I recently vacationed by driving around West Texas and Big Bend (click the pix to see a bigger version). We had a glorious time (consider a Star Party at McDonald Observatory a MUST on your next trip out there) and enjoyed sluicing for gems at Sonora Caverns, cruising up and down mountains and seeing the glory of ALL the geographic regions that make up the great state of Texas.

Before we left, I surfed the web to learn about our hotel’s amenities. No mention of Internet connectivity. None. Gasp! Whatever would we do to entertain the online-video-game playing kiddo? I, personally, looked forward to not being connected, but my son had a different opinion. We surfed around and found a McDonald’s in the area with WiFi. Whew! At least we have an emergency plan!

As an Internet Professional, I spend my days in front of a computer playing with Internet marketing tools, enhancing link development skills, reading blogs and forums, etc. I figured a few days of family time would be wonderful. I’m sad to say I’m the one that felt a little lonely out there. Not only were we unable to surf the web, but we often had no signal on our various cell phone plans. Talk about quiet time!

There has been a recent change in the Google algorithm, meaning many sites have seen changes in the rankings for cherished search terms. After muttering about it for a couple of weeks, I’ve decided not to take it personally. We’ve been #1 for one particular term for years, so suddenly becoming #2 is not THAT big a deal–especially since the competing site doesn’t have anything like the depth of information, the links, the content or the design licks that our site does. After all, it’s the human who decides which site looks interesting.

And, it’s relatively easy for a site to concentrate on a single term to compete, but our methodology for site optimization looks at 25-30 terms. For our own site, there are 50 terms we monitor, and we have dozens of terms on the first page of Google…we do a good job of filling the niche we defined as our target. Over the years, we’ve been through several major algorithm changes, and the good news is that things settle out, and the cream still rises to the top. None of our clients has ever seen substantial change to their rankings, after the storm passes.

None of us likes change, but change forces us to adapt. High gas prices help us act on our conservationist values, and we suddenly understand the cost of running errands one at a time. Something we all need to do from time to time is to consider how Google looks at our site. What pages are being served up, and which are not being served? There are two major factors to consider: quality content, and quality links.

Take your list of targeted terms and take a fresh look at your rankings. Page one rankings are definitely keepers. Terms that are not in the top 20? It may be time to remove them from your strategy. For those terms that fall onto the second page, now is a good time to think about building them up–move the content higher up in your site, or replace some of those dud terms with these up-and-comers. Also, think about longer keyword phrases that you might have unique content for–unique is a high value at the Googleplex.

Are all your links pointing to the home page? Then you’re missing a huge opportunity. Keyword-based links that point to relevant content pages can be just the thing to pop a #15 ranking onto the first page–and since the vast majority of people only look at Page One results, it’s well worth the extra effort to sharpen your SEO strategy with quality content and quality links.

Back to work after Mother’s Day, it hit me. Does Google = Mom?

You decide for yourself. Choose the most appropriate response for each question below:

1. Establishes and subtly enforces — to keep things in order — a system of reward and discipline for a set of known rules:

a) Google
b) Mom

2. Establishes and subtly enforces a second system of reward and discipline, this one for which the rules are not disclosed:

a) Google
b) Mom

3. Encourages — through a complex strategy of intermittent delayed reward for compliant behavior — the habit of always trying to do everything right to be sure she’s happy:

a) Google
b) Mom

4. Occasionally must take away everyone’s privileges when actually only a few have been bad:

a) Google
b) Mom

5.Works tirelessly to survey, decode, categorize, store, and retrieve stuff — on demand and usually in under two seconds — so most of the time we can get what we need or something pretty darn close:

a) Google
b) Mom

6. Has earned the cultural endorsement of having a noun that names them be also used as a verb:

a) Google
b) Mother

7. Fill in the blank: “If ___________ ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

a) Google
b) Momma

Am I on to something here?

Driving to errands after work, a story came onto NPR’s Marketplace that was so riveting I sat in my parked car, little heart all aflutter with hope at what I was hearing. See, Microsoft is attempting a hostile takeover of Yahoo! That’s not the fun part, though. Yahoo! is trying to rally by paring down to doing what they do well and outsourcing what they don’t do so well. Namely, search.

That’s right–the execs got together over the weekend to discuss Yahoo! outsourcing their search and paid search to Google. It’s like a Valentine’s Day gift from the universe to search marketers.

Okay, that’s probably not nice of me, but I have a major problem with Yahoo! putting paid results in with the natural ones and not differentiating them. Not PPC ads, but an additional service called Yahoo! Search Submit. The clicks are cheap, but you don’t have a say in what search terms they use to display these listings you’re being charged for. We’ve found that our clients are usually paying for clicks on their own name–positioning that they should have for free. There’s an argument for it providing a lower-quality user experience as well, since the results aren’t going to be as truly relevant as Google’s.

Why pay at all if the practice is a little bit sketchy? Because otherwise, it’s crazy hard to get listed in Yahoo! at all. Since they index your site and drive traffic there by giving preferred positioning, it’s not such a bad deal, even if it is a bit devious. To just have the second-largest market share of search become one with the largest would have us SEO nerds blissed out like you wouldn’t believe. Fingers crossed!

Everyone’s been all atwitter about Google’s smack-down on blogs that function as link farms. They adjusted page rank scores, taking some from the bigger blogging networks that cross-link down to a PR 4/10 from a PR 7/10. This sucks for bloggers who weren’t intentionally seeking out sketchy linkage and are getting punished because the company automatically formats their blogs to include a bunch of cross-links. Scraped blogs that are definitely in the gray hat area? This is exactly what they deserve. Profiting (rankings-wise) off of other writers’ work is not contributing anything, it’s parasitic.

In the overall scheme of Google and the internet, anything that removes the bad and discourages people from using it as a quick fix is a good thing. You can’t get the results without the work. Affected blogs are getting the attention right now, but with this being the third very recent update to PR, it portends changes that reach much further than blogs. If page rank is about backward links, and it’s harder to get them, will Google be adjusting their importance in the algorithm concerning cost-per-click in their pay-per-click advertising services? It’s beneficial overall to push sites to prove their relevancy to the topic and give a good user experience, but it’s unfortunate that a lot of little guys will get burned for their ignorance.

In checking around about this, I’ve seen plenty of comments complaining about Google’s dominance. Google’s not the problem here. If they weren’t providing better results, they wouldn’t be so strongly in the lead–especially in academic, business, and technology sectors where they’re overwhelmingly preferred. The problem is that other engines propagate poor quality content by not punishing it and really working to eradicate it. As long as the dross is mixed in, and often in preferred positions, the savvy users won’t be changing loyalties.