Jim Boykin Blog - Link Buying: Reviewed and not Guaranteed is the line in the sand

Post on paid directories and guidelines suggested by Google:
Link Buying: Reviewed and not Guaranteed is the line in the sand

Junta42 - Leveraging Social Media Sites for Search Engine Placement - Get Content Found

Solid info on how to get the most of social media blog posts for optimization purposes:
Leveraging Social Media Sites for Search Engine Placement - Get Content Found

Search Engine Land - When Small Businesses Shouldn't Act Like A Small Business

Good article about small businesses and their small business mindset about online visibility:
When Small Businesses Shouldn't Act Like A Small Business

SEO by the SEA - Google Patent on Anchor Text and Different Crawling Rates

Very detailed account of the anchor text patent by Bill Slawski:
Google Patent on Anchor Text and Different Crawling Rates

Search Engine Land - Google Hiring Investigator / Threat Analyst For Safety & Security

Barry Schwartz has a very interesting post at Search Engine Land about a new job position at Google which may entail some online reputation management:
Google Hiring Investigator / Threat Analyst For Safety & Security

Search Engine Wiki site

Make sure to check out Kalena Jordan's new website Search Engine Wiki. Kalena's been involved in search engine marketing forever and has compiled a great deal of information on the site. Here's your chance to become a Wiki editor and add quality information to this new Wiki site:

Search Engine Wiki

Search Engine Guide - 9 Paths of SEO Enlightenment

Good series by Stoney deGeyter, parts I, II and III:
Search Engine Guide - 9 Paths of SEO Enlightenment, Part I

Search Engine Guide - 9 Paths of SEO Enlightenment, Part II
and
Search Engine Guide - 9 Paths of SEO Enlightenment, Part III

Search Engine Roundtable - Google Declares War on Paid Links: But Why Now?

Extensive list of discussions about Google's Paid Links strategies. One of the newest changes is that Google is disallowing AdWords ads that mention selling PageRank:
Search Engine Roundtable - Google Declares War on Paid Links: But Why Now?

Search Engine Journal - How to Add Content to Wikipedia the “White Hat” Way?

Good overview on adding information to Wikipedia:
Search Engine Journal - How to Add Content to Wikipedia the “White Hat” Way?

SEO by the SEA - Google Patent on Web Spam, Doorway Pages, and Manipulative Articles

Detailed information from Bill Slawski on a newly approved Google patent. I found the information under the section Individual Document Signals / History of the document very interesting. This certainly points to the algorithm picking up changes an SEO might make to the text of a web page. The "history of the document" and "anchor text" sections were very interesting as to what level of change on the page might trigger a flag by the search engines.
SEO by the SEA - Google Patent on Web Spam, Doorway Pages, and Manipulative Articles

Cre8pc.com - Are We Designing For The Human Experience?

Very interesting article by Kim Krause Berg on SEO and usability:
Are We Designing For The Human Experience?

Search Engine Guide - Five Common Paid Search Mistakes That Can Sink Your Campaign

Good overview of the mistakes new PPC users can make when starting up a PPC campaign. Another great article by Jennifer Laycock:
Search Engine Guide - Five Common Paid Search Mistakes That Can Sink Your Campaign

Search Engine Land - When Link Building Is Pointless

Another good post by Eric Ward, this one is about deciding when to stop link building on a project:
Search Engine Land - When Link Building Is Pointless

Search Engine Guide - Search Engine Guide Publisher Responds to PageRank Drop

Robert Clough's article about Search Engine Guide's recent Google PageRank drop and discussion on paid ads. Search Engine Guide has been around long before Google was created and is a great resource for small businesses.

Search Engine Guide - Search Engine Guide Publisher Responds to PageRank Drop

Search Engine Guide - Where Does the Responsibility of the SEO End and the Client's Begin?

I liked this article quite a bit, having had numerous clients who really didn't know what they were getting into in creating their online business. We work with a number of small businesses that go through major growing pains while we work on a project with them. One of our clients discovered just how much there was to having a viable business online, they had no idea what it took to make it work. Quite a learning process educating the client and a study in patience for us and the client.

Where Does the Responsibility of the SEO End and the Client's Begin?

WebmasterWorld - Is Webmaster-SEO Stuff Flatlining

Interesting discussion in the Paid Supporters Forum at WebmasterWorld about the status of SEO (Paid Subscription):

Is Webmaster-SEO Stuff Flatlining

Search Engine Guide: NoFollow is for Blog Spam...

Comprehensive series on Google's no follow rules and paid links from searchengineguide's Jennifer Laycock.

NoFollow is for Blog Spam...no Paid Text Links, wait...Paid Ads...Aww Heck, Just Stop Linking and Let Calacanis Decide the Rankings

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Google's Paid Link Crisis

I remember when I worked at O'Reilly and Associates as their in-house SEO many years ago I found out about this new search engine called Google. Most companies didn't know what SEO was and they certainly had never heard of Google search engine back then. When I discovered Google's new search engine I had a gut feeling they were going to be big so I made sure O'Reilly's pages were submitted early on back in the day of search engine submissions.

In the late 1990's things were simple. A link was a link. In fact, links were around long before Google ever was born. Too bad Google doesn't remember this. In fact webmasters linked to each other with no concern because they wanted to link to each other. Webmasters saw a great article they liked and linked to it. Webmasters even sold ads because it was their website and they were trying to make a profit. Pretty simple concept.

Google's crisis is the PageRank icon they created. Not so simple to tear down now apparently. They created it but can't control it. The world wide web is a growing entity. New ideas, new methods of providing users information and making a living off the web has been changing with the times. Google's initial idea of using link popularity to rank was built into their algorithm and the other search engines followed the leader.

And here we are today with Google deciding webmasters can't use paid links to make a living while Google makes its living from paid links. Its a sad statement really. From the beginning Google was focused on the search engine user. Things have changed. The reality is it is too difficult for Google to tell which ads are paid and which are not unless they use human evaluation. Imagine the number of pages they would have to evaluate manually. As webmasters and SEO's become more clever about linking its just going to get worse trying to detect paid links. Detecting paid links is not easy now, much less when paid links go underground.

My advice to Google is to share the wealth with folks trying to make a living on the web. Considering the web was around before Google appeared it seems like the user friendly thing to do.

Search Engine Land - The Big Paid Link Debate Roundup

List of discussions about Google's paid link crusade:
The Big Paid Link Debate Roundup

Forbes article: Google Purges The Payola

This article from Forbes quotes a number of SEM industry professionals about Google vs paid links. What I found most interesting is at the end of the article the Ask representative talks about the specific difference in how the Ask algorithm evaluates links compared to Google:
Google Purges The Payola