Yesterday I came across this piece on do-it-yourself Search Engine Optimization at ReadWriteWeb—or more specifically at ReadWriteStart, an offshoot of ReadWriteWeb aimed at getting things done for the small business person. I’ve quoted ReadWriteWeb quite a few times here; it’s one of those started as just a blog but has graduated to the world of “real journalism” web sites that’s managed its business change by hiring former real-world journalists, including my old pal David Strom.

That paragraph had way more information than one paragraph normally should. I talked about journalism, blogging, SEO, business change, and the fortunes of an old friend—all in 76 words. Yikes!

Which is, of course, the point.

Our “stuff” is running together. Everything affects everything and what used to be clear lines have become anything but. So debate blogging versus journalism as much as you like (and you know it’s something I talk about here plenty), but with the New York Times syndicating ReadWriteWeb content you know the lines are blurring.

Which brings us to business change management. Which, of course, is what we do here.

The J Word doesn’t just blur against blogging; journalism has hazy borders with business change, too. In fact, they really do all run together. Washington Post writers getting fired for not doing SEO? So three years ago. David Aldridge writing for the NBA while writing about the NBA? Now we’re getting there!

David Pogue gets it. Jeff Haden does, too. Both had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the reality that is business change/journalism/social networking/search engine optimization, but they’re in. Once again, this stuff is all running together. It’s a lot to manage. It’s hard.

Bringing us back to the ReadWriteWeb piece on DIY SEO.

I weighed in there, saying that while Search Engine Optimization is something you probably can do all by yourself without hiring people like us, you shouldn’t. It’s a self-serving position, of course, but experience has caused me to really feel this in my bones; you can do your own SEO, but you won’t.

And then I went about my day, during which I happened to stumble across something I wrote a couple of months ago on the place where Justin Bieber, Joustin’ Beaver, and Trademarks intersect.

That piece had high rankings for all permutations of Joustin’ Beaver right after I wrote it, because Google works . . . well, the way Google works, and because the search engine giant sees this web site as worth following. But as time passed our rankings for Joustin Beaver dropped; the story got picked up by larger outlets than Answer Guy Central, and size is one determiner in Search Engine Rankings.

As of right now, here’s how we rank for Joustin’ Beaver:

That’s right. we’re only in the fifty range for Joustin’ Beaver, but Google sees Answer Guy Central as the second most important place in the world for discussion of the trademarking of Justin Bieber.

This is a discussion not as much about how good we are at Search Engine Optimization and why as it’s about Google getting smarter.

I don’t write about Justin Bieber very often, and Joustin’ Beaver, of course, even less. But I talk about trademarks pretty frequently, and one of the things we use to manage our clients business change is Intellectual Property. Google gets that. Even without a direct connection between the Joustin’ Beaver piece and our Intellectual Property page, we get Justin Bieber Trademark props from the Big G.

Business Change, Search Engine Optimization, and the words we speak and read are all running together. Do you know how to manage that?