While the market continues to tumble, dragging consumer confidence with it, new opportunities are actually opening for Search Marketing in a Recession.  Laura Callow, of Search Engine Marketing Insight, points out that although fewer people are going out and looking for places to spend their last paycheck, people are still going to spend money on goods and services during a recession.  Many people are saving money by staying out of the car and shopping online.  This has left open a big opportunity for the savvy search marketer.  While luxury items are still some time out from matching their sales number of a year ago, more people are jumping online to find deals and have them delivered directly to their homes.  This trend is driving many more ecommerce companies to update their websites to capture as many additional sales as possible.  As the economy stands on shaky ground, search marketers just need to be reactive to the constant changes and they will end up at the front of the pack by the time everyone else gets on the upswing.
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Yahoo! is planning on some big growth in India.  Business Standard reported last week that Yahoo! will hire 400 employees over the next year, the majority of which will work for its Centre for Excellence in Bangalore.  The Centre, which supports Yahoo!’s emerging markets in India, Singapore, South East Asia, Eastern Eurpore, and Latin America, is targeting architects, user experience designers, and programme managers to fill the new openings.  To combat the large percentage of young talent that typically leaves to pursue higher education, Yahoo! is also developing a curriculum with BITS-Pilani for an MS programme. These moves will help establish a greater presence for Yahoo! in India, which is currently dominated by Google.
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Yesterday we were pleased to announce a new partnership with SEMPO.  We're really excited to be working with SEMPO to develop programs that help grow the supply of search marketers across the country.

As part of our partnership, we're going to provide SEMPO with content for the SEMPO Institute and other content offerings around career development for new and search marketers alike, as well provide Onward Search employees with $1200 of tuition reimbursement as part of our tuition reimbursement program.  Additionally, Onward Search professionals who complete one year of full-time employment will also be eligible to receive full reimbursement for Individual SEMPO membership.

We've been working on this partnership for a fair amount of time and would like to thank the whole team over at SEMPO for being so great to work with.  The full press release is available for download below.

Onward Search and SEMPO Announce Partnership 8-13-08.pdf (25.55 kb)

Yesterday Google updated their "What's an SEO?" page, and integrated new content that focuses on the benefits website owners can get from employing an SEO.  In previous versions of the page, the messaging was more focused on how to identify "bad SEO" practitioners than talking about how to identify "good SEO" practitioners.

As part of the update they provided a list of questions companies can ask to qualify an SEO.  I decided to take a look at each question individually and assess how each question can help you find the right SEO. More...

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