It’s 2010 – the year that South Africans have been breathlessly anticipating since 2004. We’ve had six years to prepare, and now, with a few months to go until the kick-off of the FIFA World Cup, South Africans are white-knuckled with excitement at the prospect.

What a lot of people aren’t thinking about, though, is what’ll happen once the games are over. South Africa has spent all this time and money on infrastructure for the games – and it’s sure to be a phenomenal event – but, once the matches are over and the sporting glitterati have returned to their Spanish villas, what’ll become of our massive stadiums and luxury hotels? It’s all well and good to pour so much effort into a grand event, but it’s also important to keep the momentum going once it’s over. That’s the only way to keep attracting visitors to the country and to continue to boost tourism-generated revenue in South Africa.

In a way, it’s much the same with an SEM campaign. For most websites that haven’t been optimised, significant work is required at the start of the project. The site structure is often overhauled, extensive optimisation is undertaken, and usability is improved. Following these initial changes, the optimised site begins to improve its position on the search engine results pages. It starts to attract more visitors, and it generates higher revenue. It looks great. The SEM campaign is doing exactly what it said it would.

Sure, these results are fantastic. But the problem is that this is where many companies or website owners decide to abandon their online marketing campaigns. A solid foundation has been laid for the site, and it’s attracting more visitors than ever before. So why continue with the campaign, is what many of them ask.

Because, just like a car or a building or a city, an online marketing campaign needs to be maintained, even after it has achieved its initial goal. SEO is an ongoing process that, once implemented, needs to be tweaked and adjusted from time to time to ensure its continued efficiency. There will always be competitors optimising their sites, improving their online visibility and attempting to eclipse your brand. It’s only through committed SEM initiatives that you’ll continue to attract visitors and generate revenue through your site. If you don’t maintain it, it’ll fall to ruin and your visitors will go elsewhere.

Essentially, an online marketing campaign is an investment that needs to be managed over time. After the initial energy and finances are invested in it, it needs to be monitored and maintained to ensure continuous returns. Although it requires less time and money once the right foundations have been laid, it still needs ongoing attention in order to offer rewards over the long-term.

So, whether you’re a mayor or a webmaster, the directive’s the same: Create a solid infrastructure to attract visitors, and keep it maintained to ensure that it stays foremost in their minds – and their search results.

Until quite recently, I thought that PageRank mattered a lot when it came to how Google ranks pages in its SERPs. Well, it does matter, along with the other 200 factors Google considers when ranking pages. What seems more important is relevance. When a colleague of mine pointed out the difference between authority and relevance, and considering these in relation to the purpose of a search engine, things began to fall into place.

Larry Page once said, “The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” Quite a simple statement, and quite a lot of meaning behind the concept too.

Relevance is very important in SEM. Yet PageRank deals more with a site’s authority. Incoming links, new pages and internal linking structure create an answer to an equation used by Google to establish the “importance” or authority of a website. Incoming links count as “votes” in the site’s favour, and if there are enough incoming links (preferably from sites with high a high PageRank), the PageRank will increase. But a high PageRank does not necessarily mean that the site is the most relevant answer to a specific search query.

Think of Page’s statement again. What is the purpose of a search engine? To me, it is to provide a suitable answer to a search query so that I don’t have to trawl the web, looking for what I need. A search engine is there to make my life easier, save me time and give me exactly what I am looking for in a fraction of a second. If the results offer me URLs to sites with assumed “authority”, I might not get what I am looking for. If the results are relevant though, I will find what I am looking for, no matter what the PageRank of the site in question is.

Google doesn’t discriminate in rankings if a site has a lower PageRank – that would be going against Page’s statement. This is not to say that link-building with quality, authoritative and industry-relevant sites isn’t an important part of the SEO process. But, a well-optimised site that uses relevant key-phrases and well-structured, original content will be much more successful in the SERPs for related searches than a site with a higher PageRank and less or inferior content.

Google was back in the news last week after several users complained about “offensive” content on the search engine – specifically, defamatory images of America’s first lady. Google immediately rolled out an apology, explaining that sometimes, offensive or inappropriate search results slip through the cracks – or more accurately, shoot up the ranks – to claim the top spots on the search results. While they stopped short of an actual mea culpa, the search engine offered the salve, “We apologise if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google.”

After much contemplation, I was left in two minds about this apology. Don’t get me wrong – I myself know just how unpleasant it is to stumble across prejudiced information, and how hurtful it can be. Moreover, I can accept that Google – having time on its hands to sift though millions of web pages each day – should have spotted these rotten pages and tossed them from its index in a fit of disgust.

These points noted, however, I do have to ask: Have people forgotten that because of – or maybe despite – its enormous reach, the Internet still provides a platform for Web users to exercise freedom of speech? Not everyone has nice things to say, and some people dedicate inordinate amounts of time to espousing offensive and prejudiced ideas on the Internet. For them, this is the ultimate soap box from which to spout inflammatory ideas – because after all, what’s a bigot without an audience, willing or otherwise? And everyone knows that the online audience is the biggest in the world.

When it comes down to it, the Internet is the most accessible media platform in existence, and anyone who so wishes to use it, or abuse it, can do so with very little (if any) censoring. If I turn on a TV show, pick up a book or inadvertently stumble upon a conversation that I find offensive or insulting, I simply change the channel, close the book or walk away. As do most people faced with similar situations. With the Internet, it’s even easier: It’s one click of the mouse. Certainly, I feel disgruntled, but it’s an unfortunate feature of modern media, which by its very nature encourages the airing and sharing of views, whatever these might be.

I’m not sure I have the answer to this particular conundrum. I think Google did the right thing by issuing an apology – or at least, it did the only thing the (American) public was going to accept. Google has a responsibility to fly its spangled banner with pride. But Google itself states that it doesn’t remove pages simply because people find them offensive. We’re all grown-ups, and for the under-18s, there are countless ways for parents and teachers to block certain types of information on the Internet (if they so wish).

I think it’s up to the responsible Web user to realise that there are people with little else to occupy their minds than their own prejudices, and that they will voice their opinions online – if only to get precisely this sort of reaction. My opinion is, navigate away. I don’t think it’s up to Google, or any other engine for that matter, to block this content (as much as I may sometimes wish it were). These are the schoolyard bullies of the online world. And we all know the best way to deal with a bully.