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SEO News for December 2008 from searchenginejournal.com

No Microsoft-Yahoo Ad Deal, Yet
WSJ’s All Things Digital blog called the rumored Microsoft-Yahoo ad deal as not true. The rumor started when the Sunday Times reported that Microsoft and Yahoo are once again in talks, this time with Microsoft eyeing to buy Yahoo’s search business for $20 billion.

SEO Bookmarklets Collection: On-Page SEO and Domain Stats
Last week I listed a few useful Google bookmarklets for SEOs. This time I am looking at some more helpful browser bookmarklets that can come in handy for on-page SEO research and a quick view at essential site stats (to install any of them just drag it to your bookmark toolbar): Domain information: Alexa info - view [...]

Best of the Web &Aviva Holiday Directory Discounts!
Best of the Web and the Aviva Directory are both offering holiday discounts for publishers who wish to list their sites in these professionally edited web directories. Best of the Web (BOTW.org) sent out an email yesterday claiming that since December is the month of giving and also considering the current economic status, BOTW is offering [...]

Keyword Research: How Can Words Be Related?
Like I said previously, SEO tools not only provide useful (additional) information but are also as a great source for inspiration. This time I am looking at a less well-known (despite the fact it has been around for quite a while) keyword research tool that opens up the whole wealth of ideas on how search [...]

5 Counter-Intuitive Holiday Season Anamolies You Can Learn From
Digging Deeper Into Holiday Season Numbers Smart marketers don’t always follow the rules. Sure there are best practices, but every once in a while there is an exception to every rule, and consequently a learning to be had. I’m referring to the wacky, crazy, and intense holiday season which demands best practices and tweaks to be [...]

Britney Spears Tops Yahoo’s Top Searches for 2008
Once again Britney Spears has proven that she’s not only the Pop Princess but also the “Queen of Searches”, well at least in Yahoo’s 2008 Year in Reviews of the most popular searches. Spears together with the World Wrestling Entertainment and Barack Obama are the top three overall searches conducted by usears on Yahoo’s search [...]

Five Critical PPC Budgeting Problems
Pay per click budgeting is not a topic I thought you could devote a whole blog post to, when I first started doing PPC in 2004. But I was wrong. Here are the five most important budget-related topics in pay per click advertising: Insufficient spend Overspending Effects of tests on spend Seasonal changes Optimizing ROI via budget allocation Let’s examine each [...]

What Can or Should Be Included in a Page Title
Page title is the most prominent element of the page. It influences major aspects of your website performance: it affects rankings (as search engines consider it when judging what the page is about); it affects clickthrough (as that’s what people mainly focus on when looking through search results). Now let’s look into elements that should / can be [...]

Ex-AOL CEO Wants to Buy Yahoo for $30 Billion
Jonathan Miller, the former AOL CEO, is making a powerplay to buy part of Yahoo or raise the money to acquire the entire company reports Jessica Vascellaro of the Wall Street Journal. According to the (other) Journal, Miller is talking to private investors and gathering other forms of funding in an effort to obtain Yahoo [...]

Keyword Typo Suggestion Tools and Generators
Keyword typo suggestion tools and generators may find a much wider sphere of usage than they are traditionally supposed to: [most important] they can be used to help optimize website internal search functionality (which is especially vital for ecommerce sites where each misspelled keyword may end up in a failed conversion); they can be used for more [...]

Changing Titles Daily to Increase Click-Through and Pageviews
There are a handful of publications I read daily outside of the search marketing spectrum, one such publication being BaltimoreSun.com, the website of Baltimore’s newspaper, the Baltimore Sun. I read the Sun for various reasons, onesuch being keeping up on the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles (I grew up in Maryland and now reside in Tampa). I’ve [...]

Flickr Axing Business Use of Photos for SEO
One of the tools of the SEO trade has apparently been axed by Flickr. It seems like every SEO conference I have attended since Flickr went live included recommendations that Flickr photo submissions be treated much like HTML pages. The title of the photo, description, tags and any links in the description text work just [...]

Heading to Mexico for Honeymoon : SEJ Family Growing
I’m very happy to announce to Search Engine Journal readers that the SEJ Family is growing in more ways than one. On November 22nd, I married the love of my life, Mrs. Janna Baker, in a small ceremony here in Tampa, Florida. Some of you may have met Janna at SES New York or [...]

Keyword Cannibalization and How to Handle It
Keyword cannibalization (no matter how awfully terrifying it may sound) is a widely-spread website internal information structure problem that occurs when multiple subpages are (heavily) targeting one and the same key term. Very often webmasters are unaware of any keyword cannibalization problems throughout the site - for example, (partial) internal duplicate content issues caused by the [...]

Live Search Webmaster Center Discourages Automated Link Exchanges
For webmasters who are still in the practice of participating into automated link exchanges, you might learn a thing or two from the latest post of the Live Search Webmaster Center Blog discouraging such practice.

Flickr Adds iPhone-Friendly Video Streaming Feature to its Mobile Site
Flickr has introduced several upgrades into mobile site highlighted by a video streaming feature that would let users view their uploaded video contents right onto their mobile phones. According to the Flickr blog, the growing popularity of mobile devices for sharing not only photos but videos as well has prompted them to introduced the new [...]

Google Was Almost Charged with Web Monopoly?
For those who still remember the sudden decision of Google to back away from their paid search ad deal with Yahoo and still wondering the real reason behind it, we finally got our answer.  Prosecutor Sandy Litvack who was assigned to the case told the AM Law Daily that, the Department of Justice was three [...]

SemantiNet Announces Support for Yahoo! Fire Eagle and Yahoo! Search BOSS
SemantNet announced today that its acclaimed headup™ Semantic Web plugin now supports the new Fire Eagle™ and BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) technologies from Yahoo! Headup is a new plugin for the Mozilla® Firefox® Web browser that enables true semantic capabilities for the first time within any Web page. Headup data is displayed fully [...]

Yahoo to Push Through with Planned Layoffs
Things are definitely not looking good at the Yahoo camp. The previously reported planned layoffs is pushing through after all. And as previously published, the number of employees who are about to lose their jobs still stand at around 1,500, which could even go up to 2,000 come Wednesday - the D-Day for these Yahoo [...]

Gmail Rolls Out a Lightweight Task Management Feature
Gmail users would be either be delighted or simply ignore a new feature which is currently being made available through the Gmail Labs - a simple and lightweight Task Manager. Gmail Task is a pretty simple application which would allow Gmail users to post items which they need to do, presented through a pop-out window/tab [...]

3 Tips to Get Around the Link Bait RoadBlock
Have you ever had one of those days where you’ve hit a creative roadblock and can’t write a thing? Do you find yourself saying “what the heck am I going to blog about today� or wondering where you can go for new link bait ideas? I have. When I find myself hitting a [...]

How To Quickly Evaluate Your SERP Competition
Very often you just don’t have time (or don’t feel it’s necessary) to run a thorough competitive analysis. All you need is just do a quick key term “difficulty” evaluation (term invented at SEOmoz, I guess) to see if it’s worth digging deeper. Let’s see what can be done in this case. 1. Use a tool [...]

Start a Google AdWords My Client Center in 2 Easy Steps
Try this scenario; I think a lot of you know this one. An SEM gets laid off or fed up with their current employer and decides to try go it on their own. They secure a few clients but then realize that taking care of their paid accounts would be easier with a My Client [...]

More On Header Status Codes &SEO
I have already reviewed tools to check header HTTP headers and also listed a few must-know things about most widely-used of them. A while ago Google Wemaster Central Blog published some advice on using header status code for Googlebot to understand each page correctly: make sure your site URLs return the correct status code; track what status [...]

Google Gives Adwords Advertisers Mobile Ads Options
Google’s advertising program has not really been pretty active when it comes to the mobile platform. Until now as the Google Mobile blog is announcing that Adwords advertisers can now target mobile platforms such as the iPhone, T-Mobile G1 and other mobile handsets with full HTML browsing capabilities. With this new Adwords feature, advertisers will [...]

Google and Our Economic Recession
For the last ten years search engine marketers have played by Google’s rules. In that decade Google has effectively done as they pleased, growing into one of the true giants of today’s business world. While Google is by no means at risk of closing their doors, it is worth noting that no one - including [...]

Best Robots.txt Tools: Generators and Analyzers
While I do not encourage anyone to rely too much on Robots.txt tools (you should either make your best to understand the syntax yourself or turn to an experienced consultant to avoid any issues), the Robots.txt generators and checkers I am listing below will hopefully be of additional help: Robots.txt generators: Common procedure: choose default / global [...]

PPC Budget Awesomization: How to Optimize ROI with Graduated Campaign Budgets
Increasing ROI by Applying Modern Portfolio Theory to Pay Per Click Optimization This “Budget Awesomization� strategy is based on modern portfolio theory. And that makes sense because managing pay per click spend is not unlike investment management - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory The lesson? Invest more ad spend in PPC campaigns that produce greater ROI. Here’s how: [...]

Make Sure Google Understands Your Images Correctly
With today’s high speed Internet connections, web publishers can afford to use as many images on their sites as they want to. While making web pages attractive and attracting visitors’ attention, images help a lot in promoting the content throughout social media. Still, judging from recent discussions webmasters should bear in mind that images should also [...]

Sending Customized Reports in Google AdWords
We all know the drill, getting called in to talk with the CEO and some senior VP because they want to know the “status� of their online marketing efforts. Do they really want to hear about the awesome new social networking tool you are using, or how you streamlined the company’s website increasing click thru [...]

5 Tools to Measure Your Twitter Activity
You might think there has been too much buzz around Twitter this year, but love it or hate it, there is no denying the fact that it is an awesome tool the full potential of which is yet to be discovered. This time I am listing some tools that will help you evaluate your Twitter [...]

Sarah Palin Tops Google’s Global Zeitgeist 2008
Well what do you know? Despite losing in the recently concluded U.S. Elections, Sarah Palin has won in Google’s 2008 search Zeitgeist. Beating search terms including the Beijing 2008, Facebook login, Tuenti a brazilian social networking site, and the rest of the top ten search terms used globally on Google.com.

Google Adds Magazines to Book Search
I love Google Book Search and its many features including the full and partial preview of digitized books. It’s really a big help when planning to buy a particular book title and you want to preview its content without going to the nearest bookstore. Equally useful is the fact that you can read a book [...]

Google Amends Adwords’ Alcohol Ads Policy
Responding to what they claim as advertisers’ feedback, Google announced some modifications to the Adwords’ policy on Alcohol related advertisement across Google’s content network.  This policy of course was just an expansion of Google Adwords’ policy on advertising beer products which was allowed sometime during the Fall. Now in addition to allowing the advertisements or [...]

Linking Means Moving Backwards Too : Link History
Link development doesn’t just move forward…many times, a bit of digging into the past is in order unless you want to continue to paint over mold on the wall. You have to (ahem) become a link history detective. You may even get your own show. “I haven’t got time to worry about the future when I’m [...]

PPC TLA’s: WTH are KPI’s?
For some reason, internet marketing is full of TLA’s – Three Letter Acronyms. And TLA is my favorite TLA. What The Heck is a KPI? One of those acronyms that frequently furrows brows in the conference rooms is KPIs: No, not Keylime Pie Instructions Not Kit Kat Possession Indulgence Syndrome Key Performance Indicators. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_performance_indicators If you’re an MBA, or you [...]

Submitting to Social Media Sites for Successful Link Bait
In his recent post at SEOmoz, Tom mentioned submitting to (niche) social media sites as an important step of any link bait (once you get past your link bait roadblock): you get links from social media sites (which is good in any case); you get attention of the community of people who are interested particularly in your [...]

Gmail Labs Tests SMS Messaging through Chat
After Gmail Task here comes another feature which  would allow Gmail users to send SMS text messages through Gmail chat. This new Gmail feature is currently available only for U.S. users, but for those of us who live outside U.S., can still send text messages to our friends’ US phone numbers no matter where we [...]

Google Street View Deployed On Multiple Mobile Devices
Google’s street view team has been working hard to add additional coverage in places that up until now we not in the system. They have been concentrating much of their effort in Europe. For those who haven’t heard or haven’t used Google street view, it allows you to access street level imagery to help [...]

SEMRush : Advanced Keyword and Competitor Research
SEMRush is a new (paid) keyword ranking and competition evaluating utility developed by the creators of SEOquake FireFox extension and SEOdigger tool. The site has both free and paid versions, so you can go ahead and test its features together with me and share your thoughts. 1. Check any domain natural Google rankings (the feature that [...]

3 Google AdWords Reports That Will Get You a Raise
Let’s face it executives love reports. If you work in-house, your VP or Director of Sales/Marketing just wants to see that everything is going well. If you are an agency, it’s all about those pesky reports. We are the magicians that turn tons of raw data into a multi-color rainbow of happiness. My guess is that [...]

Some Fun Tools to Learn Internet Jargon
Unlike most of my tool reviews, this one is more about fun than being of real use. Still, tools are not only about application but also about inspiration. View this week’s collection (listing some web slang related tools) as your link bait inspiration, for example. 1. While Twitter is a good copywriting tool in itself (it [...]

EBook Review: Improve Your Website for Free: Tools, Tips and Tricks!
If you own a website, you should definitely read Rich Page’s free eBook "Improve Your Website for Free: Tools, Tips and Tricks!". The premise of the book is that before spending money on your website marketing, you should first improve your site to make the most of your promotion. Using simple mathematics, Rich demonstrates how [...]

Adsense for Domain Now Available to all Publishers
The Inside Adsense Blog has just announced that Adsense for Domains is now available to all publishers who owns several domains which are not really live sites. Whereas previously the only way that domain owners can earn from their registered dormant sites was to let third-party publishers to run their ads on those and then [...]

Google Image Search Rolls Out Style Options
Previously when you use Google’s Image Search to find a particular image, you type in specific keywords that would best decribe the image that you are looking for. Google would then display search results containing various images, regardless whether those are photos, drawings, illustrations and other forms of images that best represents your search keyword. [...]

As Google Tops November Search Ranking, YouTube Gets A Chunk of its Search Volume
As expected in comScore’s November search market report, Google’s share of the search market for November increased again compared to October’s data. And of course, it automatically follows that Yahoo and the other search engine’s search market share declined as well. Google managed to pose a 0.4% increase with a total 63.5% while Yahoo’s share dropped [...]

Hacker Attacks That Can Damage Your Site &SEO
A great thread over at WebmasterWorld forums lists most common hacker attacks types, their footprints and features. These attacks can cause damage to the presentation of your site, the users who visit your site, and also leave a negative taste on your search engine rankings. I’ve figured the discussion is worth attention and organized it into a [...]

Take Advantage of .TV Domains for SEO and Reputation Management
There is a very large untapped market of creating .TV niche and business oriented online video sites which your business may be overlooking in your online marketing and search engine optimization strategy. If your business has a strong brand, then people are searching for your brand online. If your business does television commercials, then when [...]

Google Ad Manager Rolls Out New Features
Just got this from my email sent by Google to all Ad Manager Administrators. Google is rolling out some new features and updates of its Ad Manager. For those not in the loop, the Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can be used by Google Adwords advertisers for selling, scheduling, delivering [...]

How to Protect Your Online Privacy and/or Access Blocked Sites
Many sites are blocked in some countries - if you are located in the USA, you are probably unfamiliar with this problem (unless you are trying to figure out how to access blocked websites when at work, which I am sure you aren’t). Or you just want to access a site anonymously (to prevent your [...]

Coupons.com Launches a Facebook App
With a few days left for all us to do our last minute Holiday shopping, what better way to do it but using some digital coupons courtesy of Coupons.com? And to make it easier for us to find great discounts on various consumer goods, Coupons.com has launched a Facebook app featuring various discount coupons which [...]

Yahoo Reduces Data Retention Limit to 3 Months
In what could be a pre-emptive move to the planned legislative advocacy push of some privaty advocates in putting some government pressure to the data retention and online advertising practices of major Internet players, Yahoo pushed ahead and announced that it is reducing the time it retains search related data and information to 90 days. Whereas [...]

Elephant Links
Remember reading this in your Marketing 101 class? If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying ‘Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday’, that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk him into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flowerbed, that’s publicity. If [...]

10 SEO Bookmarklets to Analyze Page Links and Images
Here is the third part of my SEO bookmarklets collection. If you missed the first two, be sure to check them out: Google bookmarklets and bookmarklets for on-page SEO diagnostics and domain stats analysis. This time I am listing SEO bookmarklets allowing for a quick access to more on-page factors: page internal and external links and [...]

What’s the Best Way to Determine a Web Page Value?
A while ago I did a couple of much-discussed posts: one on treating outdated pages and one on getting rid of multiple subpages. The important point both of these posts are missing is that before trying to decide what to do with the obsolete page you should first define its SEO value. A great thread at [...]

Why You Need to Include Social Media in Your 2009 Marketing Budget
If you’re in doubt as to whether or not social media marketing should be part of your company’s online marketing or search marketing mix in 2009, I highly suggest giving Todd Malicoat’s 9 Reasons You Need Social Media Marketing in 2009 Social marketing is the new search engine optimization. Reciprocal voting is the new reciprocal linking. [...]

Search Engine Land Redesigns with New Functionality
Search Engine Land has gone through a rather impressive redesign which gves it more of a news oriented feel (thinking ClickZ) and brings back memories of Danny’s days back at Search Engine Watch with premium membership and a sense of exclusivity for its paid members. Furthermore, SEL has also opened up its posts and articles [...]

How to Build Links with Lists
This is a follow-up to my previous post giving some tips on link building with how-to articles. But in this post I am going to touch upon a different angle. Link baiting with lists is a disputable topic. On the one hand, lists were written to death in each and every niche. At some stage [...]

8 Ways Clients Can Help Their PPC Agency Succeed
After working with about 100 different interactive clients in various industries over the last five years, I can confidently say… When you work at an agency, there are things clients can do to help you succeed for them. And there are things clients can do to make it difficult or impossible for you to help [...]

Track Santa Claus With Norad &Google
The tracking of Santa’s gift giving trip across the globe began at 6 am today as Christmas morning hit the Pacific Rim and Santa has already dropped off presents to all of the good boys & girls in Japan, Australia, Korea and parts of Russia and China. Norad (North American Aerospace Defense Command) is showcasing [...]

Google Gets 70.8% Search Market Share in Compete’s November Metrics
A lot of things happened in November related to web activities and which affected the volume of web searches. Election-related searches for must have taken the focus of web searches, but this was overshadowed by consumer related searches relating to Black Friday sales. These have all contributed in a way to the increase in Google’s [...]

Happy Holidays from Search Engine Journal
I’d like to take the time to wish all of our readers, writers, commenters and casual visitors a joyful holiday season from Search Engine Journal! 2008 is winding down and it has proven to be a turbulent year, and I’m really looking forward to 2009. This will be my first Christmas as a married couple with [...]

Free Spider Simulation Tools to Evaluate a Web Page
I did a short post previously listing a few tools that allow to get a better understanding on how Google views the page content. Today I am following up with more spider simulation tools and a more detailed comparison on what to expect from each of them: Tool / Elements to recognize Links Nofollow Bold text HTML semantic [...]

How to Add and Subtract Clients from AdWords My Client Center
Since earlier in the month we covered how to build a My Client Center, it’s time to go over the next easiest step in owning AdWords, adding and removing accounts. The other major PPC outlets like AdCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing are still having major issues with this concept. I know AdCenter is actively working [...]

Google, Microsoft and Apple Targeted in Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Recently, Cygnus Systems, a small Indiana company has filed a patent-infringement case against Microsoft, Apple, and Google involving the use of a web browser technology that display an image preview of files before users opened them. The lawsuit filed in a federal court Arizona where Cygnus Systems President Gregory Swartz reside is hoping to get [...]

Google Employees Take G1 Dream Phone Instead of Cash Gift
Then annual Google tradition (or shall we say obligation?) of giving out holiday cash gift  to its employees worldwide is not happening this year. Google is putting this annual practice into halt and instead decided to hand out the G1 Android Phone to all its employees worldwide. Aside from replacing the holiday cash gift, Google decided [...]

FireFox Addons: 6 Things You Can Do With Plain Text
1. Plain text to link: turn any highlighted text into a link and open it in a new tab: it will open a www.domain.com format text as it is; it will open example text format as http://www.exampletext.com. More ways to open text as a link here. 2. Browse pages tagged with this word / phrase on StumbleUpon: According to [...]

Shoemoney Auctioning Off His Body on eBay!
Well, not his whole body, but everything above the belt :) Jeremy Schoemaker is holding an auction on eBay where the winning company will have the honor of supplying Jeremy with their branded t-shirts for him to wear at Affiliate Summit West. (More info from Shoemoney). Just incase you live under a rock, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker [...]

Organize Your Keywords with WikiPad
I am a strong believer that a successful keyword strategy is tightly connected to an effective keyword organizing. When you are playing with your keyword lists back and forth, you generate new great ideas and come to important conclusions. Today I am offering a quick tip on organizing your keywords with a free open-source utility - [...]

Will the Widget Channel &Internet TV Save Yahoo?
In January, Yahoo and Intel plan to show off their new Yahoo Widget Channel at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which plans to bring online interaction and social networking capabilities to digital TV watching. The Yahoo Widget Channel will showcase the ability to view Flickr albums with friends while watching television, serve targeted ads to [...]

Top 20 Twitter Posts of 2008
2008 proved to a historic year for Twitter both in adoption through the sheer number of twitter users signing up to the services, but also as evidenced by many influencers writing about using Twitter for PR, Social Media, Branding and other such purposes. With such an influx of great information, it often becomes difficult to [...]

How To Research Links From Domain
While I have previously touched upon a few tools allowing to explore any page outbound links (explore and validate page outbound links, visualize page outlinking tactics, etc), I never looked at ways to find all websites a given domain links out to.

Google PageRank Update on New Year’s Eve
Google has updated their Google Toolbar Pagerank as of about 1 hour ago, marking a New Year’s Eve PageRank update which should have a whole lot of web publishers and bloggers discussing their changes in PageRank over the New Year holiday. Search Engine Journal’s Google PageRank stayed the same at PR 6, but we noticed immediately [...]

FireFox Addons for Safe Browsing
This week’s FireFox toolkit is dedicated to addons allowing you to browse the web securely. 1. McAfee SiteAdvisor will check each website you are entering in its huge index of sites. The tool: warns you before entering a suspicious/phishing website; shows a security flag in the browser status bar (green = safe; red = suspicious, gray = [...]

Google Tries to Lure Gmail Users Using IE to Switch Browser
Google is reportedly trying to lure Gmail users who are still using Internet Explorer in switching to either Firefox or its very own Google Chrome browser. It was earlier spotted that Google is displaying a simple “Get faster Gmail” message in Gmail users’ accounts. The said message links to Google support page explaining that Gmail [...]

Google’s Product Search Catches Up with Rivals
It’s very seldom that we encounter this kind of news when Google is actually playing catch up with rivals instead of leading ahead of them. Well, at least for now, Yahoo has got something to brag about its Yahoo Shopping Search since it has been leading the market for quite some time now. But unfortunately [...]

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