I get calls from clients all the time saying, “Is this possible?” or “Is there a way to do that?” Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, my response is “You bet it is!” – Or at the very least, “I’ll find out.” And these are questions that lead to developing innovations in search engine optimization.

It’s only January of 2011 and I have already obtained two “patent pending” statuses – this year. Better still, I plan to have a dozen more by years’ end – all on behalf of my company, my customers, or both.

Why is there a need to invent? Well, to be honest, there isn’t really. Not usually, anyway. But at those times when the latest and greatest thing on the market won’t do the trick, inventing is an excellent way to get exactly what you need.

Here’s an example…

Problem: The need for a grand-scale website that can house hundreds of individual businesses, all sharing a single brand, and help each be found on the major search engines by keyword and GEO – WITHOUT customer crossover.

But wait. There’s more… The site has to be easy to maintain for people with limited technical experience, yet at the same time, extremely appealing to customers.

One more thing… The users need to have select administrative rights to add pages and even GEO’s at the push of a button; and I mean literally the push of a button.

And I almost forgot one more small detail. This site has to be self SEO-ing. This means that every time someone adds a new page, the site has to automatically optimize that page, and all of its sub-pages, for every major search engine. And not just any optimization. This has to be for both keyword and GEO depending on what the user wants.

Solution: Hyper-Local ™

In just a few short months we developed a solution called Hyper-Local ™ that worked so well, and whose technology was so innovative, that it is now patent pending.

There is a great deal of money to be made in mobile computing today, and mobile search tomorrow. Plan ahead and get in on a great thing at the ground level. It will not take much.

In reality, you just need a few mobile pages woven into your existing site. You can make things as easy or complex as you like, but I suggest easy – at least for starters.

The quickest and easiest way to get in on this game is to include some content pages in a mobile format (320 by 240 pixels is usually a good place to start but your developer will know for sure).

Be sure to exclude complex, and/or resource hog elements like Flash. And if you have images on any mobile page, include alt tags to save your visitor some frustration (and rank better).

That’s about it. This one is simple. If you can afford to add a few mobile pages to get things going, that would be ideal. The sooner Google indexes them, the better off you will be.

The concept is simple enough. You set up a blog (short for “web-log”) using any free or paid method you like, such as WordPress. Then you can simply add content, on the fly, whenever (and from wherever) you wish. That content is made public for anyone to read and comment back on – unless you set restrictions.

So what’s the big deal? The main benefits are its simplicity, convenience and power as an SEO tool. Let’s break each down…

Simplicity: Once the blog is set up, all you have to do is type in a new entry whenever you get a few minutes and click “post.” It’s that simple. And search engines LOVE the fresh content.

Convenience: There is no big complicated administrative process to tie you up in knots. Just click a link to log in, enter your password (unless you have it saved in your browser) and start typing – from anywhere (note the word ‘browser’ earlier.)

Power as an SEO Tool: Blog posts are the ultimate in ethical spider-bait. When you have an active blog, search engine bots tend to come back and visit on a more regular basis. And did I mention that users can post replies if you so allow? Each one is even more content for the spiders to eat up. What could be better than getting free search engine optimization from the very people you are trying to reach?

Any website considered an authority by Google is like gold. And considering that Facebook gets more daily visits than Google, I’d say that puts them in the ‘golden’ category. But it’s not just Facebook; Myspace.com has been helping web pages rank higher for years. Twitter also pitches in, as do others.

But it’s not just “active” social medial sites like these. Video sites like YouTube and Google Video offer a whole new level of what I classify as “passive” social media. Links from these (in the video tags) can prove extremely valuable your SEO efforts.

While there is no exact magic number of how greatly links from any type of social media site help, even .01% (.0001) makes it worthwhile. Yes, really…

Think about it… The average in-demand keyword today has about 1,500,000 competing pages vying for the top spot, depending on the niche and GEO.

That’s 1,500,000 pages x .0001 = 150 competing web pages.

Simply put; where would you rather be in the search results, on page 1 or  on page 15…150 spots away from number one?

You may not have the time or budget for this, or the next few tips, but I felt they should be included so you had the greatest potential advantages, whether you can immediately take advan-tage of them or not.

If you ever receive an email like the following, embrace it as a chance to talk things over with your search engine marketing expert…

“We just experienced a major change in the search engines that has temporarily affected your rank-ings. Without getting into too much technical detail, Google has made a change to its algorithm (its formula to determine where your web pages rank for particular keywords) and you might notice a slight decrease in traffic while we make the changes necessary to counter any lost placement. As always, please feel free ask any questions – even the technical ones. Or if you prefer, we can set up a meeting for a time that is most convenient for you.”

“Although these changes are temporary and we feel every confidence in being able to recover quickly, we wanted to make you aware of the situation so you can properly plan any mitigation strategies you might wish.”

Now that’s an honest person! Someone who you want to do business with. Not some techno-babble wielding idiot who treats you like a child and keeps you on a “need to know” basis – or just can’t be bothered with you at all.

Just remember, change is inevitable and not always for the best at first. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something, so run – screaming – away and don’t look back. Do business with the one who dares to be sincere and you can minimize the nasty surprises that your competitors run into from their cheesy, self-proclaimed “experts” and “gurus.”

In closing, embrace the honesty – even when it’s hard to hear – and avoid techno-babblers like the plague. Even if your rankings temporarily suffer due to a mistake your SEM company made, it’s better to deal with an honest human who makes mistakes than a weasel who tries to shift the blame or hide the issue altogether. Keep in mind that the occasional mistake is just as inevitable as change.

So what does that mean? It’s simple, all of these pages might not be stiff competition, but they are all potential contenders to be recognized for that keyword – at least as far as the search engine is concerned.

Simply put, Google believes these page are relevant to the keyword searched. That in itself is competition, even if much of it is somewhat weak by comparison (if those “competing” Web pages have not been carefully optimized).

For example, do a search on Google for “New York pizza” (no quotes) and you will get a number similar to 22,000,000. Do you suppose there are really twenty-two million Web pages on the Internet that are trying desperately to be number one for the keyword “New York pizza”? It’s extremely doubtful.

However, of the 22,000,000 results (potential competing pages) for the keyword “New York pizza”, even if only the tiniest percentage (say 1/10th of 1%) was actually optimized, that is still a great deal of tough competition (22,000)!

This is not to imply there are 22,000 pizza shops in New York, but it does beg the question – how many pages does each website have? If each only had ten pages, that’s 2,200 actual sites. Of those, probably half are likely not a shop in the city but rather an online business – or shop in another city – selling New York style pizza. But it’s still competition on the Web. YOUR competition.