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March 2009

  SEJ SEO News Feeds Archives

There Is No Secret Sauce in SEO!
Sadly, many people have succumb to the snake oil that some shady SEOs are pushing. They say they have the secret to getting you top ranked in Google, Yahoo! and any other search engine in 7 days or less. They claim to have the bulletproof plan to solve all your SEO [...]

Are Link Requests Dead?
In the era of web 2.0 email is not the only medium to get in contact with a person. People join social media networks, become friends and grand each other the right to be get reached "from inside", from people you are supposed to trust more than a random visitor who drops you an email [...]

Organization Is the #1 Tip for PPC
When people ask what the best tips are for PPC, they assume the answer is some tool for bid management, trick in writing ads, or must have for landing page optimization. What is the best tip for real? Organize your ad groups and campaigns like your business depends on it, because [...]

Google to Axe AdSense for Video Units by End of April
Just over a year since it implemented AdSense for Video, Google announced that it will soon be stopping the said AdSense program by the end of April.  According to the Inside AdSense blog, the decision was made after a careful review of the program which they found out was not creating the impact that Google [...]

Google Says Goodbye to 200 Googlers
Despite being an almighty company, Google was not spared by the on-going economic crisis. And no matter how much Google tries to explain that the announced lay-offs of around 200 Google employees worldwide is an offshoot of overlapping work areas - it can’t hide the fact that the ultimate reason for this lay-off is of [...]

Google AdWords’ Beta Web Interface Expands to More Users
Google AdWords continues beta testing its new web interface. This was started sometime in November 2008 to some U.S. advertisers, but today Google is expanding it to more U.S. advertisers and to some advertisers in other countries as well - UK and Australia. The new Google AdWords’ beta interface would streamline that whole AdWords campaign [...]

QuarkBase Provides One-Page SEO Analysis
You may want to argue that one-page all-in-one SEO analysis tools giving a quick one-page analysis are useful at all (and I may agree to some extent) but the one I want to share today is really cool to my mind. I have actually mentioned this one previously but thought it was well worth a separate [...]

How to Improve Non-US Search Rankings
Looking through my analytics in Google, I begin realizing that I am receiving traffic from other countries around the globe. This led me to think is there a way one could in fact improve their non-US Google rankings? What if your product is something that U.S as well as individuals all over the [...]

3 Document Search Engines to Search for SEO Documentation
A while ago I listed a few ways to find PDF tutorials, and later also shared my collection of SEO cheat sheets which showed that SEJ readers were definitely interested in SEO documentation. So today I am adding a few document search engines to add to your arsenal. Tool Search options File Types Brupt One document type at [...]

Stop Behaving Badly on Social Media!
I’m a noise musician.  For those of you not familiar with the genre, that means my band, Grasshopper (http://www.myspace.com/karlmalonelarrybird), caters to a very small audience who likes to describe the music using phrases like “f***** up inharmonious horns� and “a windspiel made of knives�.  You may wonder how this relates to [...]

An Interview with David Harry, Sensei of the SEO Dojo
Many know David Harry as the whiz behind Reliable SEO, The SEO Handbook, and the Trail of the Fire Horse at Huomah.com. Knowing I was a fellow martial artist, he recently invited me to take part in his latest project called the SEO Dojo , a community for “SEO Warriors” to teach, share and learn the [...]

Advertising Scratchpad
(Scratchpad photo by Leonard Low.)  I’m preparing to advertise something I hope will become linkbait, and it’s made me dig into some advertising ideas. Just before I begin, for those of you who are unfamiliar, scratchpad is a column I write (usually on my own blog) featuring an informal style that’s kind of like a [...]

3 Development Trends That Will Impact SEO
As SEOs we are constantly tracking and documenting the latest search trends. However, how often do we pay attention to development trends? In my opinion, not enough. You are probably thinking, well why should we? SEOs need to stay on top of every aspect of development in order to learn new ways of leveraging these [...]

Crash Course in Magento e-Commerce
According to Google Trends, it’s official. More people are are searching for “Magento” than “osCommerce”. And it didn’t take long. Less than two years. I noticed it a little over a year ago and kept watch. It was in beta at the time and I wasn’t about to switch our active sites over to it until [...]

Want New Ideas and Inspiration? Start a New Project
A few weeks ago Loren announced that we had started a new project - Daily SEO tip, a blog featuring one SEO tip per day. A friend of mine asked me why we decided to start a new project from scratch while both of us have established projects of our own where we had [...]

Live Search Rolls Out Instant and Active Answers
Live Search is rolling out to new features, or should I say two new way of giving users answers to the information that they are looking for. It’s either Instant Answers or Active Answers. Both of them would enable users to find the information they need instantly and up-to-the minute. First is the Live Search Instant [...]

Google Enhances Search Results with Longer Snippets and Better Related Searches
Google is rolling out two enhancements to its search results pages. One is that search results are now given longer snippets and the other is the improvement on the related searches being suggested by Google when you use a search term that could have many aspects into it. According to Google, these two enhancements aim [...]

Twitter Enters Advertising Deal with Microsoft &Federated Media
It looks like Twitter is slowly developing a way to make money, based upon its popularity and usage : ExecTweets. ExecTweets is a Twitter powered page that pulls in a collection of posts, or “tweets,” written by corporate executives, and features branding from Microsoft. ExecTweets is operated by John Battelle’s online advertising firm Federated Media. More [...]

Leveraging Small Business Customer Reviews and Testimonials Online
Referrals from happy customers have always been the best method for generating new customers. The next-best source is well-written, satisfied customer reviews and testimonials, another kind of referral. Small businesses are uniquely positioned to obtain and leverage this form of referral being so close to their customers. This brief article describes how small businesses [...]

Ultimate Guide to Twitter Hashtags
What is a Twitter hashtag? A hashtag is a way to unite global Tweets around some particular topic. Basically, these are tags that that help those who seek similar content discover your Tweets. According to the official source: Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on [...]

Create A Brand From Scratch : Branding &Search
I have a little something to say about this topic, because I have built 3 of my own successful e-tail brands from the ground up. Each one of these brands were built solely via the Internet. Today, 1/4 of our daily traffic to these sites comes from searches looking [...]

Google Insight Search Adds News, Images, Product Data Sources
Remember Google Insights? That Google Trends like search tool which provide more flexible and functional way of understanding user behavior and that has the capability to display search volume and regional interest? Well,  aside from web searches you can now use this tool to analyze search behavior on Google News, Google Image and Google Product [...]

How Long Should the Page Title Tag Be?
We’ve shared tips on crafting a good page title several times on SEJ and each time we’ve came to conclusion that it is better to keep it short and concise. But how short should actually be and should it really be short? A WebmasterWorld discussion tackles this questions looking at various aspects. How short? If you want [...]

7 Simple Steps for Decoding Website Analytics
Following on from my talk at Think Visibility last weekend, several people mentioned how they loved the vast sea of data Google Analytics provides, but simply don’t know where to begin sorting through it to uncover trends. It can be overwhelming. So I’ve put together these 7 analytics tips to help [...]

4 SERP Trackers Reviewed : How to Monitor Your Keyword Rankings
You may come across different opinions on keyword rankings - and honestly, it is hard to choose which one is right: the one that claims that rankings are useless (and user engagement and conversions are what really matter) and the one that says that SEO is all about SERPs and keyword position. Anyway, I am not [...]

Google Image Search Lets You Filter Results with Specific Color
The Google Operating Systems Blog  is running a post on a little tweak to Google Image Search that lets you filter your results based on a specific color.  You won’t see the option to filter image results by color in the main Google Image Search though. But GOS was kind enough to share this trick [...]

Happy 3rd Birthday Twitter : Where Was I Without You?
It seems like only months ago that I first experienced the buzz about Twitter, a microblogging application which I had heard a lot about, but never really dedicated the time to dive into. It was at an SMX West show in 2008 where I witnessed my search engine friends, associates and one-day followers clicking about [...]

Craigslist More Popular Than MySpace : Sign of Economy Says Hitwise
Hitwise is running a report on the top search term in the United States for the week ending March 14, 2009, and interestingly the data revealed that “Craigslist” is the top search term for the week ending March 14, 2009. According to the Hitwise blog post, this is the first time that Craigslist topped the [...]

Chitika SearchAppalooza Announces Finalists for the SES NY “Kick-Ass Search Apps Contest�
Chitika’s SearchAppalooza, being held at SES NY next week, is a power-packed, 1 hour face-off featuring some of the biggest movers and shakers in search, and will be held next Tuesday, March 24th from 1:45pm—2:45pm. Update! One more finalist has been added to the group due to a tie for the fifth spot! The SearchAppalooza session [...]

Save 25% From Best of the Web with the BOTW Stimulus Package
Best of the Web (BOTW.org) is stepping up and doing its part to increase small business spending and savings by offering its own BOTW Stimulus Package this March with a 25% discount on all BOTW Web Directory and Blog Directory submittals. If you’ve been waiting to list your site in Best of the Web, now’s [...]

Honest Seduction : Post Click Marketing Book Review
I have been recently sent a book by three prominent bloggers and marketers: Anna Talerico, Justin Talerico and Scott Brinker, founders of IONinteractive. The book is “Honest Seduction: Using Post-Click Marketing to Turn Landing Pages into Game Changers” (note: I am linking to the blog post about the book because Amazon link is ugly and [...]

SEO Quality Indicators &The Heap Paradox
I recently held a poll on Twitter about whether a Yahoo Directory link was necessary if you are building a website in a high-competion niche. Most people said yes, a few said “not necessary.” Ugh. I hate when there’s no consensus. Thankfully this got me thinking about SEO in general [...]

Gmail Labs Rolls Out “Undo Send�
Just right after rolling out the email preview feature for YouTube videos, Flickr and Picasa photos and Yelp reviews, the Gmail Labs is introducing a new feature again. This time, the feature lets users undo sent email which are not supposed to be sent yet, or emails which contain errors. Actually the new feature is turning [...]

Get Your Search Engine Journal Laptop Sticker at SESNY
Are you going to SES New York next week? If so, be sure to look me up. The Search Engine Journal team will be giving away free SEJ laptop stickers during the conference and at the IM Charity Party (and special #SESNY Tweetups), with a New york flair! Search Engine Journal will be giving out 250 [...]

Only 2 Weeks until IM Spring Break
Today marks the 2 week countdown until IM Spring Break, the search marketing mini-con in South Florida which will feature some of the brightest and most talented speakers in search marketing, along with keynotes by Neil Patel, Rae Hoffman (SugarRae), and Chris Winfield. IM Spring Break is 3 days of sunny, Florida, spring break style [...]

How to Search for a Term Misspellings on eBay
We have discussed recently the benefits of using misspellings in PPC or organic search optimization campaigns. Much earlier before that I’ve also looked at a few tools suggesting common term typos. One mentioned downside of those tools is that they generate typo lists randomly or based on grammatical rules rather than the user behavior (well, except [...]

Google Replaces Armstrong with Dennis Woodside, Vice President for Americas Operations
Last week Google lost one of its most loyal executives, Tim Armstrong, to AOL as Armstrong left his position to become AOL’s new CEO. AOL is of course, a Google partner. Google yesterday named Dennis Woodside, a 5 year Google vet, to replace Armstrong as their new Vice President for Americas Operations. More from CNN Money : Omid [...]

Google UK Adds Google Maps StreetView
A long time in waiting, Google UK and Google Netherlands have launched Google Maps StreetView in those respected countries. News of Google StreetView hitting the UK started a year back when Google officially announced that the project will begin and Google cars and private contractors were seen filming the streets of the UK. Of course the [...]

Why Search Is Broken, and How Semantic Search Fixes It
A human gets information by asking a question to get an answer, but online, we’ve been forced to learn “keyword� searches. The thinking was that we could extract meaning from several abstract words (aka keywords) most closely related to what we were seeking. The problem is that this does not work [...]

Make the Most Of Your Linkedin Profile
LinkedIn is the best business networking site I am aware of. People join it to do business and if you are smart enough you’ll build powerful connections and find awesome opportunities there. Now let’s see how you can increase your LinkedIn profile visibility. Remind of yourself You do know Linkedin users receive email messages about your network [...]

Yahoo Handing Out Free Directory Renewals?
Seems that some publishers who have paid to have their sites listed in the Yahoo Directory (which is an essential part of a core link building strategy along with Best of the Web and DMOZ listings) are seeing their listings renewed by Yahoo for free. Yahoo usually charges an annual fee of $299 for its [...]

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking 101/201/301
Ok class, today we’re moving into graduate level conversion tracking. But we’ll start with 101. First off, the number of people using AdWords without conversion tracking just stuns me. People contact me for AdWords advice, and the first thing I look at is whether they’re tracking conversions within AdWords. Many are not. Why is this important? Why [...]

Are In-Text Home Page Links User-UNfriendly?
We know from experience and based on common sense that links organically integrated in context and containing keywords work much better (in terms of transferring anchor text to the linked page) than links placed isolates (or in a list)  in other (sitewide) parts of the template (i.e. sidebar or footer). It makes sense because in-text links [...]

Flash &Search Engines : Indexed in a Flash
When it comes to SEO, Flash can be a polarizing topic. Whenever I’m speaking with clients about their SEO initiatives (along with their creative and technical staff), it only takes one mention of flash to suddenly get a mixture of angry, excited, and confused looks. When you break it down, some brand [...]

Search is Getting All Emotional Thanks to Twitter
My four-year-old grandson, Hamza could teach the search engines a thing-or-two about how people think. I made him lasagna and while he was eating he paused, rolled his eyes upward and pronounced: “vegetable, cat basagna.” Only his mother and I could possibly understand what he meant. The ‘vegetable’ part is because even the tiny bit of [...]

Top Wordpress Resources to List Your Wordpress Blog &Build Links
I have written many times in the past about the importance of listing a blog in various authority blogging directories. And although a good deal of the lists out there can be overwhelming (I’m currently putting together a filtered list of the top blog and RSS directories on the net since the New Media 55 [...]

EyePlorer : a New Approach to Semantic Search
EyePlorer developed by German company Vionto.com visualizes knowledge graphs (k-graphs) derived from Wikipedia content that can be interactively explored. The knowledge graph consists of eyespots representing concepts that are connected to your topic. For better orientation those eyespots are clustered. If you want to know how any eyespot is connected to your topic, just click on [...]

Why is Digg.com Taking the “Social� out of Social Media?
It seems that over the past several months, Digg has been waging a war against it’s own users and alienating the very people who have helped Digg to achieve its current level of success. Since it’s never fair to make accusations without facts to back them up, let’s look at a couple of steps that Digg [...]

Google Checkout Changing Processing Fee Structure
Google is changing the fee structure at Google Checkout from a uniform 2.0% + $0.20 per transaction rate to a new tiered rate service which will reflect the different goods and sales processed via Google Checkout (a Google Checkout Quality Score?). Google Checkout sent this email out to vendors last night : We’re writing to let you [...]

GrandCentral to Become Google’s Voice
By now, you’ve probably read about today’s biggest news - Google Voice, or what was previously known as GrandCentral which was acquired by Google in 2007.   It took Google two years before finally relaunching the service.  For such a long time, we like all the others who have written about it expect Google Voice [...]

Networking Tips for IM Spring Break 2009 : SEO &Social Conference
If Scary SEO 2008 taught us anything, it’s that great speakers, good food and plenty of drinks in a mini-con style make for an amazing learning and networking opportunity. IM Spring Break will have all of these elements ad infinitum with three days packed full of amazing speakers plus a poker tournament, a pool [...]

How to Find More Related Sites in Your Niche
Very often you need to find more similar sites to the one you already have: either for backlink pitch or to compile a link baiting list or just for your niche research. So today I am sharing a few short tips on how to find more related sites (apart from searching Google for relevant terms): Find [...]

Privacy Groups Call Google’s Interest-Based Ads a Disaster
It didn’t take two online privacy groups that long to attack Google’s recent announced interest-based advertising. Electronic Privacy Information and Center for Digital Democracy have similarly attacked the online ad targeting program. For its part, Marc Rotenberg executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said that the interest-based ad targeting is a disaster and would [...]

Gradual Roll Out of the New Facebook Home Page Starts
Update: I just checked out my Facebook profile and it’s now showing the new home page.  My initial reaction is that the Highlights on the left side and the live news feed on the main column seem a bit redundant.  But aesthetics wise, the new home page looks cleaner than the old one. And I [...]

Pubcon South Liveblogging By Lisa Barone &Outspoken Media
Can’t make it to Pubcon South and looking for some raw, kick ass and live coverage of the conference? Look no farther than conference live blogging diva Lisa Barone and her coverage of Pubcon South on the Outspoken Media blog. Barone’s coverage should be starting today as according to Twitter, the conference is starting up after [...]

Hey Facebook : Imitation Of Success Does Not Guarantee Success
By now you have seen the various articles regarding Facebook’s homepage redesign. If not, go take the tour to see what is coming. As you can see, Facebook has copied some of the most loved features from both FriendFeed and Twitter. Facebook may be a massive social network, but it wants to be the main destination [...]

How Tweeting Can Cure Your Hunger : Twitter &Restaurant Marketing
Twitter is a great tool to promote discounts and deals, but I often wondered when will restaurants and clubs are going to take advantage of this great micro-blogging site? This is what I would do if I were a restaurant or club owner to get the most recent specials, deals and discounts out to [...]

Google Launches Interest-Based Ads
Aiming to serve more relevant and useful ads to users, Google is testing out “interest-based” ads. This new ad serving technique will be initially tested out to Google AdSense partner sites and YouTube. The ads relate users’ categories of interest to their browsers based on sites they visit and view. This data is then used [...]

SideStripe: Let Your Friends Help You with Your Google Search
SideStripe is a new search tool with quite a unique and useful concept worth sharing with SEJ readers. It is basically a Facebook application which assists you with your Google search. It provides a Google gadget you can add to your Google SERPs - the gadget will be looking for answers among your Facebook friends [...]

GMail Getting More Traffic Than YouTube
Hitwise has released a report showing that over the past 2 weeks online traffic to Gogole Gmail has surpassed the numbers which visit another popular Google property; YouTube. Heather Dougherty of Hitwise says that YouTube and GMail have been competing for the #10 spot in Most Popular US Websites, with Google Image Search creeping up behind [...]

Microsoft Still Open to Talks with Yahoo
Just when we all thought that the failed Microsoft-Yahoo deal has already been put to rest, here comes Microsoft still hoping that previously failed talks will be renewed, especially now that Yahoo has a new CEO in Carol Bartz. Kevin Turner, COO of Microsoft  during an interview with the Times hinted that a partnership with Yahoo [...]

Optimize Your Twitter Profile to Promote Your Deals
Twitter is becoming is mainstream in the social media and SEO world but slowly more and more bigger brands are becoming informed of the ways Twitter can get out the word of what they’re selling. Seeing already Twitter’s limitless opportunities, I’ve come up with other ways brands could use Twitter to optimize what they’re [...]

How to Design and Organize Global Navigation Menus
Last week I started discussing huge navigation menus by asking what is a better way to order the navigation categories: alphabetically or by popularity. Today I am going to further discuss the topic of optimizing the huge navigation menus by sharing my finds as per the ways to organize, design and choose words to name [...]

Google AdSense Featuring Adwords Product Plusbox Shopping Feeds
We’ve seen the shopping feeds popping up in the past in Google Search Results and in the AdWords program ever since 2007 and Barry recently did a write up on Search Engine Roundtable about the Google Adwords “Show Products” Plusbox no longer being a test and becoming an integrated part of the Google Advertising [...]

Comprehensive Keyword Analysis: It Is Not All About Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research is not (or shouldn’t be) just about creating a list of keyword phrases a surfer uses when performing a search. Using just a few SEO tools to create a keyword list, you won’t research much. The deeper you understand the topic, the richer your content becomes and the more “occasional” search referrals (those you [...]

SEO &Analytics: 4 Useful Ways To Assess Your Organic Traffic
When you set out to build your site content, keyword research and educated guesses about keyword relevance are often necessary initial steps. But nothing trumps actual data on how users engage with your site. When your site has been live for a significant amount of time your analytics offer a wealth of useful information.  For [...]

9 Twitter Search Apps : Better Than Twitter &Google
Twitter Search was a red hot topic last week, and will probably continue to heat up as Twitter usage grows beyond tech peeps and early adopters and penetrates the masses via Presidential Twittering, Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn) of CNN motivating his viewers to Twitter and other timely events like the baseball season, holidays and unfortunate events [...]

Some Basic Help with .htaccess File
Throughout past week I came across several people having trouble with .htaccess files. Really, that tech stuff is sometimes frustrating. We have also discussed the 301 redirect and .htaccess file on DailySEOtip last week and found that many people might be using it incorrectly even though it appeared to work (please refer to the comments). I [...]

Google CEO Says Google Unlikely to Buy Twitter (Right Now)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt was on PBS’s Charlie Rose on Saturday night and was asked specifically about whether or not Google will buy Twitter (amongst many other very good questions). Watch the entire video of the Charlie Rose interview of Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Google Video : His answer, albeit extremely vague, shows the Google [...]

IM Spring Break : Florida Search &Social Marketing Conference
Are you going to IM Spring Break? WHY NOT!?! http://www.imspringbreak.com IM Spring Break, the search marketing & social media conference at Deerefield Beach, FL has lowered its ticket prices to $379 for the 3 day event. That’s $120 a day for what’s going to be the tightest and most informative search marketing event in years. IM Spring Break [...]

Twitter Rolling Out Search on Homepage &Sponsored Results
Twitter is taking its search functionality from behind the curtain and is testing a search box on the Twitter homepage along with updated Twitter trends. I’m not seeing the search box myself when logged into @lorenbaker (please follow me), but it seems that they are doing some random testing. If you’re not seeing the search box [...]

What The Cloud Is Missing – The Right Desktop Partner
Over the last several weeks I have beta tested any number of startups which represent what we might call “refined walled garden� approaches to social interaction. Typically, and walled garden approach has met with great criticism from proponents of cloud computing. The dogma for many in the social networking, marketing and even technology spheres has been one of liberal damnation for anything not free, or akin to a desktop application.

Huge Navigation Menus: Ordering by Popularity Versus Alphabetical Ordering
A while ago I took a quick look at Amazon.com navigation menus evolution and a few really interesting questions popped up after I published the post. I am going to discuss them here weekly, so please share your thoughts and opinions. The first question to discuss is the preferred ordering criteria of the long [...]

SEO Implications of FireBug FireFox Addon
Firebug is one of the best FireFox addons I am aware of. While it is primarily meant for tech-savvy web developers, SEOs can also benefit from the tool and here are just a few tips: Disable CSS style (via CSS tab) selectively: make sure search bots and people browsing your site with CSS disabled can [...]

Live Search Cashback Icon Now on MSN Toolbar
Like I said, trying times need desperate measure. And so if you’re into online shopping and have been using Live Search Cashback program, you’ll be glad to know that MSN Toolbar has embedded a nifty icon for the program.  What’s good about this Cashback icon is the fact that it gleams whenever you have encountered [...]

Get Better Understanding of Google and Yahoo SERPs with Search Cloudlet
Search Cloudlet is a FireFox addon that inserts a related tag cloud into Google and Yahoo interfaces. Developed by the Russian company INTSPEI, the addon got very positive reviews on very powerful blogs and resources (check a couple of them: LifeHacker and Wired for example): Working behind the scenes, Search Cloudlet injects a tag cloud [...]

Google Launches TipJar, a Yahoo Answer-Like Money Saving Tips Site
As a little way of helping people during these trying times, Google has launched the TipJar Site, a site listing money-saving tips submitted by, well people who are supposed to be expert in the subject.  TipJar is powered by Google Moderator, a tool which started as an experiment for the Google App Engine. TipJar is a [...]

Google Health Goes More Social with Sharing Feature
For those who have trusted Google enough with their health records and started using  Google Health, here’s a new feature that you would certainly find useful - Google Health’s “Share Your Profile” feature.  This new feature will let you easily share your personal health records with those people you trust. Those people could be your [...]

Google Adsense Rolls Out Expandable Ads
Desperate times need desperate measures. Even a big time program such as Google Adsense suffers from the economic crunch that everyone is feeling right now. And so hoping to adjust to the effects of the economic crunch on its major advertising program, Google has just rolled our a new ad format for its Adsense program [...]

Yahoo Teams Up with JS-Kit to Enhance Yahoo! Updates
With Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect struggling it out in the data portability niche, we certainly have one room for another player - and that has to be Yahoo.  In partnership with leading distributed social network JS-Kit, Yahoo is announcing a revamped Yahoo! Updates service. JS-Kit powers up major sites such as AOL, Experian, [...]

Language in International PPC : Rose By Any Other Spelling May Smell Sweeter
Everyone knows - though many fail to use - misspelled keywords in their PPC or organic search optimization efforts can be very effective. Interestingly I have found that many major players in our field tend to forget this process when they start to do any kind of multilingual or foreign country marketing. I will admit that [...]

3 Common Uses of Robots.txt File
Despite of the existence of pretty self-explanatory Robots.txt standards, all-in-one tutorials and advanced tips, Robots.txt topic is still often misunderstood and misused. Therefore I decided to sum the topic up giving the three most common uses of the file for people to refer to when at a loss. Default Robots.txt Default Robots.txt file basically tells every crawler [...]

Oodle Builds a New Facebook Marketplace
After almost two years of existence, Facebook Marketplace is finally getting a much needed boost by way of Oodle, an online classifieds company which has built a new Facebook Marketplace interface. The new Oodle-powered Facebook Marketplace now provides Facebook advertisers an easier way of creating, sharing and responding to ad listings. With Oodle’s online classifieds technology [...]

Twitter Should Take Schmidt’s Critique Positively
After posting their first Tweet a couple of days ago, it is surprising that Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt would have to hit Twitter’s lack of full offering. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley conference, Mr. Schmidt said that Twitter is a “poor man’s email system.” Mr. Schmidt explains that although Twitter is a great innovation and underlines [...]

Microsoft Gives an Official Screenshot of the New Live Search
Finally, the Microsoft Live Search Team has officially issued a statement regarding the press coverage that their new Live Search interface is getting. While everyone keeps on alluding to the fact the Microsoft is rebranding the Live Search into the Kumo brand, Microsoft is neither confirming nor denying the rumor. But based on the official screenshots [...]

Real Impact of Google Quality Score In AdWords PPC
We ran into an AdWords error- yes they admitted that for whatever reason, their system messed up- that gave all our keywords in a new account a quality score of 1/10. The system was telling us that the landing page was the problem, but nothing seemed wrong there. When we contacted our dedicated AdWords reps, [...]

Matt Cutts vs Ted Murphy on Paid Blogging &Sponsored Conversations
In a followup to the Forrester report on paid blog advertising via sponsoring the conversation in blogposts, Google’s Matt Cutts has weighed in a bit on the conversation, reiterating his stance on paid blog posting. Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If link in a paid post would affect [...]

7 Essential SEO Cheat Sheets
You can’t remember everything especially with that huge amount of new information we consume daily. It is always great to have a few sheets that list most essential data we often need to deal with. Below I am listing a few cool cheat sheets most SEOs will find useful: SEO Cheat Sheet The Web Developers SEO Cheat [...]

Linkedin Teams Up with Twitter Through Company Buzz
Linkedin Leverages Twitter for Brand Tracking What happens when you take a high quality social network of business professionals and merge functionality with the ‘it’ factor of Twitter? Linkedin answers the call for corporate brand monitoring with ‘Company Buzz’, a module that integrates tweets about your companies (past and present) into your Linkedin homepage. Here’s Linkedin’s Official [...]

Yahoo Opens Flickr Video Uploads to All
Yes folks, aside from YouTube and Google Video, there is also such as thing as Flickr Video. And for quite some time now, it has been lurking in the shadow of Flickr being primarily a photo sharing site. Well, this could be attributed to the fact that Flickr Video was only limited to the use [...]

IM Spring Break Tickets Now $379 : Incredible Value
Ticket prices for IM Spring Break, the 3 day search marketing conference held at the Deerfield Beach Hilton (10 minutes from Ft. Lauderdale) in Florida, have dropped to $379. For $379 and the discount hotel rate of $119 per night at the Hilton, IM Spring Break is proof that an incredible search conference can be held [...]

White House Stops Using YouTube for Obama Videos
The White House is no longer using YouTube videos to power President Obama’s weekly video address after privacy advocates addressed concern over Youtube videos and Google user data tracking. The Obama White House is now utilizing Akamai to deliver the flash based video address. The White House is however still uploading its videos to their [...]

SEO Q&A : Do Social Bookmarks Still Hold Link Value?
Over the weekend I was asked twice about social bookmarking and links, and whether or not those social links have SEO value. I find that the answer to this question is detemined on how one values SEO and linking. Sure, some of the links from bookmarking sites do not use nofollow, and this may help [...]

Don’t Forget the Brand in SEO, PPC and Social Media
You may think I am crazy, but I have found that many marketers forget one of the most valuable tools when marketing online with SEO, PPC, or Social Media. What is this most valuable tool that you may be forgetting?  The Brand!  Don’t worry it’s not your fault, you either forgot or you were focused [...]

Free Backlink Checkers - Research Anything You Need
I’ve been reviewing backlink checkers multiple times and it’s now time to list them in one round up. I’ll be listing only free ones here and also I’ll sort them by best functions, so a few feature-rich tools may end up being mentioned in a few categories. If you know of any tool I missed, [...]

Canada Revenue Agency Wastes Tax Dollars On Broken Ad Campaign
We see this happen with more amateurish ad campaigns, but seriously, the ad agency and web developers running this campaign for Canada Revenue Agency should know better. The page you send visitors to from Hockey Night in Canada ads and from your website needs to EXIST. The page is supposed to be at www.canada.gc.ca/taxinfo . Oopsies! www.canada.gc.ca/taxinfo [...]

Check Your Brand Name Across 50+ Social Networks With CheckUserNames.com
Registering and securing your company’s name across various social networks is not just a way to build links to your site or get some nice branding results in Google, but it’s also a defensive measure to make sure that YOU own your brand on social media sites. It’s way too easy for your competition or affiliates [...]