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I was going to write about the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal, as I have a good deal left to say about it (I think). I suppose for now, however, I should leave my thoughts over at SEO Theory, where I wrote Microsoft and Yahoo! antitrust concerns.

I also gave some thought to how to increase your Bing search traffic but obviously I wrote about that last year. So I was coming up a bit dry for ideas and then thought, “Well, let’s take a look at local search”.

Hm. That’s been written to death, hasn’t it?

Still, I took a look at a random query on one of the major search engines and noticed something odd: the same address and business appeared in multiple listings for different Web sites. Oh, surely it could not be THAT simple, could it?

Alas! It CAN be that simple. Someone has created a lot of Web sites for the same business and submitted them to all three major search engines’ local search directories. How spammy.

I scanned Google’s guidelines and could not find anything forbidding the practice. Apparently, it’s okay to submit as many legitimate Web sites to the local directories as you can create. Hm.

Does that mean the search engines don’t catch on to the trick? I don’t know. I found mixed results. Perhaps there are some filters in place.

So if you want to place the microsite network game with Local Search, I would suggest the following guidelines may help you stay out of trouble:

Things To Do For Multiple Listings In Local Search

1. Create sites that have unique functions and content
2. Use a distinctive address and telephone number for each site (see note below)
3. Use a distinctive title/business name for each site (legal DBA usage only)
4. Assign each site to unique categories

Things Not To Do For Multiple Listings In Local Search

1. Do not use identical copy on every site
2. Do not redirect any sites
3. Do not use false or misleading language in your listing

Distinctive address and telephone number – Okay, if you only have one business location, how do you do this? The multiple telephone numbers should be easy. I leave that to you. Creating a distinctive address is more of a challenge. You could, I suppose, designate different offices if you own or lease the entire property. That is, include “Suite 100, Suite 200″ but I’m not sure what the U.S. Postal Service would make of that. Maybe incorporate a department name.

Distinctive Business Name – Many companies do business as one or more entities that are distinct from their legal or incorporated name. If you can reasonably do this, it might be worth the effort. But keep in mind you may cause consumer confusion — and you cannot sue yourself if you screw up your own brand value.

Why create a microsite network in the first place?

Clearly, someone is doing this for the sake of obtaining multiple listings in local search. However, there are more useful/legitimate reasons to create multiple sites. Here are a few. The more of these reasons your business matches, the more likely you’ll be okay in the long run.

• Your business offers multiple products or services distinctive enough to warrant their own brand flagship sites
• Your business offers multiple products or services through as multiple DBAs (such as after mergers and buyouts)
• Your business offers products and services to very specific markets with distinctive terms
• Your business manages pay-per-click tracking through the use of multiple sites

I’m not suggesting that you dilute your PPC tracking by mingling Local Search traffic with PPC traffic, but you can create PPC landing pages on secondary, non-indexable URLs and still use the root URLs for your microsite domains in local and organic search.

Many people in the SEO industry oppose the use of microsites for small businesses. I’m not arguing that microsites work in every situation. I’m just saying that if you already have a microsite strategy in place, you may be able to leverage it to help increase your local search visibility.

It’s something to think about, but don’t be surprised if the search engines are thinking about it, too. Just because someone else seems to be getting away with an apparently spammy tactic doesn’t mean you will. Think about the return on your investment and get the most bang for your site development buck. Create value, not confusion.

I see an increasing number of people turning to the purchase of old domains in the hope of benefitting from someone else’s work. There are times when this trick works and times when it fails. The difference between success and failure often comes down to what you yourself do, rather than what the other guy did.

When it comes to acquiring old or “aged” domains, you’re probably better off obtaining domains that are still functional rather than expired domains. An expired domain has lost its content and may have lost some of those links you feel are so important. A domain that is still up and running probably hasn’t lost anything. Some people routinely negotiate domain transfers without actually changing the domain registrant information. Sometimes it is as simple as changing the email addresses on the registrant account, but some operators remain behind the scenes.

Of course, if you’re going to hide the transfer of control you leave yourself vulnerable to dirty tricks by the original domain registrant. Lawyers and corporate asset managers are probably evolving something we could call Domain Sub-leasing, where the original registrant retains control over the domain name and the name is simply sub-leased for a period of time to the new user. There are no requirements for disclosure in these types of agreements at this time, so far as I am aware (note: this is not legal advice – confer with an attorney).

There are many dirty tricks people can play on you when you go looking for aged domains. For example, they can buy links to those domains and puff up their Toolbar PageRank and/or backlink profiles to fool you into thinking the domains have a lot of value. They can also burn the domains through spammy uses and, seeing penalties start to kick in, unload them on unsuspecting purchasers. And there are worse things domain sellers can do to you.

For most people I would say that the cost of acquiring an aged domain is prohibitive. You don’t really have the resources to vet it and you probably don’t have the resources to go after someone who burns you. If all you end up with is a domain that is under a spam penalty you can at least take down the old content, put up new content, and ask for reconsideration.

But why go to that trouble when you could just buy a new domain name?

Some people acquire old domains for their brand value but a lot of recycled names I have looked at had little to no brand value. If you cannot find mentions of the domain name on the Web (such as in news stories, blog articles, and Web directories — places people are likely to see the name) it has no brand value. Don’t pay a premium for that name.

Some people acquire old domains because they align with new marketing initiatives. For example, your company may want to rebrand itself using a different trademark. The old domain name might match that trademark. You can pay a pretty penny for that but what is the return on investment? How much trademark confusion will there be even if you pick up a failed company’s mark?

With a new, previously unused domain name you have a clean slate. You don’t have to worry about previous penalties, trademark confusion, Vanishing Link Syndrome, or other potential liabilities that come with aged domains. You do have to build value into the new domain, of course.

But sometimes building value in a new domain is the fastest, least expensive way to search success. If you can’t really show that buying an older domain makes good business sense (that is, if you cannot show you’re not exposed to any potential problems), you’re more likely better off starting with a new domain than with an old one.

This article is not really about search engine optimization, but it is definitely intended for anyone in the SEO community who has the means to help out struggling non-profit organizations. Like many of you I have been aware of California’s budget crisis. In fact, other states are struggling to adjust their budgets due to revenue short-falls but California gets the most attention from the news media.

However, I haven’t been paying attention to all the little organizations that are suffering because state and local funding has suddenly dried up. That changed just this weekend.

As many of you know, I’m a big science fiction fan. Most of you may not know that actor Kevin Sorbo (”Hercules” and “Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda”) has been a spokesperson and board member for an organization called A World Fit For Kids. This special program helps find alternative interests for Los Angeles children in an effort to guide them away from joining the hundreds of street gangs that recruit new members from among the city’s younger residents.

Kevin recently made an open appeal for new 6$ donations to A World Fit For Kids. And because Kevin’s fans love to support his charitable work I heard about this appeal through the grapevine. “Hey,” I thought to myself. “I can help spread the word about this.”

In fact, I am sure there are other charities that need help, too. And perhaps their celebrity advocates are out there making similar appeals. But these appeals can only reach so far unless people in a position to do something help spread the message. Many of you are influencers in search and social media — more so than me. If you have not been helping your favorite charities find alternative funding, now is the time to take action.

Use your blogs, your Twitter accounts, your facebook pages — everything where you express your personal feelings and interests — to remind people that there are good organizations out there needing help. The taxpayers have been funding thousands of small organizations for years. Those organizations are now being cut off from state and local government funding because the money just isn’t there any more.

If you can make a difference in some community by posting a few public service announcements on your sites, why not do so? There is nothing great about The Great Recession of 2008-2009, but we can still work together to make great things happen.

What do you say?

The SEO industry has been entwined in a long-time love affair with vertical blinders. People have insisted on focusing only on what happens within their verticals for as long as I have been learning and studying about search engine optimization (and probably longer than that).

A vertical blinder is an attitude, a perspective, a set of boundaries you establish for yourself either through necessity (to avoid information overload), practicality (too little time to look at all that other stuff), focus (concentrate on where your competition is focused), or ignorance (I didn’t realize studying other verticals might help me).

We all have vertical blinders. It is impossible to NOT have vertical blinders, given that billions of searches are performed on the major search engines every month. So any discussion of vertical blindness (which refers to your blindness of verticals other than your own) is by no means pejorative or condescending.

Comparative Trends Analysis There are certainly lessons we can learn from each other’s verticals. For example, let’s say your vertical experiences seasonal spikes and dips in market activity. You know those patterns like the back of your hand. You won’t gain any insight into those patterns by studying other verticals but if you can identify seasonal verticals whose spikes and dips both presage and correlate with your vertical’s spikes and dips, you can employ trend-spotting analysis to get a leap on your competition. This is very advanced SEO but it’s a highly effective technique that helps you stay fresh and relevant to your target audience.

Comparative Promotional Methodology Analysis You can also look at how other people promote their sites within their own verticals. They may rely more on paid advertising, more on social media, more on link networks, etc. If you have become accustomed to marketing your site a certain way, or if you don’t know any other way, you should be looking at how people do it in other verticals. You may find some options your competitors have overlooked. There are no guarantees in this industry but one maxim that comes close to being a guarantee is that most people practicing search engine optimization are relying heavily on a handful of techniques. That doesn’t mean there are only a few good techniques. It just means we get comfortable with a core set of ideas and resources and we turn to those ideas and resources more often than others.

Comparative Ideological Analysis Learn to read blogs by people who are handling similar issues outside your industry and profession. Search engine optimizers tend to focus on tech blogs, SEO blogs, and news sites. There are hordes and hordes of PR industry, marketing research, legal industry, sales, and other blog communities out there who talk about the same challenges and principles we do from entirely different perspectives. They also reference resources you’ll never learn about from the SEO and geek communities. This is also very advanced SEO because you’re forcing yourself to think in another industry’s jargon and axioms. You may have to do this when you take on a new client but if you do it just to shake up your SEO thinking you’ll find many advantages and benefits from making the effort.

Speculative Resource Management Matt Cutts once made the point that you can build only so many really good sites, and then the quality of your work declines. That is, if you manage 2,000 sites their overall quality and uniqueness will probably be low compared to what you could accomplish if you manage 20 sites. Instead of trying to do everything at once, you can build seed sites that take a long time to flourish and blossom. You add to them gradually, maybe do a little bit of work every 2-3 months. These are low priority sites for you but as you place content on them and build links for them very gradually you eventually find yourself in possession of very helpful resources. As long as you don’t evaluate them from an SEO perspective they are speculative resources. You just build them, grow them naturally, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. This is another advanced but fundamental SEO principle that was written thousands of years ago: “Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again.” (Ecclesiastes 11:1)

In any random distribution of data scores, the vast majority of scores will fall between two extreme margins that can be set at about 5 per cent of all the data each. Think of the classic bell curve diagram where 90% of your raw scores fall into the sloping shape and 10% tapers off to either side.

If you could grab Web pages at random and rate them on a scale of 1 to 100 (1 being lowest in quality and 100 being highest in quality) you would find a roughly similar distribution. You could set an expectation that about 90% of all Web pages would fall into a range of minimally acceptable quality. These 90% pages are Minimally Useful Content.

You find these types of pages on many large content sites that are very popular: Ickipedia stub pages, IMDB teaser pages for pro content, older news articles that have been archived behind subscription walls, etc.

These minimally useful pages are indexed, rank highly, and in some queries dominate search results despite the fact that more useful content has been overlooked by the search engine. Of course, we know that links and internal PageRank play a great part in achieving these rankings, but it’s a pretty sure thing that trust filters are allowing relatively poor content to move up in the search results simply because of where it is hosted.

You could split hairs and say, “Well, I’d rather my content all fall above the 50% mark”. Sure, and I’d love for random corporations to send me checks in the mail from their cash short and over balances. Let’s be realistic. About half of all Web pages will be lower in quality than the other half. Even on your own sites you can divide your pages into upper and lower halves.

But quality is a subjective valuation. Different people would make different choices so you cannot simply strive to achieve the best quality content possible — your definition of quality sucks by someone else’s standards and their opinion matters just as much as yours does.

Rather than focus on creating quality content you should focus on creating useful content. The more useful the better, but if it’s useful at all the chances of someone linking to it are better than if it’s useless.

Minimally Useful Content is King because it’s easier for everyone to agree on usefulness than it is for them to agree on quality. There will still be people who don’t have a use for your content — you cannot make content completely useful — but as long as most people would find your content to be useful, it should be okay.