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So here we are, one quarter down and recession to go. Recession has become an unfortunate but popular topic in 2008. Some people follow strict definitions of what qualifies technically as a recession while others speak purely from opinion--or maybe they are speaking from the pinch they are feeling in their wallets. For most, they could care less what you call it; labels don't make the impact they are feeling any better or any less painful.

In most industries, when things slow, something has to go. Will that be cutting back on seemingly frivolous expenses, going to fewer industry shows, reducing ad spending, or worse, cutting jobs? Like many industries, search marketing firms are considering these choices as well, and rather hoping that this slowing, downturn, recession, or whatever you want to call it, actually presents more opportunities than hard choices.

Only time will tell, but I like to think the feeling that search marketing firms may be able to find opportunities during these trying economic times are spot on. But don't think this will just be a slam dunk--every opportunity also presents challenges.

So today is a special day. My father celebrates his 70th birthday — aside from my outing his birthday and age (fortunately he probably won't see this), today will be just another day for him. Needless to say, he's not one for celebration. In fact, I think he sees most days as just another day, but in a good way. Let me explain.

My father comes from a time long before the web and computers. He didn't go to college, and fortunately grew up in a day when you could do a lot more with your life without a college degree behind your name — though I think he'd manage just as well even today. As a young kid in the 70's, I remember hanging out at his gas station, and then I spent a fair amount of the rest of my childhood, on through high school, growing up around a Chevrolet dealership as he worked his way up from mechanic to Service Manager, which he fulfilled for longer than I can recall. And not just any Service Manager — he was one of the top 65 Service Managers for GM most of that time as well. I'm sure he considered those to be "just another day" kind of days as well. As you can imagine, I got a huge dose of customer service throughout my life.

My father is true old-school, coming from a time when you did whatever you needed to to take care of the customer. And it shows. The dealership he was at continued to provide customers with loaner cars when their car was being serviced for an extended period of time, they had customers that would come in from all over to buy or get their vehicles serviced, and my father would go out of his way to help a customer with whatever they needed. To this day, I struggle to remember a time when I went anywhere with him and someone didn't come up to him to say hi or thank you for something he did. While he's left the dealership and now semi-retired, he continues to work, and more importantly, continues to practice these old-school ways.

So what does any of this have to do with the web? In this modern technology world with websites, e-commerce and search engines delivering all the information we seek, there are still some important elements of the pre-web era that we need to carry-over. I have no doubt that much of my father's success in life has been his "do what it takes" attitude, especially when it comes to taking care of customers and dealing with people. The web often removes some of that personal connection of a brick-and-mortar world, but that's no reason not to do everything you can to take care of your site's visitors.

SEO has become about so much more than just content optimization, choosing the right keywords and search engine spiders. SEO is really just one aspect of search marketing, and marketing in general, and successful SEO practitioners realize this. It's important to make sure that a website focuses on the needs of the audience. Is the site laid out in a way that meets the needs of the visitors? Is the site focused on selling products or services, or is it focused on helping the visitors solve their problems? Is the site nothing more than an electronic brochure or shopping cart, or does it provide visitors with useful information to help and educate them?

Set out to "do what it takes" to satisfy and help your visitors. Give them a great, user-friendly experience and give them the information they need to solve their problems. As the web continues to evolve and mature, the most successful sites will stand as a resource, providing information to help site visitors. Sure, low or at least competitive pricing may be important, as will a user-friendly return procedure, but gaining their trust up-front will come from helping them out with nothing expected in return.

Oh yeah, and this useful information, this resource you put together to help your site visitors and customers, could serve as a tremendous lead generator and traffic pull. What happens when you put together the definitive source of information on a particular problem or need? If it is done well, then you have probably created great linkbait that will naturally encourage people to link to that information.

Hopefully you'll also make sure that the information is easily accessible to search engine spiders, and with a little keyword research before developing this content, you'll also have great insight into the optimal terms and keyword phrases to title and pepper this content with. And don't forget that this keyword research may also point you toward the content, the problems and issues, people are looking for.

What's old is new. Whizz-bang on the web may be entertaining, but at the end of the day, people are looking for substance. They are looking for information. And for those who are willing to do what it takes, many of these people will be more than happy to tell everyone they know in person, but also to blog about it, to link to it from their MySpace or Facebook page, to write reviews, or whatever else. It's great knowing that some things do stand the test of time. Deliver a great experience, and you'll be rewarded many times over.

Thank you, dad, for teaching me the importance of delivering on your word, for doing whatever it takes to not only satisfy but to exceed expectations, and for always finding joy in whatever I do. Happy birthday dad.

So I've been meaning to do some write-ups on some browser toolbars and plug-ins that may be useful for SEO purposes...and leave it to Rand at SEOmoz.org to remind me of this with his review of 12 popular browser toolbars.

Link Counter (download) is one that I absolutely love both for what it does and its simplicity. Links play a very important part in SEO, both internal links as well as external links. Are they live or broken, 301 redirected, HTML or JavaScript based? Unfortunately the one thing it doesn't seem to manage is showing "nofollow" links, but there are plenty other tools out there that do that.

The best way to get a feel for Link Counter is to see it in action, and one of the best places to see it in action is on an e-commerce site. E-commerce sites are often rather complex with many links on a page, links out to external sites, to product pages, JavaScript windows, and more. Let's use Onlineshoes.com for our demo.

The long-awaited launch of Wikia Search Alpha, a Wikipedia-esque search engine has arrived. And I have to admit to being disappointed. It's no Google-killer. Heck, it's no Mahalo-killer either.

Since the inception of Wikia Search's Search-l mailing list last year, I've been quietly lurking but following their progress with some interest. It was great anticipation that I went to check out their just-launched (as of January 7th) alpha version of Wikia Search, an open source search engine. I took a look around the search engine and was pretty surprised to find that not only were the results irrelevant -- the top results weren't even in a language I could understand.

Let's take a look at the search results for "seo"...

Search Results in Search Wikia for SEO

Hmm... Japanese results in the top positions? There's nothing (useful) to see here (in the first page of results), keep moving... I didn't see a way to define my language settings and filter out non-English pages either.

Just for fun, I put my name into Wikia Search. I was relieved to see that this CNET blog was ranking, but my own, personal blog which has been around for years was at the bottom of the page. "Ed Stephan's Timeline of Sociology" was number two.

At this rate, Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) has nothing to worry about.

Like many companies, Netconcepts recently celebrated the holidays with a little staff get together and mystery gift exchange. There were the usual, but always popular gifts of coffee, tea, chocolates, and wine, as well as a very popular Atari console ... and as we did the "you can open one or steal one" gift rule, it certainly was the most fought over gift.

Unfortunately due to timing, Stephan wasn't able to make it as he was out visiting our friends in Seattle and participating in a great SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday otherwise he might have been torn between the Atari and the unique gift that follows and shows that even search geeks have a sense of humor (twisted as it may be).

Every search marketer has their bag of tricks and tools, but why settle for a bag when you can have a kit ... or more accurately, a box with built in carrying handle? And at $15 or less, the cost limit for our gift exchange, within range of even the budding search marketer.

What comes in a Search Marketer's Kit? I thought you'd never ask. Luckily, each item in the kit comes with its own identification tag.

Official Super Deluxe Search Marketer's Kit

Games always seem to capture a lot of attention this time of year, in part because of kids and toys for Christmas or adults and getting together for the holidays. It would seem that search marketers enjoy games, too. While this often revolves around contests or challenges to get a site to rank No. 1 in the SERPs, at PubCon this year, SEOmoz even got some search marketers to unplug long enough to play an SEO version of Werewolf.

With only a week before Christmas, I couldn't help but wonder what games might be dancing around in search marketer's minds. While these classic renditions probably haven't made it to the shelves yet, maybe this will plant the seed for next season.

When it comes to games, it's hard to beat the classics, of course...so here are 10 searchized-games for search marketers:

Connect Four Reciprocal Links — (based on the classic Connect Four game), This game is based on the outdated concept of reciprocal linking. The winner is the one who can create the biggest reciprocal linking circle. Of course, this game is purely for fun.

Battleship Text Link Buys — (based on the classic game of Battleship) This text-link-buy smack-down game puts each opponent in the role of seeking out the other's text link buys and reporting them to Google. The one who sinks the other's PageRank first is the winner.

Keyword Scrabble — (based on the classic Scrabble game) Keywords are a foundation of the search world. Players take turns building on keyword phrases, earning points based on the smallest keyword phrase that achieves the highest rank in Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

Twister Search Career — (based on the zany classic Twister) Like any industry, the search industry often features moving from one company to another. In this game, instead of colored circles, the playing mat features company logos. Just like the Web industry, each player must reach out and touch a number of different company logos, constantly moving from one company to another without falling down.

SERPs Memory — (based on the age-old game of Memory) Test your visual and memory skills by viewing a listing of top-10 SERPs from Google, Yahoo, and MSN before they disappear, and then matching up the listings across the SERPs. The one who gets the most matching results across the engines wins.

Spammer Mouse Trap — (based on the fun game of Mouse Trap) Ever wonder what a day in the life of Matt Cutts would be like? Find out with this exciting game where you get to build a trap to catch search spammers.

Search Operation — (based on the nerve-racking game of Operation) Search marketers have to have nerves of steal when every move they make can result in a site plummeting in the SERPs. Test your skill by removing bad bits and pieces from a Web page; but be careful--alert the spiders and you may get a shock.

Stratego Search Position — (based on the battle strategy game of Stratego) Search marketing, like most forms of marketing, is often a matter of strategy. Position and move your Web pages to overthrow your competition, gaining stronger search positioning, winning more site visitors, and achieving the highest ROI.

The Game of Life Search — (based on The Game of Life) One of my favorites growing up, this version has you go through the life of a search marketer, mastering your trade, building your skills, moving from company to company and site to site to achieve your search life goals.

And quite possible the grandest game of all...

Search Monopoly — (based on the classic game of Monopoly) This game can provide hours of fun and is one of the most involved of search games. Chose your playing piece, from exciting favorites like white hat, black hat, Googlebot, Slurp, or MSNbot, and work your way around the game board, accumulating Web properties. Beware--landing on a Made-For-AdSense site or SPLOG can cost you, as can landing in the Google sandbox. Pull a Chance card and find that "Matt Cutts caught you buying Text Links. Lose two PageRank points and wait a turn to file for re-inclusion." But it isn't all bad...pull a card from the Community Chest and you may find that you "Win a one year SEOmoz Premium Membership," or "A free pass to SMX." The winner, of course, is the one who accumulates the most Web properties and finishes with the largest amount in VC funding.

As far as I know, none of these games exist yet, but a lot can happen between now and next year.

*All of these game concepts are based on related games that are the property of Hasbro. Until these games exist, you'll just have to buy the classics and pretend or modify to make your own.

Stephan Spencer, Jeff Muendel and Brian Brown may occasionally blog about subjects that are tangentially related to organizations affiliated with their company, Netconcepts. More specifically, Netconcepts is a member of the Shop.org association, and they may occasionally blog about their research or blog sessions from their conferences. Also, CNET has been an SEO client of Netconcepts. Neither affiliation should impact the objectivity of the authors' posts on this blog.