On Day 3 of my new gig as an SEO copywriter I learned Google had acquired the major search engine optimization firm, Performics Search Marketing, as a part of its 2007 acquisition of Double Click. (Did I mention I was a ‘newbie’ at SEO copywriting?) That Google, the dominant search engine, would operate one of the leading SEO firms suddenly felt like “déja vu all over again,” to quote the great sage, and erstwhile Yankees catcher, Yogi Berra. (Berra was either an enlightened man, living up to his moniker, or a man who was very, very confused by things. In the end….is there much difference?…..)

Just as I’m getting started, it suddenly felt like the fix was in….Then my boss informs me Google’s announced it will sell Performics….Whew! I’m so-ooo new at this…..Maybe there is time and a place for an aspiring recovered-former- lawyer-turned-SEO-copywriter-wannabe to learn the tricks of this trade before the big fish eat all the minnows in the pond….Hey! What’s that big-mouth bass doing in the shallows? I thought they only hung out in the deep holes….

For a newcomer’s analysis of how Google’s announced divestiture of Performics is good news for the SEO industry and players in the local search market go to the full article of Thank God for Google! at eZinearticles.com.

Okay…. I admit it…. I’m a newbie….

After writing college newspaper articles, academic papers in law school and all-too-often dry, sterile legal prose as a practicing lawyer – and adding the occasional bon mot as an amateur blogger from time to time just to save my sanity – writing copy for a dynamic SEO firm seems to be both a challenge and a lot of fun. At least, at first….

Q: What do lawyers use for birth control?
A: Their personalities!

“The Challenge” seems to lie in writing for three audiences at once: First and foremost is the faceless guy or girl sitting behind their keyboard, perhaps impatiently searching the web for the information they need. Second is the client, who in the end is the one who ultimately pays my salary. (A fact I’ll have to consider at greater length, as I suspect I would only forget his or her interests at my own peril.) Third, there is the ubiquitous ‘spider’ endlessly trolling the net for its prey.… Or, worse yet, bypassing me and making my best efforts its unwitting victim.

What will the friendly spider’s clinical machine language make of the language I have to use to keep my copy human and accessible for audiences one and two? Will Google’s friendly search engine spider come back and visit me often? Do spiders have a sense of humor? I rather suspect not….

“The Fun?” That’s a no-brainer. Who else gets to come into work, idly surf the net for topic subjects and then gets to write about whatever seem to pique his interest? In a venue where “content is king” and one may be writing for clients as diverse as mortgage brokers, digital broadcasters, trucking outfits or computer leasing firms, the grist for the daily mill seems almost limitless. (And, yes, it seems I’ve heard the mantra “content is king” repeated almost endlessly … even on Day 2. Thank you, Mark Jackson at Search Engine Watch. They were almost the first words out of my prospective bosses’ mouths during our first sit-down.

Of course, this begs the questions. Will there still be a challenge on Day 50?Will writing SEO copy still seem as fun on Day 5,Monday morning? Are there any good SEO jokes out there??? Surely not as many as there are good lawyer jokes….

Search Engine Land’s Grant Crowell reviews Internet Yellow Pages™ video in a recent post. Grant discusses how IYPs like Superpages.com and Yellowpages.com aren’t getting the SEO thing among many more deficiencies.

The fact is that Yellow Pages™ publishers still think and react in print time. Get an idea, put it on the drawing board, discuss for a few months and then in six to eight months they will do an in-depth study. A year later, they are “testing” the product. How fast do you think Google would do it? Oops!, it’s done already.

My background is in Yellow Pages™ advertising and I can tell you that I had no idea what work was till I got involved in search engine optimization. SEM is a advanced marketing. Search engines work at light speed in comparison to IYPs.

Still, it is not the Yellow Pages™ products that continue to keep clients holding on to old technology, it is the terrific sales force. Pretty tough to keep up to them with little or no feet on the ground, knocking on doors. As long as they have that advantage, they will continue to be heard from in the online marketing world.

Can’t get enough of SEO?

Daily Blog Tips ranks the top 25 SEO blogs. Great reading to get your day started.

Customer surveys are powerful weapons in your link building arsenal. Search Engine Land describes their method of crafting a survey in a recent article.

For more information on link building, check out our articles section.

Comscore says that Google’s search volume was down 1.2% in June compared to searches in May.

Yahoo 25.1%
MSN 13.2%
Ask 5.0%

The numbers leave little doubt where your search engine optimization efforts shoud be focused.

A Searh Engine Land article article by Stoney deGeyter lays out the age old question (in internet time); Is SEO affordable for small businesses?

Stoney sujests three main componets to finding an efficient balance:

Investment in Time
Investment in Budget
Investment in Neccessities

I agree with Stoney that,” As long as your marketing campaign is returning a positve ROI, then the true cost of SEO is affordable.” Still, it can be difficult to convince a client to spend more money even though they are making more. You run into a mental road block. The client has a budget number in mind and has difficulty approving anything past that number.

However, if you can prove to your client through data analysis that his ROI is worth the investment, your client may very well up the ante. Easier said than done, I am well aware. That is why we offer our local directory service (shameless plug). If you can’t afford SEO for your site, there are affordable opportunities out there. Educate yourself and be patient before stepping in.

Search Engine Watch reports that while most search marketers spend the majority of their time providing search engine optimization in dominant markets, there are fast growing multicultural audiences gaining momentum.

U.S. Hispanics are more intensive than the U.S. general market. The average U.S. Hispanic spends 20 percent more time online, with 25 percent more pages viewed. They’re using the Internet more than 17 hours per week, and more than half that time is spent on sites written in Spanish. In fact, U.S. Hispanics now spend more time online than they do watching television.

According to a 2006 Interactive Advertising Bureau study, U.S. Hispanics are slightly younger, better educated, and more tech-savvy than non-Hispanic respondents.

Roughly half of U.S. Hispanics speak Spanish fluently, and roughly half of Latino adults (7.1 million) prefer Spanish language sites.

Read the article to find out why the market is so desirable for search engine marketers.

Wolf21 has developed a local directory for small businesses wanting to gain visibility on the internet for their keyword terms without the time delay in building a new website.

Not just another directory, Sesimi, promotes your individual products and services on Google, Yahoo and MSN without showing a list of your competitors. In other words, search engine users do not have to search for a service/product and then search again through a directory (and your competitors) to find you.

Webmaster World reports that Yahoo’s site explorer tool may rank the links by a quality measure. You might disagree but site explorer is a handy tool to check your inbound links.