It’s the silver bullet to SEO: Automation.

Every small business owner would love for SEO to plan, implement, execute, measure and sustain itself automatically.

However, the truth and reality is that it doesn’t. The End.

Okay, there is more to it that just stating the obvious and calling it a day.

This doesn’t mean that certain aspects of SEO cannot be automated.

In fact, there are many aspects of SEO that can be automated.

But the wisdom in automating SEO is knowing what to automate and how to go about automation.

Blinded by future rankings and the expected tsunami of traffic to be receive moments after signing their SEO agreement, business owners fall prey to paying large sums of money for services that either can’t be rendered or are rendered and leave their website severely penalized or de-indexed by search engines.

Too many times, business owners and businesses fall victim to the ole’ foolproof SEO automatic packages that tout overnight page one rankings.

Instead of taking the time to invest in SEO for the long haul, most business owners opt for the silver bullet approach.

Now, I can’t stop you or any other business owner in search of SEO strategies and services from falling prey to automating SEO.

While you can automate some of your SEO actions, there are some SEO actions that you should never automate.

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?

Subdomains have been around for a long time, but it’s only quite recently that internet marketers learned how invaluable they can be. In fact, there was a time when using subdomains was thought to be ultimately bad for SEO.

However, with every cat, dog, and bird update constantly changing search engines, many small business owners and internet marketers are clamoring for anything that can even remotely increase views and ranking.

This has given birth to loads of white-hat, grey-hat, and black-hat SEO marketing tactics.

One marketing tactic many use to boost their rankings is using subdomains.

Once considered gray hat, making use of subdomains for the sole purpose of manipulating search rankings for specific keywords or keyword phrases is now considered black-hat SEO.

But don’t lose hope just yet, as subdomains can be ethically and effectively used via white-hat SEO tactics and strategies.

Don’t believe me? Just check out such sites as Tumblr, Blogspot, WordPress, and Shopify, to name a few.

These popular mainstream websites offer services that allow users to create their own websites using subdomains instead of subdirectories.

So take a step back before we venture too far down the path of subdomain SEO. Let’s take a moment to define domains, subdomains, and subdirectories.

The short answer is “yes” and “no”.  I know, confusing right?

Search engine penalties can expire after a certain time period.

However, a search engine penalty expiring depends upon many factors.

The following factors can determine whether or not search engine penalties expire:

• Whether corrective action has been taken to remedy penalty
• Whether the website is deleted or domain name expires
• If the website continues to garner additional penalties
• If no corrective action is taken or performed to the website

And this leads us to discussing one of my current customers and their search engine penalty saga.

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.

Well, everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off checking their web analytics and webmaster tools to see if their website has been hit by Google Panda 4.0 update or in strong recovery mode.

In a tweet from Matt Cutts over the weekend, it is official that Google started rolling out the Panda 4.0 update.

If you own and operate a website and been keeping tabs on SEO in general, then you know that search marketing has changed quite drastically with the latest Panda and Penguin updates over the last few years.

It’s been a while since we’ve covered a few search ranking factors for boosting one’s website search results across major search engines.

Well, today, we’re going to address the top 20 SEO tips that website owners can implement and execute to ensure that their website’s search rankings remain highly visible or boost your way into page one search rankings across major search engines.

Here are my top 20 SEO tips for small businesses to boost their website’s search rankings.