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This morning, while I was learning about Google’s webpage creator (look out MySpace), I came across an interesting note by Chris Sherman. In his article he points out that Google encourages its engineers to spend one day a week working on non-job related projects. These “20% projects” are, apparently, the origin for many of the Google gadgets. What a great system!

Creativity is the blood of a successful organization, and Google’s “20% project” policy is a prime example of how a company can motivate its employees to keep the blood flowing. By allowing their employees to break away from their routines, they are giving them a chance to create cool gadgets and gain experience that they can apply to job related projects.

SEO is our main focus at Comit Technologies, but we are always coming up with new ideas for business opportunities. These ideas can be challenging and profitable, and they usually generate good SEO material (links, articles, etc.) as a byproduct. Our schedules are normally full, but we try our best each day to get together and devote a little time to our non-SEO related projects.

It is always good to look at the policies of successful companies and compare them with your own. Setting aside a few hours every week for pet projects doesn’t sound unreasonable. It obviously works for Google.

Comparing between the 100’s of web host can be a daunting task due to the many fly by night “web hosting companies.” Becoming a web host is becoming as simple as having access to a credit card and having a website. This makes choosing a reliable SE friendly host a challenge.

The problem with most hosting companies as they relate to SEO is that they only make money when they have hundreds if not thousands of websites hosted on their servers. If you have invested the time and effort to build a SEO friendly website and invested your time in building links to your website you may still get banned from the SE’s if someone else on your web server decides to spam the SE’s.

Don’t worry there is help!
I recently came across SEO Certified Servers a server certification service. This company has 9 key attributes to test on any server to ensure that they will not hurt your SE rankings. Check them out to see if your host is on the list.

Another reason to consider that over 60% of all business communications is done through email. Email has become the most critical business tool for communicating with your customers. If your web host is hosting only 100 different sites and only 1 of them decides to send out an unauthorized mass email to their “client” list then your server’s IP address could be blacklisted as result. The actions of 1 individual caused the email to stop working for over 100 companies. Don’t take that gamble!

There is a solution: Comit Technologies has a dedicated server to host their website customers. We guarantee 99.99% up-time and assign a different IP address to all of our SEO customers. This in effect separates any action that happens on any of our site and will prevent your website or email from ever appearing on any blacklist. No SEO customer can afford to do without this.
Contact Comit today to sign up for your SEO Friendly Hosting!

Vertical markets are an area where many SEO companies have managed to thrive. Writting, link building, and SEO in general is easier when you are familiar with an industry.

By focusing on a vertical market, an SEO company doesn’t have to conduct as much research as an SEO with clients who are in diverse markets,and efficiency also increases because the work that is done on each project can be used on future projects. They can determine their strengths and weaknesses and concentrate on improvement.

At Comit Technologies many of our clients are in the oil and gas industry. Anytime we get an oilfield client we know exactly how to handle their project because we have already researched the industry. Our writers and link builders only have to repeat what they have done before for the other oilfield companies. It is kind of like an SEO assembly line.

The vertical markets are great opportunities for SEO companies. Learning to identify and persue these markets will benefit any SEO professional.

I recently ran across several articles Here and other places about search engine conversion rates. Apparently AOL and MSN are converting more searches into sales than Google and Yahoo roughly 5%. Now why would the largest search engines have lower conversion rates?

Just think for one moment about the types of internet users who are likely to use each of these search engines. The search engines like AOL and MSN are probably favorites for people who are not computer savvy.

I can use my own father as an example. He rarely uses computers, much less the internet. If he is online, chances are that he’s either shopping or looking at a website that someone told him about. Given his lack of internet knowledge, would it be too much to assume that his home page is either MSN or AOL? He has never heard of Google or Yahoo. Why would he use another search engine when he has one on his home page? You will never catch him surfing the web just for fun.

It is because of people like my father that we see higher conversion rates for AOL and MSN. These individuals get online only to find a product or service and they use the first available search. Which will be the one on their homepage (because they probably don’t know how to even change their homepage).

Conversion rates are important, but they must be viewed with an open mind. It is wise to consider, as an SEO, who you are targeting with your website. Despite their higher conversion rates, AOL and MSN users are a small group, and they should not be your targeted market.

Business to business is a much better focus, and businesses know how to navigate the web. Optimizing for B2B is a win win situation because your focusing on important customers and increasing your overall traffic. One of the goals of advertising is to expose your company to as many people as possible. Why would you optimize for search engines with the least amount of traffic. That would be like putting a billboard on a country road instead of an interstate.

Search engines are constantly changing and SEO’s must use every tool that’s at their disposal in order to stay on top of their game. However, we should not let conversion rates and other such figures interfere with our tried and true methods.

Everyone knows that they shouldn’t jump off of a cliff because everyone else is doing it. Be an independent thinker and consider your options before making any changes based on a buzz.

Good Luck,
Paul Vidrine

Hello everyone. My name is Paul Vidrine and I am a member of the Comit Technologies internet marketing team. In the future, I intend to post information that may be either usefull or just entertaining. I will try to focus on SEO and web design as much as possible but sometimes my opinion and some useless info will be all that I have to offer. Aviation, hunting, classic cars, and cooking are my favorite topics, so expect to hear my opinions in those areas too.