Google doubled its search market in 2009, compared with 2008 (so did the number of our clients and revenues). Growing this fast is not an unusual trend for the search engine giant. Yahoo! and Bing schlepped and screamed to “dent” Google’s popularity and yet, Google is no game loser. Its search strategy was as strong as ever.

For SEO gurus the game got that much harder. 2009 was by far the most difficult year I had in keeping up with Google. Not only because our admired giant kept changing its search algorithm (like that’s something new), but also because the “link-building” game was being “copied” and “manipulated” by other SEO firms much faster.

“White-hat” SEO techniques that used to work wonders early in the year, had very little effect after a short period of time – due to over usage by all the SEO firms.

I personally rolled up my sleeves and jumped into the pool of learning how to find “new” ways of generating organic links. In another post I will share some of my findings.

I learnt one thing. Finding new organic link-building methods is an ever growing game. We have to spend more time digging into the NET and learn from our trial and errors and tweak our tests to see what works and what doesn’t. Honestly it wasn’t easy.

The good news is that we were more successful than ever. Most of our clients enjoyed top rankings on Google (the ones that were paying for the top rankings) and their businesses grew – even in the economic down-turn.

We were even able to offer free SEO to over 300 qualified Web sites. Close to 90% of them saw a change in their rankings. This is what we gave back to the Internet world.

Be tuned in as I will post more items related to some of our SEO secrets as well as laying down our strategies for 2010. Enjoy your holidays.

Ali Husayni
President

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