Aaron Wall, the author of SEO Book, first broke the news after discovering it in one of his forums. In short, Google apparently violated its own Webmaster Guidelines for paid links as part of a marketing campaign for Google Chrome.

“It was obviously paid exposure,” said Wall.

Shortly after this interview was conducted, Google responded to the incident and devalued its Chrome landing page for “at least 60 days,” according to the company’s Webspam Head Matt Cutts.

In a statement to WebProNews, a Google spokesperson said:

“Google never agreed to anything more than online ads. We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We’re now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.”

Wall did tell us that he hoped that, going forward, Google would be more “lenient” when dealing with others since mistakes can happen to anyone, even search giants.

First of all, Aaron recommends Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool. This tool allows users to find keywords organized by categories. It also displays the competition for a keyword, its suggested bid, and more.

Competitive research tools have become increasingly popular over the last year. They give users an insight into what their competitors are doing and provide an opportunity for them to capitalize. Aaron recommends the following competitive research tools:

-    Google Keyword Trends
-    Google Search Insights
-    Alexa
-    Compete
-    SEMRush
-    KeywordSpy

Lastly, Aaron humbly explains his own SEO Toolbar. The toolbar does a number of things, but in summary, it lets users select keyword tools, gives data on the number of links to a site, tells the amount of traffic coming into the site, estimates the value of the traffic, provides competitive research tools, and is easily exportable.

Google doesn’t approve of a cash exchange type of purchase, but an indirect approach is accepted. Buying indirectly helps you to get a good link but with a low risk. Your link campaign should strive for a variety of links.

Look for directory links, industry-specific links, and links from people you have done business with in the past. In the above WPN video, Aaron Wall of SEO Book says to stay away from obvious (direct) links since they are high risk.

A few examples of how to obtain indirect links are: testimonials, conferences, and charity events. Testimonials help to build credibility. If a very respected company writes a testimonial for you, it will draw positive attention to you and even business.

Conferences are another good resource for gaining links. There are unbelievable networking opportunities at these events. Having a booth at these events with your business cards readily available can also lead to indirect links.

Being involved in charity events reflect very well on your brand image. It’s also nearly impossible to bring into disrepute a link that was obtained by supporting charity.

To learn more about purchasing indirect links, check out this post from Aaron Wall.

For you’re your convenience, here are some of the links to items/pages/sites referenced in this week’s video:

WebProNews on Quattrone/Google/Yahoo

ZDNet Summary of Yahoo/MSN dealings

Google Analytics Graphing

Google Talk Enhancements

Google App Engine:
On WebProNews
On Matt Cutts Blog

Yahoo Ad Sales

USA Today Alerts

SEO Book Search Engine Rank Tool

Hope you find the links/articles useful. See you next time!

Helpful Programs Include:
* Google Analytics
* Mint Site Tracking Software
* Digital Point Forums
* SEO for Firefox
* Compete.com
* SEO Digger

Yahoo said:
“Our reps have made every effort to make it crystal clear to this customer that the issue had nothing to do with our new system or import tool but rather due to the lack of quality with his keywords, which were not tied to any content. This is standard procedure for handling advertisers who spam our system.”

Video is becoming key to small business according to SEO expert Aaron Wall. Aaron states, “Those who are getting into video now have a head start on people who still think of the web exclusively in terms of text. Think of the current video players as the equivalent of early domainers or people who were creating legitimate domains in your field a decade ago.” Considering that this is a video, I couldn’t agree more!

Aaron’s blog post describes how businesses can use video to market your product or service. At the very least videos offer “something to link to” which can lead to more sales. He also references a post at martinibuster points out the trend from “text to video” by information sites and publishers. Quote: “Matt Cutts, WebProNews, and a few search marketers like Lee Odden and Rand Fishken have been using video much more than in the past.”

Valleywag has added more spin to rumors that Yahoo will shut off its Photos service in favor of Flickr. Ever since Brad Garlinghouse stirred up Yahoo’s executives with his ‘Peanut Butter Manifesto,’ people have wondered if Yahoo would start consolidating duplicate services. So far Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield has ruled out any thoughts of merging:

“I can say that I’m really, really happy about all the recent changes. Valleywag has a lot wrong (not factually wrong, but it shows up in their interpretations) so I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in it.”

So who’s spinning people in the right direction? We’ll have to “picture” that in the future, but Flickr is a lot more popular in the U.S.

Got your Yahoo Mail beta open? Look at the top of your screen, by your username. Do you see a chat button? No? Me neither, but we will soon. Ryan Kennedy on the Yahoo Mail team announced that Messenger and Mail have been merged. You can start a chat right from the mailbox. They’re taking their time rolling this out to the millions of people who use Yahoo Mail beta.