Danny Sullivan’s new website, Search Engine Land, is full of great information. Anyone serious about search engine marketing should check his website regularly for the latest news and techniques to leverage search results.

Several students in my classes at UCLA Extension ask about optimizing websites for photographers and graphic designers. These sites are comprised mostly of photos and graphics, and they typically don’t contain a great deal of indexable text. Search Engine Land’s, “Search Illustrated” column today shows just how easy it is to optimize for this type of website… “Six Simple Steps to Image Optimization“.

Small businesses often don’t have the resources to hire a search marketing firm to maximize their search traffic revenue. The alternative is to get smart and do it yourself! I’ve always tried to help people who are trying to help themselves. That’s one of the main reasons I teach my search marketing class at UCLA Extension (”Building Smart Websites That Get Results“). For those who live in the Los Angeles area, my class is being offered again this Fall. For those who aren’t local, read the article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “Raising Your Profile: Beyond the Basics“. It’s a great “how to” primer on how to apply search engine optimization to your website FOR RESULTS!! If you follow these basic SEO principles, you will make a difference in your business… and these are things you can do yourself.

I have been advising my clients to allocate most if not all of their search funds to Google Adwords for sometime now. It even makes more sense today. Why? Because it will give you the most “bang for the buck”. Google’s share of search continues to grow. As of April, according to ClickZ Network, June 19, 2007, Google controls a whooping 55.2% share of search. Leaving Yahoo with 21.9%, MSN 9.0%, AOL 5.4% and Ask with just 1.8%. With a limited marketing budget, it’s important to maximize its impact. Search share will of course vary, but it’s not likely to change significantly very soon. For more on this take a look at Kevin Gold’s article in Search Marketing Standard, “80/20 Principle Squanders Paid Search“.

You can have a great website with lots of good content. But, if search engine spiders visit your site and can’t access it, you lose! Some thoughtful planning can help avoid that scenario. Make sure you don’t use navigation technology that will interfere with a spider’s attempt to crawl your site. Avoid Java script based navigation, Flash-based navigation and Ajax-based navigation.  Instead consider using CSS (cascading style sheets), which spiders can easily crawl. Add traditional hypertext navigation as a footer. And, be sure to create a site map and make it accessible from every page in your website! For more on this, take a look at Darrell Long’s article in MediaPost’s Search Insider, “Don’t Let Navigation Be Your Downfall“.

Here’s a simple case study from Google on how to easily and cost effectively utilize online video advertising to sell your products and services.

Google will even assist with the production of a video, which is done through their network of approved vendors.

Google announced last week that they will begin incorporating some of their vertical and specialized search results into their “main” search engine results page. Currently, this means that search results that may have previously appeared only within Google Video, Google News, Google Local and Google Books are now beginning to appear within the “regular” search results. This has been dubbed, “Universal Search”.

What does it mean for marketers? If your website normally appears on the first page of a Google search for a particular keyword or phrase, there’ a good chance that the addition of these new vertical results could push your first page position to the second page. For marketers it means that search engine optimization just got harder.

So what can marketers do to leverage this change? The key is to take advantage of Google vertical/specialized search services. Upload videos to Google Video and YouTube, distribute press releases to Google News, list your business in Google Local, etc. That way you’ll have a chance that your vertical listings will be included on a Universal Results page if they are relevant for a particular search.

This exception is important if your website is part of a business dependent on targeted prospects/traffic for leads and sales. Search traffic is by far the most important source of new, targeted traffic flowing to most websites. But, websites built in Flash loose out on this traffic because they cannot be effectively indexed by search engines.

Stories abound, such as the one in the LA Times, West Magazine yesterday entitled, “Flash Forward” (Sunday, May 13), about the power and impact of Flash. But, readers are often left with the opinion that a website developed in Flash is the gold standard. Don’t get me wrong, I love Flash. But, I know its short-coming. If you want to take advantage of the tremendous potential of search engines to deliver targeted traffic to your website, you don’t want to build your site in Flash. Embed Flash modules within the site to engage people through motion and sound. But, don’t be confused about using Flash within your site and building an entire website in Flash.

Today’s headline story about Viacom suing Google illustrates just how nervous Hollywood is about their future. As the web supplants television as the preferred venue for video and entertainment, the existing television/advertising business model for the big, traditional media players becomes less stable. Spending millions for professional content and losing control of how it is distributed is risky business. But that’s the nature of the transition we’re experiencing as people are further empowered by the Internet!

Business as we know it is being turned on its ear. And, it will never be the same again. Chris Anderson delivers a provocative description of this evolution in, “The Long Tail“. This evolution has drastically reduced the number of travel agents during the last 10 years; real estate agents are no longer the only sources of information about homes for sale; and, many others who are intermediaries or distributors between the product and the end user are finding their businesses have changed. The Internet breaks-down the barriers to distribution, giving consumers direct access as never before, making intermediaries [in more and more cases] irrelevant.

Big media has a big problem. Their business model doesn’t work anymore. If they make their content available to consumers, it will find its way onto the web. That’s not Google’s fault. Individual people are the ones responsible for putting it there. If you don’t want people to do that, don’t sell them DVD’s, CD’s, etc.

No one seems to have the answer or the “silver bullet”. Suing Google may be an increasingly popular tactic, but it is not the answer. It’s a big distraction. For businesses that are valued based on their creativity, our entertainment industry giants don’t seem to be applying much of it to this problem.

I’ll be teaching my SEO class starting April 7th. The class in entitled, “Building Smart Websites That Get Results.” Here’s the description from the catalog:

This course presents the web development strategies and tactics that can maximize your site’s marketing potential. Learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve your ranking immediately. Students act as clients and their websites are reviewed by an expert consultant. Topics include keyword development, site navigation and content, coding techniques to assist search engines indexing your site, linking strategies, and search engine marketing tools and services to increase conversions. The course meets once a month for three months to allow for enough time to achieve demonstrable results. At the conclusion of the course, students have an understanding of search engine marketing and how site architecture and construction can impact website visibility.

For more information, visit www.uclaextension.edu.

Landing page selection in a key factor in maximizing conversions via pay-per-click search marketing programs. It’s not always the “home page” that works best. The ideal landing page gives searchers exactly what they are looking for based on the keywords they use to get to your site.

Jacqueline Gill, a paid search specialist at iProspect, describes how to find the best landing page to maximize conversions: “Destination: Landing Page“.