Category: News

SI CEO Will Scott recently led a discussion panel at Search Starts Here, the 2012 Local Search Association Conference. This stellar writeup goes over some of his main points and provides a handy bulleted list of key takeaways at the end. You can also check out another writeup on Local Search Insider by clicking right here!

Our CEO Will Scott gets a quick shoutout in a Mediabistro article on Twitter article marketingCheck it out!

Client Horror Stories: The Nut Job – SearchEngineJournal

Sharing client horror stories is a popular happy hour pastime in the marketing community. At SearchEngineJournal, they’ve been running a series about the types of nightmare clients we all run into. If you are new to the industry, this could be a great way to learn how to spot a potential problem before it arises and get the respect you deserve from those clients that just don’t want to accept your input.

WSJ Says Big Google Search Changes Coming? Reality Check Time! – SearchEngineLand

The search overlords have been talking big in the press lately about a potentially earth-shattering update scheduled for the coming months. Can Google back up all the talk? Experts debate the actual impact that adding direct answer features or semantic search technology will have on the vast majority of web sites. Despite all the hype, marketers may not have to worry about major algorithm changes affecting their strategies.

4 Creative Ways to Use the New Facebook Brand Pages – SearchEngineWatch

By the end of March, all Facebook Brand Pages will be on the new timeline look. Marketers responsible for company Facebook pages know what a headache it can be keeping up with the social media giants updates and changes. Here’s a guide to making the most of the new look with examples from top brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Red Bull. Learn how to reinvent your pages while playing by Facebook’s rules.

Link Building Tools We Use at Distilled – SEOMoz

Heading into the Linklove Link Building conferences in London and Boston, the team at Distilled is in a sharing mood. In this post they list many of the link tools they use to get results for some of the largest companies in the world. Maybe your client list isn’t as impressive, but your results can be if you use the right tools and strategies.

Google and Bad Ads – MarketingPilgrim

Nothing can inspire some transparency quite like a $500 million slap on the wrist from the Justice Department. When Google was reprimanded for allowing advertisement of illegal activities like gambling they promised to pull back the curtain on their Adwords operation. A recent post on the Google blog may have appeared to offer some transparency on the surface, but it might just be a public relations stunt that is part of a behind-the-scenes battle with other search companies.

Our CEO Will Scott has a guest post up on CPA Practice Advisor today, covering essential steps to Facebook success. Click here to see what he has to say about getting your business’s page up and operational, curating content for your market, engaging your fan community and more!

Have You Been the Target of a Google Places Hit Job? —Search Engine Land
If your company is receiving mediocre/poor reviews on your Google Places page, it is possible that a competitor is sabotaging you. In order to determine if your review is spammy, you should check the source, the volume and validity of the reviewer, and the content of the review. Whether it is spam or a legitimate bad review, you should confront it head on.

We Can’t Wait: Obama Administration Unveils Blueprint for a “Privacy Bill of Rights” to Protect Consumers Online — White House
President Obama released a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” to protect consumers’ rights to privacy on the Internet.  The blueprint allows for users to control their personal information on the Internet, which in turn is supposed to maintain consumer trust in businesses. This “Bill of Rights” includes transparency, access and accuracy, and security.  What does this mean for SEO?

Facebook Launching New Premium Ads — Social Media Today
Facebook plans to launch its new approach to advertising next week.  This innovative style of social advertising incorporates user generated content by creating ads of posts from businesses.  These ads will target the friends of individuals who “like” that post.  Others will be able to “like” and comment directly onto these ads. Increased brand interaction will increase brand authority and visibility.

It’s Our First Pandaversary! — SEOBook
Happy Pandaversary! Before Google’s Panda Algorithm, low quality link building farms increased site rankings.  As a result, content farms have dropped severely in rankings and YouTube, mainstream media, and big retailers have benefited greatly.  The infographic on SEOBook breaks down the impact, winners, losers, and recovery strategies post-panda.

Pinterest Marketing Tips & Tricks to Drive Targeted Traffic — Search Engine Watch
You’ve probably heard that recently Pinterest surpassed Google+ as a traffic source. Marketers, such as Steam Driven Media, are learning how to incorporate Pinterest into their marketing strategy. Through actively participating on Pinterest—pinning and repinning pictures regularly, using creative board names, repinning others images—companies can show new products and interact with their consumers.  What do you recommend for optimal Pinterest use?

Google’s New Privacy Policy May Violate HIPAA, Congresswoman Says – Search Engine Land
Because Google’s new privacy policy intends to make its services more user-friendly by integrating all of its privacy policies into one.  Some members of Congress, however, fear that this single new policy will violate HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Google states that ads will not be associated with sensitive issues, such as religion, sexual orientation or health, but should Google be forced to comply with HIPAA regulations?

Hear No Evil, See No Evil: Google and Twitter’s Free Society is Crumbling – Huffington Post
Are social networking and Google responsible for the civil unrest around the world? While riots and Occupy movements are not a result of social networking, the ideas behind these movements are certainly propagated via tweets and posts, and it would appear that governments feel directly threatened by its strength.  Unfortunately, Twitter and Google have both agreed to repress content that does not comply with ‘local laws.’ Sounds to me like they are feeding the protest fire.

Google Panda in Plain English – Single Grain
The introduction of the Google Panda algorithm in February 2011 left many SEO experts Internet marketers and BAMBOOzled about how to defend your site against this spam filter. Single Grain has provided an effective timeline infographic to inform you of new link building rules and how to revamp post-panda.

AHREFS Review: An In-Depth Look at a New Link Research Tool – SEOBook
A new tool, similar to SEOMoz’s Open Site Explorer, has hit the link research scene. Ahrefs asserts that their own index is updated every half hour and that they have a ranking database of approximately 45 million keywords.  Prices increase and decrease based on the amount of data you have. It includes special features such as new links, referring domain breakdown, and SERP positions.

SEO: Are you Relevant, or Are You Vital? – Small Business Search Marketing
Vital is the new relevant.  According to Small Business Search Marketing, it is no longer enough to produce relevant content and title tags. While they don’t provide the answers, SMB proposes a vital question: “If you were a search engine, what kind of pages would you want to show the searchers?”

More Bang for Your Buck: Maximize New Links on Old Pages – Whiteboard Friday — SEOmoz

SEOmoz’s internet-famous Whiteboard Friday series explains the best practices for making the most of links from old pages. Working from an SEOWizz study, Cyrus Shepard walks you through 4 solutions to make sure Google passes all the power from an old page to your new link. The key takeaway? Make sure the old page is significantly updated and Google crawls the page again by using “bank shot” links.

Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts — Wolf Howl

How-to’s are evergreen content that will provide consistent traffic to your site. SEO wise-man Michael Gray provides a slough of opportunities to build How-to content, taking into account changing and unchanging content. Using the ideas from the Whiteboard Friday, you can easily build content on your site and grow your clout in the field by being a ever-present resource for users.

How to Make Your Shopping Cart Suck Less — The Oatmeal

In the spirit of How-To, viral cartoonist the Oatmeal shows us simple things to make the Checkout process (and forms in general) seamless from a user’s perspective. From consistent layout to duplicate information to increasingly-creative-expletive-inducing errors like session timouts, it’s a perfect way to ensure you have the basic shapes of the letters right, even if your i aren’t all dotted.

7 Social Media & SEO Tactics Businesses Will Adopt in 2012 — Search Engine Watch

Bob Tripathi rounds up 7 new frontiers in Social Media. Mining sentiment, focusing on profits, and the rise of Google+ are just the beginning of the gifts in the new year. SoLoMo will be driving SEO in the future — will your brand be able to keep up?

Google using Twitter connections for recommendations in SERPS — Media Chimps

After the unveiling of “Search Plus Your World,” Google came under a deluge of complaints from other sites saying that their content was being buried under Google+. But Mark Proctor has seen Google make the connection between connected Twitter accounts associated with even unconnected Google+ accounts. A last-minute change to assuage fears of anti-competitive actions or something Twitter missed in their angst?

3 Ways to Optimize Images: Search, Social Media & User Experience — TopRank

Does your website utilize images to catch your audience’s eye and promote user interaction? You may not be getting as much out of them as you can. Graphics add spice and break up potentially dull straight-text content, but are also a great venue for promoting your brand and drawing in surfers using image-specific searches. Here, TopRank shows you a variety of different ways to make sure all your image optimization bases are covered.

How Siri Makes Computers (and Coders) More Human — Scientific American

While this piece isn’t specifically sales-focused, it provides a fascinating look at the “humanization” of our interaction with the web — specifically Siri, the new iPhone’s AI assistant. Widely covered as the “future of search,” Siri dynamically interacts with the user to give them the information they need — no matter in what type of language the request is couched in. Here, Scientific American’s David Pogue takes a gander at what this means for human/computer interaction.

How to Build an Engaged Audience with Content Marketing — CopyBlogger

We’ve covered the importance of having a quality blog for your website, but how do you go about making sure your stellar copy and penetrating insights are seen by a consistent and attentive audience? If you’re starting from scratch, taking advice from the 30 social media pundits, bloggers, entrepreneurs and authors interviewed by CopyBlogger for this informative article may be a wise choice.

Creating a Simple Yet Powerful Social Media Marketing Plan — ProNet

Getting an audience for your blog is vital, and gaining followers and fans on your chosen social media networks is related and just as important. This article offers straightforward advice to any first-timer planning to launch and effective and eyeball-gathering media campaign that’s sure to set you apart from the rest.

Google Launches US Election Hub Website — Search Engine Land

Just in time for the presidential elections, Google has introduced their very own political hub to keep track of the 2012 race. While on the surface it may just appear to be a news aggregator, there are many interesting options for localization and trend-tracking as well. Search Engine Land has the details!

AND A BONUS! Our very own Influencer and prolific SI blogger Doug Thomas treated us to another Lunch & Learn today, this time focused on microformats and what they can do for your information organization. Click here to see the slideshow with examples and an overview!