You admit it. Figuring out the intricacies of how your business shows up in search results is hard. Your business is your business, and your business is not the business of search engines. You’ve come to terms with this, and you understand that you need to write a check to someone who is in the business of search engines. You focus on your business. They focus on getting you as much business as possible from the search engines.

But there’s a problem. It’s 2010. The above scenario might have worked a decade ago. It doesn’t anymore. Businesses must take an active role. It takes more than writing checks to be properly represented in search engines. It takes, as you might have guessed, a partnership.

Not having a partnership with the experts you’ve hired leads to problems. Sometimes, it just means you’re wasting money. Sometimes it ends up costing you money. But in all cases, it means you’re not doing as well as you could.

So do you even need to partner with experts? If you don’t have people on your staff dedicated to keeping abreast of the fast-changing search industry, then absolutely. How do you know if you have the right experts, either internal or external? Ask yourself these 5 questions about the experts you currently have:

  • Do you get regular, easy-to-understand performance evaluations from them?
  • Do they call you more than you call them?
  • Do they want to know when your team creates new content?
  • Do they talk in terms other than ranking, keywords and/or search traffic?
  • Have they revised any of their prior recommendations in the last six months?

If any of those were answered with a “no,” that may indicate problems. Granted, the problems could be simply a communication issue. Perhaps the draconian contract your respective attorneys agreed upon is too rigid. You can fix that with a couple of phone calls.

But you can’t fix a bad relationship with an expert more interested in cashing your checks than meeting your business goals. Search is fluid. Search changes fast. If you’re paying an expert to help you optimize your presence in the space, you need to make sure you have the right expert.

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As the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility.”  Unfortunately for Google, smaller competitors are less concerned with responsibility of privacy control and more concerned with power ad relevance.  Because of this, the search giant has fallen behind the times and is sacrificing a good deal of revenue because of it.

In a recently leaked seven-page “vision statement” from the company, it becomes clear that Google is going through an identity crisis. Google is trying to come to grips with the payoff of personal data mining vs. the potential bad PR and regulatory problems it carries.

The confidential vision statement goes on to describe some of the options currently being discussed by the company.  The ideas span from potential changes in search, retargeting, and even a data exchange in where the vast amounts of personal data collected by Google could be sold on the open market.  This article from the Wall Street Journal has outlined each potential tactic Google is considering to expand their targeting efforts.

The degree to which Google is targeting users by specific channel over time is displayed in this helpful interactive chart.

Google needs to push towards an aggressive tracking and data mining program if they are to stay competitive in the marketplace.  Simple education, user controlled privacy options, and open transparency are what the company needs in order to hammer on, forging ahead with some of these programs.  As behavioral based targeting becomes more commonplace, people will begin to appreciate more relevant ads as they realize their individual privacy isn’t really in jeopardy.

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The Social Rundown

by Dustin Diehl August 27, 2010

With Facebook Places making a big splash in the social media world last week, this week seems pretty quiet in comparison. But quiet doesn’t mean dead, as there was certainly some social news worth reporting. Here’s the rundown: The “Old Spice Guy” ad won an Emmy award for Outstanding Commercial over the weekend. What? Social [...]

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Seamless Web to Mobile Site Integration More Important Than Ever

by Rick Snailum August 26, 2010

Today mobile is becoming an increasingly viable source for internet content. Building a website is no longer a singular task – it also involves building a mobile site to complement. Many companies have no idea what their site looks like on a mobile device and many companies don’t care. But they should care, because by [...]

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Facebook Places: What it is, How it Works, What it Means

by Shannon Johnson August 23, 2010

Something substantial happened in the sphere-o-social-media this past week – Facebook’s rumored geolocation “check-ins” feature finally cropped up. It’s called Facebook Places. But you probably knew that already since it’s likely that you’ve recently seen a story about a friend’s location appear in your News Feed. Or maybe you know of it because Facebook alerted [...]

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Three Back-to-the-Basics Questions Every Blogger Must Ask

by Libbie Miller August 16, 2010

A few of my fellow Sitewireans and I recently taught a class on blogging to small business owners looking to jump into the social space. While their industries varied widely, from divorce mediation lawyers and belly dancing instructors, to long-haul trucking service owners, they all seemed to share certain commonalities: they’d been relying on word-of-mouth [...]

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