There are many ways to promote your website and one of the most efficient ways is to use search engines. Search engines are the first stop for most people trying to find information, services, and products online. Because of this, it is essential that your website appears quickly in search results.

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which provide what is known as “paid inclusion.” This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.

There is not a day that goes by that people recommending search engine optimization (SEO) don’t come up with yet another interesting idea or opinion on a topic in their field. They are all so focused on structures and procedures that they often forget that not every one agrees with their viewpoints and practices - that is, if their technical mumbo-jumbo can be understood.

The following are 5 SEO topics that are frequently discussed and disagreed upon:

1 - The Importance of Content Structure & Keywords

Being a full-time SEM (Search Engine Marketer) I have been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog (not a pretty picture) to jump every time Google twitches. Lately Google has been doing a lot of twitching.

Specifically, the rather startling news from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa that Google has ditched PageRank from Webmaster Tools.

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true,” states Moskwa. “We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.” (Source: WebProNews)

It never hurts to have a role model, and this morning, small businesses that use social media were pointed towards not one, but five. Kogi BBQ, the Marsh Cafe, Duke of York’s Cinema, Wiggly Wigglers, and Howies have all made great strides in this area.

Credit goes to Lauren Fisher, the cofounder of Simply Zesty, for identifying the firms. She started by writing, “Kogi BBQ is a mobile Korean BBQ trust that travels around Los Angeles selling Korean tacos. They’ve built up an impressive 45,000 follower base on Twitter by tweeting where their truck is going to roll up next. The company also recently ran a crowdsourced t-shirt competition, with fans voting on their favorite t-shirt design.”

If your business website doesn’t have a blog, get one. A blog, if done right, can act as a direct and indirect mechanism that brings large amounts of qualified visitors to your site, many of whom may become customers.

This is mostly related to the way blogs interact with search engines and the traffic I am speaking of will come from search engines, mostly Google.

Before I explain how you can do this to help your website, let me first give some background on how search engines work, Google in particular.

When doing business on the Internet, there are many ways in which you can make a website successful. Although the look of your website is important, fancy websites don’t make sales. There is much more to creating a quality website. To make a website successful, you must create a website that will be of interest to your target market and make them want to visit your website over and over again. In addition, your website should lead your visitors to take the action you desire, such as joining your mailing list, or making a purchase.

Selecting a Website’s Niche

Last week Google launched a new Google Maps feature called Place Pages. The purpose of these pages is to include as much information about places (which can be businesses or cities) in one spot. So for example (the example Google used upon announcement), if I search for “Burdick Chocolate Cafe” on Google Maps, and I go to the more info link for its listing (it’s a place in Cambridge, MA), I will get reviews, photos, the map listing, directions, street view, and more.

It seems like there’s an over-abundance of social sites nowadays. For a newbie, it can be quite intimidating when first joining a network or two and building a community. A handful of questions may run through your head:

• Which networks to join?
• How to participate?
• What’s enough, or too much?
• How will it help my business?

So, to answer some of these, I’d like to present my “Social Media For Dummies” overview. First, a quick recap of my favorite networks and what they’re about.

Adweek Media and Harris Interactive polled 2,186 U.S. adults between September 25 and 29 to find out what American consumers think about advertisements that use the economy as a marketing tactic. As the firm says, advertisers have to decide how to deal with the issue of the recession. Some simply ignore it, but many have incorporated it into their messaging.

Whether or not you have campaigns in place that incorporate recession-related messaging, you may find the results of Harris Interactive’s poll interesting. It may even cause you to reconsider.

Findings include:

- 27% say advertisements, which mention the economic troubles and the recession make the brand seem more manipulative

Says to Take Advantage of Biggest Patch Tuesday Yet

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday for this week has been the largest ever from the company. 13 security bulletins addressing 34 vulnerabilities were released. 22 of these vulnerabilities were considered critical. Microsoft has never addressed so many in a single month. The previous record, set in June, was only 31.

Included in the most recent Patch Tuesday, were patches for two vulnerabilities previously made public: one in Server Message Block Version 2 (SMBv2) and the other in Internet Information Services.