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When it comes to the web, there are always new terms being tossed around. A fairly interesting one I have come across several times that seems rather pertinent to the discussion of SEO/SEM and all things social is something called a “Digital Sociologist”. What is a digital sociologist, you ask? Great question – one I would like answered myself.

A digital sociologist is a person who studies the behavior of people when using digital technology, with it’s main focus on social media usage. This new study of people will probably remind you of the discussion we have had here many times on the topic of tribalization. Tribalization, if you recall, is the phenomena of people banding together on the web around a particular blogger, forum, brand, idea, belief, or what have you. Part of digital sociology would be to study this phenomena, and perhaps figure out how to make it work for your brand.

So many things are happening on the web. It’s only natural that some formal study of the behavior of people on the web take place. We (and most SEOs) have been doing it for years in the form of analytics. But, analytics alone can only tell us so much. They tell us what channel a user comes from, what pages they visited, what they bought, or where they spent most of their time on a particular site. From these analytics we can make educated guesses to help us tweak our strategies, but taking all of this a step further, to actually understand the feeling and beliefs of the user may help define a strategy to a greater extent. For some, it will help define why people behave they do about a particular blogger, brand, belief, etc.

Below is a very brief presentation on Digital Sociology by Ali Hadi. I would like to take the discussion much deeper, as I think this will ultimately have an impact on the way we do our jobs, especially as they pertain to social media and SEO/SEM.

Small businesses have a great opportunity with social media. It presents a “word of mouth” type of advertising that is sadly lacking in traditional marketing. People, oddly enough, are now looking to the web, and the people they ‘meet’ there, to help them make sound decisions on many major issues, including just about any purchase you can imagine. Brian Solis has an interesting article about small business utilizing digital sociology and social media if you’d like to read further and join the discussion.

I’ve blogged quite a bit over the last couple of years, especially during the economic downturn, about making the most of your marketing budget. We’re seeing a turn around here in NE Ohio, but a lot of companies are being careful. They know they need to make the most out of their marketing budget.

If SEO isn’t part of your marketing strategy, I gotta ask why. Why, when it has been shown time and again to provide the best ROI? TKG’s SEO blog had a great post on this topic a few months back. The article outlined precisely why you should be using your marketing dollars for SEO. James Wells also has a great post about the Value of SEO in Your Marketing Budget. He makes the great point that “many companies are overlooking this extremely cost effective and valuable form of marketing”.

If you aren’t sure how much you should be spending on SEO, perhaps a better question would be to ask yourself how much money you would like to make. Marketing requires that you spend money to make money, as the old adage goes, but with SEO, sure, you’ll spend some money, but in truth, far less than with traditional marketing, with a much higher ROI. Once you develop a strategy, put it in place and tweak it as analytics dictate, you’ll start to see why I’ve been touting this stuff for so long.

If you don’t believe me, or these other guys, take a look at this fantastic Fox Small Business video. These guys are getting a taste of where their marketing budget should go to grow their small business printing personalized gifts for children. They are a perfect fit for SEO, and that’s the advice they are giving.

We’re more than half way through 2010. What kind of growth would you like to see this year? Do you want to spend a lot for a little, or a little to get a lot?

In the very beginning, TKG had two employees, me and my sister, Dana. We were always really good friends, and that made for a really good start up. Soon after, we added James and Aaron. We ate lunch together nearly everyday, and became a devoted foursome, ready to make The Karcher Group a success. As the years have gone by, we have added nearly ten times as many people, but we work hard to maintain that close relationship with each other. We as a company go to great lengths to foster a kinship with one another. That’s not to say that we haven’t had to put some structure in place, because with this many personalities, it becomes necessary, but overall, we just work together and play together. We have a good time doing both.

One thing I have always really loved about where I work is the atmosphere. We really do have a tight knit group of folks here. I like hearing some of the guys playing pool or walking through the SEO/Marketing department and finding a couple of people throwing darts or playing a rowdy game of Foos. We have deck for everyone’s enjoyment, and have been known to grill some burgers or dogs from time to time.

We have a team attitude here at TKG. I really think it’s important for everyone here to be a member of the team. It’s vital, as a provider of both development and SEM, that we have cooperation among all our folks. It’s just the way TKG operates.

We are currently looking for a few people in our Search Engine Marketing and Design /Development departments. If you are looking for a job in the industry, are upbeat, positive, willing to work hard (and play hard) and know that you would thrive as a devoted member of our team, then check out the positions TKG has available. We’d love to meet with you.

The folks here at TKG are all heading out for our annual team building camp out. We eat, sit around a fire, have a beer or two while getting to know each other as well as all the kids and families that come along. It’s a great time, and it fosters our team mentality. Of course, someone will be available if you have an emergency, so if a problem arises, just shoot an email to support at tkg.com See ya next week!

I follow several blogs, you’ve probably noticed in my citing of many different sources. One of these is called SEO Pittfalls – and as the name suggests, the author Steven Pitts (clever, huh) writes about some of the pitfalls many site owners tend to fall into when optimizing (or not) their site.

A little while ago the site featured a nice little series on Link Building. Link building is one of the most essential parts of a successful optimization. Inbound links help your site gain authority in the search engines. The more good inbound links you have, the more weight is given to your site, and this can influence your rankings. Link building is tricky and time consuming, but not rocket science. If you want to learn the ins and outs of Holistic Link Building, as Pitts calls it, check out his blog. I think you’ll find the series very useful. The language is a little tech-y, but I’m sure you’ll get the gist. He does touch on a very important element in link building – thus the “holistic” part of the title. Pitts discusses how important it is to make sure your link building goes hand in hand with your other optimization efforts, “Emphasizing the importance of the whole website and the interdependence of its parts”. I think this is very intelligent, and sometimes overlooked.

If you’d like to take a look: http://www.seopittfall.com/holistic-link-building-101

Those of us in the SEO world have been waiting around to see when and if Bing was going to really take off, be a major contender in the Search Engine game. Seems that time is upon us. Not only is Bing supposed to be merging with Yahoo! in the near future, powering results but Bing already provides the search results on Facebook. This combo, along with the fact that Bing -Yahoo! will provide about 35% of searches, means it needs to be considered when optimizing your site.

When it comes to Google Vs. Bing, it seems that on page efforts may be taking a back seat in both SEs to things like link building. Link building needs to consist of more than just a lot of links from one site, but need to concentrate to obtaining good links from lots of different sites. This will mean a small shift for some in strategy, but hopefully you are already diversifying your link building so as not to rely on one source.

We can all guess as to which elements of SEO will win out, or we can take a look at what the analytics tell us. Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz.org has a great post up that walks you through the analytics of the whole thing. Pretty interesting – it’s gonna be interesting to see which elements are essentially the same, and who weighs which elements of SEO more heavily than the other.

Another question I put to you is what will this do in the wake of the MayDay update? What will happen to the long tail? Will the “exact match domain” matter as much as is being purported? “Exact match domain” refers to domains that are an exact match to your most relevant key phrases. We’ll have to see how analytics play out for a bit since the update. What this should mean is that your most relevant long tail phrase, if you used it in your url, should continue to matter, and in Bing – it will matter greatly.

While Google will still take over 65 percent of the market share, it is important to note that there is still a fairly large chunk (35%) to be claimed by the Yahoo!/Bing search engine. We will always optimize to make sure our clients are getting the most ROI, and I don’t see Bing changing that enough to warrant changing our best practices, however, I do think we need to pay attention to Bing and be prepared to make changes as needed.