I recently was invited to an Entrepreneur Summit sessions held in Round Rock, Texas by a close friend and business partner.

I always find it an intriguing challenge to hear from business owners looking for ways to launch, sustain and grow their businesses.

Having had a chance to address a small group of entrepreneurs about how to grow their businesses as it relates to SEO and domain names, at the table was a photographer, baker, imports/exports operator, and an online retailer.

I didn’t learn much about the online retailer as he wasn’t too forthcoming with his business or business model.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed answering internet marketing and business strategy questions about the photographer, baker and imports/exports operator.

We talked about and discussed many aspects of launching, sustaining and growing their businesses. I’ll attempt to highlight some of the questions asked and addressed in our short time together.

Things have definitely been moving at a fast pace around Kickstart Commerce, especially pay-for-performance SEO (white hot!).

Customers that signed and executed agreements nearly 6 months ago are finding profitable success in generating greater website traffic and new customer relationships.

Their rankings have not only increased, but their website is listed for multiple listings and a variety of keywords on page one and two of Google. That’s right, the big kahuna of search, Google!

One of the reasons I make mention of the pay-for-performance SEO customers is that the commonality in their success is domain name and high-quality content. Yes, there is more to SEO than just domain name and high-quality content. The focus on domain name and high-quality content is what sets these customers apart from their competition and highly visible search rankings.

Again, a good bit of present day SEO and future SEO will depend on high-quality content being shared by real people finding value in that content, generating and boosting greater backlink profile and link building value. And one way to build and boost your website’s link building value is ensuring your website has a solid foundation in regards to a domain name.

It’s easy to write high-quality content, if your website is information driven, and place that high-quality content, or any type or quality of content on a long and not easy to remember domain name. Can the website rank? Why, yes it could and can rank.

But the real question, will the customers remember the website without having to go back through their varying search steps?

With search engines closing in on 20 years, it’s safe to say that we are still in the early years of search although there have been many advancements along the way.

We’re just now turning yet another corner in search as social and mobile search both progress beyond their infancy.

Small businesses stand the greatest chance to capitalize on learning SEO because of the markets they serve. Small businesses tend serve geographic-specific audiences.

Nevertheless, search plays a key part to every business’ marketing and advertising, not only small businesses.

Whether a small, moderate, or critical percent, ranking your website, once considered optional, has become a mandatory task that businesses can no longer afford to ignore.

If you’re a small business owner with a website, then chances are likely that a good bit of your business, outside of word of mouth and referrals, comes from search engines.

Whether Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp, AngiesList, or another source, small business owners that are looking to boost their local business presence are in great need of learning about small business SEO and local SEO.

For a small business, the local market for their line of business can be quite a competitive and saturated market.

From traditional advertising avenues to search marketing and other online advertising venues, small businesses are trying to get the biggest bang for their buck when it comes to driving new business.

For some, it’s a matter of keeping the doors open.

But like any small business that relies on the web for new customers or their website to act as a 24 by 7 by 365 online salesperson, there is always the question of what is the most effective path to take in optimizing one’s website for local SEO.

One crowd believes in using a single domain to rank local SEO, while others believe in multiple domains to boost local SEO rankings.

So which party is right or wrong? Or are both parties right and wrong?

Today, I’ll take a moment to outline a few local SEO scenarios for small businesses and also discuss the pros and cons of local SEO using single domains and multiple domains.

Like most domainers, I’ve been watching and reading about the new gTLDs, also known as general top-level domain names or new domain extensions, for over a year now, following TheDomains.com, Rick Schwartz, Morgan Linton, and other domainers.

I’ve also followed GoDaddy’s new extensions promotion as well as 1And1.com’s new gTLD promotional commercial.

1And1.com created a great commercial that was well positioned, but what a waste of time and money in my opinion.

To think that 1And1.com wasted nearly 50 million dollars in one-time new gTLD advertising just baffles me to no end.

And for the record, I’ve not seen that same 1And1.com commercial advertising for new gTLDS since my post.

But I digress.

Personally, I’ve taken the stance that domain names, especially premium and super-premium keyword domain names, using new gTLDs are not going to be as successful as .com domain names.

If you’ve not used Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) search queries to track queries and impressions data for your website, then you are missing an opportunity to gain valuable SEO insight for and about your website, and increase its search rankings.

I know there are many of you that have tried free SEO tools in the past as well as paid SEO tools, but none can compare to GWT.

After all, GWT is a Google product and everyone is racking their brains out trying to figure out how to get their website to page one rankings or how to sustain page one rankings for their website.

For a free SEO tool, GWT packs a mean SEO punch and can hold it’s own as a phenomenal tool to use for webmasters and those with websites.

And today I’m going to let you in on a few secrets and how I use GWT to not only optimize my website, but to drive substantial search ranking changes and increases for my website in Google and other search engines.

If you’ve had any sort of experience with SEO over the last few years, then you should understand the complexity of trying to garner and perfect the art and science of increasing your website’s backlink profile.

Trying to increase one’s website backlink profile is much like or as difficult as trying to get the inside scoop on a news story before it goes public.

There are a number link building methods, both good and bad, one can use to destroy or increase a website’s backlink profile.

One good link building method is writing content that is value-add and worth sharing. A bad link building method is buying links via paid link services or some unauthentic linking approach.

And those are just starters that lead to a multitude of link building strategies.

But what I care to give focus to today is how you can increase backlinks using current events SEO tactics and techniques.

Current events SEO is definitely a great way not to only increase backlinks, but writing about current events in the right way, at the right time, and about the right topic can cause your website to be and remain relevant.