A terrible search engine bloodbath is on its way. Thousands of websites are going to be affected and your business’ website could be one of them. Over dramatic? Well not if you were listening to Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Webspam at the South By Southwest SEO conference in Texas this year.

The next phase in Cutts’ crusade against spam is a major change to Google’s software. This change will automate the detection and penalisation of offending websites and is expected to be rolled out towards the middle of 2012. Cutts announced the search engine’s plans to, “level the playing ground,” by targeting websites with poor content that rely on “over-optimization” rather than delivering good content.

Google is essentially getting tough on websites that use manipulative practices and these are not just commonplace, they are endemic – particularly among the current crop of aspiring self-styled “SEO agencies”.

Many businesses won’t realise their website is at risk – until their Google traffic dries up. In some cases the damage will be so severe that unravelling it will be practically impossible and a new website domain will be needed in order to escape the Google penalty.

If you don’t understand exactly what your SEO agency has been doing to promote your site then you might need to prepare yourself for a very nasty surprise later this year. If you need customers to find you in Google then the impact could destroy your business.

I see a lot of websites ranking well in search engines because of low-quality, manipulative tactics on the part of unscrupulous SEO agencies that are focussed on the short term opportunity to make some money. These tactics often work but they’re what we call ‘dirty’ and they’re against Google’s terms of service.

Unfortunately, if your agency has achieved good rankings for your website, it’s quite possible that they’ve done so using spam and over-optimisation – especially if those rankings were achieved within just a few weeks or months. If you’re not sure exactly what your SEO agency has been doing, there are ways to spot a bad seo agency and diagnose a spammy SEO campaign.

Examples of bad SEO tactics ripe for penalisation by Google include:

• Having an unnatural or unbalanced link profile
• Excessive highly targeted links
• Keyword stuffing
• Large-scale link exchanges and blog networks
• Blog and forum spam

The key to a safe, long-term SEO strategy lies in the hierarchy of fundamental SEO principles. At the heart of genuine SEO is the creation and ethical promotion of high quality content. You need to:

• Understand your audience
• Tailor your content to them
• Make sure they know about it.

If you are concerned about your website’s exposure to bad SEO and would like some free advice, call me on 0207 845 9951. I’ll be able to take a look at your SEO profile and tell you if you’re at risk within two minutes.

While the L.A. Times isn’t necessarily about to outpace the New York Times or Huffington Post in terms of readers, it has enjoyed a 5.4% year-on-year increase in uniques over June. Meanwhile, the Washington Post saw a decrease of 9%, the New York Times slumped by 18.8% and the Wall Street Journal by a hefty 20.5%. So, it’s time to take notice of a social media strategy that’s clearly working for the L.A. Times.

The cornerstone is a ramped up blogging strategy that has, according to niemanlab.org, “opened new doors for reader engagement”. Weaving news into blog content and even breaking stories within blogs, has fuelled engagement. Add to the mix a new SEO chief, optimising search-friendly headlines for the web, and traffic from search has leapt by 65% from this time last year. Combine the next ingredient, enhanced Facebook marketing to drive reader comments, and the result is a happy vicious circle. A larger community creates more traffic which creates more conversation and sharing around the Times’ content…and so on.

Orr puts the blogs’ recent traffic-driving success down to excellent content writers and high frequency posting. A recent move to integrate Facebook commenting has also driven quality comments as well as driving traffic from Facebook. In fact, since adding Facebook comments to about 50% of the site, including most blogs, latimes.com is now getting 450% more traffic referred from Facebook than this time last year.

All in all, the latimes.com is a welcome success story within a climate in which many organisations, news and other, are struggling to attract all-important traffic. While the paper is still on a learning curve as it adapts to online, Orr sounds positive about the migration: “There is a misperception that when you put something up on the web, it’s a crapshoot whether people are going to see this or not going to see this,” he said. “In reality, you are much more in control of whether your story is read than many people think.”

There are, however, several cardinal sins that will almost certainly be detrimental to an SEO strategy. Even worse, they could get you blacklisted by Google. Over at searchenginewatch.com, Jennifer Horowitz of EcomBuffet condensed bad practice down to the most prevalent and fatal SEO mistakes – have you sinned?:

1. Failing to do proper keyword research

Don’t assume you know how people think and therefore how they will use search. Everybody searches differently, often based on which phase of the buying process they find themselves in. Dedicate proper resources at this stage – use keyword tools, research web stats and check out the competition to gain an edge.

2. Deciding to do SEO in-house, but never actually doing it

Do you actually have the time to handle your SEO strategy? You don’t have to outsource, but if SEO is sitting on a to-do list for months don’t expect increased web traffic from search.

3. Ignoring social media because you “don’t get it”

Whether you like it or not, social media is an integral part of SEO. At the very minimum, get yourself set up with profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. But don’t expect sparks to fly if you don’t continue to nurture conversations and manage your accounts.

4. Lacking a strategy and plan

Handling SEO, blogging and social media requires a focused strategy with clear objectives. For instance, your Facebook posts, blog posts and Twitter marketing will prove far more fruitful if they’re coordinated to develop momentum.

5. Concentrating too much on engines and not enough on your site visitors

Never priotise web optimisation over user experience. It’s no good getting your site ranked highly if visitors won’t convert once there. Ensure your site is user-friendly, well-written and compelling and never compromise to please the engines.

6. Not growing your site content

Stale content will date your site, meaning lower rankings and unengaged site visitors (if they can even find you). Business blogs are an ideal way to keep your site fresh and supply the sort of regular, informative content that guarantees return visits.

7. Keyword stuffing and spamming

There are so many reasons not to: the engines will notice, you risk getting penalised or even banned, and your visitors will feel cheated. There’s no excuse not to be fully up to scratch on SEO best practice.

You Google the product and the search results are crowned with tempting money-off promotions. Next thing you know, you’re in the queue at Maccy D’s satisfying your craving.

The fast food giant has attributed its 3.1% May sales surge to, amongst other factors, new unique promotional tie-ins. Here follow three SEO tips drawn from McDonald’s latest social media strategy that will drive SEO rankings for any social page:

1. Link from your homepage

It might seem a no-brainer, but a surprising six of the top 20 most searched for retail brands failed to include any social media integration on their homepage. McDonald’s links to its promotions, YouTube,Twitter and Facebook marketing activity via its homepage. Search engines value these links highly, so miss this opportunity at your peril, and use your brand name in the link for maximum effect.

2. Use brand names in posts

It’s common knowledge that URLs that match search terms result in high SEO rankings on that search. With this in mind, McDonald’s made sure to launch Frozen Strawberry Lemonade with appropriately titled Facebook posts and tweets optimised with hashtags. The same applies for words used in any social media posts, so pepper your business blog liberally with both company and product names.

3. Get ‘likes’

Crowd science plays a major role in the search algorithms that affect your ranking. Link building is one way to get noticed. Likes and follows on social sites are another. To become truly popular in the social space requires buckets of creativity and originality. People like humour, but they really love offers and promotions. McDonald’s used a $1-off coupon to introduce its Frozen Strawberry Lemonade to its 9million+ Facebook fans, and more than 3,000 of them ‘liked’ it.

Tips adapted from searchenginewatch.com in conjunction with BrightEdge Technologies

Yes, keywords can effectively act as bait, reeling in users and attracting them to your website, but the real ‘hook’ will always be quality content. So said founder of Audette Media and SEO veteran Adam Audette writing for Search Engine Land, adding that investing in quality is the best way to yield long-term results.

While there is certainly a case for paying attention to algorithms and the number of hits a website gets, Audette asserted that it is vital to focus on what visitors to an online portal actually want.

As SEO matures, a number of elements now influence how a site is scored – including but not limited to information architecture, user experience and web design.

The essence of Audette’s advice – to build your SEO strategy around your users – echoes a recent Econsultancy blog, advising that content written with SEO in mind must be consistently “interesting”, “useful” and “informative”.

Thinking beyond Google (or any search engine), effective SEO should have a subtle but important effect on how the site ‘feels’ to a user. A credible, high-quality site will not only attract one-off users, but ultimately have a long-term influence on site rankings.

Thackston argues that continuity between the initial trigger (be it an ad, banner or tweet) through to the landing page is vital. This means using consistent keyphrases and seamlessly flowing copy.

Anything less will confuse potentially interested prospects, who may well drop off before even visiting your site.

The basis of writing organic SEO copy is to develop and follow the same topic from a prospect’s first exposure to your site to the call-to-action on the webpage. Thackston advises thinking of your tag sets as links in a chain, ushering the prospect from one step to the next.

“It should – in essence – work exactly like the process when writing a paid ad/landing page combo,” she says.

The next step is, ironically, to stop. Before writing, walk the exact path your prospects will walk.

“If the title tag captures their attention, where will they look for more information?” she asks. “When they click through to your web page, how will they know they are in the right place?”

By considering these and other questions of continuity, SEO copywriters can send potential customers along a clearer path towards conversion.

You may have 10,000 happy customers but it only takes one motivated, IT literate one to turn feral and as generation Y matures, there’s only going to be more of them.

Assuming the website is legitimate and can’t be taken down through legal means – or negotiated with, there is still something you can you do.

The main issue is stopping negative sites appearing directly under your main brand site in Google search results. SEO focused content creation can push the offending site far away enough from the main search results to have little associative impact on your brand.

Adding content about your brand is a good thing to do in any case, not just building a bulwark against attacks but establishing the brand as a thought leader in their respective field and providing material for social media marketing.

In that sense, the famous phrase ‘publish and be damned’ perhaps needs reversing for the online world – ‘publish or be damned.’

No doubt there’s a bit of this when it comes to online pr and social media, levels of purported expertise vary hugely, so here are seven questions I’d recommend asking a prospective online pr agency/agent, to establish if they really ‘eat their own dog food’.

1) Do they write a blog? If they aren’t blogging at all, put the phone down or call a taxi. If they’re blogging less than once a week, you have to question their content led online pr strategy – do they really believe in it?

2) How many connections do they have on LinkedIn? – Anything less than 100 connections and they’re playing at it.

3) Are they a mayor of anywhere on Foursquare? OK, this is quite new but if they say yes, you’re talking to a proper social media geek that’s interested in what’s next, not just what’s popular now.

4) What’s the best platform for blogging? If they know, they know.

5) What’s your organic SEO approach? Search engine optimisation is an important constituent of online pr and an agency needs to understand how to co-ordinate with an SEO agency in terms of keyword and link building strategies.

6) Can you name three ways to measure online pr performance? There are several meaningful ways of coming at this, your agency shouldn’t be struggling to name three.

7) Can you describe the last Twitter led pr work you did? Twitter is almost mainstream now in terms of online pr strategy so your agency should be able to demonstrate how they have used it to create meaningful dialogue with prospective customers.

One other thing to bear in mind, some agencies will have a digital Tsar, a specialist who parachutes in to answer just these types of questions. You also need to meet the staff who’ll be running the account day to day and feel comfortable that the team is cohesive and skilful enough to deliver the plan.

We see this as a natural extension to our core blog management and social media services which are focussed on creating inbound website traffic for clients in the technology & corporate sectors.

There’s such a close relationship between online pr, social media and SEO and each discipline ultimately has the same goal – raising brand profiles online. And while SEO companies are not experts in PR, neither are PR agents experts in SEO. We need each other.

We’re initially offering two products – an SEO audit which grades websites and blogs for SEO effectiveness and a reputation management service which measures brand sentiment and recommends ways to influence negative comments posted online.

Online pr helps unlock the IP lying dormant within corporations and SEO makes it discoverable to those you want to see it –  add in social media marketing and the combination has a powerful effect on website traffic.

On your wish list?

The question that caught our attention was to do with how she sees the role of social media within website marketing activity, particularly in relation to SEO.

Here’s what she said:

“I think having a solid site: great content, good experience for users (intuitive navigation, responsive), descriptive page titles, standardized URL structure, etc., is of primary importance. A strong site is the foundation where you’ll likely make your online conversions. Once this foundation is established, the social media approach helps drive traffic, builds excitement (and inbound links), that you’ll be able to capitalize on with your solid site.”