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One of the most critical elements of the SEO game – and I say “game,” because it really can be fun, in an SEO-dork kind of way – is staying on top of, if not ahead of, the latest changes in the Google algorithm. With so many variables at work, it’s a massive challenge to assign blame or credit to specific tactics on a micro-level. But as SEO pro Mike Moran points out on his blog, attempts to decipher the past miss the point:

If you can identify an idea that might improve the searcher experience, you can bet that Google thought of it, too. Instead of waiting for them to implement it, perhaps you should be working to make things better for your customer and then waiting for Google to figure out the next turn of the algorithm crank.

That’s a great insight, and a big reason why the process really can be fun. It’s about predicting behavior. It’s also at the heart of RepEquity’s “Don’t be black hat” philosophy. While there’s obviously a lot of careful and clever machinations at work in any serious SEO shop, it’s always important to come back to Mike’s central question: is this good for the user? This is the case for two reasons, really. First off, the point of a well-rounded digital strategy should be to ensure a positive experience for the user. That goes without saying, and has clear merit in its own right.

But we shouldn’t overlook the more Machiavellian payout for developing conventions that produce an end result that is good for Joe Public: you begin to think like one of the engineers in charge of improving Google’s algorithm. And when you think like Google wants you to, you can get ahead of the game. Sure, not every new strategy you implement will become part of the secret sauce, but some inevitably will.

As online reputation management matures as a field, both public expectations and industry-imposed standards are coalescing around an important, yet not quite defined, point: when is a potential client too toxic to take on?

The topic surfaced on NPR this week – on ‘All Things Considered’ and in an article at NPR.org – as part of a larger discussion about the search optimization industry. After establishing the importance and influence of SEO across virtually every industry, the article delves into an exploration of the practice’s ethics:

Search optimization companies are often approached by fraudulent businesses — and it’s the search companies themselves that have the power to decide what should be hidden, and what should be upfront and public.

“I’m not going to suppress Bernie Madoff’s information — certainly not,” Kaufman says. “Is a piece of information about candidate Ben Quayle writing for a magazine something that should really play a part in voters’ minds? Who am I to say, but I don’t feel it crosses that line.”

There are clearly ethical questions in play for SEO firms. Some companies take all comers; some companies utilize all methods. There is, inevitably, a gray area. In the above excerpt, one SEO expresses his reluctance to act on behalf of a criminal like Bernie Madoff, but sounds willing to jump into a Congressional campaign to try and limit the effect of a politically-driven scandal. The “line” he describes is, indeed, difficult to pin down.

At RepEquity, we’ve faced a handful of these kinds of decisions. Certainly, we’re not interested in suppressing news of criminal behavior… nor would we employ black hat tactics. In the end, our own reputation is at stake, as well as that of our clients. In this nascent time for our industry, we find it best to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: when is a client unsavory? We know it when we see it.

It seems George Clooney isn’t the only one.

The Pew Research Center recently released the results of a study examining Internet users’ habits when it comes to checking up on their own online reputation through search engines. The trends are unmistakable. 57% of all users have conducted a search on their own name, and that number shoots up to 65% of users under the age of 30. The highest single group of self-searchers are college graduates, at 70%.

MediaPost Publications has a good summary of the data, including some thoughts on what this trend means for the online marketing and advertising industry:

At one time people called the act of Googling yourself on a search engine a vanity search or ego-surfing. Now it’s a matter of self-preservation. The practice has long been a part of managing brand reputation, but individuals have learned the value of keeping track of information being collected and posted online about them, too. A study released this week could give advertisers insight into targeting paid search and display ads through behavior and social graphs.

Will the possibility of advertising on terms as targeted as an individual’s name raise some concerns among privacy advocates? The increasing amount of attention being paid to search trends like this one definitely raises the stakes on our online reputations.

Lest we forget that the Internet is not powered entirely by tweets and friending, Small Business Trends has a nice explanation out today regarding the value of the more “traditional” blog. The conclusion:

Though it can be attractive as a SMB owner to let social sites like Facebook or Twitter become your dominant Web presence, it comes with a high cost. The less time you spend building content and authority for your site, the more you make yourself dependent on tools that may one day fall away. And if Facebook or Twitter went away tomorrow – would you have enough seeds planted to attract your audience?

The article makes some great points against putting all your eggs in a basket owned by someone else, and some equally salient points in favor of building your own authoritative web presence that does not rely on the whims of the rapidly evolving social media space.

At RepEquity, we tend to take this a step further. It’s crucial to develop a multifaceted approach to online reputation management – one that includes full immersion in the social media world, but also stakes out more permanent territory. As Small Business Trends points out, you want to be able to exercise full control over some of your online properties; the advantages include strategic link-structures, credibility as a thought leader, and the ability to create great content that supports your brand.

However, simply launching a single blog shouldn’t be the final step. We advise our clients to build out a handful of additional “microsites” designed to augment a primary corporate or product site. Our team can generate unique and meaningful content for each of these secondary destinations, which then become a valuable part of the overall ORM program. One blog can help build credibility and improve your visibility… but two or three additional microsites can cement that credibility and dominate the search engine landscape.

It’s all about diversifying.

Google introduced another new addition to its suite of products this week – an add-on to certain organic results dubbed Social Search:

From a rep management perspective, this particular stage of Google’s social search isn’t likely to have much of an impact. For starters, it’s only part of the search experience for people logged into a Google account (iGoogle, Gmail, etc). It also really doesn’t delve too deeply into any of the social networks it targets; Facebook’s privacy policies are going to limit most of what the spiders crawl.

We already advise most of our clients to maintain profiles on all the major social networks as a defense mechanism, if nothing else. The internal workings of Facebook currently ensure that only the bare bones “public” profile ever gets indexed in the first place, which is actually ideal for a professional looking to exert a degree of control over his or her online reputation. Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter already perform very well in typical organic searches. The new Social Search only underscores the importance of being out there, but being smart about it.