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Search Engine Land

US Justice Dept. Formally Confirms Google Books Inquiry: It’s not really a surprise or even news that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed yesterday it was formally investigating the terms of the Google Book Search settlement. This was known as far back as April and essentially confirmed

The 3 SEO/SEM Conference Personas: I recently returned from the successful SMX-Advanced search engine optimization and advertising conference, and I had an epiphany: as a speaker, usability principles are applicable to these conferences. Which usability principle, you might ask? Before usability professionals create an information

FriendFeed Joins The Real-Time Search Race: Add FriendFeed to the long and growing list of players who are trying to win the race for comprehensive and quick real-time search. FriendFeed has always had a real-time element — the ability to track social activities almost as they

Google Blog Search Sees Twitter Trends & Raises With Blog Search ‘Hot Queries’: A lot of the innovation in search these days is all about What’s happening right now? Twitter is the poster child where real-time search is concerned, and despite its ongoing spam problem, Twitter Trends has become one of the primary

What Ads Types Are Most “Helpful”? Search Ads Follow Newspapers, TV: Trade magazine AdWeek and pollster Harris Interactive conducted a survey in early June among 2,521 US adults. People were asked what types of ads they found most “helpful” and what types of ads they ignored. Below are the top-line results

The Collusion Of Editorial & Advertising; Plus: Cheap Ways To Buy Exposure: Many reporters would like you to believe there is a firm wall between content and advertising, but often they merge…particularly for niche or trade related publications. When my wife was getting started in business and wanted to promote her first

Google News No Longer Wants Newsmaker’s Comments: In August 2007, Google News released a feature to allow newsmakers to add comments to stories found in Google News. That feature has gone away very quietly.When Google News launched the feature, not only did we find it “weird,” but

Google Expands Universal Search To More Phones In More Countries: Of the big three search engines, one could argue that Google is directing the most focused, ongoing effort toward mobile. Clearly Yahoo and Microsoft see mobile as a critical part of their business but Google is more or less continually

It’s All About Local Organic Domination: Lately I’ve been speaking with SEM experts about what small business owners should do to increase their online visibility. While opinions vary, most experts agree about the importance of ranking high on Google’s various organic search results.Listening to them explain

Google Book Search Lawsuit Gets Conference Treatment: New York Law School will host a three-day conference about the Google Book Search lawsuit starting on October 8 — one day after the rescheduled fairness hearing that may decide the case’s future.You may recall that the judge in the

Hunch Doing ‘Pretty Well,’ Co-Founder Says: Barely two weeks after its launch, Hunch is already taking stock of its progress. “How well do we think Hunch is working?,” asks co-founder Chris Dixon. “Pretty well, although we still have a ways to go.”Writing on the Hunch blog,

Bing Adds Twitter Smart Answers: Bing has announced they are now displaying Twitter results for prominent and prolific Twitterers in their search results. The Twitter results show the person’s latest Tweets and a link to “see more tweets” from that user. For example, if you

Google Book Search Now With Cloud Tag: The Google Book Search Blog announced a neat new feature that allows you to peek into the book via what is known as a cloud tag. The cloud tag shows you the most common terms and phrases used in the

Legistalker: What Happens In DC Doesn’t Have To Stay In DC: As a nation, the US seems to be more interested in politics than we’ve been in a long time. Voter turnout in last year’s presidential election was 61%, the first time it passed 60% in 40 years. When President Obama

Su Content Es Mi Content: Leveraging In-House Content For SEO: It hardly needs saying that content is important for SEO: a properly structured site with frequently updated, keyword-rich content is the best foundation for high search engine rankings. Quality content that is interesting or useful to users also has an

Google Toolbar For IE Adds “Advanced” Translation: The Google Blog announced the latest version of the Google Toolbar for IE (Internet Explorer) has new “advanced translation” capabilities. The translation features include:Automatic detection of languages other than your default languageOne click translationClient side (does not communicate with Google)

5 SEO Tips For Nabbing International Search Real Estate: Though the housing market continues to plummet in the United States, “real estate” on the search results page is as competitive as ever as marketers try to nab as much as possible. But accomplishing this in foreign markets can be

SPONSOR MESSAGE: 200 million passionate people. Reach exactly the ones you want.: With Facebook Ads, you can target your ideal audience as precisely as you want- from age and gender to other demographics and interests. Each ad is 100% branded by the advertiser and will be easily viewed in the left-hand Ad

OPA Study Reaffirms Display Ads Drive Search: Search and display. One often hears how they work together, but there’s still plenty of skepticism out there, especially in the SEM community, about the value of display advertising. Indeed, during the recession search has prospered (relatively speaking) while display

Stephen Colbert Does Send-Up Of Twitter & Jeff Goldblum Death Rumor: Last week, we covered how a rumor that Jeff Goldblum was dead spread on Twitter and even Google . This week, Stephen Colbert did a great send-up of the rumor, including a visit by Goldblum himself.The clip starts out with

Aaron Wall's SEO Book.com

Is Trust The New Competitive Advantage?: There is an interview on Open Forum in which Seth Godin interviews Richard Branson. The question is: Why is small business is better than big business?Branson explains how he structures Virgin so that it is a series of

Appearing Transparent is Profitable, Being Transparent is Not: John Andrews has a great post about structured data & SEO. My take on the idea (for most businesses anyhow)?It is an arbitrage play. If you are the first person in a space to do it really well and can

The Next Big Shift In Web Marketing: There was an article on TechCrunch entitled Jump Into The StreamIn short, the article is about how the internet appears to be going through its next big shift. It is moving towards becoming a stream of immediate information.

Site Testing That Isn't Tedious: Do you know what attracts your readers? What headlines they respond to most? Do they respond to pictures? Do they know what your offer is? No doubt we all agree that testing is a good thing to do.

Your FICO Score Follows You Around the Web: In one of the more absurd public privacy invasions online, Google has announced they are going to use FICO scores to help advertisers target ads at consumers in different credit buckets. I wonder if at some point in time if

Submit Your Blog to Amazon.com & Become a Kindle Publisher: Amazon.com opened up their Kindle publishing program to all bloggers. If you prefer to read blogs on your Kindle you can subscribe to SEO Book for the Kindle at Amazon.com.Publishers get 60 cents per month per subscriber. It is unlikely

Google AdWords, PPC Industry Becoming Far More Cut Throat: iProspect recently did a study which showed that the majority of people who respond to graphical ads do so via a latent action other than a click on the ad, like a search for the brand. Any such brand lift

Google Webmaster Central Guide: Google Webmaster Central have just updated their toolset, so now might be a good time to review it.For those new to Webmaster Central, Google offer a set of very useful tools that provide an insight into how Google

How to Make Easy Money on Google: Want To Make a Living on Google Money?AdAge has a good post about how Googles promotion of fraudulent advertising is undermining their brand...In a world of double-digit unemployment and old-line industries in mid-collapse, heres a sales pitch tailor-made for the

SEM Training: Do You Make These 14 Common SEM Errors?: There are a lot of parallels between Google AdWords and SEO, and a lot of the beginner mistakes are the same for both traffic acquisition strategies. I figured it would be worth outlining some of the most common ones to

How To Spot Keyword Trends: When we launch SEO projects, weve often got one eye on the future.We start with a site that ranks nowhere, then we build links and optimize with the expectation that a few months from now, well start getting

Free Keyword Research Tool for Bloggers: Free Inline Keyword Research ToolWordTracker recently announced the launch of a new free Firefox extension that aids you in doing keyword research while blogging. The keyword tool works with any publishing software, and helps you ensure

SEO Pivot - a Lightweight SEM Rush 100 Results Deep: The folks behind SEM Rush recently launched SEO Pivot.SEM Rush does a great job of comparing sites head to head, but is a bit top heavy in the search results (only searching through Googles top 20

Free Keyword Research Tool for Bloggers: Free Inline Keyword Research ToolWordpress recently announced the launch of a new free Firefox extension that aids you in doing keyword research while blogging. The keyword tool works with any publishing software, and helps you ensure

Google Sending Out Keyword Suggestions via Email: A few days ago Google sent me the following email, which somehow sent me keywords for other websites.Google did a follow up email appoligizing for the first email sending me the wrong keywords and sending me a

What Would Google Do? - Book Review: If Google is so successful, shouldnt you be doing what they do? If you follow their philosophy, then you can be successful, too.This book, by blogger Jeff Jarvis, is a collection of Google fanboy thoughts on how to

FTC Going After Bloggers = Epic Fail: The AP reported that the FTC is planning on going after bloggers that make fake endorsements or get paid in products for coverage without disclosing it:New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that

Google to Promote Affiliate Product Ads in Search Results: Blogoscoped scooped an email to a Google advertiser promoting Google Product Ads:Product ads are paid product listings that appear when users search for products on Google. Through participation in the Google Affiliate Network product ads beta program, you can promote

Get Rich Quick: What Can We Learn From The Hard Sell?: Do aggressive marketing practices repel you?Or make you more likely to buy? Is it a cultural thing? For example, does hard sell work in some cultures, but not others?Dear Friend......;)Personally, when I experience the hard-sell, I immediately become

Introduction thread #3: We have already closed out a couple welcome threads. If you are new to the site, please say hi and introduce yourself. :)

SEOmoz

Whiteboard Friday - Crawling & Indexing: Posted by great scott!Crawling and Indexing. Without them you cant rank. If you cant rank, you cant get search traffic. If you cant get search traffic, your online marketing efforts are going to suffer; and in our industry that is

A Dozen Don'ts for SEOs: Posted by randfishIm not always a fan of Guy Kawasakis work, but really enjoyed his post on the OPEN Forum - A Dozen Donts for Entrepreneurs. I thought Id take a stab at replicating it with some of my biggest

Using small website to create a bigger impact: Posted by RobOusbeyWe all like links from big sites right?Whether its in an editorial article, a guest post, etc, its great for sending some strength and trust to your site. However, the drawback of links from big sites, is that

A Checklist to Choose Which Internet Marketing Channel is Right for Your Business: Posted by randfishMy good friend, Aaron Kahlow, posed an interesting question during the Online Marketing Summit yesterday afternoon in Portland, OR. Aaron asked:If a client came to you with $1 million to invest in a single Internet marketing channel, which one would you

Tips from a recovering journalist: How to write effective press releases that help SEO: Posted by MikeK@DanconiaMediaThis post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The authors views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views

My Startup Experience: VC, Entrepreneurship, Self-Analysis & The Road Ahead: Posted by randfish(Intro: This post continues a series of personal growth focused entries. It doesnt have much direct, applicable SEO value, so feel free to skip if thats what youre seeking)Ive learned more in the last 9 months than at

A Bad Day for Search Engines: How News of Michael Jackson's Death Traveled Across the Web: Posted by Danny Dover First and foremost, let me extend my best wishes to the family and friends of Michael Jackson. I can only imagine the pain of losing a close friend and then having to watch it play out on

Whiteboard Friday - Correlation, Causation & SEO: Posted by great scott!This week, Rand is joined by one of our in-house data geniuses, Ben Hendrickson, to talk more about some of our recently released correlation data to support guidelines for SEO best practices.While correlation doesnt always equal causation,

5 Ways to Improve your SEO Landing Pages: Posted by Sam NiccollsA lot a marketers focus optimization efforts at the bottom of their conversion funnels. One effective way to examine conversion rates at the bottom of the funnel is to create a custom segment that excludes visitors who

Summer 2009 Online Marketing and Search Conferences: Posted by jennitaIs it just me, or is it getting on hot in here? Well it IS summer time again, and this year there are some interesting (both national and global) summer online marketing conferences happening. Some of the mozzers

Announcing the 2009 SEOmoz PRO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics: Posted by great scott! Its that time again and were happy to announce the 2009 SEOmoz PRO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics seminar is now on sale. Last year, we sold out within

The 12 Skills That Have Served Me Best in My SEO Career: Posted by randfishIve gotten a lot of email recently from folks asking what they can do to get involved in the world of search marketing and SEO. Tonight, Mystery Guest and I attended the Seattle Job Social event and had

How You Can Use SEOmoz in your Sales Process: Posted by Lucy LangdonThe aim of this post is to describe a few of the ways SEO agencies (or, in some instances, in-house SEOs looking for more budget from the boss) can use SEOmoz to pitch and close SEO projects.We

SEO Best Practices: SEOmoz's New Policies Based on Updated Correlation Data: Posted by Danny Dover SEO is a tricky skill. It is based on computer science but requires a certain level of artistry. It is a mixture of working with an enormous amount of search engine operated machines and an even larger

Whiteboard Friday - How Do We Plug the Nofollow Leak?: Posted by great scott!This weeks Whiteboard Friday addresses everybodys new favorite topic: Googles "new" treatment of nofollow and how it creates a massive reservoire of lost link juice. Everybody under the sun has written about this (SEOmoz included) in the

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish: Posted by rebecca"The time has come," the Walrus said,"To talk of many things:Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling hot--And whether pigs have wings."We can talk about the temperature of the sea and the possibility of

Are 404 Pages Always Bad for SEO?: Posted by randfishThere are some very different schools of thought out there regarding 404 error code pages. Some SEOs recommend: Never allowing them - 301ing every error page back to the home page or an internal category level page to

Revisiting Themed Links: Posted by randfishMany years ago, when I first started in the search marketing industry, several instances of the debate around "themed links" flared up, cooled off and reared their head again. Nowadays, it makes infrequent, though periodic appearances in the

Linkscape Index Update: Now with More Visualization: Posted by Nick GernerLast night we rolled out our latest Linkscape index update (we call it "index13" internally). From a data perspective weve got a few things wrapped in here that might interest you guys: 53 billion urls (our biggest

Jane and Robot Search Developer Summit: Posted by jennitaLast Friday I attended and spoke at the Jane and Robot Search Developer Summit in San Francisco. The idea of the conference was to cover technical SEO topics and help train developers and others. The 100 attendees (or

Matt Cutts

Making a John Q Public account on Google: One of the advantages of working at Google is that you get to see neat products and features before the rest of the world does. But that can also be a disadvantage. Sometimes I’d like to talk about a fun

30 day challenge begins: biking to work: The overwhelming winner in my 30 day poll was “Bike to work” so that’s what I’m doing during the month of July. In the third week of July I’ll be out in Boston to speak at SIGIR, but any time

Funny spam email, June 2009: I enjoy posting some of the funny emails that I get. This one made me laugh:You don’t need to %SI3_rnd10 rod’s %SI3_rnd11 and %SI3_rnd12 %SI3_rnd13’ jokes!This is a %SI3_rnd14 for %SI3_rnd15 your %SI3_rnd16! It will %SI3_rnd17 in seconds after she

Natural links are better than non-natural: I got a spam email that I thought about blogging about, but decided not to. Then they spammed me *again*. Sheesh. So here goes. If you get an email with a subject like “Affordable Link Building Outsourcing,” think twice. Any

30 days: 30 days is enough time to build a habit. Last month, I started trying to walk 10,000 steps a day for 30 days. I didn’t walk 10K steps every day, but I did keep at it until I’d walked over

My review of the iPhone 3GS: Disclaimer: This post is entirely my personal opinion. I also own an HTC T-Mobile G1, which runs Google’s Android operating system.I picked up the new iPhone 3G S this Friday and I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts:The Good:-

How to read Persian (Farsi): Google just added machine-translation of Persian (Farsi):This means you can now translate any text from Persian into English and from English into Persian — whether it’s a news story, a website, a blog, an email, a tweet or a Facebook

Watch my site review session from Google I/O: At Google I/O a few weeks ago I did a site review session with fellow Google colleagues Brian White and Greg Grothaus. The video from that session is live now and I’ll include it below:About 38 minutes in, the session

PageRank sculpting: People think about PageRank in lots of different ways. People have compared PageRank to a “random surfer” model in which PageRank is the probability that a random surfer clicking on links lands on a page. Other people think of the

Add Custom Search to any site in two minutes: By the way, you might have missed it at Google I/O, but the Custom Search Engine team has made it really easy to add custom search to any site. Google recently introduced Web Elements, which are simple snippets of code

Android barcode scanner in 6 lines of Python code: After my last video about using a barcode scanner to add and search books in your library, I was feeling pretty happy. Bar code scanners are pretty cheap--mine cost about $65. But then Google released the Android Scripting Environment (ASE)

Search your bookshelf with a $65 barcode scanner: (Okay, if TechCrunch wrote about my video then I should probably at least do a blog post too.)Last year I suggested potential Summer of Code projects and one of my favorite suggestions was “How about a good open-source program to

Straight from Google: What You Need to Know: I just gave a talk at WordCamp San Francisco 2009. Thanks to Matt Mullenweg and the Automattic folks for a great time! I think there will be a video up soon, but if you want to browse the slides in

I’m back!: I should be back over at mattcutts.com. I’m sure some bits have sloshed around in the transition from dullest.com to mattcutts.com--let me know if you see anything truly weird.I plan to talk sometime soon about what I learned in the

Use a Wii Balance Board with Linux: In this post you’ll learn how to make a working Bluetooth weight sensor + fast real-time graphical display with about 200 lines of Python code. You can code any Nintendo Wii-like video game for Ubuntu/Linux and the Nintendo Balance Board

What you should do next week: Next week is going to be a humdinger. If you’re in the Bay Area, here’s what I think you should do:- Attend Google I/O. If you’re a developer, trust me, I think you’ll get something out of the conference. Just

Letter to a young journalist: Don’t conclude from my previous post that I dislike journalism. All through middle and high school I woke up early to read the local newspaper each morning. I was the editor of our newspaper in high school. My mother wanted

Recent piece by Sanford and Brown: (I work for Google, but this is my personal opinion.)Last week I was on vacation down in Florida and I had a chance to tour Thomas Edison’s winter vacation home. The tour guide told us that Edison wired his house

What was new at Searchology?: Google launched 3-4 new features at Searchology today. You can read about Search Options, Google Squared, Rich Snippets, or Sky Map in my previous post. But I also pay attention to the small things that Google said. I noticed several

Google Searchology 2009: Search Options, Google Squared, Rich Snippets: Google just finished its Searchology 2009 event. In previous years, Google has used Searchology to introduce Universal Search and Personalized Search. So what was new this year? Several things:Google Search Options. Marissa Mayer referred to this as a handy “toolbelt”

Search Engine Watch

Is Twitter Killing Other Online Activities?: The world may be all a-Twitter, but it seems the inordinate amount of time now spent there is costing other places traffic. Given the social aspect of Twitter, it could be a forum killer long before it becomes a serious

PageRank Sculpting: Welcome Back to High School Hell: Googles new rules affecting PageRank sculpting bring us back to high school. Instead of letting us vouch for our cool friends and disavow the geeks who want to hang out with us, Google is now punishing us for being one

Balancing Efficiency and Volume in Paid Search: On a daily basis, paid search managers must balance efficiency and volume in an effort to meet the goals of the campaign. There is no right or wrong decision; there is only what is right for your business at that

Share Your Way to Better SEO: SEO campaigns often become bottled up in silos and never reach their full potential. SEO covers many different areas of your business, so sharing information and strategies across all possible lines is not only preferable, but should be a required

Selling SEO Projects Against PPC Campaigns: Search advertising is familiar and attractive to budget managers, like a trusted old friend. So how are you going to get some of that PPC budget for your SEO proposal? ...

3 Common Social Media Mistakes: Judging by the amount of media coverage of sites like Twitter and Facebook, a company might think they need to invest heavily in those areas ASAP. They might be wrong. ...

Blogs and Blogging 101, Part 1: Search engines will reward a site that has quality content with good rankings. For many sites, one of the easiest ways to add that quality content on a consistent basis is by starting a blog. ...

Bing -- Early Estimations in Local Search: Its way too early to say Bing is a success, but initial trials are favorable. Where Bing could shine is in local search, a relatively untapped revenue source and a fragmented marketplace. ...

Link Marketing Challenges & Solutions: Two of the biggest obstacles companies face in link marketing are developing linkable content and making people aware of it. The key to success in these areas is to widen the scope of places where you get ideas. ...

Applying Probability to Landing Page Optimization: In the context of LPO, probability can be viewed as simply taking the best guess given the available information. The more information you have, the more accurate your guess will become. ...

Top Signs Your Site Isn't Ready for Prime Time: Many things have changed in the last few years, but the real foundation for SEO success hasnt changed much at all. Before you put time and effort into the SEO flavor of the day, try the tried and true SEO

Taking the Fear Out of Web Analytics for Your Small Business: Do you have Web analytics installed on your small business Web site? If not, you should. How will you know how your Web site is performing if you arent measuring the right data? ...

Get Your Head Out of the Sand: A good chunk of your customers or potential customers are involved in social media in some way. Do you know what theyre saying about you? Are you missing out on opportunities to connect with them? ...

Effective PPC Ad Copy 101, Part 2: Weve covered the searcher behavior funnel and tips for writing headlines and descriptions. Now well venture beyond the ad copy to discuss methods for testing and fine-tuning your ads to increase performance. ...

Bing: The Agency Perspective: Its true that Bing has low market share and likely wont put a dent in Google at this time. But we need to get back to some fundamentals and think about what it could mean for the future of online

The Web's Wild West Days Are Gone: Just a few years ago, the Web was an open playing field where few things were taboo. Those days are gone, and if were not careful, there could be dire consequences for online marketers. ...

Sage's Dirty Little Secret: Lean forward here. Im about to tell you a dirty little secret: Part of an effective PR response is to keep the controversy going. ...

Following the Nofollow Kerfuffle: Matt Cutts says Google changed its handling of nofollow last year, but no one noticed. Can that really be what happened? ...

Pronet Advertising

DocStoc Charges Out Of Beta With DocCash: If you are looking to make money on the web, but arent too technically savvy, DocStoc has just released a cool new product that lets you easily make money. Through their new program, DocCash, every time you upload a document

How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time: Over the past few weeks I have been reading a book called Twitter Power by Joel Comm. As many of you know I am not a big fan of books, but I have to say it is one of my

Catchup - 12/22/08: Jeremy Schoemaker is giving you a once in a lifetime opportunity to get your brand out there while supporting a good cause. During Affiliate Summit Jeremy will be wearing one persons brand on his t-shirt during the conference. If you

Marketing Through Giveaways: Marketing doesnt always have to involve using methods like search engine optimization, email marketing, or banner advertising. Instead of using expensive methods of marketing you can also market your company by giving your product away for free to select bloggers.One

Are you going to Pubcon?: If you are going to Pubcon, there is a lot going on. DK, over at Purpose Inc is organizing a fight club, dinners, drinks, and a poker tournament with hot chicks.Go over to the schedule page for

Email Publishing Now On Docstoc: Docstoc just rolled out an email feature that easily allows you to upload documents online. Docstoc now supports email uploading and publishing. Simply email any document (.doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf) to uploads@docstoc.com, as an attachment, and your document(s) will be

Looking to increase your traffic? V7N has a solution for you!: As we all know, the more links you have coming into your website the more traffic you are going to get. The problem with this is that it can take hours to solicit and obtain links. Luckily V7N has solutions

The Inside Scoop from Facebook Advertising: One of my friends, DK, had a chance to visit Facebook a few weeks ago and he learned some cool stuff about it. There are 175 million active users.The fastest-growing demographic is those over 30The average user has 120 friendsThere

Ineternet Marketers Charity Party at SES NY: If you are going to attend SES New York, or live in New York, you HAVE to attend the Internet marketers charity party! Unlike most parties, you wont just have fun, but you will also be saving lives.For $50 you

You Have to Talk to People to be Successful! Who Knew?: Almost everyone on this planet wants to become successful, there is no doubt about it. You cant blame people for wanting this. Success in wealth can take you places youve always dreamed of going and buy you things you always

Tip'd Turns 2.0: Financial social media site, Tipd, just went 2.0.

Docstoc Launches DocShots: For all of you bloggers and website owners out there, you have to check DocShots.If you ever embed files into your website, you should use DocShots because it makes it easier for your visitors to browse them.

iNetMania Now Available for Download on the Apple App Store!: Do you love Monopoly? Then you have to check out iNetMania, which is kind of like a Monopoly type of game for Internet companies.If you have an iPhone, you can download the game here.

All Advertising Agencies Luanches: If you find yourself looking for a great advertising agency, All Advertising Agencies is a site that helps businesses find and contact advertising agencies based on the specific kinds of services they are looking for, their industry, budget and location.

IM Spring Break: Getting bored of those dull Internet marketing conferences? Most of them are packed with great information, but if you have been to any of them, youll realize that they can be boring.If you want a great conference experience in which

Affiliate Theme Revolutionizes The Affiliate Industry: Have you seen those big checks on the web from affiliate marketers showing how they made thousands, if not millions of dollars? I know I have, and every time I see one of those checks I always think about how

Check Out Search Muffin: One of my friends just released a new service called Search Muffin that allows you to see how you rank on Google in different locations. As you know, Google has different datacenters, so it is always a wise thing to

SEO Black Hat

Temporay Cloaking While Link Spamming: Over at contentgeneration, Brad has a wordpress plugin that will cut down on the complaints you get from link spamming:It’s a temporary cloaking plugin for Wordpress. It allows you to display a simple message to visitors, such as “Account Suspended:

Micheal Jackson Death Most Clicked Story Ever: Yahoos Blog has some of the stats.

Craigslist Drops Erotic Services Category: Our beloved Cesspool may never be the same again.

Google To Open Up Brand Bidding: Looks like they are clued into the fact that brand searches would fetch much more money if there was serious bidding competition:Starting June 4, marketers in about 200 countries will be allowed to purchase rival trademarks as keywords to trigger

Cheating and Confessing FTW: Firefox plugins (like most software) don’t make that much on a per user basis from donations. Here’s the story of the writer of a noscript plugin “confessing all”, only to be followed up with more donations than he’s probably received

Should I Buy a MacBook Air?: 6 months of moderate, secondary use was enough for me to destroy 2 of them. Even when they ran perfectly, they were still far from perfect.

Remember that Fortuny Douchebag?: The court awarded damages.

Search Engine Roundtable

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: July 3, 2009: In this weeks video recap, we discuss the July Google webmaster report, a lot has happened over the past 30 days. Google may have had a PageRank quirk. Google penalized the porn industry and then reversed it. Google is messing...

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 3, 2009: Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

July 2009 Google Webmaster Report: We are a few days into July and the WebmasterWorld thread that covers Google changes from month to month has been getting a lot of traction over the past couple weeks. The overall theme is that there is a lot...

Google's Recent PageRank "Technical Quirk"?: It seems like there are several threads around the SEO forum space that have discussion on a recent PageRank update. Yes, even more recent then the June PageRank update. There is a WebmasterWorld thread, a few DigitalPoint Forum threads and...

How Important is DMOZ in Your SEO Process?: A WebmasterWorld thread asks if DMOZ is still relevant in 2009? DMOZ is a legendary web directory and has a ton of history. But is it still a critical or what it ever a critical part of your overall SEO...

New Free SEO Guide By Hobo: July 4th Reading: Shaun, aka Hobo, has released a 157 page PDF guide on SEO. You can download the book over here. There are many SEO books out there, some free, some at a price. I would list some that I recommend, but...

When Google AdSense Is Banned In Your Country: There are some countries that simply do not like Google or they simply dont get along with Google. If you are in one of those countries and you try to access Google AdSense or possibly other properties, you may see...

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 2, 2009: Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

Firefox 3.5 Now Supported by Google AdWords: On June 30th, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5. On June 30th, we had the first complaints at Google AdWords Help that the Google AdWords interface was not supported in Firefox 3.5. The error message being displayed to AdWords advertisers was: Support...

Google Finally Drops Call Tracking Phone Numbers?: We knew Google was going to discontinue the 800# call tracking feature shortly after May 5, 2009. Well, it seemed to have continued to work, until yesterday. A WebmasterWorld thread reports from one advertiser who religiously used these free 800#s...

Searchers Want "Pages From ," Google Might Drop It: So Gabs spotted last week that Google was testing removing the pages from UK radio search button at Google UK. He was the only one I saw mention that until now, but I blogged it at Search Engine Land, because...

Offering SEO Before The Site Is Developed: A HighRankings Forum thread has discussion around a topic I can relate with. My company, RustyBrick, builds out custom web software and sites, including iPhone apps. I often get new customers coming to me with their request to build them...

Bing Adds Tweets Answers But How Real Time Is It?: It is amazing how many blogs are buzzing about Bing adding Twitter results for some prominent and prolific Twitterers. It works by searching for name tweet/twitter or the @username. So for example, @rustybrick returns my latest Tweet. The thing is,...

YouTube Changes HD Viewer? Increases Upload Size to 2GB: Yesterday, if you viewed a video on YouTube in HD format, it would display in a large format. It would basically move down all the content on the right of the video and increase the video size to the full...

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 1, 2009: Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

How To Remove a Facebook Page in Google Search: A Google Webmaster Help thread has a searcher asking Google how they can remove a Facebook page from Google. The page has been deleted from Facebook, but it still shows up in the Google Cache. Googler, Wysz, gave the searcher...

Google Reverses Adult/Porn Site Penalties: On Monday we reported that Google spanked the adult porn industry by penalizing many of the sites. There were many theories as to why those sites were penalized. It wasnt all the adult sites that were penalized but a nice...

Google AdSense Australian Payments Not Being Issued: We have covered time and time again about Google having issues paying publishers in this country or that country. This time, Australians are suffering from now being paid on time. There are at least two threads with reports of the...

Google's Support Forums Member Status Glitch: We rarely cover forum news about the forums themselves, so I figured I pull out one significant thing that happened in the forums over the past 24 hours that is really bothering some forum members. As you know, Google has...

Get Ready For The Google AdWords API v2009: Yesterday Google announced the latest version of the AdWords API, version v2009. This is an upgrade from AdWords API 13 which was released in October 2008. There are major changes between v2009 and version 13 and Google wants you to...

SEO Chat

List of SEO Tools: In this four-part article series we will cover a total of 91 tools. Those tools include SEO tools keyword research tools content management systems image search tools ranking checkers analytics tools social media tools online copy writing tools link building

The History of Search and Search Technology: This is a brief history of search engines and search technology. In this article you can learn the basics of how search engines work and how they got to where they are at the moment. We ll also look at

More Ways to Optimize for Local Search: This is the second part of a two-part article on local search engine optimization. In this part we are going to cover how different factors affect local search engine rankings the number of user reviews positive and negative reviews reviews

Online Copywriting Strategies and Techniques: This is a continuation of last week s article on online copywriting. In the previous article we focused on style. Here we cover content creation strategies and techniques....Need a Web Host? Visit TopHosts.com and Find the Right Web Host Today!

Use POG Ads to Promote: There are a lot of online advertising opportunities out there. As a Webmaster don t you owe it to yourself and your site to explore the possibilities offered by them all Is it possible that one of these advertising possibilities

Local Search Engine Optimization: Local search is a huge multibillion dollar market. The yellow pages have dominated local in the past but search engines are constantly biting off their market share. Chris Smith from Search Engine Land predicts that yellow pages will see a

Online Copywriting Advice: Human visitors read. Bots scan and rank but bots do it for human visitors. It will be moms dads sisters and brothers who read the page and it s those people who have the wallets with credit cards and PayPal

Submitting to Directories: Submission to online directories still works. Contrary to the widespread rant that directories are dead they are not. Good directories can still help you rank in Google you just have to watch for signs of quality. You can still make

Formatting a Website with Personality Types in Mind: Welcome to the third part of a three-part series aimed at helping you improve your conversions by catering to the personality types that visit your web site. In the first article of this series we discussed four different personality types

Copy Writing with Personality Types in Mind: This is a second part of a three-part series on how to build a website with the four personality types in mind. It will show you how doing so can increase your conversion rates. We ll focus on the kind

Crafting a Website with Personality Types in Mind: We are all different. Some of us prefer to know every detail others come to decisions in a matter of seconds. For you authority may be the main deciding factor while for others customer feedback is the main selling point.

Increase Your AdSense Revenue Through Keyword Research: Any webmaster and blogger knows that significant Google AdSense revenue is very important to the life and profitability of blogs and websites. One of the biggest problems faced is lack of traffic which leads to lack of clicks on Google

The Lowdown on Keyword Density: Keyword is a term often used by various people however few people actually understand what keywords have to do with websites and search engines. It may seem apparent that search and engine would be keywords for Google but can we

Article Writing for Back-Links: There are a number of ways you can get visitors to your website. The best way of course is to give them a reason to visit. Since many web users search for information if you can show them that you

Website Affiliates: One of the more common Internet marketing techniques involves using affiliates. There are definite benefits and drawbacks to this approach and the Internet gives it a special twist. Keep reading for a close look maybe by becoming an affiliate --

Yahoo Closes Geocities: Falling victim to the hazards of competition from up-to-date blogging and social sites Geocities will no longer exist later this year. Yahoo announced its decision in late April to shutter the ancient web hosting site inspiring a range of responses.

Advanced Search Operators and SEO: In this article we ll share with you a couple of cool hacks to use in search engine optimization called advanced search engine operators. To use this article you must already be aware of your core keywords the main keywords

Using Analytics on Your Site: If you re investing time or money in SEO PPC you need to know what you re getting in return. The best measure is your bank account and ROI but with careful analysis of your visitors and their behaviors you

Public Relations and SEO: Before PR meant Page Rank it was short for public relations. This century-old science not only has a place in the new field of SEO but it plays a vital role if you want to get good buzz for your

SEO for Microsoft Live Search (MSN): Microsoft is the latest major player in the search engine game. It came to the scene in 2 4 and has since lost half of its market share to Google. Microsoft continues to treat search as a top priority and

Online Marketing Blog

7 Ways To Develop A Unique Brand For Your Blog: With the blogosphere churning out nearly 1 million posts every 24 hours, an unstoppable river of content flows over the web daily. It’s daunting, especially if you’re new to online publishing. The good news is it’s still very possible to

Intersection of Search and Social Media: Earlier this week I gave a presentation on the intersection of SEO, online PR and social media to a great mix of people (mostly agencies) at a SEMPO Arizona event. The SEO/PR/Social topic is an interesting mix due to the convergence

How Direct is Social Media Marketing?: I had nice back and forth with Brian Clark of copyblogger on Twitter last week about direct marketing and social media. Ultimately it was more an issue of perspective and semantics but there were some great points about the intersection

Influencing The Social Web: Agility Is A Factor: How agile is your marketing? Do you have layer upon layer of approval processes, committees, lawyers, and executives who need to sign off on every piece

Strategic Link Building for SEO: Not many in the Search Engine Optimization game would argue that link building isn’t tactical. The problem is, approaching link building as an end goal and tactically, is very much like a hamster running in it’s cage. That’s what many

TopRank Digital Marketing Talent Pool Grows with Adam Singer: No description.

TopRank BIGLIST: Interactive Marketing Associations: The digital and interactive marketing space moves fast and as both companies and individuals scramble to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage, it can be a challenge to find resources and likeminded individuals to help make that happen. Associations offer

Content Marketing Strategy with a Side of Social: Development of a content marketing strategy that speaks to the target audience plays a key role in successful execution of an overall online marketing program. Companies that embrace the social web as part of their marketing mix need to consider

Jumping off the Social Media Cliff: Of those that reach out to our agency at TopRank, most of the companies I talk to are intrigued and even excited about social media. The challenge for organizations is that they’re often not exactly sure where to start or

Making a Case for Social Media: At the Online Marketing Summit in Minneapolis this week, I presented on Social Media Strategy and briefly highlighted Blogging and Twitter as tactics. This is the first of several posts that will visit the key concepts offered in that presentation.Why social

Online Marketing Summit: Social Media Basics: At Online Marketing Summit held in Minneapolis and hosted by ClickZ, Caitlin McCabe of Sway Inc spoke to the audience about Social Media and had these insights:1. For people who think Facebook is just for kids, go search for groups

Is Your Web Site SEO and Social Media Friendly?: Numerous companies are losing vast amounts of revenue due to their web sites doing poorly in the search engines. Web sites that are not easy to find via search miss out on attracting new customers as well as repeat customers

Green Online Marketing: 5 Ways to Repurpose Content: With the importance of content in online marketing, many businesses are hard pressed to come up with original articles, blog posts, videos, images, presentations, etc on a regular basis. There’s a myth that once you publish something, that all who

SEO Tool Review: BuzzStream for Link Building: As I work with our clients on their link building projects, I am often testing out new tools to make the process more efficient. After meeting with Lee at PubCon South in March, Jeremy Bencken - one of the founders

What Snapshot of SEO Drives Your Web Business?: Search Engine Optimization is a changing field. At any given moment in time, companies that rely on the web for new business or customer communications will consume information about SEO and then rely on that snapshot for months or even

Learn SEO, Social Media, Digital PR from TopRank: Over the next 2 weeks several staff from TopRank be hitting the road for multiple SEO/Social Media/PR speaking and training events. We invite you to attend and would love to meet up with readers of Online Marketing Blog. Topics during

Measuring the Value of Search Optimized PR: Measuring the effect of online marketing and PR efforts is essential for both understanding the return on investment but also for feedback that will improve subsequent efforts. Measuring the effect of SEO for Public Relations benefits should start with well

Making News Content Search & Social Media Friendly: Changes in consumer preferences towards news consumption and sharing habits via the social web present both challenges and opportunities for PR agencies. Searchers increasingly expect to interact with what they find via search. The opportunity for Public Relations is to understand

Link Building Tips for News SEO: For those readers just joining us, this is post #8 in a series of 10 on the intersection of search engine optimization and public relations, “Top Ten SEO Tips for PR Professionals“.Besides content optimization and making sure a site’s news

Pull PR and Newsroom Optimization Tactics: Most web sites with active media relations programs host an online newsroom. Analysts, journalists and even some bloggers find newsrooms a useful resource for finding past media coverage, press releases, image assets, executive bios, company history, webinars, white papers, case

Search Engine Journal

Google Shrunk its Search Results Page: Honestly I didn’t notice the difference until I read from Mashable that Google have changed the way it displays search results. As usual, I couldn’t find any announcement about it at the Official Google Blog. So, I take it to

As Google Book Search Gets Better, Here Comes the Anti-Trust Regulators: So while U.S. Anti-Trust Regulators are planning to investigate Google’s deal with book publishers to settle copyright issues amounting to $125m, Google continues to make Book Search a better and worthwhile service for their users.If you’ve been following this issue

Google Blog Search Adds RSS, Hot Queries, Latest Blog Posts: Nothing innovative here really. Just some functional features which should have been added a long time to Google’s Blog Search. Then again, better late than never. So, Google has just added RSS/ATOM subscription, list of the most popular terms that

Interview with Fraser Kelton of Glue, New Promising Social Network: This week we feature the interview with Fraser Kelton, working at new and exciting social media project Glue, developed by AdaptiveBlue. 1. Please share your background. What brought you to the Web 2.0? Also please tell us a few words

Landing Pages On A SMB Budget: Creating new landing pages for testing is getting cheaper. And scalable.So there are fewer and fewer reasons for SMBs not to be testing their landing pages and sites to optimize conversion rates.Testing landing pages has long been a preoccupation of

What If Google Profiles “Lazy” or “Selective” Outlinkers?: The topic of your link neighbors is well discussed. It goes without saying that: a backlink from a resource linking to only reputable sites is good;a backlink from a resource that links out very seldom and is very conservative /

Google Disables Commenting in Google News: Google has disabled a Google News feature that allows personalities featured on the news items to comment on the news stories. When this was announced not so long ago, news media couldn’t quite get the idea behind it. Although it

Microsoft, Real, & Yahoo All Sued for Music Store Copyright Infringement: On Tuesday, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real were named in a lawsuit filed by some music publishing companies claiming that each of their online music stores - Zune, Yahoo Music, and Rhapsody - infringe upon their copyrights. If you’re shaking your head and

Bing Starts Indexing Twitter Updates, Sort Of: As real-time search and Twitter’s growing importance in producing valuable information is getting into the mainstream, Bing is joining the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter in bringing real-time search feature in their respective search algorithms. Starting today, Bing will

Twitter Unveils New UI; What This Means for SEO: Yesterday Twitter sneakily unveiled a new user interface for both the “followers” and “following”. While I personally believe that their efforts could have been better spent on stabilizing their servers and working out those infamous “overcapacity” issues, the change is

Digg Rolls Out Revamped Content Duplication Detection Technology: On Tuesday Digg announced that they were finally rolling out some major updates to their duplicate detection technology, and let’s be honest - it’s about time! The technology they had in place before was hardly reliable.The way that it used

SEOpivot: Find Your Site Most Promising Keywords: SEOquake addon developers continue to impress us with always new awesome tools. This time they are launching a new one called SEOpivot.This tool finds your site most promising keywords by looking at your site current Google rankings and identifying most

Michael Jackson Death : TMZ Traffic Surge Numbers: When the news about Michael Jackson’s death broke out, it was TMZ who scooped it beating other news outlets and was quoted as a source throughout Twitter, Facebook, traditional media and various online properties. As a result, Hitwise numbers are

Bing Gets a Slight Increase in Market Share: Expect more of these kinds of post in the next couple of days as search analysts will be on the lookout for statistics on Bing’s first month of operation. The latest of these data is coming from StatCounter which is

Flickr Rolls Out Twitter Integration Feature: Flickr has just introduced a new feature that it should have done long ago - Flickr2Twitter. If you use Flickr, this new feature would allow you to post uploaded photos directly from your Flickr to your Twitter account. Flickr2Twitter will

Firefox 3.6 in 2010? Namoroka!: With Google Chrome threatening its dominance in the browser arena, Firefox certainly has got many things to consider to prevent Google’s browser from inching in closer in terms of popularity and user base. At the rate things, it seems like

StumbleUpon Tip: Use Google to Choose the Best Category and Tags: Sharing stories on social voting and bookmarking sites both grows your social media profile power and enables you to reach your audience. Surprisingly enough, being one of the most important element of the story success, proper tagging is very often

How to Effectively Train an Internet Marketing Staff: One large issue when running a business on or offline is training staff. The main issue that arises is whether you feel comfortable training your future competition. This is especially true in a service or consultancy based vertical, such as

Social Media Profiles for Online Reputation Management: Your reputation, online or offline is vital extremely important. Recently, a friend of mine owned a travel business. After hiring an employee with a light criminal background and having thousands of dollars embezzled from him, he started to pursue legal

Facebook or Just Face-Look? Are People 55 And Older Really Using Social Networking Websites?: Facebook is estimated to have 70.2 million unique visitors per month in the United States according to comScore. Social networking is booming, everyone is friending, following, tweeting, tagging, and grandma and grandpa are getting involved too. Wait a minute, did

Graywolf's SEO Blog

Leadership Blogging, It’s All About Leading: The following post is a counterpoint to the Outspoken Media post titled “Would I Recognize Your Blog In A Dark Alley“, and exists to offer an alternative path to land of unicorns and rainbows.First off there’s nothing wrong with running

Can You Get a Website Indexed with No Links and XML Sitemaps?: This weekend I was doing a little housekeeping on some of my domains and hosting accounts and decided to test and see if it was possible to get a website indexed using XML Sitemaps and no external links.Since some piano

Thanks to this Months Sponsors – June 2009: I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn’t be regular posts here.Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action

How to Invalidate Wikipedia Articles: Recently Google announced they are experimenting with including Wikipedia in Google News. Personally I’m not a fan of Wikipedia, so I think this is the perfect opportunity to share some tactics on how to make Wikipedia a whole lot more

How to Practice Kamikaze SEO: One of the key aspects of any SEO strategy is knowing the risks of the tactics you use. As those tactics approach or break Google’s guidelines the more likely they to get you penalized or banned. Knowing where you are

The Big Fat RSS Lie: Anytime a social media consultant starts talking to prospective clients and they bring up blogging, they talk about how RSS can be used to help them directly connect with their customers … the truth is in most cases it’s a

SMX Advanced Pagerank Sculpting and Javascript Linking: Probably the biggest kerfuffle at SMX advanced this past week was Google’s reversal on how they crawl javascript links, and how they are handling pagerank scuplting. First let’s look at the javascript linking issue, I agree with Danny Sullivan that

Does Your Publishing Schedule Match Your Readers Habits: In old days newspapers and magazine figured out there where optimal times for publishing certain types of stories, example Tuesday was traditionally “Science Times Tuesday”. As old world publishers transitioned to online publishers those rules probably don’t apply anymore and

How Google Profiles SEO’s: At SMX one of the more contentious subjects was the debate over Google’s Android Phone giveaway, and demonstration that they are in practice profiling SEO’s.Let’s back the clock up and review the facts: On May 27th at the Google I/O

SMX Advanced 2009 Wrap Up: Last week I attended SMX Advanced in Seattle and thought I’d share my thoughts about it.What’s the single most important thing I got from SMX Advanced, simply put there is no substitute for face time you get with someone at

Wikipedia Invades Google News: The following screen shot has to be seen to be believed 7 wikipedia articles listed as news sources in google news (picture after the jump click to enlarge)I don’t even have the words to describe how incredibly horrible an idea

Thanks to this Months Sponsors - May 2009: I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn’t be regular posts here.Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.CrazyEgg.com - Supplement your analytics with action

My Customized Laptops from Skinit.com: So those are my three skinit.com customized computers. The middle Yoda one is a Tablet PC, it’s a little old, slow and very heavy, mostly my wife and kids use it. The Battlestar Galactica one is my main laptop It’s

Griffin AirCurve Demonstartion: When you use your iPhone one of the things that really sucks is the speaker volume, it barely audible unless you are in a completely quiet room. The griffin air curve makes it loud enough that it’s actually useableHere how

Looking at Windows MaxiVista: I’m a big fan of the remote desktop I use it all the time to run scripts without having to log in/out on multiple computers. Check it out for yourself at MaxiVista.com.Advertisement: Is SEO taking too much of your time?

How to Add a Visual Slider to Thesis: The following is a tutorial on how to add a dynamic content slider to your Thesis wordpress theme. It’s easily adapted to work with any wordpress blog, but like everything it’s just easier with Thesis We’re going to be using

Did Matt Cutts Expose a Hole in Digg: Last week Matt Cutts made a post about how to connect your Linux computer to a Wii balance board using Bluetooth. This post happened to make the Digg homepage, however what was really interesting is the way he did it,

Dear Michael Arrington Please Save Techcrunch Before it’s Too Late: The following is an open letter to Michael Arrington owner of Techcrunch.com, you still have a chance to save Techcrunch before it’s too late.Quantity Over QualityLast friday May 8 I took a twitter poll to see how other people felt

All credits go to the authors of these sites. Without their hard work Original Signal would not exist. Last updated on July 4th 2009 15:11 | Contact