We are excited to announce SEOmoz as our new channel sponsor for the SEO Channel at Marketing Pilgrim. We are partnering with SEOmoz to bring our readers great SEO information to help stay on top the complex world of search engine optimization. SEOmoz joins Trackur who currently sponsors our Reputation channel.

At Marketing Pilgrim we are looking to partner with world class organizations like SEOmoz for other news and information channels like PPC, social media, web analytics, Internet law, mobile, local, search industry and more. With the Internet space being so dynamic and ever changing our readers are looking for information in all areas of Internet marketing space so that they can perform their duties armed with the most current data to keep them ahead of the competition. By putting the news into these channels our hope is to help readers make sense of the news through it being organized in the areas they are most interested in.

There has been plenty of talk about just what signals Google is using for search placement. What are the social signals? Will +1 play a role? Honestly, since SERP’s can be so different for every searcher you always have to wonder these days, right?

Well, one SEO signal that has received some attention in the recent past is the speed with which a page loads. Google has always rewarded sites that are coded cleanly and load quickly because it is important to user experience of that page. Another result of a ‘clean’ page is the page loading quickly.

To help measure this element Google has introduced its Page Speed Online tool, which is described in their Webmaster Central Blog.

Well, that didn’t take long. Yesterday we get news that Yahoo is really looking to improve its search experience. Good news, right? Well, eMarketer isn’t going to let Yahoo get off that easily as it released numbers predicting a continued decline in Yahoo search ad revenue share (mainly due to Bing’s gains). Those gains by Bing are slowly happening but perhaps the bigger surprise is the predicted rise in Google search ad revenue share. Here it is.

Are you agreement with these numbers? Will Google become even more dominant as Yahoo fades off in to the sunset and Bing picks up the pieces? How will this play out? Let’s hear your predictions in the comments.

Google is rolling out an updated user interface to approximately (initial) 1% of Google Analytics users.

In its announcement, Google says…

Our goals for the new version are to make it easier and faster to get to the data you want and to enhance the Google Analytics platform to bring you major new functionality. Many of the changes in the new version are the result of your feedback. For example, you can now view multiple advanced segments without needing to also use All Visits. You’ll find some of the other most requested features like multiple dashboards in the new version as well.

And, while I’ve not had a chance to thoroughly poke around the new interface, it appears the new version is mostly a change to the “look and feel” of Google Analytics. Kind of like when a car manufacturer does a facelift each year, not a full redesign.

As an online marketing consultant I’m always preaching the value of SEO, but every now and then a website owner crosses my desk where I advise them to abandon their SEO efforts (cue the boos and hisses). I’ve compiled a list of the reasons I feel justify abandoning your SEO efforts and I hope it leaves you thinking about the value of all of your marketing campaigns and how they fit into your overall strategy.

1. None of your sales come from your website.

There’s a lot of discussion surrounding a new video from Matt Cutts.

In it, the prominent Google engineer explains why you should not be swayed into registering a domain name that includes the keywords you are likely to target for your SEO efforts. He provides many examples of successful companies that have a branded domain name–and not a keyworded one.

Then he drops somewhat of a bombshell for all those SEOs that have been relying on the keyword in the domain to do all the heavy-lifting:

Google is taking more steps to create a truly personal search experience. Now, if you don’t like results from a site you a can remove those results from that domain completely from your future searches. Talk about the ability to get rid of content farms!

The Google blog states

You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve clicked a result and it wasn’t quite what you were looking for. Many times you’ll head right back to Google. Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right, but sometimes you may dislike the site in general, whether it’s offensive, pornographic or of generally low quality. For times like these, you’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results. Now when you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to “Cached” that reads “Block all example.com results.”