent changes by FB have annoyed many users (and undoubtedly pleased others) myself included.  I like to think I'm pretty tech savvy, but I just don't get FB's new "timeline" layout.  IMHO, they've taken something good and fixed it to broken.  If users are unhappy, you can bet advertisers are hearing the fallout.

This week, car giant GM pulled $10 million in ads from Facebook.  Just a few days later FB was valued at $106 billion - now $10 mil seems pretty inconsequntial.  However, if one giant has seen fit to do this, you can bet others are looking hard at FB's ad model.  Interestingly, GM issued a statement on it's corporate FB pages that hey are still on FB, "like" alll their fans back, and will increase information via FB over the coming months.

So is advertising on FB really that bad?  Studies have shown the click through rate on ads to be a dismal 0.0051% or about 1 in 2000!  Compare this to a CTR on Google Adwords (no friends of mine BTW)

In the first 4 months of this year, Google has rolled out a number of algorithm changes which has changed the face of SEO.  Not that this is new to any of us in the industry - just another frustration to deal with and adjust to.  But, like other major updates, it has changed the way of SEO - again.

What color is your SEO's hat?

Various forms of SEO are referred to by different colored hats.  While I've seen up to 5 or 6 colors described, there are, in my mind, really just 2 - white and black.  I guess you can argue that, if you do a bit of both then you're doing grey hat, however, the possible outcome of you bit of black hat work will result in the same penalties, maybe just a little slower.

White hat SEO

Ethical, by-the-book (the book is written by Google - bear that in mind), no harm no foul SEO.  Google claims it wants to provide the most relevant results to whatever search phrase a surfer enters.  And that's probably where they started.  Now, I believe, they're more about being big business and making a load of money, and one