Search engine optimization was thrown for a loop a few months ago as Google launched a new algorithm dubbed Panda. The net effect was that many SEO professionals' work suffered because some of the techniques they had been using no longer had the same high level of importance that they once had; some SEO work was even outright dropped by Google.

While some search engine optimization pros managed to hang on to their spots — the ones who were already doing the things Google now prefers — many less-than-professionals saw their efforts wiped out.

However, Google made it possible for everyone to reclaim their previous standings and earn their top spots once again. It takes a bit of understanding of what is considered "good" search engine optimization to be able to rise to the top.

Search Engine Optimization Tactic #1: Create High-Quality Content.

One of the factors Google is looking at for their new algorithm is how long people spend on a site. If a site is not very good, or if the writing is poor, and people do not spend a lot of time there — say, less than 10 seconds — Google concludes it must not be a very good site, and so they will drop it on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

To improve time on site, it is necessary to have both a well-designed site AND well-written content — two factors that keep people on a site longer, because they enjoy the experience. A good search engine optimization program will focus on creating good quality content and a good-looking navigation and layout. Have a beautiful site with interesting copy, and people will stay longer.

Search Engine Optimization Tactic #2: Lower Bounce Rates Through Navigation.

"Bounce" is when a person enters a site, visits one page, and then leaves the site again. They bounce, like a ball. But if someone visits a second page on the site, they did not bounce. If 10 people visit a site and leave, the site has a 100 percent bounce rate. But if five people visit a second page, the bounce rate is only 50 percent. The higher the bounce rate, the less valuable Google may consider it.

A good search engine optimization technique is to include navigation on a website that encourages visitors to visit more than one page. It could be an "articles just like these" section at the end of every blog post, or links to the next or previous post. Some newspapers and magazines will split up stories into two or three sections. They do this ostensibly to serve up more ads (thus charging more to their advertisers), but it also keeps their bounce rate lower, which helps them rank higher for certain stories and keywords.

Search Engine Optimization Tactic #3: Embed Videos

Videos are an excellent search engine optimization tactic, because they accomplish so many things at the same time. Just by embedding a YouTube video on a blog or website — especially if it is one's own video — it can help search engine optimization in at least three ways. 1) If a video is 1 - 2 minutes long, and a visitor stays to watch the video, time on site is increased. 2) By using video SEO tactics, the video will also rank higher in YouTube's SERPs. 3) Because Google often shows related videos in a SERP, a high-ranking YouTube placement will also lead to a high-ranking Google placement.

Search engine optimization has changed for the better, thanks to Google's new Panda algorithm. It has gotten rid of many low-value pages that were created by spammers seeking to game the system and sell the three P's of the Internet — pills, poker, and porn. It also rewards the search engine optimization pros and marketers who are trying to do the best for their clients and employers, and deliver the search results that people truly want to see.

SEO consulting can help grow a company's lead generation numbers just by virtue of making the company website found more easily on different search engines. SEO consulting agencies work to optimize a company's website, following the different techniques and tactics that SEO experts have found to work well.

Here is how SEO consulting can help improve lead generation.

A realtor specializes in mid-century modern homes in a particular part of town. Her website is currently a few pages of the usual real estate speak about customer satisfaction, putting buyers in their new home, and pictures of happy families. But the realtor's site does not rank well, and gets very few leads.

1. The SEO consulting professional first determines which keywords and phrases potential customers will use. They do this by checking other real estate websites, looking at the realtor's website analytics, and using SEO tools that show the best/most used keywords other visitors use when performing similar searches.
    
2. Next, the SEO consulting pro will revamp the realtor's website as needed, placing keywords in strategic areas, like page titles, headlines, and body copy. This "on-site SEO" an important part of any SEO consulting work, because this is the structure the search engines look for in order to determine what a website is about. If this important structure is missing, it is more difficult for the search engines to determine what a website is about. While it will not ruin the realtor's chances for being found, it does make it that much harder to be found, compared to other, similar websites.
   
   In the realtor's case, the SEO consulting firm will recommend keywords like "mid-century modern," the name of the neighborhood, and the name of the city.
    
3. Blogging is another important tool in an SEO consulting pro's toolbox. While the SEO consulting firm may not provide this service themselves — it is either up to the client to write their own content or an professional business blogging service — they will recommend it, and can even help create the blog. For the best effort, the blog should be a part of the realtor's website
   
    
4. That is because the search engines focus on a website's frequency and recency of updates — how often do they do it and when was the last time they did it? The more often a website is changed, the more valuable a search engine assumes it is. A blog is the easiest way to update the website, because a weekly or twice-weekly blog post will have the same effect as constantly changing the website.
   
   For the realtor, she should blog regularly about new houses for sale, changes in the neighborhood, state of the school, new restaurants, and anything else that will mention the keywords from point number two.
    
5. Backlinking is another service that top-flight SEO consulting firms will provide. While on-site SEO is important, it only tells the search engines what is important. Backlinks are what tell the search engines if something is popular and important. In that sense, backlinks are like votes. The more votes something has, the more important the search engines think it is. While anyone can read a book on SEO and call themselves an SEO consulting pro, the best agencies will actually manage backlinking for their clients as well
   
   For the realtor, her backlinking strategy needs to include articles written by other bloggers, comments left on other blogs, and even special mentions on discussion forums and community sites.

By hiring an SEO consulting agency to handle these details, the realtor will begin to see her website climb up in the search rankings. As she climbs up the rankings, she will also see an increase in traffic to her site — that traffic represents interested home buyers and sellers. As they read through her valuable information, they will then contact her for help in buying or selling their homes. The more contacts she gets, the more opportunity she has to close sales.

SEO consulting can help other businesses grow in this same manner. It is all a matter of knowing the best and latest techniques, and knowing how to capitalize on the things that potential clients are looking for.

The mobile SEO world is deeply divided. They are deeply divided in a way that only the true geeks can deeply divide. Entire church denominations have splintered over much, much less.

What is rocking the mobile SEO world is the question of dedicated mobile websites and domains: are they important, necessary, and valuable, or are they a complete waste of time?

The argument boils down to whether companies need a mobile-specific website and a mobile-specific domain name on the .mobi platform. Should companies purchase a .mobi domain name and then a separate server to store their specially-designed mobile websites.

Mobile SEO Argument #1: Mobile Websites and Domains Are IMPORTANT

Some mobile phones have problems rendering websites, say these proponents. And mobile search engines look at websites differently than regular desktop websites. Even the users visit a website for different reasons, whether they are on a laptop or on their mobile phone.

Generally, a person who is looking at a mobile site only needs basic information, not long blocks of copy, Flash-based movies, or giant graphics that are difficult to read. They want quick information, because they are usually on the move, trying to find an address, look up an item, or decide what they should buy. They do not have the time to sit down, research, investigate, and ponder. This means their web browsing habits are different — they want fast, simple, and easy to use.

Also, a .mobi domain name is important to mobile SEO because it helps the mobile search engines determine whether to include a page in their mobile-only search results. Plus, it makes it easier for mobile SEO professionals to buy a domain that matches their most-frequently searched keywords.

This means mobile SEO professionals need to do what works for both the search engines and the mobile users. They need dedicated pages that are programmed in HTML5. They need pages that only a mobile user will want, like contact information, directions, menu, easy ordering, etc.

The benefit of this approach, say the proponents, is that it boosts mobile SEO rankings, making sure the company's website appears at the top of the mobile search results.

Mobile SEO Argument #2: Mobile Websites and Domains Are NOT NECESSARY

These proponents argue that the modern smartphone is like a mini-computer capable of rendering any website. There is not even a need to create mobile pages on a desktop site, because the site will render beautifully on the smartphone's web browser.

The benefit this has to the mobile SEO professional is that it saves money: no need for extra programming, extra domains, server space, and someone to manage it all. Any money that would have gone into website development and mobile SEO can instead be put into other social media marketing efforts.

The problem with his argument is that not all phones are the most up-to-date smartphones. They do not all render web pages correctly. Of the total cell phone market, only 28% of them are smartphones. And some of those phones are older and still cannot render desktop websites.

The proponents then say that if companies would only program in HTML5, then any device could read it — desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and cell phones — and this would no longer be an issue. Of course, the costs and hassles of redesigning an entire website is going to result in the same extra costs that creating a mobile website and hosting would have in the pro-mobile site argument above.

While this mobile SEO argument is not going to be resolved any time soon — at least not until all websites have begun adopting HTML5 and/or all smartphones are able to render desktop websites no matter the age. Until then, the mobile SEO professionals will hotly debate and discuss this issue for years to come.

Video SEO has become an important part of regular search engine optimization. Anyone doing a basic Google search has seen how their search results often contain videos, especially from Google-owned YouTube, on the search engine results page (SERP). This is because Google is putting a lot of emphasis on videos, which means video SEO is not only possible, it is expected.

One video SEO consulting agency used a video to help the SEO efforts of a mobile coupons app developer. The video, which dealt with using mobile coupons to reduce a person's carbon footprint, was posted to the company's blog in an entry on using mobile coupons on vacation, and then tweeted out to nearly 3,500 people in the agency's network.

As a result, the company's video has begun ranking even higher for its particular keywords about mobile coupons (ranked #4), mobile grocery coupons (#3), and green shopping (ranked #14, but because it is a video, is ranking on Page 1).

The videos are also ranking highly on Google within its own video search pages — they actually reached Google's first page within a single day, especially for the keyphrase "free grocery giveaway." In this particular case, the high ranking can be attributed to the video SEO technique of using the term in the description of the video.

For users who search on YouTube for these same keywords, the results are similarly positive. Mobile coupons is a Page 1 rank, mobile grocery coupons is first on YouTube's search results (in fact, different videos from the mobile app company rank first, second, fourth, and fifth). Unfortunately, green shopping does not rank well on YouTube, having been supplanted by comedian Tom Green, who apparently has a thing for taking videos of his shopping trips.

Keep in mind that YouTube is the world's second-largest search engine, which makes it ideal for video SEO efforts.

Based on these results, it is obvious that video SEO is important, but why? If companies and brand managers know why, this can help them decide whether to try video SEO or not.

Video SEO Factoid #1: Google Declared 2010 to be the Year of Video In 2010, Google put a lot of effort into growing its video offerings, improving its video search engine optimization, and making video easier to produce, upload, and use. Now, video has become prevalent in the online world, often replacing TV as a primary source of entertainment for many of those in Generation Y.

Video SEO Factoid #2: Google Declared 2011 to be the Year of Mobile Phones It may seem weird to include this here, but when one considers that videos are very easy to watch on  smartphones, and that many people consume videos on their phones, this becomes important. Now, not only will people want to watch videos on their phone, but they will go straight to YouTube — the world's #2 search engine — to find them.

Video SEO Factoid #3: YouTube is NOT the Only Video Site Vimeo and Daily Motion are also major video sites that accept video uploads, although there are dozens of video sharing sites available. Uploading the best videos to these different sites using a video uploading tool helps the company's videos not only reach different niche audiences that each video site reaches, but with all the video SEO techniques, like keyword-rich descriptions and titles, and backlinks, the company's website improve their own search engine ranking.

Video SEO is one tool that continues to provide solid results for its practitioners, but surprisingly, it is not a widely used tool by many SEO professionals. They continue to fight and tweak for different keywords and tactics, without considering the powerful benefits that video offers. For a complete SEO package, consider all the benefits that a simple video shot with a simple video camera or smartphone can offer.

Translation SEO may be the next big thing as more multinational companies localize their services, products, and even websites in different countries. Translation SEO is the idea that a website — say, one built in the U.S. — is translated into another language like German or Japanese, in the hopes that the SEO juice (that's a technical term) will be the same on the overseas search engine.

Many companies think running their website through a machine translator will perform just as well on the localized Google as it did in the U.S. Of course, translation SEO is not that easy.

For one thing, those translations are often word for word translations, and don't follow sentence structure rules or use idioms. Nothing is more embarrassing, for example, than finding a phrase like "Man, I'm hot!" doesn't mean you're overheated in German, but that you're. . . feeling very amorous. There are similar pitfalls when using machine translations, and you may find that people in other countries are finding your site for. . . "other" reasons.

Here are three other best practices for translation SEO.

Translation SEO Practice #1: Research country specific keywords.

People not only call things by different words in different countries (an "elevator" in the U.S. is a "lift" in England) but they may use entirely different search terms when they do perform a search. Do country-specific keyword research, rather than relying on your knowledge of the culture and language.

Also, don't rely on the staff in your overseas office. Many companies call a product one thing, while searchers and potential customers call it something else, both in the U.S. and other countries.

Translation SEO Practice #2: Optimize your site to rank within high search market targets.

This means following the best practices of the popular search engines in that country, which may not always be Google. In Russian it's Yandex, in China it's Baidu.  And their best practices are not necessarily Google's, which means your translation SEO is more than just following Google's best practices. It means you need to work with SEO professionals who have extensive experience in those countries.

Translation SEO Practice #3: Don't duplicate pages from other websites.

Even if you translate to another language, it's never a good idea to duplicate pages, unless there's a reason to do it. (And in that case, make sure you designate the original pages as the "canonical" pages.) Rather, make sure your translator is also a decent writer who can rewrite the copy enough so it's completely different. Otherwise, you could still suffer the same duplicate content "penalties" that other web designers see when they repost the same content on different websites.

Translation SEO, if done properly, can help a company achieve the same online success they have seen in their home country. It's a matter of finding the best keywords, and working with experienced SEO professionals who know how the other country's search engines work.

Social media SEO has increased in importance, thanks to some changes in Google's algorithms, most recently the Google Panda update. What Google Panda has done is made social media connections a bigger part of their SEO algorithm — in other words, the more connections a person has, the more likely some of their material they have read or recommended will show up in the person's search engine results page.

And social media SEO looks like it is going to become more important with the introduction of new tools like Google+.

For example, Craig is looking for information on vacuum cleaner repairs, they do a Google search for the term "vacuum cleaner repairs." If Craig is not logged in to Google, or does not have many connections, Google will present him with the most objective posts that rely on the typical search engine optimization techniques. He will most likely be presented with the best optimized site about vacuum cleaner repairs.

But, if Craig is active on social networks like Twitter, is connected to a lot of people on Google+, and even has someone in his Google Contacts list, Stacy, who has a keen interest in vacuum cleaner repair shops, then anything Stacy has said about vacuum repair is going to appear on Craig's search engine results. If Stacy has left a comment on a vacuum repair page, or shared a vacuum repair blog post, or even written a vacuum repair blog post herself, then her results will show up on Craig's page.

This will have two positive effects on social media SEO. One, the more connections a business has with potential customers, the more likely they are to show up on the search engine results page. And two, people who write blog posts about vacuum repair can finally show their faces in public without being embarrassed.

Social media SEO takes advantage of the connections between a searcher and their networks, because people tend to believe and trust testimonials and opinions of their friends more than they do of complete strangers. But they believe and trust testimonials of complete strangers over the information provided by traditional marketers.

The implications of this for traditional marketers is that they may no longer bark at their customers with new special offers and promises of big savings and crazy prices. Customers are no longer looking, at least on social media, for typical marketing behavior. They are skipping TV advertisements, leaving commercial radio for satellite radio and Internet radio, and blocking ads on websites with software, all to avoid being slimed with traditional advertising methods.

These days, customers want relationships with their companies. They want to hear from companies they trust, and that have provided value to them in the past. They want to connect with companies that will not send them constant advertisements or pester them with needless communication. They would rather work with companies who help them answer questions, solve problems, and help them fix issues.

This means that for social media SEO to truly work, businesses need to connect with potential customers via social networks like Google+, Twitter, and Facebook (if appropriate), and communicate with them in the manner they want, not the way the marketing department thinks it should be. The businesses need to create a valuable newsletter, add people to their email list, and ask them to add the business email address to their white list. They also need to frequently write blog posts that address different questions and problems these potential customers are facing.

As these businesses connect with these customers via social media, it also means the business will show up with a high search rank whenever these customers do a search for a topic the business can handle.

SEO SEM (search engine optimization and search engine marketing) can mean the difference between success and failure for a lot of online businesses, or businesses that rely on online traffic for a major part of their revenue. SEO SEM can mean the difference between a lot of traffic and no traffic. Between qualified leads and browsers. Between running in the black or sinking into the red.

SEO SEM is the idea that websites are not only optimized for search engines (SEO), but that online marketing professionals make a concerted effort to market via those same search engines (SEM). In other words, knowing how to position a website so it is easily found by the largest number of buyers.

But SEO SEM is not necessarily something companies want to take on by themselves, since it can involve a steep learning curve. While it makes some sense to have an internal employee handling the SEO SEM, keep in mind that this person will most likely have other responsibilities that distracts them from their original tasks. Also, hiring and training a new staffer can take months, which most companies do not have, especially if their search engine results are flagging. Lost positions means lost profits, and the longer a company waits, the lower they drop on the search engine results pages.

So companies should consider hiring an SEO SEM consultant to carry them forward. But what should they look for in that new consultant?

Ignore university degrees and accreditation. Look for experience instead. SEO SEM is fairly new as an academic study, and only now are some universities are offering classes on it. However, they are using old methods and old texts — techniques that became obsolete even six months ago. A real SEO SEM expert gains their knowledge from working in the industry and reading the latest blog posts and white papers, not sitting in a classroom.

Ask for examples of past work. This may be difficult, because many SEO SEM consultants have non-disclosures with their clients, but it is still worth asking for. But, they may be able to show analytics reports without disclosing client names or identities.

Check out their search engine rankings. Not only should a good SEO SEM consultant rank near the top of their chosen keywords and niches, they should be ranking well on local search results. The best consultants will not only understand general SEO techniques, but they will also know how to do local search as well. Also, do not just limit the check to Google; look at Yahoo and Bing too. A good consultant will focus on all the major search engines, not just the biggest. One day, the others may explode with growth, and companies that ignored them will be left behind.

Finding an SEO SEM consultant may be rather difficult for companies that do not know what to look for. But as long as they are armed with a few basic benchmarks and questions — like looking for years of experience, size of past campaigns, examples of work, trial performance, and search engine rankings — they can make a well-informed, educated decision.

may seem like an extravagance for some smaller companies companies, but it can be the thing that separates a successful company from a mediocre one, a successful online campaign from a failed campaign. SEO consulting may seem like an added expense to companies operating on a smaller budget, but the benefits it can reap will make the SEO consulting costs more than pay for itself.

Here are four reasons small companies need

.

SEO Consulting Tip #1: It Can Create a Positive ROI in Months, Not Years The whole reason to do search engine optimization (SEO) is because it can help a company be more easily found on Google and other search engines. When companies sell products online, the most important thing they can ever do to survive and thrive is to be found at the top of the search engine results page. If companies are on page two, they might as well not be on the Internet at all. Studies have shown that users rarely go past the first page of search results. Page two is rarely visited, and if a company is on page three, they might as well be selling televisions to the Amish.

SEO Consulting Tip #2: The SEO Learning Curve Is Fairly Steep Search engine optimization is rather complicated and requires in-depth knowledge. While anyone can learn to do it, it takes months and months of reading, implementing the lessons, monitoring, measuring the results, tweaking the parameters, remeasuring the results, and constantly tweaking and measuring, especially when there are major changes to the search engine algorithms. SEO consulting is a full-time job for a reason. This is not necessarily knowledge that can be picked up by reading a book. It requires constant learning and testing.

SEO Consulting Tip #3: SEO Tactics Change Constantly Search engines are always trying to provide the best possible experience for users that they can. If a user has a good experience during one search, they will be back for another. And then another. Pretty soon, they are regular users of that search engine, which means the search engine can continue to serve up their ads, which is how they make money. In order to get people to use that search engine, they constantly work to provide the best experience possible.

This means they are constantly working to weed out spammers, eliminating unimportant or useless websites, and making sure the Internet experience is as useful and enjoyable as possible. All of these changes can have serious ramifications on a website's search ranking. This is why SEO consulting is a full-time job. The SEO consulting professional is constantly keeping up with changes in the industry via articles, white papers, and blogs. They know that any information in a book is usually out of date before it is ever printed. The SEO consultant is always keeping up with these changes, which is something that a part-time practitioner just is not able to manage.

SEO Consulting Tip #4: Search Engine Optimization Takes a Lot of Time Search engine optimization is one of those tasks that usually get relegated to the bottom of the to-do list. It is one of those tasks that most everyone agrees is important, but there are always meetings to take, phone calls to make, copy to write, and sales to close. As well-intentioned as the business owner is, search engine optimization will always take a back seat to the meetings, phone calls, office tasks, and sales, which means it will never get done.

And by the time the owner has time to do everything — because sales and phone calls have slowed down, thanks to a poor search engine ranking — it is already too late. The months they should have spent optimizing their website are now lost, and it will take several more months for an SEO consulting professional to repair the damage. But by then, sales may have slowed to a deadly pace, and the business owner is looking for a quick fix just to keep the business going.

SEO consulting is not something a business owner can ignore or trivialize, not if they want their business to succeed. If a business needs to make a great impression online, an SEO consulting professional can really save their bacon.

Reverse SEO is an ongoing battle for a lot of people. One little mistake and a photo gets posted to dozens of websites. One lapse of judgment and the mistake is blasted all over the Internet. Or one person who shares a job seeker's name but doesn't share their sense of morality and good judgment can confuse people searching for that candidate.

Reverse SEO (search engine optimization) can help push negative search results down the search engine results pages (SERPs), and make the positive content appear at the top. Here are four reverse search engine tips that can start working almost immediately.

Reverse SEO Tip #1: Use Quora, Yahoo Answers, and Other Q&A Sites

Q&A sites like Quora, Yahoo Answers, and LinkedIn are all great places to not only establish expertise and credibility in a subject, they are also a good place to drop in URLs that point back to one's main website or blog. Visit the Q&A sites on a semi-frequent basis — at least every three days — and answer questions in a few niche areas. If there are useful blog posts or websites, include those as well. But this is not a place to spam articles or websites, because users will often report users as spammers. Rather, give high-quality useful answers, and only include URLs when they are important and valuable.

Reverse SEO Tip #2: Buy Personal Name as a URL

Using one's own name as a URL is the most effective reverse SEO technique, because search engines put a lot of stock into domain names. Any name or keyword in a .com URL gets extra attention from the search engines, and in many cases, they are likely to place that website at the top of the SERPs. As a result, it does not matter what content is at the top of the page, a named URL will trump even that, as long as there is some useful content. Create a basic website with a WordPress site or free Google page, and point different backlinks to it.

Reverse SEO Tip #3: Start a Blog

A blog is an excellent way to reverse SEO negative content off the top SERPs. It is regular content about a specific topic and by a specific person. If it is one person who is trying to remove negative content, then a blog is an ideal way to do this, because they can write and post everything under their own name. Every post has the potential to not only help reach its own high positions, but as each post is promoted on different social media networks, it can also push the positive content to the top of the SERPs, and push the negative content off.

Reverse SEO Tip #4: Use Videos

Videos aid greatly with reverse SEO, because they get a lot of search engine "juice." (It also does not hurt that sites like YouTube are owned by Google.) Just by posting a video to YouTube, adding a link that points back to the hosting website, and then embedding that video on the site, and it can boost the website's search engine rankings. This can be especially useful for a blog that requires regular content and needs a boost from the search engines to improve its performance.

While reverse SEO is not an easy fix — plan on taking at least three months and as long as a year to remove negative content — it can be an effective tool to overcoming negative search results. Whether the project is for a job candidate, a corporate brand, or even a politician who has made some drastically unfortunate life choices, reverse SEO can ultimately help restore the positive aspects of the person's or company's brand and image.

SEO SEM would not be what it is today, if not for spammers.

No, seriously.

In fact, most Internet advancements have even happened because of spam. And to understand how far SEO SEM (search engine optimization and search engine marketing) has come, it is important to look back at where it came from.

Spam is the word used to describe unwanted email, taking the name from the Spam sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus. But it has since expanded its meaning to unwanted SEO SEM tactics and results too, flooding the search engines with pages that no one really wants, all in the hope that some poor sucker will buy something, thus justifying their efforts.

Back in the mid- to late-1990s, Yahoo was really the only major search engine being used, and they relied on web masters to use certain tactics to tell them what a website was about. Most of these SEO SEM techniques basically involved having proper keywords on a website. As long as a search engine found a few keywords on a page, it assumed that was what the page was about. But as the competition grew stiffer, someone realized if they had more keywords on a site, they could win the search. Eventually it became a battle to see who could have the most keywords on a page.

However, this ruined the user interface, making pages unattractive. No one wanted to see the keywords plastered across the top of a page, screaming what the site was about.  So web masters began placing keywords at the bottom of the page, repeating them over and over several dozen times.

The search engines didn't want any of this, however, so web masters tried creating invisible text (white text on a white background), but the search engines began to penalize those sites. So they tried tiny text — using 6 or 8 point text — but that didn't make the search engines happy either.

The next SEO SEM trick was to stuff as many keywords as possible into a page title and meta description, like the Description tag and Keyword tag. It was not uncommon to see the same keywords repeated in a title and meta tags a couple dozen times. The search engines penalized those sites as well, and said they did not want any SEO SEM keyword stuffing at all.

So the SEO SEM pros had to learn how to use one or two keywords in a title and description, and to practice proper search engine optimization. This technique is now the current accepted SEO SEM practice.

In the meantime, they also tried keyword stuffing in the body copy, trying to intersperse keywords into the copy as frequently as possible, creating horrible sentences like "Download this free website marketing report that details different website marketing techniques to improve website marketing."

But, just as with the tiny text/invisible text tricks, the search engines caught on again, requiring SEO SEM pros to actually become good writers who created readable and interesting copy. While there are still plenty of bad writers out there, the push has been to improve the quality of online writing, and there has been some real progress over the last couple of years.

The battle still continues on, as SEO SEM marketers try to stay one step ahead of the search engines, while the search engines fight to keep their databases free of the SEO SEM trickery and chicanery that spammers are known for.

There probably will not be an end to SEO SEM spam any time soon, but as users get smarter about it and search engines find new ways to combat it, there could be a serious decrease in it, and an improvement to the user experience as time goes on.