Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Google Forcing Some Searchers Into 20 Search Results
  

  For some searchers, Google seems to be forcing them into 20 or more search results on a page. By default, Google shows searchers 10 results on a page, but even if that searcher specified 10 on a page, some may be seeing twenty or more per page. Andy Beard and myself are in [...]

• Google’s Top AdWords Advertisers: Leaked Document Reveals Advertising Dollars
  

  adAge obtained an “internal Google document” that disclosed the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. As you can imagine, the numbers of pretty revealing.It showed that $574 million was spent, where 1,356 advertisers spent between $10,000 and $100,000. It also showed that AT&T was Google’s largest AdWords customer in [...]

• 13 Questions To Ask Before You Hire A Local SEO Consultant
  

  I am sick of small businesses being scammed by shady and/or incompetent SEO consultants so I put together this list of questions that any business should ask before they hire a local SEO consultant.

• Google Settles Buzz Lawsuit With $8.5 Million Payment
  

  A busy day for Google on the legal front continues with news that the company has agreed to $8.5 million in payments to settle a federal lawsuit surrounding Google Buzz and privacy. According to AFP, court documents filed today show that seven plaintiffs will get no more than $2,500 each, lawyers that filed the case [...]

• Google Announces Can’t Be Missed Press Event On Search – What’s Up?
  

  Google’s announced a special press event for next Wednesday on search that “you won’t want to miss.” What big news could there be? Let’s speculate — but I wouldn’t get too excited.Here’s what the invite says:We invite you to join us on Wednesday, September 8, to share our latest technological innovation and to get an [...]

• Facebook Adds Popular News Articles To Search Results
  

  It’s sort of a baby step in Facebook’s efforts to improve its search results, but certainly worth noting here: Facebook is now showing news articles in its search results and ranking them by how many “likes” and “shares” the articles have received from Facebook users. The All Facebook blog says the number of friends who [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Inside Facebook Seattle [Pictures], TechCrunch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Business Photos Visits Our Flower Shop, floristblogs.com
• Quintura URL Info – New Android Application, Quintura blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google AdWords "Try Also" Suggesting "Breasts", Search Engine Roundtable
• Pest Control Firms Fight to Control Bedbug Search Ads, New York Times

Searching

• How to Build a Great Query, AOL Search Blog
• Free Access to Public Library Logo from Cecil County, MD Public Library, ResourceShelf
• Intellectual Property Search/Info Site IP.com Upgrades Search Functionality & Adds IBM Redbooks as Non-Patent Literature Collection, ResourceShelf
• Israel: Online Databases: GuideStar Israel (30,000 Registered Non-Profits), ResourceShelf

SEM Industry

• Google still bashing creative agencies?, blog.arhg.net
• Interview: Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising, Online Marketing Blog
• Labor Day 2010 Search Engine Logos Lacking (Google & Ask.com), Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Would Google Offer Embedded Search Links to Site Owners?, SEO By The Sea
• Google Improves Control of PPC Exposure With Modified Broad Match, Search Engine Guide
• LDA – Is On-Page Optimization the SEO Secret?, SEOmoz
• How I Kicked Myself Out Of Google Blogsearch For Months or Years, andybeard.eu
• Eight tips for understanding Baidu SEO, econsultancy.com
• Five questions for B2B paid-search marketers, econsultancy.com
• Google Adwords – Mid to Long Tail – Google Doesn’t Care?, andybeard.eu
• SEO Speak: Canonical Issues, Vertical Leap Blog
• Why Brand and Reputation Management SEO are the Way Forwards, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• Facebook Prevents Users From Sending Suspicious Friend Requests To Strangers, Inside Facebook
• Mining social networks: Untangling the social web, The Economist
• New Sidewiki “Sidebar” web element, Google Code Blog
• Two Quick, Simple Social Media Tips, SEOmoz

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Just Cause You Spend $65k On A Site Does Mean Google Should Like Your Affiliate Site – With lots of honest discussion on the direction of a site on the webmaster help forums, combined with reinclusion request, it is possible for Google to change their evaluation & trust of a site, removing penalties.Also more confirmation from Johnmu that Google don't hate affiliate sites…I still beleive they prefer the Mayo Clinic over "Top 10 Ways To Cure All Your Ills Infographic – click here for your Acai Fix"
• Google Power User Tips: SERP URI Parameters – Good tips. About time you learn to search with wget and your browser's URI bar, without fancy UI widgets …
• Why PRs can be better link builders than SEOs – Kelvin Newman writes on Econsultancy that that the public relations firms could have done more to get into search engine optimisation but he continues by saying that despite this reticence to get going he thinks there’s a scary truth that the search firms need to wake up to: if and when the PR industry gets its act together a lot of the link development tactics search companies are delivering could be delivered by someone with a public relations background.
• 6 Ways to Know He’s “The One”: Client Edition – Another great post by Lisa Barone. If you've been in business for any length of time you'll know this post on saying no to the wrong clients is completely true. Whether you put it into practice may be another story!
• In Defense of Links, Part One: Nick Carr, hypertext and delinkification – Original Title:' "In Defense of Links, Part One: Nick Carr, hypertext and delinkification"By Scott Rosenberg – co-founder of Salon
• In Defense of Links, Part Two: Money changes everything – Part two of this three part series focuses on corporate links.  …"These are links placed on pages because they provide some tangible business value to the linker: they cookie a user for an affiliate program, or boost a target page’s Google rank, or aim to increase a site’s “stickiness” by getting the reader to click through to another page."
• In Defense of Links, part three: In links we trust – As SEO's we view links as a form of digital currency, that can be bought, sold, bartered, or gained through attention manipulation. However for the rest of internet this isn't always the case. Scott Rosenberg makes the argument that for many people links are the updated modern version of footnotes, where an author can provide reference or back up material to support their article.

Save $300 by registering now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, New York City, October 4-6. Time is running out! Rates increase September 11.

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Google Forcing Some Searchers Into 20 Search Results
  

  For some searchers, Google seems to be forcing them into 20 or more search results on a page. By default, Google shows searchers 10 results on a page, but even if that searcher specified 10 on a page, some may be seeing twenty or more per page. Andy Beard and myself are in [...]

• Google’s Top AdWords Advertisers: Leaked Document Reveals Advertising Dollars
  

  adAge obtained an “internal Google document” that disclosed the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. As you can imagine, the numbers of pretty revealing.It showed that $574 million was spent, where 1,356 advertisers spent between $10,000 and $100,000. It also showed that AT&T was Google’s largest AdWords customer in [...]

• 13 Questions To Ask Before You Hire A Local SEO Consultant
  

  I am sick of small businesses being scammed by shady and/or incompetent SEO consultants so I put together this list of questions that any business should ask before they hire a local SEO consultant.

• Google Settles Buzz Lawsuit With $8.5 Million Payment
  

  A busy day for Google on the legal front continues with news that the company has agreed to $8.5 million in payments to settle a federal lawsuit surrounding Google Buzz and privacy. According to AFP, court documents filed today show that seven plaintiffs will get no more than $2,500 each, lawyers that filed the case [...]

• Google Announces Can’t Be Missed Press Event On Search – What’s Up?
  

  Google’s announced a special press event for next Wednesday on search that “you won’t want to miss.” What big news could there be? Let’s speculate — but I wouldn’t get too excited.Here’s what the invite says:We invite you to join us on Wednesday, September 8, to share our latest technological innovation and to get an [...]

• Facebook Adds Popular News Articles To Search Results
  

  It’s sort of a baby step in Facebook’s efforts to improve its search results, but certainly worth noting here: Facebook is now showing news articles in its search results and ranking them by how many “likes” and “shares” the articles have received from Facebook users. The All Facebook blog says the number of friends who [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Inside Facebook Seattle [Pictures], TechCrunch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Business Photos Visits Our Flower Shop, floristblogs.com
• Quintura URL Info – New Android Application, Quintura blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google AdWords "Try Also" Suggesting "Breasts", Search Engine Roundtable
• Pest Control Firms Fight to Control Bedbug Search Ads, New York Times

Searching

• How to Build a Great Query, AOL Search Blog
• Free Access to Public Library Logo from Cecil County, MD Public Library, ResourceShelf
• Intellectual Property Search/Info Site IP.com Upgrades Search Functionality & Adds IBM Redbooks as Non-Patent Literature Collection, ResourceShelf
• Israel: Online Databases: GuideStar Israel (30,000 Registered Non-Profits), ResourceShelf

SEM Industry

• Google still bashing creative agencies?, blog.arhg.net
• Interview: Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising, Online Marketing Blog
• Labor Day 2010 Search Engine Logos Lacking (Google & Ask.com), Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Would Google Offer Embedded Search Links to Site Owners?, SEO By The Sea
• Google Improves Control of PPC Exposure With Modified Broad Match, Search Engine Guide
• LDA – Is On-Page Optimization the SEO Secret?, SEOmoz
• How I Kicked Myself Out Of Google Blogsearch For Months or Years, andybeard.eu
• Eight tips for understanding Baidu SEO, econsultancy.com
• Five questions for B2B paid-search marketers, econsultancy.com
• Google Adwords – Mid to Long Tail – Google Doesn’t Care?, andybeard.eu
• SEO Speak: Canonical Issues, Vertical Leap Blog
• Why Brand and Reputation Management SEO are the Way Forwards, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• Facebook Prevents Users From Sending Suspicious Friend Requests To Strangers, Inside Facebook
• Mining social networks: Untangling the social web, The Economist
• New Sidewiki “Sidebar” web element, Google Code Blog
• Two Quick, Simple Social Media Tips, SEOmoz

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Just Cause You Spend $65k On A Site Does Mean Google Should Like Your Affiliate Site – With lots of honest discussion on the direction of a site on the webmaster help forums, combined with reinclusion request, it is possible for Google to change their evaluation & trust of a site, removing penalties.Also more confirmation from Johnmu that Google don't hate affiliate sites…I still beleive they prefer the Mayo Clinic over "Top 10 Ways To Cure All Your Ills Infographic – click here for your Acai Fix"
• Google Power User Tips: SERP URI Parameters – Good tips. About time you learn to search with wget and your browser's URI bar, without fancy UI widgets …
• Why PRs can be better link builders than SEOs – Kelvin Newman writes on Econsultancy that that the public relations firms could have done more to get into search engine optimisation but he continues by saying that despite this reticence to get going he thinks there’s a scary truth that the search firms need to wake up to: if and when the PR industry gets its act together a lot of the link development tactics search companies are delivering could be delivered by someone with a public relations background.
• 6 Ways to Know He’s “The One”: Client Edition – Another great post by Lisa Barone. If you've been in business for any length of time you'll know this post on saying no to the wrong clients is completely true. Whether you put it into practice may be another story!
• In Defense of Links, Part One: Nick Carr, hypertext and delinkification – Original Title:' "In Defense of Links, Part One: Nick Carr, hypertext and delinkification"By Scott Rosenberg – co-founder of Salon
• In Defense of Links, Part Two: Money changes everything – Part two of this three part series focuses on corporate links.  …"These are links placed on pages because they provide some tangible business value to the linker: they cookie a user for an affiliate program, or boost a target page’s Google rank, or aim to increase a site’s “stickiness” by getting the reader to click through to another page."
• In Defense of Links, part three: In links we trust – As SEO's we view links as a form of digital currency, that can be bought, sold, bartered, or gained through attention manipulation. However for the rest of internet this isn't always the case. Scott Rosenberg makes the argument that for many people links are the updated modern version of footnotes, where an author can provide reference or back up material to support their article.

Save $300 by registering now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, New York City, October 4-6. Time is running out! Rates increase September 11.

For some searchers, Google seems to be forcing them into 20 or more search results on a page. By default, Google shows searchers 10 results on a page, but even if that searcher specified 10 on a page, some may be seeing twenty or more per page.

Andy Beard and myself are in that test or possibly a weird bug group. When we search, I am on Mac Chrome in the U.S. and Andy is on Firefox in the Poland, we are getting 20 or more results per search results page. Personally, I am getting about 30 results and Andy is getting 20 results per page.

Adding ‘&num=10′ to the end of the search URL and/or saving your search preferences to show 10 “number of results” makes no difference.

At first, I thought it might be a bug with Chrome on a Mac but then I heard from Andy that he was using Firefox. It may be a test or it may be a bug that is not browser specific. If I find out more from Google on if it is an “experiment” of theirs, I’ll let you know. For now, I hope that Google overriding a specific search setting is a bug and not an experiment.

Save $300 by registering now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, New York City, October 4-6. Time is running out! Rates increase September 11.

For some searchers, Google seems to be forcing them into 20 or more search results on a page. By default, Google shows searchers 10 results on a page, but even if that searcher specified 10 on a page, some may be seeing twenty or more per page.

Andy Beard and myself are in that test or possibly a weird bug group. When we search, I am on Mac Chrome in the U.S. and Andy is on Firefox in the Poland, we are getting 20 or more results per search results page. Personally, I am getting about 30 results and Andy is getting 20 results per page.

Adding ‘&num=10′ to the end of the search URL and/or saving your search preferences to show 10 “number of results” makes no difference.

At first, I thought it might be a bug with Chrome on a Mac but then I heard from Andy that he was using Firefox. It may be a test or it may be a bug that is not browser specific. If I find out more from Google on if it is an “experiment” of theirs, I’ll let you know. For now, I hope that Google overriding a specific search setting is a bug and not an experiment.

Save $300 by registering now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, New York City, October 4-6. Time is running out! Rates increase September 11.

adAge obtained an “internal Google document” that disclosed the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. As you can imagine, the numbers of pretty revealing.

It showed that $574 million was spent, where 1,356 advertisers spent between $10,000 and $100,000. It also showed that AT&T was Google’s largest AdWords customer in June 2010. Here are some revealing charts from adAge:

AT&T spent over $8 million in June, Expedia almost $6 million, Amazon $5.85 million and eBay $4.25 million. eBay is an interesting number to me, because there were rumors it was more like $26 million per month, we do know eBay did slow down some of their Google ads for a while.

The document also shows how BP, who spent $57,000 a month is now spending $3.6 million per month. Yes, BP has been using search ads to help their image with the oil spill, but the amount they spent makes me wonder if Google turned the other way when they were violating the AdWords terms or if it was indeed just an error?

There are many revealing data points here, so check out the adAge article for more information.

Save $300 by registering now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, New York City, October 4-6. Time is running out! Rates increase September 11.

adAge obtained an “internal Google document” that disclosed the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. As you can imagine, the numbers of pretty revealing.

It showed that $574 million was spent, where 1,356 advertisers spent between $10,000 and $100,000. It also showed that AT&T was Google’s largest AdWords customer in June 2010. Here are some revealing charts from adAge:

AT&T spent over $8 million in June, Expedia almost $6 million, Amazon $5.85 million and eBay $4.25 million. eBay is an interesting number to me, because there were rumors it was more like $26 million per month, we do know eBay did slow down some of their Google ads for a while.

The document also shows how BP, who spent $57,000 a month is now spending $3.6 million per month. Yes, BP has been using search ads to help their image with the oil spill, but the amount they spent makes me wonder if Google turned the other way when they were violating the AdWords terms or if it was indeed just an error?

There are many revealing data points here, so check out the adAge article for more information.

Save $300 by registering now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, New York City, October 4-6. Time is running out! Rates increase September 11.

Just got an inquiry from the millionth small business who had wasted a nice chunk of their budget on an offshore SEO agency that did a grand total of nothing except worthless spammy link building. Here’s an example.

I am not going to bitch about snake-oil salesmen, ethics, how many good SEOs there are, etc. Instead I am going to ask every small biz out there who is reading this to sit up straight, stop mumbling, look me in the eye and pay attention. It’s time to wise up.

Now I know you are no search marketing expert. That’s why you’re looking for help with your SEO right? So I thought it might be useful to put together this list of questions for the next time you take a pitch from your friendly local SEO consultant:

Can you tell me exactlyhow you do what you do? Local SEO is not magic. There is a long list of techniques that are known to work. Some work better than others. While how a SEO campaign is executed can have some proprietary aspects to it, in general a good SEO consultant should have no problem telling you how that are going to go about improving your rankings. In particular you want to make sure they are not using any spammy techniques that could potentially harm your business. If they avoid the question or they don’t seem particularly transparent about their methodology, hang up the phone. It’s not particularly hard to switch out a toilet, but most people would prefer to hire an expert so it gets done right. Your plumber doesn’t have any secrets (at least I think he doesn’t) so why should your SEO consultant?

What are you going to need from me to be successful? While it typically takes some time to analyze the state of a business’ SEO, the consultant likely has a list of tactics they will deploy which they know from the start. Some of these will require input from the client. It’s important for you to understand up front how much of commitment will be required. Knowing how much time, money and human resources you will need to spend will help you determine how profitable this effort will be.

Do I control access to all accounts? Typically local SEO engagements require updating your business’ profiles on a number of sites: Google, Bing, Yahoo, yellow pages sites, etc. I hear from businesses all of the time who can no longer get into their Google Place Page account because their old SEO agency or a former employee created it for them. It is critical that you control admin access to the account for any profile or page created for you by a third party. This can save you a lot of headaches if you part company in the future.

How are the spammers doing it? Most SEOs I know typically work inside of the various search engines’ guidelines to achieve great rankings for their clients. It can be tedious, not-very-glamorous work, but in the long run it pays off. That said, there are a whole host of successful SEOs that use less-than-kosher techniques that can pay off fast and drive a ton of new customers to their clients. While these techniques can be risky, the short term ROI on them can be stellar. I would never recommend that a client go this route, but as I watch the same spammy fake address listing rank #1 for a valuable local query for the third month in a row, I would be hard-pressed to tell a client that it is not worth doing. If you are going to play in this game, you need to know both how to play by the rules and how to break them. If the consultant doesn’t know about these techniques, how are they going to know how to beat them?

What is a typical return on investment for one of your clients? This is always a great question. Depending on the client’s business, a good search marketing consultant should be able to come up with some kind of tangible ROI metric that you can relate to your own business. Instead of “increased traffic 50%” I like stuff like “generated five breast augmentation customers at $1,500 a pop and twenty qualified leads in sixty days.” That one always starts a good conversation with the prospect.

How do you measure your effectiveness? Pretty simple question. How are you going to prove to me you did what you did and that it worked? Typical answers include: increase in rankings for targeted terms, increased qualified traffic to your site, increased inbound email and phone calls (via a tracking phone number usually), and ultimately increased business.

How do you communicate your effectiveness to me? The consultant should have a system that regularly communicates what they have done, what is going to be done and when.

Who’s my point of contact? You or a 22-year-old? Enough said.

If we part ways, will you remove all your work from my website and the links you have secured? This is why it’s important to understand the consultant’s methodology from the get-go. SEO consultants often rely on networks of sites they control to get links to your site. Then they hold you hostage by threatening to remove those links if you don’t renew a deal. Make sure you understand up front that this is not the case.

Can you show me some representative results? If they can’t show you a company that they have successfully ranked #1 for a variety of competitive terms and give you an idea of how they did it, then say sayonara.

Can you give me some references?

Why do customers leave you? I doubt there is any agency out there that has a perfect record when it comes to performance and customer retention. Customers change their strategies. Consultants don’t hit home runs every time. An honest discussion about challenges the consultant has had with customers and how they are improving things is always a good thing. A good consultant should almost be proud of their mistakes. I like to tell my clients that when I started doing SEO I lost a lot of traffic and learned enough so that you don’t have to.

What sets you apart from other SEO companies? The answer here shouldn’t be “we get you ranked #1.” What you really want to know is why they think they deserve your business vs. the thousands of other guys out there?

Thanks to Mike Belasco of SEOverflow and Will Scott of SearchInfluence for contributing some of these questions.

Just got an inquiry from the millionth small business who had wasted a nice chunk of their budget on an offshore SEO agency that did a grand total of nothing except worthless spammy link building. Here’s an example.

I am not going to bitch about snake-oil salesmen, ethics, how many good SEOs there are, etc. Instead I am going to ask every small biz out there who is reading this to sit up straight, stop mumbling, look me in the eye and pay attention. It’s time to wise up.

Now I know you are no search marketing expert. That’s why you’re looking for help with your SEO right? So I thought it might be useful to put together this list of questions for the next time you take a pitch from your friendly local SEO consultant:

Can you tell me exactlyhow you do what you do? Local SEO is not magic. There is a long list of techniques that are known to work. Some work better than others. While how a SEO campaign is executed can have some proprietary aspects to it, in general a good SEO consultant should have no problem telling you how that are going to go about improving your rankings. In particular you want to make sure they are not using any spammy techniques that could potentially harm your business. If they avoid the question or they don’t seem particularly transparent about their methodology, hang up the phone. It’s not particularly hard to switch out a toilet, but most people would prefer to hire an expert so it gets done right. Your plumber doesn’t have any secrets (at least I think he doesn’t) so why should your SEO consultant?

What are you going to need from me to be successful? While it typically takes some time to analyze the state of a business’ SEO, the consultant likely has a list of tactics they will deploy which they know from the start. Some of these will require input from the client. It’s important for you to understand up front how much of commitment will be required. Knowing how much time, money and human resources you will need to spend will help you determine how profitable this effort will be.

Do I control access to all accounts? Typically local SEO engagements require updating your business’ profiles on a number of sites: Google, Bing, Yahoo, yellow pages sites, etc. I hear from businesses all of the time who can no longer get into their Google Place Page account because their old SEO agency or a former employee created it for them. It is critical that you control admin access to the account for any profile or page created for you by a third party. This can save you a lot of headaches if you part company in the future.

How are the spammers doing it? Most SEOs I know typically work inside of the various search engines’ guidelines to achieve great rankings for their clients. It can be tedious, not-very-glamorous work, but in the long run it pays off. That said, there are a whole host of successful SEOs that use less-than-kosher techniques that can pay off fast and drive a ton of new customers to their clients. While these techniques can be risky, the short term ROI on them can be stellar. I would never recommend that a client go this route, but as I watch the same spammy fake address listing rank #1 for a valuable local query for the third month in a row, I would be hard-pressed to tell a client that it is not worth doing. If you are going to play in this game, you need to know both how to play by the rules and how to break them. If the consultant doesn’t know about these techniques, how are they going to know how to beat them?

What is a typical return on investment for one of your clients? This is always a great question. Depending on the client’s business, a good search marketing consultant should be able to come up with some kind of tangible ROI metric that you can relate to your own business. Instead of “increased traffic 50%” I like stuff like “generated five breast augmentation customers at $1,500 a pop and twenty qualified leads in sixty days.” That one always starts a good conversation with the prospect.

How do you measure your effectiveness? Pretty simple question. How are you going to prove to me you did what you did and that it worked? Typical answers include: increase in rankings for targeted terms, increased qualified traffic to your site, increased inbound email and phone calls (via a tracking phone number usually), and ultimately increased business.

How do you communicate your effectiveness to me? The consultant should have a system that regularly communicates what they have done, what is going to be done and when.

Who’s my point of contact? You or a 22-year-old? Enough said.

If we part ways, will you remove all your work from my website and the links you have secured? This is why it’s important to understand the consultant’s methodology from the get-go. SEO consultants often rely on networks of sites they control to get links to your site. Then they hold you hostage by threatening to remove those links if you don’t renew a deal. Make sure you understand up front that this is not the case.

Can you show me some representative results? If they can’t show you a company that they have successfully ranked #1 for a variety of competitive terms and give you an idea of how they did it, then say sayonara.

Can you give me some references?

Why do customers leave you? I doubt there is any agency out there that has a perfect record when it comes to performance and customer retention. Customers change their strategies. Consultants don’t hit home runs every time. An honest discussion about challenges the consultant has had with customers and how they are improving things is always a good thing. A good consultant should almost be proud of their mistakes. I like to tell my clients that when I started doing SEO I lost a lot of traffic and learned enough so that you don’t have to.

What sets you apart from other SEO companies? The answer here shouldn’t be “we get you ranked #1.” What you really want to know is why they think they deserve your business vs. the thousands of other guys out there?

Thanks to Mike Belasco of SEOverflow and Will Scott of SearchInfluence for contributing some of these questions.