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Joe Lewis discusses Gord Hotchiss’ interview with Matt Cutts regarding Personalized Search posing a challenge to black hat SEO.

It would be nice to think that it really will pose the “fork in the road” between White Hat and Black Hat SEO that Matt suggests it might. Unfortunately though, those who are willing to employ optimization tricks, are doing this out of a character trait, not just because they like exploiting Google’s algorithm. They appear to be willing to do whatever it takes to make a quick buck.

So, as unfortunate for the business community as it is, these folks are more likely to just find ways to exploit social media for rankings, while continuing to work on traditional black hat techniques. In the end, they’re likely to dilute the impact that Social Media has, and should have, on SEO.

You know, the search industry has been around for several years now, and it never ceases to amaze me how little marketing professionals know about it. In my business, we work with hundreds of companies of all shapes and sizes. They all have access to the same Internet we do, but amazingly, they find ways to stumble into false information about Search.

I can’t tell you how many times we come across potential clients and competitors who still believe meta tags are all there is to search, or that “hits” are a good measure of success. (For those of you who don’t know, meta tags have little to no bearing on a site’s rankings, and hits are a garbage number).

What I want to know is how long is it going to take for this industry to grow up to the point where this kind of junk isn’t peddled anymore? There are lots of efforts going on to educate the masses on search, I’ve listed a few below:

Search Engine Strategies
SMX
SEMPO
Cleveland SEO
TKG Search Marketing Seminars

These efforts are primarily dominated by professionals who want to educate marketing professionals on how to do things the right way.

There are also, and have been for years, lots of discussion boards, forums etc. on the topic of search. Clearly though, high level executives aren’t likely to take the time out of their day to get involved in these things. They are more effective for those of us in the Search Industry to discuss and learn.

Those of us in the industry that actually care about our clients and the market, need to commit some time and energy to educating people and cleaning up our industry. Again, there are many good efforts working toward this end now, just a few are listed above.

I think a good place to start is to compel those in the web development industry, no matter how big or small, that are offering Search Marketing: If you want to offer it, take the time to learn it. If you don’t REALLY know it and do it, then don’t offer it and take the junk info off of your site. All you are doing is misleading potential clients and demonstrating to true search marketers that you’re part of the problem.

We have another search marketing seminar coming up this month on the March 22nd. We’ll be in Columbus doing our best to educate the business community on what Search Marketing is, why it’s important and how they can take advantage of it.

If you’re a business owner, it’s well worth your time to attend. We’ll have our friend Jake Bailie of STN Labs (formerly President of TrueLocal.com) give some great insights and info.

Hope to see you there.

This Friday, I’ll be at the Canton Chamber Fast Break Breakfast, discussing the topic of growing and successful businesses in our market.

There’s a lot of press in our local media about the poor economy in NE Ohio, but our business and many others are thriving. There are a lot of successful businesses in our region, and we’ve got a lot to offer. The Canton Chamber, along with other groups like Team NEO, is making a good effort to promote the growth in the region.

As always, we (The Karcher Group), will be in NY for the Search Engine Strategies conference. We’ll have the standard booth and sales guys roaming around, but this time we have an added bonus; Aaron Geh will be speaking on the topic of Ad Agencies and how they can better adopt search.

It’ll be a pretty good panel. We’ve had a lot of experience with agencies. Some good, some bad. But in general, they typically have quite a ways to go in terms of truly understanding and adopting search.

If you like controversy, it’ll be a good one to hit.