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Looking for a credible source to strengthen your article, blog post or white paper? There’s an excellent source you may not have considered-LinkedIn. Chances are you have received dozens of emails from friends, colleagues and total strangers asking

34 Vote(s)

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You would think that snow day wouldn’t have much effect on someone who works at home, except that all the other people who usually leave around 9 didn’t and threw off my groove. So while I was eating breakfast I looked at yesterdays mail looked at the Oprah magazine, and had this thought “Do you […]
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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

The power of just one trusted link has often been discussed but isn’t often proved. Normally any site that has one trusted link also has lots of others so you can never really tell which links are passing the most weight.
TV stars Richard & Judy have their own wine club that ranks very well on […]
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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Lee: SES conference NYC is "undoubtedly one of my favorites" & coming up fast, March 17-20. Since SES changed formats starting with NY, "I pinged Incisive Media’s Marketing VP Matt McGowan with a few questions."

23 Vote(s)

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Should companies that claim to vigilantly fight web spam allow people to advertise spam tools on their network and sell the spam tools using their payment processor service?

Google signed a billion dollar ad deal with MySpace, and at the same time recommends people buy friend bots to spam the same website:

What’s among the biggest contributor to blight on MySpace? The leagues of sock puppet profiles and automated friend requests that jamb your inbox. Google — the company that stands on a soap box attacking companies for SPAMMING their index to manipulate search results — is selling keyword advertising for software designed to create fake profiles and send SPAM friend request.

How is a direct paid link any more sinister than Google recommending email users dating cheating housewives? Why does Google put less effort into policing their own ad network than they try to enforce on the rest of the web?

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

While ad nauseam Dofollow bookmark-site Link building can be useful, the "new" SEO is all about making friends and participating in niche’ communities.

29 Vote(s)

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

We’re not all the same!

37 Vote(s)

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

As a person who has studied search for many years I thought I would analyze how I thought a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo could change online publishing and internet marketing strategy and business models. This post assumes that the purchase goes through with Yahoo’s board and regulators, and that the underlying search architecture and ad platform of Microsoft is used rather than Yahoo’s current mess.

Organic Search

• Yahoo! Search is stale. They place way too much on user generated content and worthless tag pages located on sites with a high authority score. Microsoft Search makes it much easier to rank pages on lower authority sites so long as they have fresh inbound links.
• Like Google, but unlike Yahoo, Microsoft places significant weighting on domain names in their relevancy algorithms.
• Microsoft closed their small business directory. Many of Yahoo’s regional directories no longer accept paid submissions. It is uncertain what parts of Yahoo might get killed off in staff cuts before and after the acquisition. Submit to the Yahoo Directory while you can.
• Yahoo Shopping and Microsoft Shopping are two of the bigger shopping sites clogging up Google’s search results for many queries. A potential merger of these could help the top one rank better while freeing up space for other competitors.
• Yahoo places 4 ads above the fold for commercial searches, driving down organic search results. If Microsoft buys them and runs fewer ads to win marketshare that allows more of the organic search results to receive a solid stream of traffic.
• Yahoo offers a paid inclusion program to sell rankings in their organic search results. If Microsoft buys Yahoo I believe that program will be phased out as it is hard to image that it makes as much profit as it costs in public relations damage, especially if Microsoft intends to catch Google in search.
• Yahoo! News is the leading news site on the web. If Microsoft combines that asset with default installed desktop widgets on Vista they can further enhance that market position.
• Microsoft is bad at following 301 redirects, but they have had that problem for a while, and one would hope they would get that fixed prior to powering Yahoo! Search.

SEO Recommendations

1. Spend some time tracking rankings in Microsoft to better learn their relevancy algorithms if you have not yet studied them.
2. Ensure your website has a fresh content strategy or reason to keep picking up new links.
3. If possible, when starting new projects, try to build them on domain names that match your primary keywords.
4. Submit to the Yahoo Directory while you can. If the Yahoo Directory dies off it may create a hole in the market leaving a profitable business model for another directory or even a site like Mahalo to take its place as a leading generalist editorial catalog of websites.
5. If domain authority (i.e.: running few large sites) was a big piece of your search strategy creating numerous smaller niche sites once again became a profitable strategy.
6. If you were reliant on paid inclusion for traffic that traffic stream may dry up, so your best off learning about Microsoft’s ranking algorithms ASAP.
7. Check to see if your site meets the requirements to be included in Yahoo News.

PPC Ads / Paid Search Advertising

• Yahoo! Search’s ad platform is still exceptionally clunky. In spite of being recently upgraded they still do not have a public facing keyword tool and only let most advertisers use their keyword tool while they are in the middle of creating a search campaign. Microsoft, is much more open and innovative with their ad platform and advertiser tool set.
• Google has been hoarding data for years without giving much of it back to prospective advertisers. When Yahoo upgraded to Panama they followed Google’s path. Microsoft recently launched an Excel ad plugin that shares a ton of useful data with advertisers. If Microsoft buys Yahoo! their data will become more accurate and likely force Google to show more aggregate advertiser data.
• Ad campaign management gets easier because advertisers only need to maintain two ad accounts, which might make self-management of search campaigns more practical for small businesses.

Pay Per Click Ad Recommendations

1. Open an adCenter account using this coupon code for $50 in free ads, and set up your adCenter account to get used to their interface and ad platform.
2. Use the Ad Intelligence plug-in to see how sweet it is.

Display & Contextual Ads

• Microsoft purchased aQuantive earlier this year to own large scale display ad serving capabilities.
• Yahoo has more pageviews than any other website. If behavioral data has hidden latent value they should be able to leverage it across their network and partner websites.
• This merger will likely take YPN out of perpetual beta, creating a credible alternative to AdSense, which will increase the share paid to smaller publishing partners.

Display & Contextual Ad Sales Recommendations

1. Display ads likely to fall in value due to recession, and a glut of inventory from social media and other websites, so I still like higher value businesses that remove greater friction from commercial transactions when possible. The one exception to this belief is in game ads, which I see as having a lot of upside if you can publish games good enough to attract a large audience.
2. The combining of the Yahoo and Microsoft ad networks should create many arbitrage opportunities.
3. If you have a site that profits from AdSense it is in your best interest to try Microsoft’s network after it launches. Odds are that Microsoft will be willing to give publishers a large share to win marketshare, and giving Microsoft a try will help them create a more robust network which forces Google to increase AdSense payouts.

International Search

Short term I believe this acquisition is about gaining momentum in the US market. But Yahoo is strong in Japan. They also have significant market coverage in Spain, South Korea, and China. Microsoft has notable search share in some European countries. Both have about 4% marketshare in the UK. You can learn more about international search by downloading this 2007 Global Search Report [PDF].

I think a solid strategy going forward for Microsoft to gain search share in foreign markets is for them to offer their operating system free or at a reduced price for bundling search in the desktop. They already give away operating systems in exchange for feedback or exposure.

If the Microsoft purchase of Yahoo clears, expect Google to start distributing a Google flavored version of Ubuntu to the general public before the year is out. Inside of 5 years Microsoft’s operating system will be free or irrelevant.

If you want to read the documents that started Microsoft’s major push toward web search they are here and here.

Danny Sullivan offers some great coverage of the deal here

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

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.

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

YahooPete has informed us all that there are new features in Yahoo Search Marketing. He lists them as follows:

• Keyword Generator that allows you to add keywords to existing ad groups
• Campaign Tune-Up Alerts (only available in the US at the moment)
• Conversion Based Ad-Optimization
• You can now exclude up to 250 keywords.

Additional information can be found on the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog.

Good stuff. Things are getting better, though there’s a bit of concern that the negative keyword amount should be unlimited and that “shady” search partners should be excluded completely.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch Forums, and DigitalPoint Forums.

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Very interesting take on Google’s Social Graph API.

I think reputation management just got a whole lot harder. How hard would it be for someone to spam links to something you don’t want to be connected with?

26 Vote(s)

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Don’t hold back Rebecca. Say what ya’ REALLY feel. From SEOMOZ Blog.

35 Vote(s)

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

It is hard for me to link to just one thread with discussion on how it appears Google is paying less and less this month to their AdSense publishers. But there is one huge WebmasterWorld thread with pages and pages of posts, starting in the middle of this month and still containing a lot of steam with upset publishers.

Overall, many publishers have noticed a drop in earnings reported throughout the month by Google AdSense. There are dozens of other threads with similar complaints across forums and sites.

Some publishers have said their earnings are flat or up from the previous month but most are reporting a drop in earnings.

I figured I do my own poll and see what the Search Engine Roundtable readers are noticing:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Posted by Dave Naffziger

There has been plenty of discussion about the stories that become popular on Digg.  However, these posts don’t actually help the submitter that much. Do ‘Microsoft’ stories hit the front page frequently because there are a lot of stories submitted about Microsoft or because Diggers love Microsoft?

I think it is much more useful to look at the statistics behind what does and doesn’t get promoted. The most important metric is one I’ve termed ‘Promote Rate’: the percentage of stories with a given characteristic that get promoted to the front page.  

I wrote an analysis a little over 6 months ago that looked at some of the key characteristics and felt it was time to update and expand on my initial analysis (a few friends were submitting some content to Digg and I wanted to offer them the best advice).  

Time of Day and Day of Week 

Mid-week (Tuesday and Wednesday) have historically been the most active days on Digg. Most stories are submitted and promoted on these two days.  However, Sunday and Monday are the best day of week to submit a story:

In addition, Sunday afternoon to evening is by far the best time of the week to submit a story.  A story is twice as likely to be promoted during this period than the worst time (early am on a weekday).

Category 

The most popular categories are not necessarily the categories that are best to submit to.  The two graphs below show the difference between the top categories by stories promoted and the categories with the highest promote rates.

I’d like to repeat the analysis with terms in the headline, but I’ll need to save that for another post.

Notes: 

This analysis was conducted on data over the last three months: 10/27/07 to 1/26/08. The data for this analysis was retrieved using the Digg API.  There are a few holes due to API-related errors, but I believe 98% of the stories submitted are represented here (about 770K submissions). 

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.