You are all fimiliar with Black Hat SEO right? That’s where an SEO minipulates the search engines alogrythms to boost their rankings. This is not illegal, but violates the search enginges rules for inclusion in their searches, some of which can be pretty lame and hypocritical.Anyhow, I remember hearing this saying one time “Liars are smarter then non liars because you don’t just have to rember what you said but you also have to remember who you said it too.” I think that was from a comedy, but can’t put my finger on it. The fact is that it is 98.53% on the money when it comes to SEO. Pissing off the major search enginges and is easy and its hard to know exactly where the line is that you don’t want to cross. If you plan on getting caught, and you should if you practice the dark arts of black hat seo, then you have to know how to completly change your identity. You will need a new hosting account and web address. Hoever if you get banned from Google adwords, MSN adcenter or Yahoo Search Marketing then this could be as extensive as using a different computer, hosting company, domaina name, credit card, name on a credit card and IP address. They clearly don’t like getting burned twice when internet advertising is concernted. Black hats also need to know skills like cloaking and spamming, but they need to know the most up to date methods or they will get caught right away. Bam. If you aren’t one step ahead of Google then all your efforts are for not. In fact with modern black hats its not a matter of if you will get caught but rather when you will be, so you better make enough money of your site to justify the time spent on it if you go the black hat way.

Obviously anyone who uses black hat techniques when marketing someone elses sight is a reckless fool, unless of course the person who hires said SEO knows that they are doing it in wich case they are the uniformed fool. Unless that person knows and trusts the black hat SEO and the risks involved, did I just digress?

But with great risk comes great rewards. Some markets are so competitive that the only way to get on the front pages of the search engines are to cheat (online gambling, adult sites, and viagra for example), and the SEO’s fight it out like online Samurais and ninjas. However, the learning curve is steep where black hat is concerned and their is no school you can attend to learn such dark arts. At least now ligitimate illigitamate school that I know about, I’m sure their are scammers out their who will teach you (how to get caught) for a price.

I personally would recommend anyone new to the wild west of internet marketing stick to white hat SEO, but know this as a fact. “If you walk on this side of the road, safe. If you walk on this side of the road, OK.. but if you walk down the middle, SMOOSH! just like grape!”

-Mr. Meogy, The Karate Kid (c. 1983ish)

Detroit Tops Nations Unemployment, Michigan ties with California & Somalia for Most Failed State

California and Michigan continue to report the hardest hits, as they have for months. Of the cities with jobless rates of 15% or more, 13 were in California and four were in Michigan.

Among metro areas with populations of 1 million or more, Detroit reported the highest jobless rate at 15.3%, while Riverside, Calif., was second at 14.7%.

Detroit - Highest Office Vacancy Rate in the Nation
Nearly three-quarters of the country’s major metropolitan areas experienced an increase in office vacancies in the first quarter of 2010.

The city of Detroit has the highest office vacancy rate. Mired by troubles within the automotive industry, just over a quarter of all of the office space in the metropolitan region now sits empty.

Michigan Births Drop
The U.S. birth rate dropped nearly 2% in almost every age group — except among women ages 40 and older, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

“There is good research … that says the economy is a factor,” said D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer for the Pew Research Center, which also released a study Tuesday linking falling birth rates to the recession.

The trend has particularly big implications in Michigan, where the birth rate has declined since a peak in 1990.

In Michigan, the number of births dropped from 125,394 in 2007 to 121,128 in 2008 — about a 3.4% decline, according to the NCHS. And when compared with the numbers from 1990, it shows Michigan’s birth rate has dropped nearly 21%.

Hope for Michigan Business and Families
Young educated people have been leaving Michigan in droves over the last decades, moving to “cool” states with their “fancy” economies. While the not so educated youth of Michigan are leaving for “cool” states like Colorado, California and Oregon due to their trendy ideals and pot. Several young Michigan natives have moved to Iowa as well. Oh, the good news… Michigan is perfectly situated for surviving, and even thriving, in our global warming world. As global temperatures creep up over the next hundred years Michigan, surrounded by Great Lakes, will become an ideal tropical paradise. Our steamy shark free lakes will be the envy of a starving world, even if the temperatures raise enough for Piranhas to become an invasive species we can still drink the water. In fact, Michigan’s well armed militia will also be well prepared to defend one of the world’s last great sources of fresh water.

More Hopeful Hope
Some Michigan business, like the Ford Motor Company, have even started to make a comeback before global warming have already stabilized and have even began rebuilding market share. Hopefully Michigan can continue to have a strong, but modern, industrial and be able to make up for the job loss that downsizing in the auto and other industries has caused by expanding its tech and service sectors. Auto Engineers can become software engineers and used car salesmen can sell Search Engine Optimization services (that’s a crack on the sometimes tarnished reputation of SEO’s and used car salesmen by the way). However, the one true silver lining is that if Michigan becomes depopulated and poor we can always enjoy Michigan’s greatest blessing, its nature, without industrial waste and the constant encroachment of urban sprawl.

Google had previously defended its position in China using what CEO Eric Schmidt called the “evil scale” which essentially is a balancing system, allowing smaller evils for a greater good. While this sounds noble, it also sounds like a slippery slope. I think Hitler used a similar sort of logic or the holocaust, the end justifies the means.

Google will most likely remove itself from the fastest growing internet market, soon to pass the US. Google is a distant second for search engines in China, and apparently Google doesn’t translate well and most Chinese haven’t a clue how to spell it, but still huge and second place isn’t bad. Unfortunately the Chinese citizens will lose an option, the “good” Google had censored for in the first place.

Perhaps Google just has a zero tolerance hacking rule? Like some sort of school weapons policy. Whatever the reason though I personally feel Google has lived up to its motto with this decision. Congratulations Google, maybe you haven’t turned into a hypocritical, sold out, corporate greed powered, ROI focused, evil mega corporation after all. I take back a lot of what I said about you over the last couple of years (accept the stuff regarding Google and SEO, but that’s more of just having different opinions). This is the cool company I remember first hearing about in 2000 and it’s good to see it isn’t gone. So please continue to stand by what you say and “don’t do evil”.

Smart companies will use this time to maneuver their company into the
best online positions while it’s less expensive, and they will be ready
to take off when the economy turns around again. As the recession
weakens competitors, companies with an eye on the future can get in
position to dominate their market place.

Perhaps your company can’t afford to pay any amount for search engine
optimization and search advertising. There is another option, it’s
called performance based marketing. Basically the SEO company will
receive a percentage of the income you receive from their promotions.
The only thing you need to commit is some time to work with the SEO
Company in order to come up with a promotion. For example, if you do
sell Canoes you might pay the SEO company $185 for each sale that uses
the offer they promote. This risk free option works best for larger
purchases, but it can be tailored to almost anything. SEO experts can
also generate leads for you to contact and you can pay them per lead. To
start a performance based program simply contact an SEO company.

Right now the internet is still a relatively young media, but it’s also
an extremely important one. Younger people use it exclusively to find
goods and services and it’s growing rapidly. This opportunity is
literally make or break for companies and now is the best time to jump
in or fall behind.

First, should an in house SEO be hired? This option seems viable for
only the largest of companies. An unfortunate reality of SEO is that
most people don’t understand what an SEO does exactly, so in a smaller
company it may be perceived that an SEO doesn’t do anything except place
some PPC ads and wait a month to analyze them. It may not be as
noticeable that the SEO is spending his/her time link building and
improving ranking for a variety of keywords. Also, it may seem that once
the SEO has achieved top rankings for the targeted keywords there isn’t
as much to do, again this isn’t true as the SEO must maintain the
positions but perception is everything. A very real disadvantage exists
concerning in house SEO’s however, succession of the position at the
time of the SEO’s departure. SEO’s are not generally willing to share
their strategies and methods with another SEO and even if they did
different SEO’s have different strategies.

Should an SEO company be hired from the less expensive third world? This
is perhaps the worst mistake that can be made, there are many SEO
companies based out of India, Indonesia and a variety of other
countries. The truth is they can do more harm than good. Promises of
thousands of links often mean they will use software to spam sites with
links to yours. This will be quickly noticed by Google and the other
search engines and your site will be penalized. Another problem is that
they lack knowledge of US culture and command of the English language,
this cultural barrier can cause them to create copy and verbiage that is
confusing or embarrassing for your company. Out of contrives SEO’s have
very little accountability and can ruin a brand in weeks that you have
spent years building up. These companies have no accountability and too
often use unscrupulous methods making this the worst option in SEO.

That leaves hiring a US SEO company as the best option. SEO companies
have a reputation to protect, they have wide experience with a variety
of industries and they generally have a pool of human resources and
technological tools to pull from. Also, they can adjust to the work load
much easier than an in house SEO, if the work is light for a particular
month, then you will be billed for the lesser amount. Companies also
have the advantage of not taking vacation time and generally have
experts in a variety of SEO skill sets. In the end, hiring an American
SEO company will be your safest bet, and generate the greatest return on
your investment.

However, when I drive around Detroit and its suburbs in Oakland county (once one of the nation’s richest) listening to the continuous dire news coming from the radio, the scene outside doesn’t match what I hear. The bridges are still standing, gas prices are low and people seem to be driving to work. I guess there are more than a few foreign cars around me too, but in general things look stable. I guess looks can be deceiving though, I’m sure the Detroit Lions would look pretty formidable to me if I saw them up close.

Despite what is obviously a bad situation to everyone (and to some it seems we are on the brink of doom) there is probably an upside to this. It has famously been pointed out the renaissance came out of chaotic, warring Italy, not peaceful Switzerland. The point being that stressed, unstable situations can be breading grounds for innovations. It often takes dire situations and shocks to old systems to improve them and make real changes to their general structures. General Motors has been a slow moving goliath of a company, not embracing the winds of change such as fuel economy. The Lions can get a first draft pick and start building a new team. Michigan will have to reinvent itself, it seems even the most optimistic feel the auto makers will have to come back as much smaller companies. Michigan will then have to look towards other industries; perhaps in this environment tech companies can flourish. SEO, e-business, and hundreds of other technologically based company models could fill the space available. Michigan’s workers would have to reinvent themselves as well, but we need a revolution, not a modification. So if there is a silver lining, it is that the change continuously talked about in our last presidential election isn’t just a possible path forward, it’s the only one.

The Obama camp continues to run a nice clean organic search page and has caught up in an area where they previously lagged, the paid search results. Obama supporters have ousted the paid attack ads that previously popped up in the “sponsored results” section attacking his character. Apparently the Dems are using their money advantage in the online space as well. It was ironic though, the last few months the popularity driven search results went to the Democratic candidate while the republican candidate held the purchased positions.

One thing is certain, it will be an interesting couple of weeks with both camps trying to drop last minute bombs, bombs that will find their way into the SERP’s (Search Engine Positions) and we all know that the SERP’s are a modern, infallible barometer of who will win the next election and rule the free world!

Up until this last week John McCain had more positive information dominating the top ten ranks for his name in a google search. However, a Barack Obama surge is on! Barack has, like McCain, pushed his MySpace page on to the front page ranks! The worse news for McCain however is that satire has sprungthrough his SEO defenses, YouTube videos atitacking his credibility have made the top list. (From therealmccain.org) Also, the search results tide has shifted towards Barack since a lot of the hoopla about his minister and Jessie Jacksons BS have cleared up. So for right now…

Barrack Obama has the lead in the presidential SEO contest!

Michigan SEO expert will continue to keep track of who is winning this portion of the presidential contest and then drawing some sweeping, over simplified conclusions about the results of the Presidential SEO contest in November. Remember, this is where you will find the score card for this historic event.

Disclaimer: Presidential campaigns know very well that the internet has a potentialy huge impact on modern political campaigns. They hire the best and brightest guns in the business to aid there canidacy. However, in the massive world of presidential politics this might not even be enough, if a story has weight behind it then will make the top of the search rankings. However, that is beside the point, in the world of SEO cry babies get no love… and perhaps no votes.