The American Idol publicity machine is much like a runaway freight train. It barges its way onto the front pages of entertainment magazines, television talk shows and gossip websites like no other entertainment franchise. So it is no wonder that recent rumblings of how former Idol judge and executive producer Simon Cowell uses search engine optimization (SEO) to control his image may not be simply the stuff of celebrity conspiracy theory.

The New York Daily News ran a piece online last week which accused Cowell of hiring UK SEO super firm Reputation Management Consultants to assist in yielding positive search engine results when innocent Googlers look up Cowell online. The Daily News claims that said searches for Cowell pull up 20 or so pages of positive stories about Simon Cowell such as “Wayne Newton writes fan letter to Simon Cowell.” Critics of Cowell say that they have a nearly impossible time finding their biting pieces about the judge we loved to hate online.

Hans Ebert, a former music industry exec who served time at EMI and Universal, says his blog entitled “Why ‘American Idol’ is Better Off Without Simon Cowell” has all but vanished from cyberspace. The blog, published August 5^th, ripped Cowell a new one by stating he is the “Sarah Palin of music.” Ebert discovered not long after publishing the critique that his blog had been “de-activated” by WordPress, the host of his blog. 12 hours later, the blog was reinstated; Ebert did some digging and found a trail that led right to Reputation Management Consultants, who are known to represent several UK celebrities in their London office. Not surprisingly, Cowell’s peeps have told the press that the accusation is pure hogwash and the paranoiac stuff of Internet nerds with nothing better to do.

This story doesn’t seem totally out of the realm of believability to us, as we know what a powerful PR tool SEO had become. Cowell wouldn’t be the first (or the last) brand to manipulate SEO to conjure up nothing but good stuff in a search tied to his name. It does bring up questions about how SEO can be used for personality marketing and what the future of SEO may look like for folks with the right amount of money and connections to make it work for them.

But what say you, dear readers? Is this Cowell SEO story a glimpse of things to come with brand management? Or is the story itself another cog in Cowell’s hard-working PR machine? Let’s dish about it in the comments section below!

We’ve pondered the powers, problems and pratfalls of search engine optimization (or SEO, as the kids call it) in this blog several times. The reason the discussion resurfaces on a regular basis is because as a channel for marketing, SEO is constantly evolving with the technological tides. SEO watchers and experts keep their eyes peeled on the latest developing Internet marketing techniques and how they relate to getting amazing search engine results. So it stands to reason that the topic of SEO is once again flying off the keyboards of bloggers landing smack dab in the middle of newsfeeds.

Last week, Inc. Magazine online ran a great read about how to use Google’s already-built-in tools to help track SEO. Discussed with Chris Dawkins of Trace Media is the importance of off-site links, bonding with similar sites with similar keywords and maintaining on-site optimization with keyword-rich content. Inc. goes deeper by exploring Google’s Webmaster tools. We’re thrilled they point out that the world’s biggest search engine actually has free tutorials and tools for beginning SEO marketers. The article specifically directs readers to Google’s stats and diagnostics tools, both great resources in tracking website traffic.

On Monday, Hubspot threw its two cents worth in as well by going back to keywords and their importance in SEO. Hubspot whipped together 10 effective places to target keywords. Number one on the list is URL. Turns out placing your keywords somewhere in the URL of a page will assist in bumping up your ranking (who knew?!). Other keyword target suggestions include page title, using bold text, meta description and sliding keywords in image file names.

The cool thing about the ever-present discussions about SEO is that they signal an era of approachability. Thought before to be something for only those in the know, SEO is now a fountain for the small business owner to tap into. With a bit of research, we can all participate in search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) poisoning is like the online marketer’s version of the swine flu — everybody’s heard of it, but no one’s really sure what it is. After doing some online digging, I found a plethora of articles explaining SEO poisoning, how to avoid it and what big companies are trying to do to stop it.

Evil Spamming Empires use SEO techniques to pump up the rankings of their websites, therefore pushing them higher and higher in your search results. It looks like there’s a billion good sites on the first page related to your search, but according to Neil Rubeking of PCMAG.COM, SEO poisoning pushes bogus and malicious sites front and center while leaving what you’re really looking for back a couple of pages. Forbes points out that SEO poisoning is linked to phishing scams whose main goal is to trick users into clicking. Instead of manufacturing original content, SEO poison writers ride the coattails of existing content, making the whole venture extremely affordable and all the more devious. The worst part is that many phony SEO “experts” are popping up online and charging clients boatloads of money, only to wind up poisoning search engines.

This brings us to the next problem with poisoning. How do businesses looking for SEO experts avoid becoming Google polluters? Research, research, research. Turn the tables on your SEO firm and Google their handiwork. It will speak volumes about what you can expect from them. Also, push them on their content policies. Do they use mostly original content or do they recycle and re-purpose to a fault? Who are their staff writers and will they work for your company? Ask for samples like any good shopper would. And while you’re at it, get some references from other small businesses.

The SEO poisoning issue has shown up all over this month on the tech and marketing blogs. Google, for its part, is beefing up security; many believe it may be the answer to stopping clogged search engines. Encrypted searches are said to be a repellent for SEO-poisoned content. Encrypted searches thwart of pages and pages of lame results, leaving only what the user was looking for. As Microsoft, Google and the other tech superheroes look for solutions to stop SEO poisoning, the little guys can stay safe by watching where we click and with whom we trust our SEO needs.

It happens to all of us sooner or later…. we fall in love with a brand or a brilliant mind or an addictive product, and after searching high and low, we finally find the website dedicated to it. Thrilled to have more to fuel our new obsession, we devour the content on the site. Or we start to. But our appetite and interest are replaced with disappointment as more…

It was the gastric gut bomb heard ’round the world when Kentucky Fried Chicken unleashed The Double Down Sandwich a few weeks back. This culinary concoction made of two fried chicken breasts serving as a bun with melted cheese and two strips of crispy bacon, created a marketing frenzy and set off a blogging firestorm unlike any fast food product we’ve seen in quite some time. At nearly 600 grams of more…

“Ball of confusion, that’s what the world is today. Hey. Hey.”   - The Temptations.

The new health care package, the lady from eBay who wants to be governor, the gravity defying awesomeness that is Justin Bieber’s hair are all things I really do not understand. In fact, at the risk of sounding like Ed Anger or Andy Rooney, there’s a bunch of things I don’t understand.  So thank God for the more…

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It is a fun little note for the history books that Facebook eclipsed Google as the most used site on the Internet.  For years, Google has pretty much gone unchallenged. Google is still the advertising god as they have a multitude of avenues to deliver adverts to the people. From Google Buzz and Gmail to Google Reader and more…

The panning for gold prospect that is Search Engine Optimization is a befuddling concept that admittedly this writer is still trying to wrap his non-technical brain around.  For those of us shoved in the creative type column, it can be totally intimidating. Initially, it appeared that popping up at the top of search engines was some sort of luck of the draw or more…

In a move that could be only described as a dis, T-Mobile told Yahoo, the previous default server for the wireless network, “thanks but no thanks”. T-Mobile has instead signed with Google to serve as the network’s primary search engine as well as the default server as reported on Monday. Yahoo will continue to server in messenger and mail capacity for the phone company while Google will be doing the majority more…