I recently returned from a vacation and had the chance to parasail for the first time in my life.  Despite my fear of heights, it was actually a rather enjoyable experience.  As I sat there 300-feet above the Lake of the Ozarks I thought that parasailing was a pretty simple activity.  You get a boat, add the necessary equipment, throw the parachute up, strap the people in, slowly release them to the optimal height for enjoyment and then drive around the lake. 

But the most important part of the process (outside of safety requirements) was to keep the boat moving at a speed to provide proper wind-resistance for the parachute to carry the riders.  If the boat moves too slow or comes to a stop the tension on the rope is lost and the parachute slowly floats down and into the water.  And this is where I go on my boring rant about SEO.

SEO is a lot like parasailing in that it is a pretty simple process.  You find a good domain name, build a site that is crawl-able by the search engines, conduct keyword research to identify traffic sources, develop quality optimized content/meta data/H1 tags that align with your targeted key phrases and then you build links like crazy.  But the process doesn’t end there…YOU MUST KEEP TENSION ON THE ROPE!  Or, your site will slowly drift down in the rankings, much like a parachute.

In today’s online environment a large majority of businesses are using some sort of search engine marketing strategy and this means that your #1 ranking today could be your competitor’s #1 ranking tomorrow.  It is important to not only implement an aggressive SEO strategy but to build on your successes by continuing the SEO process.  Even if you just blog or spend a few hours link building each week it will help to push your site further and further ahead of the competition.  And you will reap the benefits of top rankings for years to come!

This post explores how you can utilize basic leadership principles in your writing to produce compelling web content that guides your readers to great success! (And by “great success” we obviously mean 3 out of 10 readers finish at least half of your article!)

Courage.

Such a vital component of leadership. Yet few people truly have it. At least when they need it. And even then, few can summon it without first consuming inadvisable levels of coffee or Mountain Dew or 5-Hour Energy.

That’s what makes natural leaders so fascinating. They captivate any audience, no matter how lethargic. They thrive in the company of the uninspired.

Indeed, what brilliant and heroic people they are.

Unfortunately not all of us are natural born leaders. And that’s sad. Yet even the most pathetic and feeble of us can still lead. Even if we teach people  how to write optimized web content for a living, we can still lead.

It’s true.

By embracing a few basic principles of leadership in your writing, you can lead your readers to victory - at least 3 out of every 10 times. And I’ll explain how. So who’s coming with me!

Motivate your readers with a PROMISE

No one volunteers to wander aimlessly through a graveyard in the middle of the night. Most won’t even wander through a Wal-Mart parking lot after sunset. Too dangerous. Too spooky. Too much on TV.

So, there simply must be a motive. Some reason to embark on such a perilous adventure, when all signs indicate only trouble and site-squatting vagabonds lurk in the shadows.

Think of the internet as that spooky Wal-Mart parking lot. And think of your readers as the sensible folks who won’t go strolling about the abandoned shopping carts just for the heck of it. They won’t read just anything (Not unless you’re Chris Brogan or Seth Godin or some other guy with a name that sounds suspiciously similar).

Thus, it’s imperative we offer a promise that explains our mission; that one thing that compels otherwise rational readers to follow us into the uncertain heat of the night.

Remember to introduce your promise right away – in your title if possible - and to reinforce it often.

Make it utterly clear from the outset. You can’t frolic down the road and expect people to follow without any inclination of where they’re headed. This isn’t Forrest Gump. This is real life. Ok, it’s the internet. But still.

People aren’t so frivolous that they’ll read an online article that seemingly offers them nothing. They need to be told and reminded of why they’re running through the desert. That’s what true leaders do. They remind people to be courageous.

Guide your readers with a COMPASS…Or a sweet MAP!

You know why everyone follows Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean? It’s not because he’s a heroic leader. And it’s not because he’s played by Johnny Depp, a guy who just about everybody digs - even fictitious pirates.

They follow Captain Jack Sparrow, despite having myriad reasons not to, because he has the super secret pirate compass! Only by the navigation of this sweet compass can all the pirates get to the secret treasure, or the secret ship, or the secret Keira Knightley, or whatever secret thing it is they’re desperately trying to find in those movies.

So get a secret compass…Or at least pretend to have one.

Tell your readers that only you can guide them to the treasure they seek. For some, that compass might be your expertise on a particular subject matter. For others, it might be an in-depth statistical analysis only you have performed, or an exclusive interview that only you have secured. Perhaps it’s a witty sense of humor or an especially unique point of view that only you boast.

Just give them something, for crying out loud. Even if it’s merely silly movie references – give them something! True leaders convince their troops that following them will deliver victory. Even if, at times, the mission appears lost and hopeless.

Offer your readers an occasional park bench

Reading a blog post isn’t like spending Seven Years in Tibet, folks. Nor is it like ripping off a Band-Aid or taking a shot of tequila. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition.

If you write web articles that are 1,800 words of uninterrupted single-spaced thought, no one will read them, no matter how brilliantly composed and lucid they are.

It’s just too daunting. Too much to digest.

So don’t write web articles that are 1,800 words of uninterrupted single-spaced thought. Never. Just don’t do it.

Divide it up. Make it a 7-course dining experience.

By offering distinctive headlines that divide your optimized web copy into sections, you’re assuring your readers that they needn’t consume it all at once, that it’s cool if they want to nibble on it one section at a time. Maybe have a drink and regale their friends with tales of collegiate debauchery.

This provides them the necessary endurance to complete the entire meal. And by the time they finish the last bite, they’ll be satisfied. 3 out of every 10 of them might even be thankful.

Because it was you - yes, you! - who delivered your online readers to victory. You are a true leader. Whatever that means.

Most of our optimization work is performed on client websites and in nearly every case we are trying to achieve improved rankings and increased traffic within a budget and timeline. While we don’t have a true “pay-for-performance SEO model”, rather than locking new clients into long term agreements we often advocate beginning with a short term contract that will allow us to prove our worth before moving forward with a larger commitment. Our most typical scenario gives us 90 days to tackle the SERPs and analytics for a group of medium to moderately difficult search terms (from a competitive standpoint).

While every project is different, when you have to show some success in a relatively short period of time it is important to quickly identify the major issues holding back your site. As we discussed in an earlier post, page title optimization is always very high on the list. Even with that said when you are working on a site with hundreds or thousands of pages, spreading yourself too thin by concentrating on only one ranking factor will usually fail. Unless you have an overwhelming number of site architecture or duplication issues, you are normally better off getting laser focused on just a portion of the site.

Along the same line is the amount of time you spend on research compared to time devoted to actual change suggestions, on-page optimization tweaks or link building (for example). There are so many different ways to analyze a site or even one page on a site. There are also dozens of keyword research techniques and SEO tools, and you could spend countless hours dissecting the strategies that have seemingly worked on competitor sites. At some point you simply have to be comfortable knowing you’ve done enough due diligence to dive in and begin making changes that will have an impact.

Search engine optimization is a science. It’s not like building rockets, but most SEOs follow a set of tried and true practices that offer the greatest chance of success. Search engine optimization is also an art. All the research in the world won’t do you a bit of good until you take that first step and begin making changes. Every client and every website is different. This is what makes the process fun and exciting.

Since its launch Facebook’s goal has been to provide a platform for family/friends to keep in touch in a simple and efficient way.  But like any business, Facebook is trying to make money and that is achieved by not only attracting a large number of users but also providing useful tools to keep them on your site (so they can provide impressions/clicks for those taking advantage of Facebook advertising). 

If Facebook is successful in creating a question/answer forum similar to other leading sites then a Facebook user will have the ability to search for the answer to a question and find useful answers from experts.  And they will be able to do all of this within Facebook instead of having to go to a search engine.

Another huge positive to a product like this is how well these types of sites rank on search engines.  If you search any sort of question you are bound to find the three sites mentioned above as well as hundreds of other “How To” sites.  The sites sitting at the top are usually the sites with the most answers to the question.  So, if a lot of people ask questions and a lot of people answer questions then you get better rankings for these questions on the search engines and receive more traffic.  If Facebook perfects this new feature they will add stickiness to their site while also generating more and more traffic.  And the best part is that all of the work is done by Facebook users!

Hard to tell what the result will be as Facebook has failed multiple times with new products.  But you will be able to tell this fall when you’re searching for “what to make for a college football tailgate?”  If you see a result from Facebook Answers…you’ll know they are heading in the right direction!

BP’s digital marketing budget has grown some (ok, considerably) in recent weeks and search engine users should be wary.

The disastrous state of unnecessary affairs in the Gulf Coast has sunk BP in a bottomless PR nightmare, and the oil giant is exploring every means possible for cleaning up its sullied image.

BP CEO Tony Hayward has become an unwelcome staple of morning, noon and evening newscasts, as he waxes poetic about his company’s supposedly earnest efforts to rectify the mess it caused in the Gulf of Mexico.

When Hayward isn’t on our televisions, he’s on our computers starring in online commercials that accompany the most popular videos on YouTube (Last week, I was digitally assaulted by the man while getting my bi-weekly dose of Numa Numa).

Now, BP is seizing our search engine results pages in an attempt to disperse the black pall lingering over its name. Search for “BP” or “Oil Spill” or “Gulf Disaster” or even “BP is a Terribly Silly Company” and the top sponsored link is invariably paid for by BP, which states that it’s kindly disseminating “Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping.”

Thus, those searching for information pertinent to the spill won’t immediately see  a news story. They won’t see the blog of some impassioned environmentalist or that of some corporate watchdog. They’ll find BP telling everyone how much it cares. And for almost every search imaginable - particularly those with negative connotations.

Such SERP positioning doesn’t come cheaply. Scott Slatin, an analyst for New York SEM firm Rivington, told ABC News that by his estimates BP’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) accounts on Google, Bing and Yahoo! likely cost the company in excess of $10,000 per day, to win the bidding battles for a host of vital searches related to the monumental oil spill.

While the individual cost-per-click is likely low (BP has no competition for most phrases), the sheer mass of phrases BP is bidding on makes Slatin’s estimates plausible. Even so, that kind of money is obviously negligible for a company that reported $14B in profits in 2009, and this in a down year that saw profits suffer a mind-boggling 45-percent decline from the previous year.

However, the question isn’t merely whether this is money spent wisely – even paying $100,000 per day on PPC would be money well spent given BP’s desperate need for crisis management – but whether it’s entirely ethical.

BP’s deep pockets afford it an insurmountable online advertising advantage, and as the majority of search engine users likely cannot distinguish sponsored results from organic results, it’s debatable whether search engines should be playing ball with BP, no matter how much they’re willing to pay for these clicks. Search engines are historically liberal in what phrases they accept bids on, but one wonders if that shouldn’t change in the face of tragedy.

Is it good money for the search engines? Sure. Is it sound PR strategy for BP to bulk up its digital marketing budget, to further its message that it’s genuinely acting in the best interests of the Gulf community, that it’s willing to take full responsibility for its tragically costly blunders? Certainly.

But what about search engine users – are they getting justice? When they seek out veracious information about the Gulf disaster, to learn how things are progressing (if at all), and unwittingly end up on BP’s corporate blog, are they being treated fairly?

Because the deal between search engines and search engine users has always been this: users trust the search engines to deliver the most accurate results, and search engines are rewarded when users click on the paid ads. But when those users aren’t buying anything, when they are shopping for information and not cars or tennis shoes, should they be taken advantage of? Do the rules of that deal change then?

At Blue Traffic, we enjoy performing such consultations because we want our clients to practice sound SEO strategies even after our professional partnership ends. Thus, I was delighted to meet with some fellow writers and share with them the fundamental rules and strategies I employ when fashioning content for other clients.

Unfortunately, rather than edifying the eager scribes, I departed with a sense that I had left the poor chaps terribly confused. Although describing the basics of SEO is a relatively simple and harmless chore, communicating the intricacies of writing SEO copy can be a horribly frustrating exercise. Why? Because optimizing content isn’t an exact science.

Therefore, instead of talking about how to write optimized content, I decided it would be best to practice what I couldn’t effectively preach. What follows is a basic set of rules for SEO writers that anyone can consult to produce content both readers and search engines will enjoy. This is by no means a complete list. It’s not my intent to pen the authoritative manual on optimized content. It’s just a list of methods that have enabled me to achieve desired results for clients in a variety of industries.

Rule 1: Google doesn’t appreciate Shakespeare – people do

Search engines are exceptional consumers of content. They read everything they can crawl. They’ve read every book in every language – twice. But they don’t understand it. Nor do they know if it’s any good. Google can tell you what a sentence or paragraph or article is about without knowing whether it’s prolific in a profound sense or a plentiful one.

Google assigns value to content according to the behavior of human readers – not according to some arbitrary algorithm that projects an entry’s staying power. If people like it, Google likes it. So write for people.

You can optimize and optimize and optimize, hoping Google will reward your efforts with premium rankings, but if human readers don’t enjoy it, then neither will Google. How does Google know if people like it? By following the links.

A popular saying in the SEO community is that “Content is King.” It’s not that simple. Try searching for a classic book, like Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. What ranks No. 1? The actual text? A scholarly critique? An original book review? No. No. And no. It’s a generic Wikipedia entry. Why? Because Wikipedia has about a billion links pointed to its site. Is this a good thing for search engine users? Probably not. Is it good for the tens of thousands of book reports written by students who never read Mr. Twain’s book? Certainly not.

I introduce this fact not to discourage anyone or to underscore Wikipedia’s considerable advantage. This extreme example is introduced to emphasize the fact Google rewards links, not great content.

How is this valuable to you? In most cases, you won’t be competing with Wikipedia but with rival companies, organizations, groups and bloggers. So just get more links than them. It’s that simple. How do you do that? Write more engaging content than them.

But isn’t that contradictory? Didn’t you just say content is worthless? No, I said get more links. And you get links by writing better content. How do you do that? That’s what rule No. 2 is for.

Rule 2: Shut up and write some engaging content already

The internet is a democracy where everyone has a vote. Those who receive the most votes (links) win not elections but powerful rankings. Your best SEO strategy is to reach out to voters by writing content they will link to. Content people within your niche will blog about or Tweet about. Content that gets people talking about your products, your services, your company.

Don’t be frightened to take a unique stance on a familiar topic. Nobody ever stood out by being the 700th person to agree with something. The people who generate buzz are those provocative rogues who are courageous enough to support a daring, and perhaps unpopular, position. Fresh wins the fight. New angles are always the best, even if they’re seemingly ludicrous.

For instance, say Galileo had a blog way back when and he wrote an incredibly controversial post about the world being round – not flat. People would think he was absolutely crazy. They’d bash him in the comments section. He’d be the laughing stock of every astronomy forum. But I bet people would link to him. And I bet his blog would rank No. 1 for “The World is Round.” And I bet a whole lot of people would be searching for that once they realized that he was probably right.

So write engaging content. Establish yourself as an authority on a subject or introduce a fresh argument. How do you do that? Read rule No. 3!

Rule 3: That’s already been written about 50 million times, but that hasn’t

Everything has been written about. At least once, it has. The Internet is very much like The Simpsons – everything has been done before. And yet there are still infinite questions left unanswered. There are countless arguments that haven’t been made. There are myriad viewpoints that hitherto haven’t been introduced…So find them.

Identify the hot topics in your industry - then take an angle nobody else has considered. Here’s a great post on ViperChill about identifying hot trends through Stumbleupon, Delicious and Yahoo! Answers.

In addition to spotting trends, perform some critical analysis yourself. Do your due diligence. Search Google for specific industry-related questions. Which ones have no adequate answers? What information might prospective clients or customers want that’s inaccessible? Don’t know what information they want and can’t find? Then ask them.

Then, once you’ve identified a fresh topic, write the optimized content. How? That’s what rule No. 4 is five…for.

Rule 4: My keyword density formula is better than your keyword density formula – I guarantee it

What is optimized content? Is it content that follows an exact keyword density formula? Should you incorporate keywords into every sentence? Every paragraph? I heard you’re supposed to infuse one keyword into every seventh sentence – is that true?

What nonsense.

My personal thoughts on keyword density: forget keywords and write naturally (as emphasized in rule No. 1). If your content is about a topic you hope to rank for, odds are you’ll use those keywords or phrases naturally. Injecting keywords where they don’t belong will only produce choppy and spammy content that neither Google nor your audience will appreciate. It’s a waste of time.

Furthermore, when it’s clear what your content is about, your readers will unwittingly know what keywords you want them to put in their anchor text links. If The Incredible Car Blog writes a blog about what cars will be like in 2020, odds are those linking to the post will put some variation of “2020 Cars” in the anchor text. And one link like that from a reputable site is worth more than 1,000 instances of “2020 Cars” included in the original post.

So write honestly and eloquently. Be informative and entertaining. Write something you’d want to read yourself. Don’t worry about optimization when you’re writing. Once you’ve completed the most engaging content in the world, that’s when you go back and optimize it. Rule No. 5 tells you how.

Rule 5: The brutally honest secret to optimized content

How do I optimize content? Well, I’d love to tell you how. I’ll say this: optimized content is what it isn’t. I mean, it isn’t what it is. Huh?

Myth: Optimized content is merely content with keywords included.

If writing optimized content was simply the process of stuffing a bunch of keywords between other words, you wouldn’t need writers. You could take existing content and scatter a bunch of keywords around. You might find this on a car dealership’s website:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was a great time to buy New Chevrolet Cars in Chicago!”

Does that mean you don’t want keywords in your content? Of course, not. You gotta have a few keywords. Just don’t overdo it. Let the opportunities present themselves naturally. Then pounce on them!

Let’s go back to that Chicago car dealership. Maybe they already have some unique web content with 5 or 6 natural instances of “Chevrolet Cobalts in Chicago,” a phrase they rank No. 1 for in Google. Spectacular! But they’re missing out on tons and tons of related searches. Why? Because they have no instances of “New Chevrolet Cobalts in Chicago,” or “Used Chevrolet Cobalts in Chicago,” or “Pre-Owned Chevrolet Cobalts in Chicago,” or “Best Chicago Dealerships for Chevy Cobalts.” There’s any number of ways people in Chicago will search for the same car, but this dealership is only taking advantage of one of them!

THAT is what optimized content is. It’s writing naturally and then searching through your content for ways to improve it. Anticipate the ways your audience would search for you, and then give it to them. Don’t set out to write content just so you can stuff it with 50 instances of a phrase you want to rank for. Write something of value to prospective clients and consumers, and then go back and optimize content accordingly.

I suspect this post will rank well for 5 or 10 phrases (none of which was intended to be Chevy Cobalt related), and yet I never compromised the flow or readability…At least I didn’t do so intentionally for the sake of search engine optimization.

And when people link to this post, they’ll either call it The Greatest Online Guide to Content Optimization Ever or The Absolute Worst Online Guide to Content Optimization Ever. Either way, one thing will be for certain: it will still rank well for Online Guide to Content Optimization. And now you know why.

Traditionally, it’s been about identifying the companies you compete with and trying to reverse engineer their marketing and advertising strategies to your benefit. But more often, what SEO’s are referring to is your competition in search engine results. These may not be the same companies you’ve gone head-to-head with for the past 20 years. In fact, many aren’t companies at all - but rather websites and web pages that simply outrank yours for valuable keyword searches.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you either sell insurance or handle the marketing for an insurance agency in Des Moines. Everyone knows how extremely competitive the car, home, life, business and health insurance industry can be - and you are always trying to stay one step ahead of other local agents and agencies. They are your competition. Day in and day out, it is you against them in making the sale - and seldom does your phone ring because a complete stranger wants to buy insurance.

Now, you understand that someone who heads over to Google.com and searches for “buy insurance in Des Moines” would be a fairly hot lead (to say the least) - wouldn’t you agree? What you might not know is that most of the individuals and companies you’ve been competing with for that potential customer are nowhere to be found in Google’s search results. One might say, they aren’t even your competition…at least not online. Do the search yourself and you will find you’ve got an entire new group of so-called rivals. Wikipedia, Superpages, Virginia.edu (say what?), Kiplinger, Arizona.edu (spammers), KCCI, Des Moines Register, city-data…where are the insurance agents you so politely wave to at the local coffee shop?

From an SEO standpoint, all of the above mentioned websites are your “new competition” and figuring out how to move your agency or webpage ahead of theirs is the task at hand. None of the results I just mentioned seem like a good place to buy auto insurance, so the searcher is left with clicking on a paid advertisement or trying another related search. Imagine the delight had that person found your agency website in the top listings - something like DesMoinesInsuranceExperts.com (note - as of this writing that site doesn’t exist). And imagine your excitement when you answered that phone call and heard, “Yes, may I speak to someone about buying car insurance?”.

The point is, you have competitors both online and offline. If you’ve been in business more than a few months, you likely know who you have to outsell on the street. Now it may be time you did some competitive research online to figure out who’s getting in front of all the locals who are shopping via the web. Often times, getting a leg up on your hidden competitors can have an even larger impact on your company’s bottom line. Happy research!

“Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search.  It is ony half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business.  They’ve got to find other things to do.”

Google’s umbrella of online products may not be as broad as Yahoo’s but it is hardly “just a search engine”.  Since it’s launch in early 2007 Google’s Gmail has been steadily gaining steam in the email market and the acquisition of YouTube in 2006 has also expanded Google’s reach.  Google was ground-breaking with their Google Earth application and continue to be an excellent provider of accurate maps and driving directions.  And they’ve even taken a stab at Facebook and Twitter with one of their most recent developments, the social networking site Google Buzz.

Took a quick look at the services I use and realized that I personally show no real correlation.  My homepage is Yahoo but my primary search engine is Google.  My main email is Yahoo and I utilize My Yahoo but I also frequent the Google Local Business Center and prefer Google AdWords to Yahoo Search Marketing.  I have both Facebook and Twitter accounts but have logged into Facebook ten times in the past week compared to once for Twitter.

I applaud Carol Bartz for standing up to the Goliath of the search engines but I don’t think Google is going to scrap their business model anytime soon.  In March, Google recorded 14.3 billion searches compared to Yahoo’s 2.7 billion and Microsoft’s 1.9 billion.  If it isn’t broke…

Marc Patterson - Search Marketing Consultant

Just how fast is the social web growing this second?  This hour?  In addition to that growth; what is the activity like for these platforms?  Are we contributing Weeky?  Hourly? Is this the “year” of social media, or will next year surpass this one?   I recently stumbled upon this interesting little widget created by Gary Hayes at www.personalizedmedia.com.  Although this is still in constant development; the flash app shows just how quickly the social media web is growing.  Gary created this app out of research via social media sources and sites last fall.  He created and coded the app based on his collected data.

A few of the main points Gary sites in using to create his ticker:

• 900 000 blogs posts put up every day (source Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008)
• Twitter 18 million new users per year & 4 million tweets sent daily (source TechCrunch Apr 09)
• 20 hours of video uploaded every minute onto YouTube (source YouTube blog Aug 09)
• Facebook 600,000 new members each day, 700 million photos, and 4 million videos  (source Inside Facebook Feb 09)
• 96 million videos watched daily on You (source Comscore Jul 06 !)
• Money - $5.5 billion on virtual goods (casual & game worlds) even Facebooks gifts make $70 million annually (source Viximo Aug 09)
• Flickr has 73 million visitors a month who upload 700 million photos (source Yahoo Mar 09)
• 1,250 text messages per second (source Linden Lab release Sep 09)
• SMS - Over 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (source Everysingleoneofus sms statistics)

Keeping in mind this chart is not in real-time, it does however provide a few interesting nods to social media progression; over $190,000 is spent each DAY on Facebook gifts,  iphone apps are being downloaded at a faster rate than new blog posts,  and Flickr image uploads surpasses Facebook video uploads daily by nearly 123%.  It would be interesting to see Gary add some additional e-mail statistics; e-mail accounts to date, etc.  Seeing social media grow through these numbers is remarkable. I’m off to hit “publish” and contribute my 1/900,000 of the blogposts posted today!

You see, while the notoriously confidential folks at Google were kind enough to throw us this latest nugget, they conveniently left out an adequate accompanying definition of just what they really mean by site speed.

Here’s Google’s vague definition: Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.

But what say Google about the infinite combinations of web browsers, PCs and internet connections that users employ in their individual web experience? Is site speed derived from a mass average of every internet user in America, or does it simply reflect the respective experience of Larry Page? What’s more important: A site’s surfability or crawlability?

Google does offer a number of helpful tools to resolve any site speed issues you might have (that list is available below), but the entire concept still begs several questions: Will generic static HTML sites have a decisive advantage over more valuable sites whose speed is bogged down by useful educational tools? Will an abundance of photos and multimedia apps have a negative impact on your site? What about pages loading from third-party URLs, like iFrames?

It’s likely impossible to say. All a SEOer can do is test, test, test. Google did say that page relevance will continue to be the dominant variable and that only 1% of sites will be affected by site speed. Thus, perhaps this latest announcement will prove utterly inconsequential. But if you find your prized No. 1 ranking for that key phrase has fallen to No. 2, at least you’ll know why. Your site speed is inadequate.

And here are some tools to help get number one rankings back!

•    Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
•    YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
•    WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
•    In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below.
•    Many other tools on code.google.com/speed.