The following employment ad appeared in my local Cleveland newspaper today:



Now, I have nothing against an employer using the newspaper as long as they're tracking the return on investment. I do, however, question an SEO firm using print, while missing the boat on exactly what keeps them in business.

Here's what I mean: Fathom SEO fails to use pay-per-click advertising in their recruitment efforts. A search on Google for "cleveland seo jobs" gives me nothing promoting jobs at Fathom, who could most likely always use a steady stream of potential SEO talent in Cleveland, their headquarters.

Organically, Fathom SEO has a page dedicated to openings, but guess what? The term "jobs" isn't anywhere on the page. Even the title tag fails to be unique to employment. As a result, they obviously fail to rank competitively against the competition.

Lastly, the reply mechanism on the print ad is an e-mail address that looks pretty generic. Careers@fathomseo.com? Do they know responses coming to that address are from this newspaper ad? Shouldn't they use something like newspaperad@fathomseo.com?

When a hospital fails to utilize search engines for employment effectively, it's forgivable. When an SEO firm fails to utilize search while dumping big bucks in print, not so much.

Site Reference has a great article bashing ever-important directory DMOZ.

Most DMOZ editors think they are a cut above the rest of us. They believe they hold the key to life or death – that for obviously meritocratic reasons they have been selected to wield power over webmasters who need to come crawling to them to plead their case. The problem starts at the top – the senior editors are geeks who’ve been operating in the upper hierarchy of DMOZ since the time that only computer geeks were really interested in the role. Like many geeks, they’re very intelligent but kinda out of touch with aspects of the real world.

It's all good and very true from my experience. See the rest here.

I have to hand it to Google. Age filters are probably by far the best thing they've done to deter spamming their engine.

Time and time again, I get clients who are start-ups looking to tackle some of the most competitive keyphrases in a short period of time. Ain't happenin'.

If you're a new site, get used to the fact that high rankings for competitive phrases with sites in the Top Ten that have been around since the '90s should be tabled for at least 12 months, if not longer.

On the flip-side, if you're a site that has been around for awhile, have received an ongoing, respectable amount of backlinks over the years, competing for competitive phrases in a short period of time is a possibility.

Additionally, if you're thinking of launching a site in the future, do yourself a favor and launch as soon as possible and get indexed. Even if the site is one-page with some basic text (stay away from "coming soon" and the like). The sooner Google recognizes you as a real site, the better.

There also seems to be evidence that the older your backlinks, the better. So, to the degree that it makes sense, start getting quality, relevant, keyword-rick backlinks immediately upon launching a new site.

As Oaseo wants to bring the world of search marketing together in the workplace - both job seekers and employers - it's important to help put a face to a company name and connect like-minded professionals.

That said, we recently sat down with Sage Lewis of SageRock in Akron, Ohio. SageRock is a small search engine optimization and marketing firm with global recognition. We visted them recently, turned on the video camera and hoped to find out a little more about the firm and show off the personality of its president in the process.

Enjoy.

(video, 8 mins.)

Checkout eMergent Marketing's Paul Elliott give an SEO review to Ctix.org at a recent Cleveland SEO event.

Bambi Francisco of Marketwatch fame is in love with soon-to-be launched search engine Powerset.

From her recent post:

After having an in-depth demonstration of the search engine last week, I’m convinced that Powerset has a great shot at improving the overall search experience. By doing the Pepsi challenge between Powerset and other search engines, I have to say, searching was a far richer and liberating experience on Powerset.

Apparently the engine ranks Web sites based on the "meaning and relationship" of words as opposed to "occurrence and proximity of words."

The strategy is an interesting one. For example, in employment, the word 'recruiting' provides search results encompassing everything from incoming freshman to Ohio State football team, to military information to, of course, employment.

There's a better way. Although I think Google is on its way to much more personalized results, maybe competitive pressure from a new engine will help spur such enhancement quicker.