We know you were expecting us...so welcome to the SEO Chat newsletter! If you're wondering what everyone's favorite search engine is up to and be honest, what SEO doesn't? you'll want to check out the article we're highlighting for you this week from eWeek. Google's enhancements to its email service serve a number of purposes, and they should worry the competition. Why? Read the article to find out.

Of course, when it comes to articles, you'll want to catch this week's offerings on SEO Chat. On Wednesday we ran a great guide for those who'd like to start pay-per-click campaigns but feel nervous about it, full of PPC tips to help you make your marketing effective. We also put on our teacher's hat on Tuesday with the first part of two-part tutorial on advanced keyword research strategies. On Monday, though, we challenged you by asking if your brand is killing your search advertising campaign. How is that possible, you ask? You'd be surprised...or if you're an SEO with clients so focused on sending one particular message that they don't see where their best potential clients really are, maybe you wouldn't.

If you love SEO the way we do, you'll also want to check out the awesome SEO-related tutorials on Tutorialized. We've highlighted a few of our favorites for you this week, but feel free to learn from all of them, even the ones on web site design and development or other areas that interest you. What? You don't think they're awesome? You think you can do better? Well, then, guess what: we welcome you, nay, even challenge you to do better! You can submit your own excellent SEO-related tutorial to Tutorialized for free. Make it really good, and we might even put a link to it in this very newsletter!

Our Thread of the Week deals with a scary problem that happens more often than most of us would like to think about: a site redesign followed by a huge drop in position in Google for some important keywords. What can you do about it? Sometimes the source of the problem isn't quite what you'd think, as our original poster discovers. Feel free to check out the thread and join the conversation!

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, talks about how people got into doing SEO as a career. Going from the direction of being a webmaster is one obvious path, but there are others. If you're curious to see some of the roads taken, scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

• News of the weird wants you to know that it cares about your feelings. It cares about hurting them.
• The triumphant return of Bobby and Juan. And plantains.
• Say hello to the Tech Auction Network. Then say goodbye, because you will never see it again.

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How Modern Code Generation Works
More IT shops are facing tighter deadlines and stretched development teams. That pressure, as well as the emergence of widely accepted standards and new technologies make database applications development tools more viable today than ever before.
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Interested in pay-per-click ad campaigns, but nervous about taking the plunge? This article will give you a good overview of what's involved. It will lay out the benefits and introduce you to the top companies with which you can do PPC marketing. You will also learn what you need to know to make the most of your campaign.

Pay per click marketing, with an estimated turnover of $1.1 billion per year and growing at 13 percent per quarter despite the economic downturn, has become vertically integrated into the Internet marketing arena.

Emerging from the banner ads and click through rankings of the early 2000s, pay per click saw initial innovation when Google introduced AdWords Select in early 2002. Google now controls about 50 percent of the PPC market share, followed by Yahoo at 25 percent. AdWords shows the selected ad near relevant search results, as well as on content and search sites within the Google Network.

Read Top PPC Tips for Effective Marketing

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Advanced Keyword Research Strategies
by Ivan Strouchliak
2009-02-03

Keyword selection will haunt your search engine optimization campaign forever, so in this article we aim to help you make better choices. In this first part of a two-part series, you will learn where to find an abundance of keywords, and how to narrow them down to the ones that will be most effective for your web site.

Pole Position Marketing has done a great job with their Keyword Selection Guide, which I highly recommend that you download and read. This article will focus on some of their advice mixed with more knowledge of keyword research and selection.

You will not find tools or tips for beginners here, since I assume you are already familiar with some keyword research techniques. If you are new, explore the SEO Chat keyword research section or do some Google research.

Read Advanced Keyword Research Strategies

Is Your Brand Killing Your Search Campaign?
by Terri Wells
2009-02-02

Building a brand gets you name recognition that translates into online searches, web site traffic, and conversions, right? Not in all cases. You may try to position yourself as one thing, but your target market is looking for something else. And it does not matter if you can fulfill that need, too, if your audience can not find you!

Gord Hotchkiss wrote an article for Search Engine Land that expresses the matter in terms of who owns the search page, or really controls the process. He focused on those running text ads in the search engines, but some of his points rang true for organic search results as well. If you are a marketer or advertiser who wants to differentiate your company from its competition, you are not going to like what you are about to read: depending upon how you go about it, you might be doing your organization more harm than good.

Hotchkiss used airlines as his example, but any competitive industry in which a large company known for certain advantages (or even a single advantage) casts a long shadow would serve. If this sounds anything like your industry, pay attention. Everyone who flies knows that Southwest competes on price more than any other airline - and what is more, price looms large in the minds of potential airline customers. Many airlines try to distinguish themselves on factors other than price, but they need to fly the same routes as Southwest, and they need to fly them at prices that will not make customers automatically choose Southwest instead.

Read Is Your Brand Killing Your Search Campaign?

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

Google Adword Campaign
How to build your own Google Adword Campaign. Easy to follow set of instructions.
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How to Promote Site to Increase Traffic
SEO is about promoting your site.
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Easy Search Engine Friendly URLs with mod_rewrite
Create search engine friendly URLs easily with mod_rewrite.
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How Search Engines Operate
How search engines and its spiders actually work?
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SEO and Link Building for Quality Traffic
Build quality traffic using your keywords! Here is how!
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Make Engines Read Keywords
Force search engines to read your keywords.
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It's easy to panic when you suddenly drop from Google's listings for a high-performing key phrase. What do you do? Sometimes the answer lies in places you don't expect, as our original poster learned here. Be sure to stop by the thread and share your experience.

Previously in the top 5 listings for phrase but have now dropped out entirely.

Hi all,

I have read - 'I have lost my rankings, Google has dropped me PLEASE READ BEFORE STARTING A THREAD!!' and am still looking for your help please!

Our website ( 'abfab DOT co DOT uk' - I can't post a link due to the forum rules) has had a recent redesign and a lot of new content.

The site was always previously highly ranked (in the top 5 listings) for this phrase but has now dropped out entirely.

This is a nightmare because it's our main traffic generating phrase.

We are even well positioned for 'fancy' on its own; also for other terms such as 'buy fancy dress', 'fancy dress shop' etc.

Our keyword density (we think) is ok for 'fancy dress' - we've done everything else we can think of - I can't see what's different from our site to the other sites on page 1 for this term (I realize we don't have as many inbound links as some, but we are highly ranked for other terms so I can't see that lack of links is the problem); please does anyone have any ideas about why we're not listed for this term because it's having a really detrimental effect on our business.

Any ideas?

Your help is greatly appreciated!

Many thanks.

Check internal links. ;)

Thanks a lot for the reply and your suggestion. We have just double-checked this and they all seem correct (e.g. cannot see any pages not found - was that what you meant?)

Also have checked internal links in webmaster tools and I can see it lists quite a few (because pages link through on templates to the home page, etc).

Did you mean you can see a problem with the internal linking structure?

Well I had a similar issue and it resolved itself after I removed internal links from the home page and lowered the percentage of keyword rich anchors pointing back to the home page. I notice you link to the same pages more than once (about 30 of them as well).

Actually I can see in the source one page (ladies costumes) linked 4 - 5 times. Is this the same for all of them? I think that would be considered spammy.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

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How Do You Get into SEO?

Every so often someone in our SEO Chat forums posts a thread related to SEO as a career: what does it take to become a freelance professional SEO? How do they get hired by an SEO company? What abilities should an SEO have? What are the long-term prospects for the field? This time, one of our members asked how others got into SEO in the first place. It's a good question, and if you're reading this newsletter because you're interested in SEO and wondering how you can learn more and maybe even turn pro someday, you may find the diversity of answers reassuring.

The original poster admitted that he'd simply bought some books, started sitting in forums all day, and started some of his own sites. He'd been studying SEO for two years, but "I think it feels like 4 as I have been studying it day and night, plus working in the field." His approach is hardly unique, but others came to the field from different directions.

One respected member, for example, started by joining a company as a junior webmaster "which translates to jack of all trades". Once he discovered it, one of those trades become SEO. He brought it to the attention of his higher-ups and never looked back. If you're already a webmaster or website designer, transitioning to SEO can come naturally.

Another member got lucky, in an unusual way. Back in 2002, he knew nothing about computers except how to open a web browser. He then landed a job as a marketing assistant, in part thanks to a friend. This friend "taught me all of the basics of web design, SEO and general Internet marketing." He then made an AdWords campaign much more successful than it had been, cutting its costs by more than 60 percent and increasing its Internet sales by 50 percent.

Not surprisingly, he was hooked after that, and eventually left the company. He now owns several websites and has several clients. He's not a pure SEO, however, as he also does site design. It's not as profitable as SEO, he finds, but he really enjoys it.

From this response and others, it looks like one of the best ways to get into SEO is from the point of view of site design. And why not? If you've ever wanted to build your own web site, it's a great place to start experimenting with SEO. Be prepared to do a lot of research and open yourself up to good advice, like the kind you can find on SEO Chat. Good luck!