In the (blog) News: SEO's got game with print media advertising.

I was recently made aware of some interesting circumstances regarding advertising online materials in print products; Instead of printing a web address, many businesses are printing search keywords.

What interests me most in this is how much trust is put into whoever manages the SEO (Search Engine Optimization, for the web-illiterate) for the product(s). There are so many variables to consider, such as Google bombing, competitors listing similar products, and the plain-and-simple fact that some people just don't know how to do SEO properly (side note: Yes, I know - I've got to work on my own, but I've got to finish the transitions completely before I get too involved in SEO).

Another interesting thing to consider is what search engines your customers will be using. New search engines pop up regularly, and there has become quite the fringe market out there. How are the SEO-gurus dealing with the variety in search engines available now? Maintaining visibility across the board for search engines new and old reminds me of designing websites for the various major browsers (which is less of a problem now that IE8 is finally going to be somewhat standards compliant, but now we've got the mobile web to coddle).

It will be interesting to see, within the next month, if advertisers are finding that the keyword based advertising system is starting to become inadequate due to some of the points I mentioned (or others I may have missed).

-WFL