Stephen Mahaney gives a lot of credit to his team. A team that is publishing one of the most well-read resources on boosting website rankings – The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Wars. This search marketing resource provides blow-by-blow details on how to get your search indexing right the first time. Stephen is the President of Planet Ocean Communications and publishes Unfair Advantage Book as well as SearchEngineNews.com a monthly newsletter service for subscribers to the book. Stephen is of course a core member of this team, and an expert on search strategies.

Stephen’s not likely to share stories about the reader who actually sold his business for $45,000,000 because of tips he learn from Search Engine News - the magazine-length mini-report on industry updates, research and insights that’s delivered monthly to subscribers of the book. Instead, he’s likely to talk about his team of researchers and marketers covering the ever-evolving search space.

If you’re new to Search Engine News, just think of them as a clearinghouse on search engine knowledge. The Unfair Advantage Book itself gives you easy to understand information on practically everything regarding search engine and directory optimization and promotion including paid-search tactics. Subscribers include Warner Brothers, The Weather Channel, Penthouse Magazine, Sandia National Laboratories, and many top affiliates including James Martell among others. In fact, I’m a paying subscriber too.

I interviewed Stephen for the first time on May 23rd for this post and have provided his responses to seven questions below.

QUESTION 1

GOYAMI: One thing that's interesting about Search Engine News from my perspective is that you not only provide in-depth month-to-month overviews of changes in the search engine arena but also address larger online marketing topics as well as providing simple how-to SEO guides in your book. Who's subscribing to your service and what are they purchasing?

Stephen Mahaney: Our largest group of subscribers are web designers, site managers, and business owners who know how critical it is to integrate search engine optimization (SEO) into their site design right from the very beginning. Many have already learned the hard lesson of *how difficult it can be to "fix" an already-designed site* by trying to patch it with SEO strategies as an afterthought.

Another large slice of our subscriber base is composed of online business owners or managers whose sites are doing poorly in the rankings. These are the movers and shakers who eagerly step up to lead the way by showing their constituents, employees or partners what needs to be done to increase traffic to their sites. Clearly, their goal is to significantly improve their company's bottom-line profits. Within this group we find the cost-conscious corporate executive, the promotion-minded employee and even the small business owner who personally tackles a wide range of specialized tasks. Not infrequently this group will also include the so-called mom & pop businesses as well.

Our third group is what we call our professionals, researchers, and students. Many of these subscribers make their living by consulting with Fortune 500 companies in regards to the latest SEO strategies. A few are involved in purely academic pursuits while others are writers who actively contribute strategic search engine marketing (SEM) articles to various publications. We've also found a surprisingly significant segment to be enrolled in some sort of online marketing and/or website design course where our book -- The UnFair Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Wars -- and publication, SearchEngineNews.com, is required reading.

Each subscriber receives an ongoing, detailed overview of the factors and elements that search engines respond to when ranking pages at the top for keywords searches. They also receive first-of-the-month updates to help them keep pace with the periodically changing *onsite* page design elements as well as *offsite* page-ranking strategies. In addition, and as you mentioned, each monthly update focuses on some kind of specialized marketing strategy and/or resource intended to not only bolster search engine rankings but also to facilitate online sales conversions. In short, they receive the information they need for their business to profitably thrive online.

QUESTION 2

GOYAMI: I'm noticing a lot more attention to local search. What steps should affiliate marketers be taking now to support their online marketing efforts using search?

Stephen Mahaney: The era of affiliate marketers putting up a link and simply optimizing the onpage elements of their site to score well for a keyword is drawing to a close. The engines are weeding out duplicate and near-duplicate sites and sites that appear to be redundant offerings. On the other hand, the engines love what everyone refers to as "content sites" especially "great" ontent
sites. One might say *the bad news is that affiliates will have to work harder for their affiliate commissions*. The good news for knowledgeable affiliate marketers is that *the competition is likely to significantly decrease*. That's because many of the less imaginative affiliate-sales entrepreneurs are simply cherry pickers -- they put up a website and hope. They only do the easy deals. Of course, that's understandable. The problem is that it's starting to *not* work anymore.

The affiliates that will continue to thrive are those who are smart enough to specifically target the products and services that can be profitably sold by way of value-added informational-type sites. That means they must create sites that educate consumers about the specific commodity as well as offer the ommodity itself. Obviously, not every product or service lends itself to such an educational opportunity that can be translated into compelling sales copy. Clearly, the more the affiliate knows about overall search engine *marketing* (SEM) the better they stand to gain from the maturing affiliate marketplace. But, otherwise, we see the shifting sands of *search* swallowing up the efforts of most less-serious affiliate marketers.

QUESTION 3

GOYAMI: What do you see as the emerging markets of the search space?

Stephen Mahaney: Right now there are three red-hot segments emerging in search. The first two are blogs and mobile search. The third is local search. We're devoting much of our available resources to researching these three topics. We already know that blogs are effective tools for boosting top rankings. Somebody once joked that BLOG stands for better listings in Google and we agree that can certainly be the case.

The other two, *mobile search* and *local search* are related, to some degree, because much of mobile search is done in a local context. such as people using mobile search to find the nearest place to get a cup of coffee. Still, they're both in their infancy and, right now, the focus is more on *local search*, which is a bit further along than mobile search. Eventually, mobile search is going to be huge, and we believe it will follow many of the same optimization guidelines as local search.

Regardless, we've already begun identifying the most basic elements of successful *local search* optimization.

QUESTION 4

GOYAMI: What recommendations would you provide merchants that are seeking a competitive advantage in the search space via local search?

Stephen Mahaney: For starters, we know that sites ranking well in *local search* are doing so largely based upon their "published" physical address. Now, while that may sound simplistic, consider the fact that it's a problem for businesses that operate over wide geographical areas. For example, a plumber based in, say, Boston might also service the surrounding cities of Cambridge, Sommerville, and Medford. However, they won't be found in a search for "plumber medford" unless they are *online marketing savvy enough* to also create a "virtual presence" for Medford.

One solution we are seeing is to set up virtual offices or PO boxes as close as possible to the center of whatever city -- actually, zip code – the business is targeting. The next step is to get that virtual address listed in the *local search* section of the engines. As you're aware, we recently featured a report that focuses on the details of doing just that.

Most importantly, a company must be listed -- and, believe it or not, the most effective way to get your site listed in *local search* is to have a listing in the local print-version of the yellow pages. That's because of the way local search data tends to sort of "bubble up" through several levels before it ends up in a major local search engine, such as Google Local or Yahoo Local.

For instance, take Yahoo Local. They get the data for much of their local search listings from data provider *infoUSA* who maintains a comprehensive database of U.S. businesses. InfoUSA, in turn, gets the bulk of their data from print yellow pages. So someone looking to get listed in Yahoo Local should take out a listing in their local print yellow pages, which will get them into infoUSA's database, which will in turn get them into Yahoo Local. Google Local also recently inked a deal with infoUSA to license its U.S. business database.

There are other ways to get into local search, such as signing up for a basic or enhanced listing through Yahoo Local's website or adding your business through Google's Local Business Center. Companies should absolutely do both while bearing in mind that also having a print-version Yellow Page's listing is usually the key to being added to the various flavors of *local search*. This not only includes Yahoo and Google but also for MSN, AOL, A9, InfoSpace and several other local search engines and online yellow pages.

Obviously the local search revolution is still evolving but it's most certainly here to stay. And, without doubt, it will soon be replacing the phone books everywhere in the U.S. and, eventually, the rest of North America, as well as much of the world. What we find most interesting is the fact that brick-and-mortar usinesses that currently function offline stand the most to gain. That's because, right now, the engines are providing incentives to early adopters -- Yahoo even offers a free website. In other words, now's the time to get your local business *listed* while the learning curve for doing so is manageable and the price is right -- basically *free* or very close to free.

QUESTION 5

GOYAMI: Can you tell us more about the Reviews and References links that are included with a detailed local listing? How important are References? Is this another level of link popularity based on customer reviews?

Stephen Mahaney: First of all these features are new and we expect to see major adjustments. Currently, there exists the loophole for people to embellish and augment their own listings by inventing their own rave reviews. We suspect this may create a credibility problem sometime in the not-so-distant future. Regardless, there aren't *yet* any well-developed layers of security to protect either the *search-consumer* from bogus reviews or *a business* from smear tactics that competitors may engage in.

Right now, it's incredibly easy, for instance, to create several anonymous profiles in Yahoo and write rave reviews about your own business and/or nasty ones about your competitor. Of course, either such practice is shady and we aren't advocating them. Regardless, it would be naive to believe that this weakness won't be exploited. We suspect it's a flaw that will have to be eventually addressed and corrected.

In any case, the Reviews and References have no effect on ranking.
Currently, the major determinate to ranking in *local search* is a matter of how close the business address is to the center of the zip code or the address-location being used as the search-consumer's start point. No doubt, this will change. It's quite possible that consumers will, in fact, play a part in determining rankings once the engines have found a way to substantially reduce the possibility of manipulating the References and
Reviews.

QUESTION 6

GOYAMI: What about general search engine rankings? Does TLD -- top level domain -- impact any aspect of indexing, ranking, or link popularity?

Stephen Mahaney: Ranking-wise, there are indications that Google gives a slight preference to .edu and .gov sites but, since these domains aren't available for commercial businesses to use, that really isn't useful information for general business sites. Besides, people expect to find institutionally
accredited schools and government sites at such locations and they'd likely be
irritated if a commercial business managed to slip into the domains of the
non-profit web.

What most people really want to know is whether TLDs such as .com, .net,
.info and so forth offer any *ranking advantage*. The short answer is,
technically, no. However, if one were to rephrase the question by asking if
any of the TLDs offer an *business advantage* over the others then the
answer would clearly be yes -- dot.com is the winner.

The reason is because commercial online success is dependent upon at
least two major forces -- search engines AND people. While it's debatable
whether the engines prefer any one domain extension over another, people
clearly see dot.com as first class and everything else as coach seating.
Mind you, consumers will still buy coach seating when it offers the best
value but whenever they can sit in first class for the price of coach, they
most certainly do!

Stated another way, if all else is equal, then the dot.com domain tends to
win the battle with the consumer. That alone is reason enough for us to
advise the procurement of dot.com domains above all others. If the fickle
algorithms of the engines periodically favor them, then all the better.
Clearly they never see dot.com as a detractor to good ranking. If anything,
it's the opposite.

There are many minor reasons to stick with dot.com that are too numerous
to list and, individually, they register only as pebbles. Yet, when these
pebbles are all stacked together, they form a mountain too high to ignore.
From a marketing perspective, unless you are selling copycat or deeply
discounted products, if your chosen domain name isn't available in dot.com
then you should probably think of a different domain name.

QUESTION 7

GOYAMI:It seems to be common knowledge that link popularity influences rankings in a major way. What tips or techniques can you give to our readers on link popularity?

Stephen Mahaney: The short answer is that, there is no short answer. Yes, you are correct -- link popularity is the top influencer of top rankings. In fact, we've recently written a Special Report entitled *15 Essential Strategies for
Building & Structuring Inbound Links* all having to do with specifically
*how* to build link popularity.

I'll try to give you a brief rundown. First, maintain a natural appearance for
your link structure. Search engines, especially Google, hate artificial link structures, such as those that develop when a site is engaged in a lot of reciprocal linking and link buying, and they are very good at detecting them. From there you should choose your links wisely, be careful who you link to, get links that match the topic of your page, the fewer links on the referring page, the better. If you feel that you must purchase links, avoid run-of-site links. Maintain consistency in the format of your links -- your-site.com is often not the same to a search engine as www.your-site.com even though both will resolve to the same page. Get your keywords placed in your incoming links' anchor text. See to it that some of your incoming links are hitting your sub-directory pages. Beware of link partners using the nofollow tag. Seek out quality incoming links over quantity. Provide *content* to link partners that they can use to link back
to you. Use reciprocal links cautiously and avoid link farms.

That's the nickel tour of what is actually a very tight, informative and
exhaustively complete 3800 word report. In it we detail each concept in
crystal clarity.

QUESTION 8

GOYAMI: How can subscribers best use your services? Is there a path to a quick-start?

Stephen Mahaney: Depending on the knowledge level of the subscriber, yes. For people who are just starting out, it's best to begin by perusing the first part of our UnFair Advantage Book which explains the basic strategies that search engines react to -- both favorably and unfavorably. Arguably, it's more critical to first learn *what traps to avoid*. After all, if one
inadvertently ruins a site's standing with the engines from the onset --
something that is actually quite easy to do -- then they'll find themselves
swimming upstream against the current trying to fix a mistake. That isn't a
spot any beginner would want to find themselves in.

For subscribers who are, say, intermediate to advanced, then I'd
recommend starting with the most recent *Monthly Update* as well as the
current and previous month's *SE-Bytes* and feature reports. In total, that
would normally be seven reports that would highlight the most important
strategic information over the previous 60 days. Of course, the entire
*UnFair Advantage Book* is also available to all subscribers as well as our
entire eight-year archive. There's also an on-site search engine to help
users locate relevant articles.

Another shortcut that subscribers find to be quite useful is our
*Submission Guide to the Major Search Engines* located at
http://www.searchenginenews.com/se-news/submit.htm. This chart
shows, at a glance, all the different offerings of each major search engine.
There are direct links to the various departments: Web Search, Paid
Inclusion, Search Advertising, Contextual Advertising, Directory
Listings, Local Search Listings, Local Search Ads, Shopping Search, Travel
Listings, and News Listings. It's not rocket science but it *is* a big time
saver having both a list of all relevant search submission options as well as
a direct link to access each from a single location.

I should also mention that since each issue of SearchEngineNews.com
averages between 35-45 pages, and we include an easy *print-n-run* feature
that allows you to quickly turn our magazine-style publication into easy-
chair reading.

Note: You can learn more about how to improve your website ranking by subscribing to The Unfair Advance Book on search engine marketing by clicking here.