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Most Search Engine Optimization experts find search engine submission services to be a waste of time and a scammy type of service.

That being said, Google's John Mueller took it a step up by saying using these services may hurt your rankings.

In a Google Webmaster Help thread John responded to a webmaster who was asking "mass website submissions to search engines," and asked if it will have any impact on their rankings.

John from Google said, yes, it may, it may have a negative impact. Why? John explained that it can lead to a tremendous number of unnatural links for your site. As you know, unnatural links can more than ever have a negative impact on your site. Despite the concerns with negative SEO, this is the reality we live in these days.

So yea, it sounds like in some cases you can use these services to negatively impact your competitors, assuming their link profile looks horrible anyway?

As anyone who's ever struggled to achieve and maintain high search results rankings can attest to, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a constant race to stay one move ahead of your competitors. To win that race, you need to continually improve your own website and monitor your competitors' SEO activity.

If you've watched rivals usurp your top rankings, you'll want to consider these five tips:

1. Focus on content creation.
When it comes to digital marketing, the acronym "ABC" doesn't just stand for "Always Be Closing." It should also remind webmasters to "Always Be Creating."

Whether you're pursuing SEO, pay-per-click or any other digital marketing strategy to attract new visitors to your website, the quality and amount of content matters. Adding fresh content to your site makes it more appealing both to the search engines and their automated indexing programs, as well as the people who read your pages. High-value content can also lead to viral sharing, which increases the number of external backlinks pointing at your website and further improves your SEO.

So content creation is a "win-win-win." If you're concerned about competitors usurping your high search rankings, you can't go wrong by investing time in creating blog posts, articles, downloadable products and other content for your site.

2. Plan your keyword targeting strategies carefully.

As you're creating this content, you'll want to pay careful attention to the keywords you're targeting. Just because you've reached the top spot in the Google results for a given keyword doesn't mean that maintaining this ranking is a valuable use of your time.

What you need to focus on are the search queries that yield the highest total traffic. To determine which keywords are most effective and which ones can be ceded to competitors, look at the traffic data for different search queries using Google Analytics or Google's Webmaster Tools program. If possible, use advanced tools like Raven Tools (free, with paid plans starting at $99 per month) to determine which keywords are producing the most conversions.

3. Stay abreast of SEO news.

SEO is a field that's constantly changing. If you're able to jump on a new technique or growing trend before your competitors, you may be able to cement your lead in the natural search results.

Set aside time each week to monitor SEO news websites such as Search Engine Land or Search Engine Watch. If you see evidence of a major change in SEO best practices, take action right away to prevent your site from falling behind in the search results.

4. Monitor your competitors' backlink profiles.

While it's important to monitor your own website's backlink profiles to prevent negative SEO attacks, you should also keep a close eye on any changes in the links your competitors are building.

Often, the best SEO techniques aren't widely publicized. Instead, people accidentally stumble upon a winning combination that leads to positive website results. By monitoring your competitors' backlink profiles using tools like Majestic SEO (free, with paid plans starting at $49.99 per month) or Open Site Explorer (free, with paid plans starting at $99 per month), you can both identify potential linking partners for your site and uncover any new linking strategies your competitors may be using to try to beat you.

5. Monitor your competitors' on-site SEO activities.

Also monitor competitors' on-site optimization efforts. If any competitors dramatically change their SEO activities, you could be looking at one of two possible scenarios: They may have discovered a new way to optimize their pages in the search results, or they may be updating their pages in response to a penalty from the search engines.

Online Branding vs SEO

For marketing, while SEO has its own advatages, online branding offers many benefits. In certain instances, marketers may be confused to use whether SEO or online branding. However, we bring in the benefits of both strategies for marketing a product or service.

Search engine optimizer is popularly known as SEO and a process of improving the rank or visibility of a website by editing its content and HTML including associated coding and removing barriers to the indexing activities. However, SEO has nothing to do with online branding. The more you do SEO the more you attract visitors and customers.

On the othe hand, spreading your brand and getting recognized by the online world is online branding. Social media sites started helping marketers to promote their products more effectively than ever before. The brands are noticed when the internet users while using certain social networking sites resulting in purchasing your product or service.

How important is it to be on top? In search marketing, the difference between a first and second place listing can be huge, according to new research from Compete.com.

Their recent analysis of "tens of millions" of consumer-generated search engine results pages from the last quarter of 2011 highlights a few interesting insights for marketers. As shown in the illustration above, 85 percent of all listings shown are organic, with 15 percent paid search listings. Overall, 55 percent of search engine results pages have ads.

When it comes to clicks on those organic listings, 53 percent go to the top result. The second sees 15 percent of the action, the third 9 percent, the fourth 6 percent, dwindling all the way down to 4 percent to round out the top 5.

“Since the vast majority of listings on a SERP [search engine results page] are organic, and the majority of clicks are on the first listing, it’s imperative that brands strategy including constantly monitoring results due to the ongoing evolution of search engine algorithms,” Compete analysts advise.

Paid listings perform far better at the top, as well. Not necessarily the top of the ad block, but the top of the page as a whole.

Compete’s research shows that 61 percent of paid search ads are displayed in the right sidebar. Yet these ads get just 13 percent of the clicks. Sure, you want to be on top in the right ad block; the top listing on the right gets 4 percent of all paid search clicks, while the second gets just 3 percent.

However, the third listing in the top ad block gets more than double this, at 9 percent. The first listing at the top of the page gets an overwhelming 59 percent of all paid search clicks. Clearly, wherever it makes sense and is attainable, the top of the page is the place for advertisers to be.

A few other interesting tidbits stand out in the report:

Compete also offered by way of advice for marketers, “There is a strategic battle going on in SERPs and every decision has a dramatic impact on results. Most, if not all, search marketing efforts need to prove a ROI as there is a very definite spend, whether it is SEO or SEM.”

According to SEL, major Google Panda update happened on 27th September 2012 and almost 2.4% search engine queries for English language is impacted with this update. This is the 20th iteration of Panda update and changing the name convention for Panda updates, it’s call as Google Panda 20.

What’s new in Google Panda 20th Update?

Unlike all previous algorithm update, which was just a data refresh, this 20th Panda update includes more signals and it’s an algorithm update and not just a data refresh. Usually in a data refresh, very few percentage of search queries are affected but this time, it was a major algorithm update and affects 2.4% search queries. That means, more ranking signals added or removed in this update.

One major issues with this update Webmasters are facing is, distinguish between EMD and Panda update. Since, the time difference is hardly 24-48 hours and Webmasters who are using exact match domains to get SEO advantage, it’s hard to determine if they are affected by Panda or Exact match domain penalty.

Though, one thing which is very common about both the algorithm change is: Both are targeted to penalize low quality content and improve the ranking of high quality content and domains. So, if your blog traffic went down between 27th-29th September, you need to work on your Blog SEO, quality of articles and work on over all Social media optimization and branding of your blog.

Though, I really hate the latest update as I could see too many results from same domain and it’s decreasing the over all Google search quality. I hope it’s just related to few of my queries but if you are also seeing the same results as me, do let me know via comments. One thing which is certain after Panda, Penguin, EMD and other algorithm updates is Google values high quality Blog with quality content. More over, niche targeted blogs are easier to rank for small tail and Long tail Keywords.

If you suspect that you have been hit by Google Panda 20th, you can use Google penalty checker tool to find which algorithm update affected your blog. You can check out a timeline of Google algorithm updates here.

If you are not affected by EMD and affected by Panda algorithm update, I recommend you to check out following 5 articles, which will help you to understand how SEO works after Post panda and penguin world and how you can stay ahead of crowd:

Road to Panda recovery is going to be time-consuming but with few tweaks you can easily see the traffic difference in matter of a week. If you have never done SEO optimization of your WordPress blog, you can take advantage of my Personal Blog coaching or WordPress SEO service to make your WordPress blog more search engine friendly.

1.    CREATION OF BUFFER SITES
We Create Fan page, You Tube, Google+, Blogger, Twitter, Yahoo Groups, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc, And use them as buffer sites to reduce link velocity. Main object is of the better sites is that, money site/Main site, should be 100% safe or in other words there is No Risk of Google slap (Banned, Deindexed or Sandboxed).
2.    SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

3.    WEB 2 SITES OR SOCIAL NETWORKS
Web 2 sites/properties or social networks are not article directions. They should be created as websites and treat them as websites.

4.    VIDEO CREATION & SUBMISSION

5.    ARTICLE DISTRIBUTION TO VARIOUS BLOG NETWORKS

6.    SUBMITTING ARTICLES TO THOUSAND OF ARTICLES DIRECTORIES WITH ARTICLE MARKETING ROBOT

7.    POWERPOINT AND DOC SHARING

8.    PRESS RELEASE

9.    SOCIAL BOOK MARKING

Our philosophy at Creative Content Experts is that search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) require different approaches and time-lines. SEO comes first as you identify keywords and develop on-page content. Then comes SEM as you build links to your site from 3rd party websites.

Search engine optimization is performed on your website by developing or solves a problem for a search engine user. Well written copy on your website starts with relevant keyword selection. Then you develop a page or pages that help search engine users answer a question or solve a problem. Page titles, heading, meta-tags, and the actual copy on the page are all important pieces of the SEO puzzle.

Search engine marketing begins after quality content on your website has been published. You then identify which of the various 3rd party links are most relevant. All 3rd party content should be focus and well-written since search engine users and customers may find this content before they search for you.

Having an easily -accessible quick contact from on each key page of your institution's website on the right side of the page, below the header, will aid the user in requesting information. Why there? Testing has shown this is the most effective placement. The eye travels in an "F" pattern-ending up on the quick contact form.

The web has played a major role in expanding business today. And becoming visible to people who matter, is the priority of all business. Search Engine is the key for online visibility as people use search Engines to find the relevant things they are looking out for. With that in mind here are a few of the expected trends in SEO for 2012.

SEO is a large and dynamic puzzle. No one piece alone will achieve and sustain long term rankings. Some pieces are larger, some are smaller, but they are all imperative to a successful strategy. To have a successful SEO strategy, you will need to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

Search engine optimization is a process to enhance the online visibility of your website in search engines.