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You’re never going to guess which SEO rockstar was in The New York Times yesterday… Oh. You guessed. Right. Well then. Carry on.

Rand Fishkin , CEO of SEOMoz, appears on Oprah more than any other SEO. So we weren’t surprised to see Rand Fiskin and SEOMoz debut yesterday in The New York Times Fashion & Style section.

Come to think of it, we were surprised. We didn’t see the Times story mentioned in the growing search blogosphere. SEOMoz blogger Rebecca Kelley didn’t mention the citation in her weekly news roundup but fortunately, Rand “tweeted” the link to the NY Times article on Twitter today.

“Skin Deep: To Cut or What? The World Butts In” a feature by NYT reporter Anna Jane Grossman suggests, “Gone are the days of making beauty look effortless. Instead everyone wants confirmation in the form of numbers, like so many singers vying for the love of the world’s Simons, Paulas and Randys. And it seems public approval trumps personal choice, or the advice of friends.”

The SEOMoz blog, (where SEW Expert Eric Enge and CEO, Stone Temple Consulting), has been guest blogging, received a coveted link from NY Times Digital.

So here’s the scoop on the author of The Desire for Fame in the SEO World:

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SEATTLE – A Washington-based company that sells search engine optimization (SEO) services to small businesses is prohibited from selling or advertising them to new customers under the terms of a settlement announced by Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna.

While the SEO standards debate rages, the search marketing industry continues to be perceived as purveyors of snake oil and predators of small business owners.

SEOMoz honcho Rand Fiskin denies that SEO standards are needed while raging against Internet Advancement to no avail for more than two years:

“All in all, this is one of the most despicable players I’ve seen in the spam/scam SEO game. It disgusts me to think of the thousands of dollars companies are paying every day to these clowns to get services that carry no business or marketing value whatsoever. These guys are going on my big time sh-t list.”

That was in February, 2006 before hundreds of additional complaints were filed against SEOMOz competitor, Internet Advancement.

Under the agreement filed in King County Superior Court, Internet Advancement must allow its customers to exit existing contracts. The SEO firm’s Web site is still online so advertising apparently doesn’t include a Web presence.

So will the lawsuit put the SEO firm out-of-business?

Amazingly, no.

The agreement allows Internet Advancement to offer search-engine optimization services to existing customers. The company may provide Web site design services to new customers, as well, provided such services don’t include the creation of metatags or keywords or submission to search engines.

The agreement states that Internet Advancement cannot:

* Advertise or offer search optimization (SEO) services to new customers;

* Misrepresent its success rate, ability to provide top search-engine rankings or increase Web traffic or its number of repeat customers;

* Fail to disclose all material contract terms before customers have agreed to pay for services;

* Fail to respond promptly to consumer complaints, refund requests or other requests for services or information;

* Charge customer credit cards without authorization;

* Fail to process requests to cancel service or bill consumers after they have cancelled contracts;

* Represent that a customer isn’t entitled to a refund because the customer performed changes to the source code of his/her Web site unless a third-party technical expert confirms that the changes were made or authorized by the customer.

More astonishing: Google, Yahoo, MSN , AOL and Ask have allowed their logos to be used on the Internet Advancement Web site.

Internet Advancement of Redmond, which also does business as 4GreatBuys.com, was accused of misrepresenting its ability to provide top search engine rankings and increase Web traffic, even after being sued by Washington State.

The defendants admitted that some of the violations had occurred and agreed to the new settlement filed today in King County Superior Court, but denied that all of the alleged violations were part of a repeated pattern. They will pay a $118,386 civil penalty and $35,959 in attorneys’ fees. The defendants also agreed to comply with a lengthy list of injunctive provisions or else be slapped with an additional $450,000 penalty.

According to today’s settlement, Internet Advancement guaranteed that a customer’s Web site will appear within the first 25 links on major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and AOL, when Internet users search for specific keywords.

Customers paid $999-$3,000 in “set-up” fees and a $149 monthly fee.

Small businesses filed 82 complaints about Internet Advancement with the Attorney General’s Office between Oct. 28, 2004, and March 10, 2008. The Federal Trade Commission and Better Business Bureau also received complaints.

All righty then.

REFUND REQUESTS
Internet Advancement agreed to a refund program. Customers eligible for refunds fall into three categories:

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This morning over at Seattle-based blog SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin asks "What is an Algorithm? How does it apply to the Search Results at Google, Yahoo! & MSN/Live?" The post, How to Track the Evolution of Search Engine Algorithms & Why It’s Important to Do So, amounts to a free clinic regarding the "whys" and "hows" for professionals seeking to garner more organic search traffic.

"The vast majority of search marketers operating in the organic space at least lay claim to "following the latest algorithms" at the search engines, and in 90% of the client pitches I’ve ever heard (or made, for that matter), the subject comes up at least once. However, I think this is still a topic about which there’s not a lot of true understanding and for those new to the field, it’s probably the most daunting aspect of the work. So, to help ease some pain, I figured I’d address many of the most common questions about keeping up with the search engines’ ever-changing mathematical formulas that rank search results."
Rand Fishkin

The article gets to the algorithmic red meat: inherent trust in link metrics, domain trust over the importance of individual pages, temporal analysis of link growth, sandboxing of new websites, fixing blog comment spam, and Google’s recent crackdown on reciprocal tactics.

SEOBOOK’s Aaron Wall, in what will likely be a hot post around the social news and bookmarking universe, serves up candid and insightful thinking on the long term competitive advantage of classic search engine optimization vs. pay per click. His writing style is hungry and tone passionate. Aaron’s got his Mojo on in this delightfully self-effacing comparison of SEO & PPC’s long-term value.

Wall writes, "This is why I like SEO so much more than PPC. Most people are too lazy to spend years researching their topic, years building a brand, years building links, and years building social and customer relationships. We are afraid of failure, afraid of success, and afraid that we are investing too much in one place. But, if someone sees me ranking in the organic results they can’t just clone it unless they know SEO well, and are committed for the long haul."

Many A-list SEOs have weighed in to the dialog regarding the Tao of SEO and PPC in tandem and separately. For additional perspective read "PPC vs. Organic," David Naylor, Lee Odden’s classic 2006 "The Lame PPC and SEO Debate," and sugerrae’s recent rant, "The Lazy SEO vs. The Lazy Monetizer." In a street level video interview, Rand Fishkin discusses using PPC to test organic concepts, PPC vs. SEO in China, and other useful concepts.

In this evolutionary algorithmic age every search marketer charged with boosting rankings on the organic SERPs knows, with fearful certainty, that building inbound links is essential. Utilizing social media communities to do so is a front-and-center tactic for many.

Sure, we’re all aware of mainstream players like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Propeller, etc…

However, there are hundreds of social communities other than the biggies. These niche’ player-communities can be terrific venues to engage readers of similar ilk, make friends, drive focused micro-busts of traffic, and build links. Some communities are junk. This post offers niche’ social site examples and provides links to lists which index and profile dozens of useful ones.

Dofollow and Nofollow
A quick word about Do/No follow. Most blogs (and many communities) these days attempt to discourage spam by removing "link-juice" passed on links dropped in discussion threads. That’s called "Nofollow." (Wikipedia is a classic example of Nofollow.) Nofollow links deliver traffic but there’s no SEO benefit. If you view the source code of this page, you’ll see that some of the social site links are Nofollow and therefore do not pass energy.

When evaluating the potential benefit of social community participation, it’s best practice to understand the objective and potential gain. Whenever a site, with decent Pagerank, "forgets" to turn off Dofollow, it’s an opportunity of sorts to build links of varying strength and value. The most important caveat is that gratuitous link dropping, without offering true value to the community, is spam and will likely be treated as such.

Every search marketing professional knows that garnering good quality, relevant, and "natural" inbound links to your site or blog is critical to drive your SEO ranking efforts. Honest participation in niche’ social communities, relevant to your product & services, is the tactic that many savvy SEMs reach for to build their site’s inbound link-profile. In addition to the community site links themselves, “hot” posts can result in feed subscriptions, increased readership, and links from other relevant and valuable sites.

Fark is a social news site in which moderators approve user link-submissions and post them to the homepage. The links are Nofollow but can drive noticeable traffic.

Slashdot is a community where techno-heads hang out and geek-jam. However, users submit stories about entertainment, politics, and other fun stuff. If editors approve a submission and it’s promoted the homepage, measurable traffic can result. Also, links in the body of each post are Dofollow and pass juice.

Metafilter is a moderated community, both by site administers and users, in which participants share interesting web content. Links are Dofollow.

Mixx is widely regarded as an up-and-comer in the social news world. A potentially mainstream Digg replacement site, many SEM folks had early-adopter Mixx profiles for fun and future marketing bang. Oh yes, they forget to turn off Dofollow so the links pass juice.

Hugg is a smaller community engaged in dialog surrounding environmental issues. There’s social exchanges about technology, politics, and science as well. Links are Dofollow.

Sk*rt is a Dofollow PR 5 fashion, food, and technology community, primarily comprised of females.

Stirr’dup is a smaller NoFollow social news site which categorizes news as technology, entertainment, news and politics.

Linkinn is a PR5 site specializing in offbeat video and pictures. Links are DoFollow and pass juice.

Lists of Useful Social Media Sites:

48 Social News Websites: A List of General and Niche Social Media Communities
Tropical SEO: Top 38 Niche Social Media Sites (That Actually Send Traffic)

Respected blogger Sugarrae has posted a serious interview with industry leading link-building experts and is a must-read. Interviews include:
Eric Ward, the Link Moses behind URL Wire
Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz
Roger Montti, the founder and owner of martinibuster.com
Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl and Clientside
Justilien Gaspard, Link Columnist for SearchEngineWatch.com, his link building blog and course author SEMPO Institute
Aaron Wall of SEO Book and Clientside SEM
Debra Mastaler of Alliance Link and the The Link Spiel
Michael Gray of the Graywolf SEO Blog
Andy Hagans, the lazy SEO of the Tropical SEO Blog
Jim Boykin of We Build Pages and Internet Marketing Ninjas
Rae Hoffman, CEO of Sugarrae and MFE Interactive

Some people want everyone to like them, and this, to be honest, can be a bit pathetic.  But businesses may need everyone (or at least a whole lot of folks) to like them, and so Rand Fishkin has addressed the issue of why Yahoo and MSN/Live don’t always send much traffic.
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More: continued here [...]

The dominant search engine, Google, doesn’t have a problem with nofollowed paid links, but few webmasters want to pay for something that brings minimal value to their sites.

WebProNews is at PubCon 2007 in Las Vegas, bringing you the latest in web marketing.
John Lessnau noted several points about purchasing links during the Link Buying session. Webmasters [...]

It’s odd, really - if Wikipedia were a person or animal, we’d be hard-pressed to actually like it, given how untrustworthy it can be.  But we do like it, and the site’s popularity gives some people all the more reason to toy with it.
Whether you’re looking up simple search terms like “dog” and “tree,” [...]

At the SMX Social Media event in New York, Liana Evans, Director of Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance, and Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz advised marketers to fish where the fish are.
And that fish are in "microcommunities," vertical or specialty sites with social networking features. Because these communities are already focused on a very specific [...]

Rand Fishkin disclosed he is giving up a small percentage of SEOmoz in exchange for a venture capital investment of $1.25 million from a pair of investors.Rand said in a recent post to SEOmoz that they have decided to seek outside investment for his popular SEO site and services.
“We literally have a hundred different [...]