Bob, an accomplished marketer and strategist, stressed the importance of content as a marketing tool.

Clients always ask me how to optimize their website for search engines and what latest Google factors they should consider.  And the answer almost always is good content written for their customers.

Rumours will tell you that Google have somewhere between 120 to 250 factors they look at when ranking a website, but two factors are most important, content and back links.  If you have great, useful content, you will get back links.  Build a resourceful website that is helpful for your target audience, develop content they will find helpful, and even your competitors will link to you.

That is not to say, that you should not pay attention to other factors, like website load time, but if you have to pick one factor to put most of your SEO resources on, that would be content.  Content, with the right keywords and keyphrases, will get you ranked better than you are ranking today.

And when you are considering content, it doesn’t have to be all textual, it can also be images, videos, webinars, tools, templates….anything your target audience will find helpful.

If you want to know what content can do for you, Google Bob Garlick and the first five pages is him.  No, not the first five results on the first page…the first five pages.  Now that’s just pure evil genius.  No wonder, this Garlick wasn’t able to keep me away.

For more on Bob Garlick, visit him at:

Garlick Marketing
Garlick Design
Bunker Project

Will be connecting with few of the people I met for possibly working together on projects.

But today Google waved good bye to this most excellent of tools, blaming lack of user adoption.

I saw the aforementioned video which got me all tingly with excitement. When I received an invite to join the early beta, I donned by virtual wet suit and headed over to FireFox to surf the Wave.

But the Wave was a disappointing ankle buster and my high came crashing down immediately. What a bummer of an experience. But as with all things Google, I figure it will improve and I will give it another try at another time. Never did. And now its bye bye Wave.

Or is it?

According to Urs Holzle, Senior Vice President, Operations, some of the innovations from Wave are open sourced and can be used by customer and partners in their own projects. That is something to do the wave about.

With over 300,000 fans already, Gap would need to quickly learn how to handle the open social media platform.  Most of the comments on the wall are non-controversial and pro-Gap, like how much people love their jeans and what not.  But a comment from Eileen O’Brien:

“Should Gap Cos stop advertising on Fox which produces anti Obama shows like O’Reilly, Hannity and Glenn Beck? If so let them know now!”

How should Gap respond to that, if at all  Maybe the comment won’t get anywhere, but what if it does gets picked up by others and starts to grow into a campaign?  How should Gap respond to that?  Social media is a fun place that could very easily and very quickly turn perilous.

Companies need to have a policy in place on how to deal with these situations.  But I am happy to see Gap and other companies (big or small) embracing the internet and starting a conversation with their customers.

You know the new idea as arrived and matured when old-school wakes up and make the new idea their own.  Time for the youngster to create something else.  So what’s the next New?

Ouch!

Do you believe you deliver superior service to your customers AND do your customers agree?  Here’s another question.  Do your competitors’ customers believe they get superior customer service from your competitors?

Seems like an opportunity for you to innovate and improve your service and gain bigger market share?

But that’s not all the news fit to print on Facebook.  They also acquired FriendFeed and launched real time search.  Now even more reasons to glue your Face to the Book.

Facesaerch and CompareCaffine are similar in functionality, but I haven’t been able to compare since Caffeine is down for system maintenance.

But both Caffeine and Regular are too rich for my taste.  For now I will stick to Google Lite.

Matt Cutts claims the search results will still be very close to what they have been in the past.  But believing it to be a big enough change, Google opened a sandbox for users to try the new architecture.  I did, couldn’t spot the difference.  Then again, I was never good at spotting differences.

Give it a spin and if you get bored, surf on over to the hour and a half video of Wave, that would knock your socks off.

A very non-giddy Bartz and Ballmer invited millions of advertisers to the party. Both mentioned the dreaded G word (yes, that would be Google), but no mention of the M word (Merger).  And neither were seen in the same room, doing what couples newly in love do.  Hmmmm..makes one wonder.  If you are into celebrity snoop, here’s the tabloid.

More importantly, what does this mean to millions of businesses who are obsessed with getting to number 1 in the search engine ranking? Google is still the dominant player, but Bing (Microsoft’s new baby) is increasing its share. Perhaps time to look into optimizing your site for Yahoo/Bing as well.

But is SEO the be all, end all of online marketing? No. SEO is just one component of online marketing. How important that component is would depend on your particular marketing strategy. But don’t overlook social media, email, press release, media release, coupon, etc. They can bring substantial ROI to your marketing $,£, €‚¥, etc.