Sometimes naïve clients come to me waiting their brand new websites to be in the top 10 in the search engine rankings without considering the competition. For instance, I’ve had clients who say that they want to spend $500 to be listed in the top 10 rankings for a competitive term such as “home loans”.

When I get such requests, I will quickly point the client towards the competition for this term. The top 10 listings are dominated by large corporations, government sites and sites that have been around for at least 6 years. Aside from the government sites that are considered to be trustworthy and authoritative, the corporate sites have most likely invested hundreds of thousands of dollars or more on their SEO efforts over several years time and may even employ a full time search engine optimization staff to make sure they stay in those top rankings.

What I then will offer my client, if they decide to select my company for SEO services, is to do in-depth keyword research to find alternatives to the heavily competitive keyword phrases. Many small businesses may benefit by optimizing for long tail keyword phrases that are specific in nature.

About half of the time the client will wish to do this. The other half of the time, they will search for a new SEO who will promise to get them into the top 10 rankings for “home loans” for very little money and effort. Once this client has been disappointed by the lack of results, they sometimes come back, burned by this former SEO, yet with more realistic expectations.

As any SEO will attest, managing client expectations and offering realistic services and results is the most difficult task at hand. If an SEO can to this well, then the client will be happy with the results and it will be a win-win for both parties.

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Websites in the Ask.com network will now start to display ads from the Microsoft ad network. For several years, Ask.com was displaying Google ads in their network and then in April 2007, the former AskJeeves rolled out its Ask Sponsored Listings contextual ad program to advertisers.

This rollout also came with a promise to publishers to rollout an Ask.com publisher program at the end of the 2007 quarter, which did not happen. In fact, at the start of 2008 this Ask publisher program is still in beta.

Now, with the Ask CEO Jim Lanzone stepping down from the company one has to wonder if the publisher program is in jeopardy and if the Microsoft ads represent a change in direction for the fourth largest search engine on the Internet? Many publishers are hoping that this is not so.

Right now the Google Adsense publisher network is the most lucrative and largest of it’s kind available to publishers. Yahoo’s publisher program is still in beta for 3 years now and there is no hint to this ever going public. This leaves the Microsoft publisher program, which may or may not happen and the Ask publisher program, which also may or may not happen as the only major options to compete with Google.

Publishers need more options as second tier programs such as Adbrite, Bidvertiser and ValueClick cannot compete with large search engine advertising networks for PPC revenue. Internet publishers are keeping their fingers crossed that in 2008, Yahoo, Microsoft or Ask will step up to bat with rolling out their publisher programs publically to compete with Behemoth Google. Competition is good, right?

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It’s no secret that Google is able to deliver a large amount of traffic to websites. In fact, some websites receive over 90-percent of their traffic from Google. But, with this kind of lopsided percentage also comes Google dependency.

Google dependency can have a huge downside when the algorithms are changed and sites that have enjoyed top positions in the rankings and sometimes for year have all of a sudden dropped deep with the SERPs. In fact, many online businesses have gone out of business because of this kind of shake up in the rankings. The Florida update a few years back is just one example.

So, how does one become less dependent upon Google? The key to becoming less dependent upon Google is becoming more dependent upon other search engines like Yahoo, MSN and Ask plus direct traffic from other sources. Google places a higher value on the inbound links than it does in on-page optimization.

In order to rank well in Yahoo, MSN and Ask, however, one has to put a priority on the on-page optimization of a website. By maximizing both on-page and off-page optimization, websites will be able to lessen Google dependency and receive more targeted traffic from the other search engines.

Placing a website’s links in directories, trading reciprocal links, submitting articles to article banks and writing press releases with links back to the website are also a good way to market one’s site and become less Google dependent.

Those who diversify their marketing efforts on the Internet are more likely to weather the storm when the inevitable drop in the SERPs occur. With less Google dependence comes empowerment and this is something that all Web businesses would do well to strive towards.

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With economists and political candidates talking of an upcoming recession, other outlets are creating a rosier picture for online advertising. The Yankee Group is predicting that in just 3 years, online advertising will double from last year to hit $50 billion.

Of special note is that local online advertising, according to JupiterResearch will grow at 13-percent per year over the next 5 years, making it the fastest sector of advertising growth. For SEO companies, this will mean that part of the services they offer will need to be geared towards the local market.

Also, local search opens up a new area for search engine optimization as more Mom and Pop shops and other small businesses hit the Internet. While an impending recession may have an impact on the economy, it may not affect all areas of the economy equally and local search is positioned well in the event of an overall market downturn.

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