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Search Engine Land

Live Blogging SXSW: Can The Real Time Web Be Realized: I’m here at SXSW waiting for the Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized? panel to begin. I’ll be liveblogging what happens, so stay tuned.Search engines have certainly jumped to add in ways to find real-time content. This panel features reps

Yahoo Goes Hollywood With New TV, Celebrity Shortcuts: Citing the popularity of entertainment-related searches, Yahoo’s search results have gone Hollywood with the announcement of new search shortcuts for TV shows and celebrities.The TV shortcut shows the title and a short synopsis of the next episode, along with video

Valuing Keywords Based On Their Role In Conversion: Are you valuing all keywords equally, assuming they all offer the same benefit to your paid search campaign? That may be a mistake. Heres a cautionary tale that shows you how to assign appropriate values to keywords based on their

Google Adds Microdata Support For Rich Snippets: The Google Webmaster Central blog announced a third markup language supported for Rich Snippets. In addition to microformats and RDFa support, Google has added microdata support, which is part of the HTML5 specification.Here is an example look at Microdata in

Can Google Stay In China And Still Save Face?: Ever since Google’s bold statement early this year that it would be withdrawing from the Chinese search market if it couldn’t find a way to operate without censorship, Mountain View has found itself in a bit of a no-win situation.

20 Tips To Search Conference Success: Attending search conferences should be part of every SEM pro’s yearly routine. Whether it’s to network within the industry, learn new tips or tricks, find new business opportunities, or even just have a good time with like-minded folks, it’s important

Deadly Sins Against SEO: Part 1: Are you getting bad or conflicting SEO advice from landing page and conversion specialists? Keep your ears open for these deadly SEO sins.*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the

SPONSOR MESSAGE: Are You Serving the Same Web Content to Everyone? Using Segmentation to Retain(...): This webinar and guide covers: A formula for Web site conversion The four main psychographics to use to begin segmentation How Digg appeals differently to segments to keep visitors coming back to their siteDownload Now*** Read the full post by

Google Goes Live With “In-Stock, Nearby” Mobile Shopping: In the range of thigs discussed at Google’s Search Evolution event in December Engineering VP Vic Gundotra demonstrated mobile shopping with real-time inventory information. Now Google has announced that product is live.Google is working with a limited number of retailers

Google Is Bing’s 4th Largest Referrer: Hitwise tweeted Bing’s largest referrers, or the upstream sites that drive traffic to Bing. It is here we learn that Google is Bing’s fourth largest referrer. Here is a picture of the referrers to Bing as Hitwise published on their

The Problem Of Inconsistent SMB Contact Details – Part I: Have you ever thought twice about how to find the correct contact details for a local business – i.e., their name, address, phone number? The answer should be so simple: just Google it. Well, the reality is not that simple.

March 2010 Yahoo Search Update: Yahoo announced a search update to their index. The update includes possible updates to Yahoo’s crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms. Dan Rampton, Yahoo’s Product Manager said:The Yahoo! Search engineering teams are rolling out updates to crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms.

Chomp: An Apps Search Engine Or “Yelp For The App Store”: Chomp could be described as a search engine for iPhone apps (and eventually other apps stores). It’s a two-month old iPhone app and more recently a website, which resembles Twitter, whose objective is to enable people to more easily discover

Facebook Search Gains Boost Bing & Motorola Puts Bing On Chinese Android Handsets: I’m my discussion yesterday of the comScore search data I neglected to point out (as GigaOm has) that Facebook saw 10 percent search query growth in the past month. That’s significant and it validates an argument I’ve long made that

US Regulators May Be Gearing Up For Google-AdMob Challenge: Beyond the iPhone one could convincingly argue that the best thing to happen to mobile advertising in the past year was Google’s announced acquisition of AdMob. It got everyone’s attention — especially the $750 million (stock) price tag.It also single-handedly

PPC Academy Toolbox: Keyword Monitoring: Because we are still in the research phase of PPC development, it’s important to get a very clear understanding of the advertiser’s business online and how that will affect the way we build and manage the account. Last week, I

Bing’s Market Share Up For Third Straight Month: Hitwise: Just last week at SMX West, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his short-term goal for Bing is to gain a point here or a tenth there — to chip away and slowly increase its share of the search market. The

The E-commerce Pattern: Core Conversion Marketing Strategies: Here are the three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for e-commerce web sites. Get these strategies right, and you should be able to optimize your way to higher conversion rates. Get any of these wrong, and you will find yourself

Business Searchers Are Looking For….: Business buyers use search engines throughout the entire research and buying process. For this reason, most B2B marketers utilize search marketing as a cost-effectiveway to build brand awareness, engage prospects, and generate leads. In terms of lead gen, a potential buyer

comScore: Android Shows Strength As Mobile Web Usage Grows: Metrics firm comScore released some new quarterly mobile data that shows strong growth for Android handsets in the US and an increase in mobile web usage:RIM showed modest growth while the iPhone’s growth, according to these figures, flattened. Meanwhile WinMo

Aaron Wall's SEO Book.com

Crafting SEO Landing Pages: The landing page, in terms of SEO, went out of fashion. Landing pages, which tended to be mass-generated, near identical pages pointing to one money page, became a target for the search engine spam filters. However, the type of landing

Interview with Andrew Shotland: Today I get to interview one of my favorite reads in the SEO blogoshpere, Andrew Shotland. Andrew runs the Local SEO Guide blog and has graciously taken some of his time to share with us his thoughts on Local SEO.1.

The Evolution of Man & Media: So remarkably bad, that I had to share it! :DI dont know who Demand(ed) that Media, but could I please get my minute and six seconds back? With 50,000+ views, that 1 video has wasted over a month of human

Is SEO Science or Art?: Recently SEOmoz posted about running a test that proved their thesis that nofollow PageRank sculpting still works (while actually only proving issues with sample size & methodology). But the issue of proving things with SEO publicly is typically a misguided

Local SEO - A Case Study: How Do You Do Local SEO?Its quite clear that local SEO will be *one* of the places to be in 2010 and beyond. Need convincing?Check out: Google and Yelps failed deal - If local search was unlikely

Mark Cuban's Mahalo Wants Your Blood (And Gets it TOO!): Mark Cuban recently talked about how search engines and content aggregators are vampires. There is no reason to be indexed in Google. ... You haven’t gotten anything backBut he failed to disclose how his Mahalo investment loots content.

Slow & Steady vs Hype, Crash & Burn: HOPE is perhaps the single most lucrative thing to sell. There are so many people in need of direction, while so few actually want to do the work required to achieve the end goal. Thus many scammers

Starving Artists in the Age of Cesspool Content: On Hacker News, Melvin, from Web Design Company, had a great analogy on the Mahalo business modelLets use a different industry to illustrate what is happening. Lets say a band named The Beatles records a new album. The local radio

More PROOF Jason Calacanis is a ____: Publicly Jason claims to be ignorant about SEO because it allows him moral flexibility and makes Google less likely to torch his site (even though he is blatantly violating their search quality guidelines, and has for *years*).

Why Mahalo (and Other Content Scrapers) Render Google's Spam Team Flaccid: I was talking to a friend yesterday who was at a conference where Demand Medias CEO spoke, and he stated that nobody asked the big question: what if google decides they dont like you anymore?Then I got thinking about how

Learning SEO: It Can Get Noisy: There is obviously no shortage of information on SEO. But thanks for turning up here :) The sheer avalanche of SEO information can be overwhelming, for beginners and experts alike. Who do you know who to listen to? What information

I Turned the Google Toolbar Off, But It Kept Spying On Me...: Ben Edelman: Although I had asked that the Google Toolbar be disable, and although the Google Toolbar disappeared from view, my network monitor revealed that Google Toolbar continued to transmit my browsing to its toolbarqueries.google.com server

Google AdWords Tax Calculator: Many experienced advertisers realize that there are many gotchas in the AdWords system...optimization tools and default setting which optimize to boost Googles yield at the expense of unsuspecting advertisers, who dont yet know what match types are or that their

All Shades of Gray: Does Google like auto-generated websites wrapped in Google AdSense ads?The short answer is no.The long answer is a bit more convoluted. But so long as they are...well brandedwell fundedoperating at scalegood at public relationswrapped in AdSense ads...the answer is yes,

SEO Consulting: How To Construct Great Proposals: Like in any consulting field, SEO is rife with competition. There is only one way to win in such an environment, and that is to set yourself apart from the crowd. Not in a bad way, of course :)Here are

Beating the Logic & Creativity Out of You: I remember in 2nd grade when our teacher was teaching us how to do math I raced ahead and was doing lessons for today, tomorrow, and next week. The teacher rewarded my efforts by yelling at me and ripping up

What Matters Now: I am still behind on a couple major writing projects, but one of the writing projects that was hardest for me was trying to write something for Seth Godins new project - What Matters Now. A killer PDF full of

Spam Free Search?: Just for fun. But if things get much worse it might be good for utility as well ;)

Open Site Explorer is Pretty Slick: From a marketing and a public relations standpoint this tool is brilliant. Rand just put up a full in-depth review here.In the past I have not been a fan of certain outing policies, but of late I have seen that

3 Steps for Optimizing Content for Long Tail Keywords: The following is a guest post from Tom Demers.One of the most pivotal aspects of driving large volumes of search traffic in most verticals is effectively targeting long tail keywords. While ranking for competitive phrases and developing link authority are

SEOmoz

Whiteboard Friday - When Optimizing, DON'T Test Everything: Posted by great scott!Test, test, test! Thats the mantra these days. Conversion Rate Optimization is the buzzword on everybodys lips (and tweets). So why are we telling you NOT to test? Well, were not, were just saying to be smart

4 Things That Are Getting Me Rankings, Right Now: Posted by Glen AllsoppThis 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

SEO Health Checks - Regular Housekeeping Tasks for Your Website's SEO: Posted by richardbaxterseoTechnical problems, errors and surprise releases are all regular features in the day to day management of a website when you’re an SEO. There’s no doubt that maintaining a quick, error free and well optimised site can lead

SMX West 2010 - Man on the Street Interviews: Posted by jennitaNote: This post will make you smile, possibly even laugh. It wont however teach you much about SEO. Youve been warned.Last week I attended SMX West in Santa Clara, California and took a couple flip video cameras along.

Optimizing Search Conferences: How Differing Incentives Create Audience vs. Organizer Issues: Posted by randfishWARNING: Get ready to read with this one. There arent a ton of fun graphics or quick bullet points, but I do promise that if you read through, youll feel much more knowledgable about the topic, and likely

Targeting Multiple Keywords vs. Singular Keyword Focus: Posted by randfishDespite being a seemingly simple topic, this one seems to stymie even experienced SEOs. Theres a natural conflict that creates the issue - the more keywords you target on a single page, the less you need to link

Search Marketing Success Stories: Posted by RobOusbeySearch Engine Optimization covers a huge range of tactics - all of which can bring direct benefit to a website. In this post, Ive shared examples of different tactics used at different websites, and the effects that have

Strategic Link Building: How to Productize Link Acquisition and Dominate Your Niche: Posted by randfishThis week, despite still being seriously under the weather (see this weeks sad WB Friday), I flew down to SMX West to speak on the Link Building Strategies panel. Although Id wanted to put more work in and

Whiteboard Friday - Twitter as an SEO Research Tool: Posted by great scott!Sure, you use Twitter as a social media tool, but have you ever considered it as an SEO research tool? No? Well watch and learn this week to find out how you can harness it in a

Introducing New Features for Open Site Explorer: Posted by Danny Dover Today I am proud to announce the launch of the second version of Open Site Explorer. Since SEOmoz has officially moved out of consulting, we are now able to put our full resources into building fantastic SEO

Ballmer, Sitelines & Other Favorites from SMX West Day 1: Posted by jennitaSMX West 2010 kicked off with quite a bang (or was that a yell?). Since Microsofts CEO, Steve Ballmer

One Dead Simple Tactic for Better Rankings in Google Local: Posted by randfishThis post is short and easy to follow, just like the tactic it recommends. Most everyone who optimizes for Google Local (aka Google Maps) is familar with David Mihms excellent and oft-referenced Local Search Ranking Factors. In that

Pagination: Best Practices for SEO & User Experience: Posted by randfishWeve been getting a lot of questions in Q+A and on the road at events like last weeks Miva Merchant conference, Online Marketing Summit and the YCombinator conference about how to properly paginate results for search engines. In

Managing SEO Campaigns in Declining Industries: Posted by RobOusbeyThis is a graph of organic traffic for a theoretical site - they might be in an industry such as print advertising, construction equipment or VHS rental. The decline in traffic is pronounced and serious.

Whiteboard Friday - 5 Things You're Not Doing (But Should Be): Posted by great scott!This week, weve got a couple of newcomers to Whiteboard Studios! Our very own Jen Lopez and Danny Dover (whom you should know well thanks to Jens Meet the Mozzers post) are pinch-hitting for our globe-trotting CEO.

Meet the Mozzers!: Posted by jennitaOver the past few months, weve announced a number of exciting changes here at the mozPlex. Some of those include becoming focused on our software, new SEO tools and a cultural change with our TAGFEE Tenets. With that,

SEO Chrome Extension - Comprehensive View of Page and Domain Data: Posted by neopunisherThis 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

How to get the most out of your SEO: Posted by willcritchlowThe good news is that tomorrow (Wednesday 24th Feb), at 8.30am PST (11.30am EST / 4.30pm GMT), I am going to be joined on the next Distilled conference call by Richard Baxter as we discuss "how to get

SEO for Startups: Top 7 Lessons + A Trip to YCombinator: Posted by randfishLast week, while in London, I received an email from Paul Graham, whom Ive long admired, possibly even idolized a bit. He asked if I was available to come speak at a YCombinator SEO event in Mountain View.

Applying Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto to SEO: Posted by Tom_CThis post was inspired by Rand. If Im honest, Im not sure how many of my posts arent inspired by Rand... Specifically however it was this tweet which set the wheels in motion (if ever so slowly):

Matt Cutts

Start an embedded YouTube video at a certain timestamp: In a previous post I covered how to link to a specific timestamp in a YouTube video. The short version looks like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08sThe “#t=31m08s” takes you to 31 minutes and 8 seconds in a video. I just found out that

Calling for link spam reports: Google has been working on some new algorithms and tools to tackle linkspam and we’d like to ask for linkspam reports from you. If you’d like to tell us about web sites that appear to be using spammy links (e.g.

Leaving the iPhone: I’m three weeks into a new 30 day challenge: no iPhone. When I got a Nexus One in December, I spent a few weeks carrying both phones around in the pockets of my jeans. It took a little while to

My speaking plans for 2010: Last year I tried to limit my travel but still ended up making about ten (!) trips in 2009. This year I’ve resolved to travel less for work. Right now, here’s my current speaking/travel plans for 2010:March 2-4, 2010: SMX

Finding the best cell phone carrier: Okay, someone tell me if this device exists (or build it!). I want a device where I can pay $10-15 to get a gadget in the mail. The gadget would sit in my pocket for a week wherever I go.

Blog to Book?: I recently went looking for some software to make a blog into a book. Here’s what I found:- Lulu will take PDF files for a book. Blogbooker.com will try to create a PDF from a blog. Unfortunately, my blog made

Chrome support for Greasemonkey: Back in December, I happened to click on a Greasemonkey script in Chrome and was shocked that it just worked. At the time, I wrote a note within Google that saidWhoa. I just clicked on a Greasemonkey script in the

Improving Arabic searches and talking more about ranking: Moustafa Hammad and Mohamed Elhawary, a couple engineers in our search quality group, just did a nice post about improving Arabic language searches:Our algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar along with signals from historical search data to decide

Installing Android development environment on Ubuntu 9.04: I wanted to play with writing Android apps on my home Linux computer, which is currently running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). These are mostly notes for myself, so don’t feel guilty if you skip this post. - Make sure your

Keep an eye on changing pages: Google just launched a nice feature on Google Reader: the ability to keep an eye on pages for changes. This works even if the page doesn’t have its own RSS feed. This sort of thing is very handy. You could

PubCon 2009 talk: State of the Index: If you followed @googlewmc on Twitter you would already know about this, but I recently recreated my “State of the Index” talk from PubCon in November 2009. Here’s the video of the talk below:And here are the slides if you’d

Google earnings via YouTube webcast?: Huh. This looks new. I headed over to investor.google.com to listen to the Google earnings call. Normally the webcast uses Windows Media Player or Real Player, but this time it looks like the earnings call is being hosted on a

More info about synonyms at Google: Steve Baker, an engineer in the search quality group at Google, just did a nice post about synonyms on the Google blog. A lot of people seem to think that Google only does simple-minded matching of the users’ keywords with

Follow @googlewmc on Twitter: Okay, we’re starting to release new webmaster videos. Normally you could follow me on Twitter to find out about each new video, but I’m on a Twitter diet until the end of January. So if you want to hear when

Ways to help Haiti: Lots of people are thinking about ways to help Haiti after their horrible 7.0 earthquake.Google recently introduced a page with a large number of resources for the Haiti earthquake, including the ability to donate money.Also, a bunch of Googlers have

Important blog post on Google blog: This is an important blog post. Go read it from the source.

Giving up Twitter for three more weeks: Quick summary: I’m giving up Twitter for 30 days. I normally tweet about the webmaster videos that we make. Please follow googlewmc on Twitter if you want to find out about new webmaster videos.For the last few months I’ve been

A short note about real-time search: This is just a quick blog post to share some info about Google’s real-time search based on the earthquake that shook the Bay Area this morning. I didn’t feel the earthquake myself, but the real-time folks looked at how we

Search Engine Watch

Do Top Students Get to Pray in Google Church?: Competitive spaces require creative methods for getting well ranked. But are big PPC spenders given SEO leeway? ...

Build Links in 30 Minutes a Day: You can successfully build links to any type of Web site in just 30 minutes a day. Heres how. ...

SEO vs. PPC Debate -- Which Do You Prefer?: Theres a growing divide between online marketers who enjoy organic search and those who prefer paid search. What do your preferences say about you? ...

Don't Over Optimize Your Site: SEO is a best practices game. Understanding how not to over optimize is an important part of the mix. ...

Winning the Multi-Agency Game: Can't We All Just Get Along?: Some survival tips for when youre asked to work with your clients other agencies. ...

Passing The Torch as an SEO Manager: At some point in your career as an SEO manager, you may decide to leave your current employer for greener pastures. How you help your soon-to-be former employer during this time says a lot about you as a professional. ...

Get Your Search Campaigns Ready for the Yahoo/MSN Merger: Tips on MSN search, blocking referrers, choosing your network, and a look at some promising Yahoo betas. ...

Search Around the World: Italy: A look at the most popular search engines, top industries, and search marketing best practices in Italy. ...

Your Locations are Your Biggest Digital Assets: A physical address has huge online implications. While youre covering your assets, make sure to build up your presence for local-based searches. ...

Measuring Social Media with Web Analytics, Part 1: Measuring social media is possible and Web analytics should be a key part of your measurement strategy. Part one of a two part series. ...

Forget Shorty: Long Tail Keywords Convert Cheaper: Dont miss out! Long tail PPC terms offer the cheapest ROI in many industries and are also easier to rank for organically. ...

3 Tools for Optimizing Page Speed: If youre responsible for a site, and you think you may have page load time issues, here are some tools to get your site performance up to speed. ...

What Can Mobile Do?: The transition for advertisers from online to mobile search is still in its infancy, so there are massive benefits for early adopters. Get ahead of other marketers, understand the space, and drive your brand as a leader. ...

Using Linkscape Metrics to Prioritize Link Building Campaigns: How to get the most out different backlink reports and generate high value link targets. ...

Focus on the User: How do you make sure that your Web site is user friendly? Here are some tips to avoid setting yourself up for search engine optimization disaster. ...

Google Buzz 101: For those of you who are just tuning in and trying to understand what Google Buzz is and how it works, this article will answer some of the basic questions and help get you started using it. ...

Mobile PPCall Simplified: A Conversation with Google: Googles mobile pay-per-call program looks like a bargain for advertisers in verticals and large agencies alike. But will Google eventually decouple the call monetization from AdWords clicks? ...

5 Reasons You Should Get Your AdWords Professional Certification: Heres why PPC managers should get their AdWords Professional certification. ...

Getting Your Money's Worth: SEO and Your Digital Assets: Tips for optimizing digital assets, such as images, videos, white papers, sales materials, and press releases, to gain more search value. ...

Mastering Google Webmaster Central: From site verification and crawl errors to newer tools and features, Google Webmaster Central is critical to the success of search engine optimization campaigns and keeping ahead of the competition. ...

Pronet Advertising

The Conference You Have to Attend: SearchFest: On Tuesday March 9, SearchFest is going to take place in Portland. If you own a business, here are the top 5 reasons you should attend and if you dont own one... well there are still some good reasons for

My Home at Olive 8: Its been a while since I posted and updated you about my life. For the past year or so I have been living in Seattle and most recently, I just bought a place at Olive 8 by Hyatt. I know

The Micropreneur Academy: My friend Rob, just luanched the The Micropreneur Academy. Here is a bit more information on it.The Micropreneur Academy, an online learning environment for solo software entrepreneurs, is opening its doors to new enrollments soon. Launched in April by noted

Want to be a winner? Join the Winners Circle!: Gyutae Park from Winning the Webjust launched a new membership site called Winners Circle. I dont normally post about stuff like this but I wanted to mention it because I think it has a lot to offer marketers of all

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

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

SEO Black Hat

Corrected: Top 100 Site Traffic Breakdown: Their infographic was helpful, but it needed a slight correction.

$200 Twitter Contest: 122 Characters Sent Back 2000 Years: Whoever comes up with the best answer wins $200 (via paypal).

Why 6th Place in Search Might Soon Be a Player: Whats good for the Goose is good for the Google.

Microsoft Cross Platform Flow: This type of thing really is going to be huge.

Hear that? That’s the Sound of Socialist Head’s Assploding.: But . . . but . . . Canada has teh best health cares system evah!

The Real Reason Google Dropped Youtube Support: So you’ve probably heard that Google has decided to drop IE6 support for Youtube.At first I just figured “Cool, we’ll get more people away from IE6.” But the real reason is that they want to promote Chrome:That first Slot will

“Mad Libs Converts!” says Case Study: What other games can you play with your potential conversions to get them to interact more?

Search Engine Roundtable

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: March 12, 2010: It has been two weeks since my last video recap, but I have been doing text recaps - so check those out. Why did I miss the video recaps, I was in Israel for both pleasure and business. I...

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 12, 2010: 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....

Google News Archives Adds "Browse This Newspaper": If you go to the Google News Archives and find a digitized back issue from the Google archives, you should be able to now browse that newspaper directly on Google. For example, lets take a look at the The News...

Google Shopping Adds Inventory Levels: Ever want to pick up a product from a store now and want to know if it is in stock in nearby stores? Yea, you have, I have. I end up calling stores to find a store that has it....

SEO's Nemesis, Ripoff Report, Caught Selling Links: Frank Watson wrote that RipOff Report Now Selling Links, Verifying Safe Cash4Gold. In short, he shows how they are selling links for certain qualified and verified businesses. What is the big deal if a site sell links? Well, it is...

Google Adds XML Validation to AdWords API Sandbox: I cannot tell you how many issues I see come up in the AdWords API forum about why does a certain request work in the Google AdWords API Sandbox and not in the normal AdWords API. A Sandbox API is...

How Important is Google PageRank in 2010?: Every year or so, the Google PageRank debate lives on. Some people say Google PageRank is the number one important attribute to have a page rank well in Google. Some say PageRank is worthless and should be completely ignored. Others...

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 11, 2010: 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....

Yahoo Search Update: March 2010: Yahoo announced a new search update, or what they call a weather report for their index. Yahoo said you may notice ranking changes in the Yahoo Search results. They said: The Yahoo! Search engineering teams are rolling out updates to...

Google Forcing Some AdSense Publishers To Select a Local Currency: A WebmasterWorld thread reports that some Google AdSense publishers are being forced to pick a local currency, instead of using the U.S. dollar. Three publishers claimed it happened yesterday, where they logged into AdSense and had to pick a local...

Stealing Google Maps & Local Citations: Google Maps has been a extremely important area for SEOs and SEMs to focus on for their clients. Ranking in the Google results that have a maps result is often critical to these businesses and those map results come up...

Three New Bugs With YouTube: There are three known and confirmed bugs with YouTube. They include not being able to save changes being made to videos, and issues playing and sharing videos in YouTube Groups and Orkut. Here are the three threads created by Liz...

Study: Searches Ignore Real-Time Search Results: OneUpWeb released an eye-tracking study that showed how most searches ignore the real time search results. The takeaways from the study, as Greg Sterling recapped nicely include: 73% had never heard of real-time results before participating this studyOnly a quarter...

Google Help Forum Search Adds 3rd Party Content: All of the content published on this site is sourced via discussion forums, that is what makes this site unique from the thousands of other SEO blogs out there. Much of that content is sourced from the Google help forums....

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 10, 2010: 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....

Chuck Norris Turns 70 Today, No Google Doodle?: Google and Chuck Norris have a long history. If you go to Google.com and search for and hit, Im feeling lucky button you will be taken to this result that reads: Google wont search for Chuck Norris...

The UK Bing Ads : Here Is a Video: As many of you know, Microsoft is conducting a major ad blitz in the UK in order to capture market share for Bing, their search engine. Bings product manager sent me a link to one of the new commercials, which...

MSN's New Portal Now Live: If you visit MSN.com today, you may notice a new look and feel for the site. The beta design is now the new official look for MSN. Like it or not, this is the new look for now. Greg Sterling...

Google Shuts Down "Site Performance" Tool While Upgrading It: An updated Google Webmaster Help thread has confirmed reports from Googles sreeram that Google is updating the Site Performance reports in Google Webmaster Tools. During this update, Google has temporarily stopped updating the existing reports. The Googler said: We are...

Google Directing You To Wrong Country? Report The Issue: I am finally back from my trip to Israel and one thing that kind of bothered me while I was there was that whenever I went to Google.com, it redirected me to Google.co.il. I know, that is how it should...

SEO Chat

WordPress 301 Redirect: Tips and Techniques: There are several instances when you administer WordPress blogs where you will need to perform a 3 1 redirect. It is one of the most important corrective actions you can take when moving content. No other methods are as friendly

CrawlTrack: Tips and Techniques for Webmasters: If you re looking for a web analytics program but don t want to use Google Analytics you might want to give CrawlTrack a look. This web application goes beyond simple analytics to help secure your website. Let s take

Google`s Living Stories: the Final Nail in the Coffin for Paper Media?: Google has earned the wrath of publishers before. You d be upset at Google too if it looked like the search giant was going to put you out of business -- or at least force you to seriously rethink your

Keyword Difficulty vs. Size of Domain: You might wonder when it comes to competitive keywords does Google prefer ranking big domains This question can be answered by taking a close detailed look at the relationship between keyword difficulty and the size of the domain. The result

Social Networking SEO Tips and Techniques: The popularity of social networking sites on the Internet offers not only opportunities for friends to meet again online or get in touch with your old classmates and office mates but a new opportunity in the field of search engine

Beyond Keywords: Increase Your Google AdSense Revenue: This two-part article series explains how to maximize your revenue from Google AdSense. You should have read the first part already as it discusses the selection of keywords for AdSense success. This time we ll go beyond analyzing keyword-related issues

How to Increase Google AdSense Revenue: One of the best ways to earn money online is by using Google AdSense. If you are a blogger and your blogging web software allows you to copy and paste HTML code then you can implement Google AdSense. In this

Five Ways to Optimize Pages: You think very carefully about your keywords your phrasing your titles and links when you create an article or blog post for the Web. When writing with an Internet audience in mind you re always sure to optimize your content

Updating WordPress Tips and Techniques: WordPress is one of the best and most popular open source CMS blogging platforms. The down side of its popularity is that it is frequently exploited by hackers wanting to take over and deface your website. In fact in one

WordPress Database Tutorial: Security, Backup and Efficiency Tips: WordPress is currently the most important open source website publishing software. It has diverse applications ranging from self-publishing content blogging to acting as a full-fledged content management system. Yet only a few tutorials give serious emphasis to the WordPress database

Design an Online Quiz Using Google Docs: In this article you will learn how to build an online quiz using Google Docs. Popular applications of this can be found at websites for online universities and schools. If you are planning a website that offers online training and

Submit and Update a WordPress Plug-in: WordPress is currently the most popular blogging platform as of 2 9 . It is released as open source and can be used by anyone for free. Because of this immense popularity it is widely supported by web developers who

Should You Be Clocked In?: Facebook. MySpace. Insert the name of your favorite social networking site here. These Web sites allow you to connect with contacts of all types -- old college chums family members acquaintances co-workers perfect strangers -- but they also largely have

Are You Optimized? Use SEO Analysis: There are lots of little ways you can check to see if your keyword optimization efforts are paying off for your Web site. You ll know you re achieving search engine optimization when your traffic increases when you enter the

Keywords in Domain and Links as Google Ranking Factors: This is the the third part in an article series that examines and verifies the important factors for ranking in Google. The factors we will examine in this part include keyword use in the domain name and keyword-focused anchor text

Testing Keyword Use in Title Tag as a Google Ranking Factor: This is the second part of a three-part tutorial that examines and verifies ranking factors for the Google search engine. If you want to make sure that your SEO efforts for your web site will be meaningful and give it

Assessing DMOZ: A Quality Review: DMOZ is the most popular directory among search engine marketers and professionals. This is because of its reputation for being a quality directory the directory s age its authority among search engines and the most important of all the fact

Verifying Google Search Engine Ranking Factors: Google search engine ranking factors are among the most important items to check in any SEO work. This will ensure that the strategies formulated are effective current and optimal for the best search engine ranking results. Every search engine optimization

WordPress SEO Tips: Benchmarking Matt Cutts Blog: Matt Cutts writes one of the most successful and widely read blogs in the SEO field. What can we learn from taking a close look at his blog What lessons can we apply to making our own blog a success

Accurate Rank Checking in Google for Different Geographical Locations: One of the most important and common measurements of ranking success is the search engine results position. Since this factor is quantifiable it should be very easy to measure the success of an SEO campaign. As you might guess with

Online Marketing Blog

10 Tips on Live Blogging & Content Marketing at SXSWi: So here I sit in the DFW airport hanging out with David Berkowitz waiting for my connection to Austin. What better way to spend that 45 min than to write a helpful blog post? A big part of my “mission”

5 Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Marketing: If you run an ecommerce business, chances are your customers – regardless of their age, gender or economic status – are active on social networks and social media sharing sites.Just consider the statistics from social media monitoring site Pingdom:Males and

BIGLIST Social SEO Blogs Update 031110: Welcome to the post-Winter/pre-Spring version of the BIGLIST review of SEO blogs. Snow is starting to melt and you can actually walk around outside (in Minnesota) without your eyelashes freezing together. We have a nice group for you to review so fire

11 Free Tools for Social Media Optimization: Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search.The

Ford’s Focus on Social Media: Scott Monty Interview: When you think of successful consumer brands in the social media space, names like Dell, Zappos and Pepsi come to mind. Another is Ford. Last year the Ford Fiesta movement generated tremendous amount of awareness (and pre-orders) for a vehicle

Poll: Best Royalty Free Stock Photo Sites for Bloggers: As with many bloggers, we’ve been using royalty free images for many years. Many bloggers make use of images from Flickr and we have too but you can’t always find the right image there. I’ve even made a point to

5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix: From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness.LinkedIn, however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots

My Top iPhone Apps for Social Media Marketing: It’s a little ironic that I’m writing this post about iPhone apps using WordPress on a Motorola Droid (Devour actually), but it allows me a chance to experience how hard it is to blog, using a tiny tiny tactile keyboard and

Customer & Influencer Research in Social Media: “If you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” Pink Floyd, The Wall.That quote from Another Brick in the Wall reminds me of the cart horse

5 Sure Fire Tactics to Promote a Business Blog: Relevant, Consistently Updated Content + Flawless Technical Functionality & User Experience = Perfect Blog LaunchWhat’s missing from the equation above? You guessed it: blog promotion.Creating a glitch-free blog with informative content means next to nothing without attracting readers.Start promoting your blog

OMS10 B2B Marketing Case Study: Marketo: Our agency TopRank Marketing has been working with Marketo proving SEO, content and blog marketing consulting services for about 2 years. I finally had the opportunity to meet VP Jon Miller in person today prior to his presentation at Online

How Journalists Use Search & Social Media: TopRank ran a survey of journalists, reporters and editors on their use of search and social media in 2008. We found 91% use search engines like Google to do their job. 64% use social networks. Published in Jan 2010, a

15 Social Media Answers From OMS10: Online Marketing Summit 2010 in San Diego is host to a smorgasboard of internet marketing topics and this afternoon I am priveledged to participate on a panel about Social Media. Panelists include:Chris Baggott, CEO, Compendium BlogwareLee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online

Small Business Tips For Reporting Web Metrics: It’s an exciting time to be a small business owner or communications professional. Why? We’ve never had

Brandividualism: Dilema or Opportunity?: Many business owners and managers are perplexed by the social web. The effect of customer participation with social media on brands is undeniable. The effect of employee participation with social media can be a bit of a quandary. The range of

5 Twitter Management Tools You Can’t Live Without: Without a doubt, one of the most popular shiny new objects of many social media marketing programs is Twitter. There are Twitter books, Twitter conferences, Twitter blogs and numerous articles devoted to Twitter marketing. Unfortunately, there’s not enough time left

Open Letter to Blog Comment Spammers: Dear “SEO Consulting Services New York” and you too “Starting A Home Business”,I have an admission to make: I don’t like comment spam. You are comment spammers. Our readers don’t like you. I don’t like you. You’re not welcome here.Our

Basic Tips on Web Analytics: Just about every business with a web site does something to market and promote it. When those companies are asked about web analytics, it’s surprising how many look back with a blank stare. This isn’t the case with mature online

3 Reasons PR & Communications Pros Need to Know SEO: The PR industry is in a state of flux with increasing importance on getting into the content and social web business. Consumers are spending more time with digital and social media. Advertising dollars are following. That means less budget to

Ten Must Read Tips to Start a Small Business Blog: A friend of mine who is an experienced corporate marketer started a new business. The store just opened and being the good pal that I am, I was able to provide some advice regarding marketing on the web – specifically

Search Engine Journal

Yahoo Adds TV Shortcut on Search Results Page: Its TV Portal is one of Yahoos strongest verticals. I personally check it out to get my fix of entertainment news from time to time. So, it is but logical for Yahoo to try to maximize the potential of Yahoo

New Google Wave Extensions Debut!: Okay, so my title is fairly misleading. Google Wave HAD extensions... just maybe one or two. When Wave came out I was so excited that I totally exhausted the poll option. I sent out ridiculous polls to all my friends

Join 5,500+ Search Marketers on SEJ’s Facebook Fanpage: Search Engine Journals Official Facebook Fanpage hit the 5,000 mark last week, and is now pushing 5,600 fans who are sharing search marketing news, blog posts and comments on SEJs Facebook Fanpage.Not only does the SEJ community share SEJ posts

3 Tricks on SEO & User Engagement: I rate search engine optimization on content accessibility, popularity, and usability. We can say that content is well optimized for search engines when it is accessed as soon as it published, generates links from trusted sources, and drives user engagement.

SEO Professional FireFox Toolbar: Tracks Yahoo! Backlinks: A few weeks ago I shared four addons to show you some website stats at a glance. Earlier I had also compared the three most popular advanced SEO toolbars. Todays addon is one more multi-purpose SEO toolbar to add to

Google Adds Blue Dots to Product Search Results: Just a quick update to inform you that if youre using Googles product search, whether on your computers or mobile devices such as iPhone or Android phones, you can now check whether a particular product is in stock on a

I Admit It – These Videos Taught Me a Few Social Media Tricks: I have been enrolled in the Market Motive social media online course for close to two months now. Each week I have been given a social media topic and have been responsible for viewing a certain number of films which

15% Off Search & Social Spring Summit for SEJ Readers!: I am very happy to announce the countdown to Search & Social Spring Summit 2010, the official search marketing and social media conference of Search Engine Journal!Search & Social Spring Summit 2010 is the second annual conference from Search &

My “Couch Talk” Local Marketing Interview With Chuck Reynolds: For those of you that do not know Chuck, he has a great deal of experience with geo games as well and other geo apps, local search and marketing, and is not only a marketer but a heavy engaged user

3 Tools to Analyze the Sentiment of Your Brand Social Mentions: Sentiment analysis is something very new and immature. Sentiment analysis allows you to identify general attitudes towards your brand (or a product). The goal of sentiment analysis is to assign a given social media comment with a degree of association

Picking Wise Search Projects: Whether you work in-house or take on several clients, there are going to be projects that make you cringe and projects that feel good to work one. A lot of this depends on the project manager and/or client. Here are

Facebook Searches Grow by 10% in February: ComScore has just released its February search engine rankings data. And while theres nothing new in terms of who is on top, who gained and who lost, whats surprising about it is that among all the online properties where searches

YouTube Mobile Now Serving Banner Ads: With the ever growing site traffic of of YouTube mobile site, it is not surprising that Google will take advantage of this to serve advertisements. In 2009, YouTube mobiles site traffic increased by 160%. You can just imagine how good

Google Adds Biking Directions to Maps: While you are pondering on the points made by Todd about online retirement, heres a worthwile albeit healthy activity that you may want to consider - biking. And to help you navigate your way through U.S. cities on your bike,

Be “Real” With Your Customers: A lot of today’s top copywriters got their start in direct mail, broadcasting and catalog pieces. Back then, the medium was strictly rooted in the “Push” era – we shovel out the content, you take it all in and buy

Your Online Retirement: “Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at

Find Relevant Blogs (and Link Building Opportunities) with Xmarks: Xmarks is one of those FireFox plugins that Ive been using for ages. I mentioned it in my one of the first FireFox tool overviews and I still find it awesome. With some (arguably) great social features added Xmarks has

Google Opens Apps Marketplace for Business: I pretty much remember when talks about Google launching its own store for web apps started circulating before. But Google remained mum about it until now. The Google Apps Marketplace has been launched and is now open for business.So whats

Weekly Search & Social News: 03/09/2010: Welcome to another edition of 7 Days of Search and Social - so, how are we now? Last week was a pretty busy one out in the trenches, especially considering that SMX was on (generally slows the blogging world). I

W3C Validation for SEO – Myth and Reality: A topic that has been discussed extensively by some people in the SEO community is the notion that having a W3C compliant web site is either critical to SEO or its not. Most recently, Edward Lewis and I debated back

Graywolf's SEO Blog

How to Handle Old Directory Listings, Links and off Topic Traffic: Today’s post is another answer to a question–this time from Nathan Schubert, who wants to know what you should do with old links from directories and websites that still drive traffic if you’ve changed the content on your website.OK. First

Developers VS Users: Anyone who’s been involved in web development for any length of time has likely encountered the Developers VS Users situation. It’s a mistake that can often lead to expensive problems down the road. So what exactly is the problem? And

Are You Chasing Off Topic Traffic: When your blog or website becomes successful and starts to get traffic, if you don’t make direct sales yourself or commissions via affiliate traffic, you almost always look for other revenue streams. The most common revenue stream is CPM based

Outrank Your Competition By Taking One More Step: I love competition. I compete against just about anyone, at just about anything. For the last few years, competitive webmastering has been my focus. I like to start a site in a small to medium sized niche, and outrank everyone.

When Google Local Gets it Wrong: Now, don’t get me wrong. Google Local and Google Maps are extremely valuable tools that I use a few times every week. But every so often they get something wrong–so wrong, in fact, that I’m not sure where the wires got

Hey! Editors! Leave Them Links Alone!: There’s a trend of editors in the SEO world uptight about linking out. A friend in the industry who guest blogs recently told me that he was told by his editor he couldn’t promise links to contributors who participated in

Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors – February 2010: 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 Set up Caching on Your Blog: The question for today’s post comes from Meg Geddes aka NetMeg. She wants to know more about setting up caching on Wordpress.Ok, let’s get the big question out of the way. What is caching and why do you want it?

How to Deal with Expired Product or Auction Pages: Today’s post is question from Hicham Damahi of beezid.com/ who asks “How to handle expired product pages on a classified / auction site.” I’m going to expand the topic to cover expired product pages as well, since the concept it

Creating Better Auto-Generated Text: Over the past two weeks we’ve taken a look at different aspects of copywriting, including aspects such as the value of good copy, outsourcing your content, and tools to make your content better. To round out the series I thought

When To Pay Top Dollar for Copy: It took Leo Tolstoy six years to craft the 460,000-word War and Peace. A cheap copywriting service could churn out as many words for your website for just $9,200 (at 2 cents a word) over the course of a few

Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your Wordpress Posts: As you know I’m a big fan of the Wordpress platform. Although it’s not the most optimal platform, there’s no question that it makes it easier to run a website. I was recently asked by Brian Clark of CopyBlogger to

Is Wordpress Good or Bad for SEO: Earlier this week there was a post on SEOBullsh*t that talked about how Wordpress was inadequate for anything more than a personal blog. Since I’m a big advocate of Wordpress and use it more than any other platform, I thought

Sponsored Posts Experiment: There’s an old saying … You’ll never make the shot you don’t take. It’s in that spirit I’m announcing that, starting today, I’ll be experimenting with some new advertising here in the form of sponsored posts. I’m doing things with

Interview with Michael Streko of Knowem.com: The following is a sponsored post and part of new advertising option I’ll be announcing later today.For this post we’re going to be talking to Michael Streko Co-Founder of KnowEm.com. For my readers who might not know, you can you

The Tales Silently Told By The Cannons Of Titles: What Bestselling Authors Know About Writing TitlesThey vary by genre, but the majority of bestselling authors and editors return to the same hooks time and again to routinely sell obscene amounts of books. On the recommendation of Clayton Makepeace, a

Is Sarah Lacy Making Sponsored Posts on TechCrunch?: Post Updated See End of PostIf you read TechCrunch, you may have noticed a post this weekend about Blueprint Cleanse, a health product designed to cleanse your body. On the surface, the piece seemed to be a “California” lifestyle piece,

TextBroker.com Copywriting Service Review: Like most people who work in the marketing space, I’ve been hearing more and more about “demand media” and “content farms” in recent months and how they are either the death of quality writers or the greatest thing since sliced

Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic: Google has long been an advocate of “build great content”; however, in reality, it’s turning into “build great content … and if we like it we’ll take it from you, put it on our pages, and deprive you of that

Google’s Social Search – Affecting a SERP Near You: Late last week Google announced it was graduating social search from beta and making it active for everyone. I got a heads up from Barry Wise of KnowEm a day later, and we spent some time talking about what this

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