SEO Book Re-opening
After about 11 weeks or so of being closed to new members, I have caught up on a number of projects and we have decided to re-open again. We increased the price again to try to help manage demand, as it is far easier for me to keep adding more value to x members than to have 2x customers. There are so many ways to profit from search, but it is too easy to get bogged down doing administrative work if we were to have thousands and thousands of customers. Plus increasing price tends to increase customer quality (keeping any pikers out while encouraging more successful people to join) and make doing the work that much more enjoyable. Current members

10 Blue Links (and a Bunch of Other Stuff!)
Google announced product listing ads today, a cost-per-action ad program that shows images in the search results: Product Listing Ads is part of our effort to simplify the advertising process for merchants with large product inventories. Some of the key features of Product Listing Ads include: Pay only for results: Product Listing Ads are charged on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which means that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad and completes a purchase on your site. Because Pro

Excuse Me, But Where Did Google's Organic Search Results Go?
In the past many SEOs have called organic search results the results on the left side of the page and the pay-per-click / AdWords results as the results on the right side of the page. As Google has grown more aggressive witht promoting vertical/universal search I think a better way of defining the portions of the search result page are ABOVE THE FOLD and BELOW THE FOLD. As recently as yesterday Google stripped the phone numbers off of non-sponsored map listings, even if you were doing a navigational search! And that shows that the primary goal of the maps is as filler content (rather than utility).

More Ways for Google to Embed Themselves in Your Conversion Stream
The Free Credit Report ads have caused such user confusion in the marketplace that the government has felt the need to create a spoof site with $100,000 worth of amateur video to mock Free Credit Report.com. And yet even if you search for the official website [Annual Credit Report] to this very day Google is cashing in showing 3 PPC ads ABOVE the organic search results for that NAVIGATIONAL search query...sorta like how they were cashing in on eBay's brand recen

Borrowing From PPC
Search marketers know that if the title of the ad matches the searchers keyword query, they stand a good chance of getting the click. This mirroring strategy works for obvious reasons. The visitor already has a psychological attachment to the phrase - after all, they typed it in! Making Sure You Get The Click A lot of SEO strategy talks about how to achieve rankings. Whilst important, the SEO pro knows ranking is only half the battle won. While it's true to say most searchers will click on the top results in preference to results lower down the page, they will also scan across the various tit