Online Marketing Blog

The floor was open for audience questions as representatives from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com addressed issues on the importance and value of inbound links.

One question seemed to resonate throughout the entire session. How can a search engine identify whether a link is paid or organic in nature? Shashi Thakur of Google replied that through both manual and algorithmic methods, the search engine is able to determine the nature of a link.

But why are paid links so bad? Thakur suggests that generally, purchased links are intended only to deceive search engines while adding little to no value to the user.

It can be incredibly laborious when deploying search engine optimization for an enterprise company with tens of divisions, thousands of products, and tens of thousands of web pages. Bill Macaitis, Marshall D. Simmonds, Melanie Mitchell, and Bill Hunt led the “In House: Big SEO” discussion providing insight into how to effectively manage SEO campaigns of tremendous magnitude.

Simmonds of the New York Times shared 5 items to ensure the success of a huge SEO campaign:

• Organization - The development and time frame of an SEO project plan
• Analysis - The collection of data describing a program’s current situation

“Video is a compelling SEO channel,” said Sherwood Stranieri of Catalyst Online, “and social marketing and viral marketing are the driving forces behind video optimization.” We’re witnessing, with Google Universal, how digital assets are changing the landscape of search. Video, like audio files can drive unprecedented traffic as well result in a surge of inbound links. This is great- if you have entertaining video content, right? Wrong!