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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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4:00AM morning outside the New York Hilton: the city wakeup-crowd stirs pre-dawn Manhattan lights. From the 53rd St. lobby the regal doorman guides me to Kennedy International-bound taxi and deli coffee black…impeccable New York service in hand. The cab ride provides the necessary 30 minute Internet-access window to post aimClear Blog conference coverage waiting in WordPress.  Then it occurs to me: “Dude, I must be pretty screwed up to be blogging in a TAXI.”

Search marketing conference attendees seem to be the most plugged-in-public group of techno-comrades on earth. We rove in packs of iPhone and laptop-totting pied-pipers evangelizing link love, holistic patterns, authentic participation, conversion tracking, and good will. These SEMS, SEOs, PPCs, Mr., Mrs. & Ms are such beautiful people. I love the search marketing industry because ya’ll are SO plugged into the grid, running remote marketing machine empires from Blackberries.

We’re a curious and over-stimulated group, resulting in behavior that will have future anthropologists mumbling to themselves. It’s a great time to be alive and so many incredible ways to connect for business and pleasure. Here’s 13 Undeniable symptoms of total communications-grid immersion.  These are not listed in any particular order of severity.

Search marketers are modern communications channel gatekeepers, technicians, and salespersons, obsessively plugged into the grid. Millennial behavior chatter permeates our culture as SEMs have steadily become the 900 LB mainstream gorilla.

My sense of is that we wouldn’t have it any other way than total grid immersion. Farewell SearchEngineStrategies NYC 2008. &nbsp You’re still the beautiful New York lady, shining city-scene of light and global opportunity. The culture of marketing king-makers, search marketing students and communications-grid pundits rocks my world.

Footnote: Add the measured insanity of “blogging in the airplane isle whilst waiting for the aft cabin bathroom to free up.”

First, maybe you’re in-house, working for a CPG big-brand,  e-marketing multi-million dollar health insurance products, a solo designer, are president of a boutique SEM shop in Toronto, or perhaps your wild-thing is classic PR. This post applies to you.

Every professional needs someone. This timeless axiom is especially relevant to both those who consume and those who provide search marketing services. aimClear interviewed 21 marketing companies and solo practitioners for this article, in order to clarify our anecdotal understanding of how industry peers view strategic partnerships.

Let the Games Begin
In 1999 it was feasible to be a small search marketing shop or in-house team and literally cover all the bases: SEO, paid search, social media, link/traffic building, analytics, and content development. Now SEM has exploded on to the scene, becoming the most relevant skill-set in the entire marketing universe; the multi- headed hydra of interconnected disciplines which can’t easily be handled by a single small (or sometimes medium) SEM department or agency.

In-house or out-house (always wanted to say that) healthy business things result from crafting strategic partnerships amongst specialized and trusted peers with complementary skills. Herein lays the golden path for many a marketing team to remain compact and efficient, whilst providing world class solutions to satisfy any client’s needs.

"Although we position ourselves as a full-service SEM agency, we’ve been partnering (more than ever) with what I would have considered competitors in the past. For one company, we manage PPC while a partner of ours manages SEO. In another example, we provide strategic consulting for a content portal, while the current SEM firm will manage the launch and ongoing activities.

I believe it’s a win-win-win in most cases, as the client gets best-of-breed service providers while the vendors get a unique opportunity to learn from each other and share revenue.”
Kent Lewis, Anvil Media, Inc.

Full Service SEM, Circa 2000
Back in the day, social media was a phenomenon looming intangibly on the horizon and required little attention. ” Socially informed search” meant humans maintaining the Yahoo Directory and community meant AOL chat rooms, IRC, and Yahoo Personals.

Overture was easy to operate, dominated the paid search landscape (there was no Google AdWords) and organic optimization was easy for the well-informed.  Analytics were rudimentary, conversion tracking was an afternoon cookie-bake for the clever, and link building meant directories, exchanges, and cold phone calls. Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, Aaron Wall, and other “old fart” SEOs hadn’t invented terms like “linkbait” and search engine algorithms were refreshingly easy to reverse engineer [sigh].  

The search marketing industry was about to undergo an explosion of epic proportions, bringing the entire planet’s media empire paradigm to it’s very KNEES. Those were heady times indeed. A small SEM shop could make a massive difference for any client on any “best-practices” front.  We could literally do it all ourselves.

“Our in-house SEM department is changed with targeting 15-24 year olds artsy types.  These days the young are incredibly savvy and demand that we serve them by publishing with increasingly familiar tools. Even with our [significant] in-house marketing resources, we delegate out design, some application development and even SEO projects. 

The in-house/out-of-house hybrid approach results in better conversion and ROI, satisfies our customers’ expectations, and our team is always current with crucial SEM information. In the end it costs us less and we sell more.”
Lance Sabin, Institute of Production and Recording

Not Your Mother’s SEM
Things have certainly changed! Social media participation permeates the very fabric of society. Organic optimization remains an intense mish-mash of authentic content, publishing technique and hundreds of distribution channels. Link-building has crossed over into social media. This is especially intriguing as organic optimization and SMO (even Social PPC like Facebook) fold into the realm of social media practitioners.

“I’m a social Media marketer. That said, we social-side SEMS sure know we don’t live in a bubble, sweet as that would be. It’s in my best interest to have relationships to share with my clients… a diverse set of brilliant professionals. Then my clients can do anything, and I happily play my part. “
Shana Albert, SocialDesire

Personalized and Universal search blew “old” SEO out of the water.  Client relationships begin with taking inventory of digital assets and highly complex PPC campaigns sport millions of keywords, where sharpshooters mine long-tail ROI.  Each specialized endeavor requires deep commitment to craft and have become cottage industries unto themselves.  It’s easy to understand why solo or small SEM practitioners often choose to focus, as opposed to attempting to do it all it all. 

“Our focus is our agency’s organic search, paid search, and social media. We keep these functions in-house as we have the knowledge and expertise. Other activities where we don’t feel we have as strong a competitive advantage (usability, email marketing, web design, and affiliate marketing) are outsourced to experts we view as being the market thought-leaders.

Often our strategic partners bring us work that’s perfect for what we do best. In the end, it’s all about working together to get clients the results they expect in this incredible age of specialization and heightened expectations.”
Jeff Quipp, SearchEnginePeople

Should Relationships be Transparent?
Some of the firms we interviewed transparently share subcontractors with their clients, even to the point of direct billing and no marked up fees. The advantages can include more efficient communications channels, clarity, and shared customer service responsibilities. Points of danger are sometimes fragmented communication, lack of a coordinated front, a confused client and more complicated communication.

Other strategic partners find it less complicated to remain in the background. In our interviews we heard repeatedly that a key advantage to having the partner-firm remain invisible was that the “originating” company nearly always has a better understanding of the client’s goals and makeup. Decisions as to the “transparency issue” are personal to every strategic partnership and should be embarked upon intentionally.

“We’re an advertising agency that specializes only in pay per click. That’s all we do. Maximizing conversions is critical for our clients, so we partner with web designers analytics firms and a range of others. Reciprocally we also partner-out, usually transparently, to agencies who subcontract PPC work to us, so they can provide top service to their clients without maintaining an expert staff in-house. It’s just easier’.
David Szetela, ClixMarketing

PR agencies are all over the SEM revolution and have learned to partner with SEM shops. Social media is such a huge component of the “new” PR and so makes total sense that “traditional” practitioners appreciate the benefits SEM-type thinking brings to the arena. Savvy PR practitioners embrace social and are partnering more and more with SEM shops

 "SEM agencies and PR agencies are usually 180 degrees apart on the spectrum of measuring results of their efforts.  To SEMs, immediate feedback means spreadsheets with detailed analytics. PR clients are more used to clip-books with column inches counted months later. These days, clients want immediate feedback and statistics as to their efforts. We’ve learned to embrace this conundrum and partner to capitalize on the advantages of both PR and SEM. Using strategic partner-vendors helps us link PR results with the magical measurement capabilities of the modern SEM.”
Janet Johnson

 “Search marketing is expanding and becoming much more of a specialized field. We’ve found it highly beneficial to partner with key providers and concentrate on our areas of specialty. Our entire approach to the web is to unify the various components of marketing under a strategic umbrella, so it often makes sense to augment our strong points with complimentary solo consultants directly for specific projects. This is the model we’re working with and it’s been successful.”
Adam Audette, AudetteMedia 

In-House, CPG, big pharmaceutical, independent designer, local SEO or up and coming carpet cleaning company — everybody needs somebody else sometimes. The timeless reality of the interdependent corporate web has never been more obvious than in the field of search marketing. Paid search, organic, social, PR, email, and every classic node, there’s work enough for everybody. Specialization, as the SEM universe expands, is inevitable.  Many of our peers reach out to forge strategic relationships.

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• Microsoft Wants to Buy Yahoo: Convergence, Continued
  There have been rumors of late about some sort of Microsoft/Yahoo hookup — and here it is. Microsoft just tendered a $31/share bid for Yahoo. All of Yahoo.
• Paid Search Advertising Drives Microsoft Bid for Yahoo
  More relevant search results and social media innovations won’t solve the problem of Google’s dominance in paid search advertising.
• MSN and Yahoo Merged: How Would It All Mash Up?
  Aside from the potential effect on Yahoo/MS investors and the American Economy (which will be reported on ad nauseum), the implications for the search marketing industry could be massive and exciting.
• Yahoo Board, Sans Semel, to Consider Microsoft Bid
  Former CEO and chairman Terry Semel stepped down as chairman last night.
• The Other Side of the MS/Yahoo Deal
  What would this merger mean in term of a search experience, organic results and news content?
• Super Bowl Advertisers Mostly Unprepared, Search-wise
  Advertisers pony up big bucks to create and air an ad during the Super Bowl, then fail to prepare for the inevitable searches for their company and ads.
• SEW Experts: Why All Links Are Paid Links in the Travel Trade
  The paid links debate isn’t so black and white. The question of what truly constitutes a paid link, and what qualifies as advertising, will continue to be a huge point of contention.
• SEW Experts: Rewriting URLs: SEO for CMS, E-Commerce, and Dynamic Sites
  There’s as much confusion and controversy surrounding URL rewriting as Darwin’s theory of evolution.
• SEW Experts: Optimizing the Planet: SEO on a Global Scale
  When building an SEO team to provide global services, it’s necessary to recruit skilled, multilingual SEO experts — no easy task.

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Hold on tight SEM artists. Search marketing is mainstream bacon & eggs in America this morning. Even the “tease” story on the Today show was Microsoft’s “huge takeover bid to purchase struggling” Yahoo!

Microsoft’s profits have been soaring due to increased demand for computer software. Yahoo is in the dumper, having just laid off 1,000 people. Is this acquisition finally real?

In 2006, the SearchEngineWatch blog was aBuzz with “Microsoft buying Yahoo” posts and hashing out possibilities in search marketing forum chit-chat threads. The Wall Street Journal prognosticated about the possibility of “a major departure for Microsoft.” They wrote, “Microsoft has considered the idea of acquiring a stake in Yahoo, and that the two companies have discussed possible options over the course of the past year.”

Some SEMs who love major search engine drama games saw this one coming down the pike years ago, and are still salivating. For others, the very idea would be hell. Personally it makes me just giddy.

The potential implications for both organic and paid search marketing could be del.ici.us for the Microsoft desktop. For PPC the much maligned Panama and AdCenter paid advertising platforms, along with all their graphically beautiful albeit dysfunctionalretarded inadequacies, could be fixed.

Think about the intriguing social media marketing adventures which would be possible. Maybe Yahoo Answers will integrate in Windows Mobile OS. Office 2009 might just include Word documents sporting a new “Insert/Flickr Image” function. How does this affect the market landscape for Google’s much heralded GPhone initiative. An aligned Yahoo/MS mobile platform-play would no doubt be a fascinating addendum to the Linux vs. Windows shoot out.

How will Yahoo email mashup with Outlook? What would pumping Yahoo Pipes into the MS machine mean to the feed aggregation paradigm? How would Microsoft create marketing mechanisms marketing to the decade old Yahoo Personals social graph?

The list goes on. MSN AdCenter was the first mainstream engine to dabble in demographic targeting, but the interface is weak. One would hope a combined Yahoo/MS team would know what to do with reams of data Yahoo has gathered about us all.

Aside from the potential effect on Yahoo/MS investors and the American economy (which will be reported on ad nauseum), the implications for the search marketing industry could be massive and exciting. Stay tuned. It might finally be true. Hold on tight search marketers and we’ll see how it all mashes up.

In the search marketing industry, face-to-face events seem to abound. If you’re a bit lost, here’s the beginnings of a rough working guide to the next 4-5 months in the field and what to expect.
The Big:
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a look at upcoming search industry conferencesRate this: 2.5

In a previous column, it was suggested that the search marketing industry needs to take responsibility in solving the search marketing staffing crisis. In today’s Search Ads column, “SEM Mentors: The Apprentice,” Matt Spiegel shares an exchange with an SEW reader, an SEM apprentice turned mentor.

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sew experts sem mentors the apprenticeRate [...]

While the search marketing industry has done much growing in the last few years, it’s also lagging behind other industries in certain areas. One thing the industry lacks is credible information about salary and structure of in-house search marketing teams. Part of this is due to the esoteric nature of the job compared to other [...]

The search marketing industry is immature, both in the sense that nearly all the players are under 10 years old, and in the way partnerships are created and maintained. That’s the argument presented by Did-It chairman Kevin Lee in his ClickZ column today, “SEM Immaturity Threatens Industry Future.”
The fault lies on both the client and [...]

In today’s Search Ads column, “The Five Characteristics of Highly Effective PPC Specialists ,” Tony Wright has come up with five characteristics of successful PPC specialists. As anyone in the search marketing industry can tell you, talent is scarce. If you can find one with all these traits, hire him/her on the spot.

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