Friday, April 9, 2010

Search Engine Journal - 10 new articles


"Search Engine Journal" - 10 new articles

  1. Google Outs Nested Labels, Email Preview in Gmail Labs
  2. Microsoft Gives Bing Shopping a New Look
  3. Twitter's Global Growth by the Official Numbers
  4. Apple Challenges Google's Mobile Ad Platform with iAd
  5. And the winners for the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit are…
  6. How to Always Have Reference Info by Hand When Blogging
  7. Factoring Time into SEO
  8. Add Images to Your Google Sitemaps Extension
  9. Location-Based Marketing, Resources and Tools
  10. Yahoo Searches Gain 3% of Market Share
  11. Search Search Engine Journal

Google Outs Nested Labels, Email Preview in Gmail Labs

Here’s something worth checking out on Gmail Labs - nested labels and email sneak preview.  The nested labels feature allow you to organize your labels hierarchically. While the email sneak preview feature lets you sneak into the contents of email items in your inbox.

What’s good about nested lables is that you can add as many layers as you want on a particular lable. And since they are labels, the color coding schemes apply to the hierarchical structure that you are going to make, no matter how complex they are.
The “Message Sneak Peek” feature lets you see the content of an inbox item without opening it. So, can skip emails that are not that important and just read them later on at your own casual time. The message preview is display everytime you right click on an item in your Gmail Inbox.
In addition, to make email preview faster, you can assign a keyboard shortcut that would enable this feature. You need to set this on your Gmail settings first to use this feature.
Overall these two new features may seem simple and yet they add up to making Gmail a very useful webmail account than it is right now.
To use these features, go to the “Labs” tab of your Gmail account and simply enable them.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Outs Nested Labels, Email Preview in Gmail Labs




Microsoft Gives Bing Shopping a New Look

Microsoft has just updated Bing Shopping,  putting in some enhancements to product categories and navigation. Specifically, Bing Shopping now has a list of product categories on the left side of the homepage. This will enable you to drill down to specific items under the specific product categories. It will also help get started searching for products you want to buy. It’s like giving you a window shopping experience, only this time its done online.

In addition to the product category lists, Bing Shopping also now gives you a summary of all the information you need pertaining to a particular product. These information include – where to buy, user reviews, cashback percentage, and product specs.
Bing has also enhanced the product review section to give you the most relevant and recent opinions from other people. You can even narrow down by filtering on star ratings or use Bing Shopping’s “opinion scorecard.”
Aside from all these, Bing also promised to roll out some more enhancements of Bing Shopping the future.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Microsoft Gives Bing Shopping a New Look





Twitter's Global Growth by the Official Numbers

The Twitter blog is running a post today announcing some numbers related to Twitter’s overall growth not only in the U.S. but internationally as well. According to the post, more than 60% of Twitter users are from outside the U.S. This is definitely a huge leap from Twitter’s early days were users were primarily employees and their friends. Now, Twitter users have become a group with diverse identities.

Some specific proofs of Twitter’s growth in other regions:
  • In Chile, right after the recent earthquake, Twitter saw a 1200% increase in signups from most Spanish-speaking countries.  This is a big leap from November 2009’s 50% increase in signups.
  • In Columbia, Twitter signups rose by 300%
  • In India, signups rose by 100%, thanks to Twitter’s tie-up with Bharti Airtel of India which allowed Twitter users to send and receive tweets via SMS.
  • plus other countries such as Indonesia, Haiti and more
Interestingly, most of the incidents of increase in signups happen right after Twitter played significant role in providing a fast, realiable and real-time information updates  during national emergency situations, accidents, disaster and events.
This only goes to show that Twitter has now evolved from a mere social networking micro-blogging platform to an effective, reliable and very updated communication tool.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Twitter’s Global Growth by the Official Numbers




Apple Challenges Google's Mobile Ad Platform with iAd

Apple is officially entering the mobile ads arena, and perhaps taking revenge at Google for snatching its plan of acquiring AdMob. Apple’s battleplan?  the iAd mobile ad platform.
Apple’s iAd is a pretty straightforward mobile ad platform utilizing of course Apple’s main products – iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad. These three devices are host to the thousands of mobile apps which Apple is providing with an advertising platform.
The revenue-sharing scheme is simple as well.  Apple host and sell the ads, developers get 60% of the revenue and both of them goes home smiling from what they’ve earned. In addition, Apple will also make it easy for developers to add the ads on their apps. According to Apple, it will only take an afternoon’s work.
Additionally, iAd will keep users in the same app instead of kicking them out. Apple will be utilizing HTML5 to carry this out. iAd ads will be interactive, thanks to HTML5 and will look like a native iPhone/iPod/iPad apps.
Now for the clincher – Apple said that not only developers can make the ads, even ad agencies. That’s how easy the iAd can be implemented.
Question now is – how this will impact other mobile ad platform. Or to be more specific, can iAd give Google’s mobile advertising platform a run for its money?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Apple Challenges Google’s Mobile Ad Platform with iAd




And the winners for the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit are…

We are all excited that the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit is less than a month away! With 52 tickets left, we are quickly approaching our capacity limit. With topics such as Doing Business on Twitter & Facebook and Outsourcing Secrets: Cut Costs & Spend More Time on the Beach, you really don't want to miss it.
We have 5 free tickets (valued at $525) to give away. One has been given to our Twitter contest winner, Ben Cook. Now, I am proud to announce our YouTube, Your Story and SEOtini contest winners. Drum roll please…

1)      The YouTube contest winner goes to Ethan Stanislawski! Ethan posted a video response on YouTube about his first day on the job doing SEO. He tells of how the Paris Hilton DUI incident, CNN and the Daily Show made him realize that SEO is about marketing.

2)      The Your Story contest winner is Joshua Titsworth! Joshua told his story about how he got into internet marketing. He went from working at a non-profit organization to being called “The Repair Man” to being hired by another company for his experience (where he gained from self-taught SEO).
In 2007 I started working for a non-profit in downtown Kansas City, KS. I was hired with the directive to help raise funds, write press releases, and update the website. The more I got involved with the website the more I liked it and the more time I started to give it. After the website was looking better than it did before (I was stuck using Frontpage ‘98), a board member complained to me I was spending too much time with it. If they can’t find us what good are you? So I started looking for cheap ways to market NPOs online.

I came across seomoz and few other sites. I was a little shocked at first, not at the material, but at how quickly I was able to read and understand it. In the past it has taken me hours of reading and homework to comprehend what was in front of me. With the information about SEO I could read it, process it, and use it right away. Pretty soon the website was doing well, patients were finding us easily, their mission teams were getting filled and all from the web.
After that a board member (a different one from before) asked me to look at his site. I applied the same measures as I took to ours, and the same results took place a few months later. But with all non profits, what is written in the contract is not always what you will do. I was ordered to take a break from the web to focus on facility repair. Pretty soon I was known as the repair man, which I didn’t mind, but I really wanted to do more internet marketing. I ended up leaving that non-profit to get more involved in SEO so I could get a job one day.
I applied for everything I could. I had two years of limited experience, but I never got a call back until I applied at Chemidex. They called me, and I made it down to the final interview. My boss told me on my first day the deciding factor was so much experience, as it was they wanted someone with a heart for SEO and someone young enough in his/her career that they could get their start with Chemidex.
I’ll admit, I’m still pretty new in this field. But I love it, and I can’t imagine not working in this industry.
3)      The winner of the SEOtini contest is Vivian Hoang! Vivian has given us an award-winning recipe for our signature drink, The SEOtini. Everyone who attend the Search & Social Spring Summit will get a complimentary round of this drink.
2 parts Grey Goose vodka
1 oz Blue Caracao
1 oz Cointreau
1 oz Champagne
Mix the vodka and liqueurs in a mixing glass. Add ice, stir to chill, and then strain into a martini glass. Top with champagne, stir gently, and garnish with a lemon peel.
Congratulations to Ethan, Joshua and Vivian for each winning a ticket to the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit. We have one last contest (THE GRAND PRIZE) to be announced on April 15th, 2010. That's exactly ONE WEEK from today! You can still enter here.

For questions or more info about the conference, you can reach Thao Tran at thao@searchandsocial.com or (813) 932-4SEO.

Please check out this video on the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

And the winners for the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit are…




How to Always Have Reference Info by Hand When Blogging

Having some useful reference information by hand when writing a post or doing research online is an awesome way to both get more productive and also to create a thorough, deeper-researched copies.
Therefore you may find the following two tips useful as well as easy to implement in your daily routine.
1. Access reference information while you write or read: take advantage of MS Word’s Lookup Feature
I am using Microsoft Word Lookup feature which I find very useful. Unfortunately, too many people are absolutely unaware of it.
So, when writing or reading the post in Word, just highlight any word, then right click and select “Look up”:
Look up wordpress
A sidebar panel will open with the reference information for the selected word:
Look up word
You can configure the reference info sources by “Research options” right in the sidebar panel. In the dialog, you can select more sources, add your own or exclude those you don’t need:
Look up Word
2. Access reference information while you browse the web: take advantage of Lookitup Greasemonkey script
There’s one handy Greasemonkey script that allows to quickly look up any word in a number of configured online reference sources.
The script is LookItUp and it works as follows:
  • Install the script (get the Greasemonkey for that);
  • While reading online, select any word and click the reference source short key.
Some of the default short keys include:
  • w – look it up in Wikipedia
  • d – look it up in Google definitions
  • u – urban dictionary
Look it up
The sources and the short keys can all be configured (deleted, moved, added, etc) via the tool Options (accessed via FireFox Tools -> Greasemonkey -> User Script Commands -> LookItUp settings).
Lookitup settings
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How to Always Have Reference Info by Hand When Blogging




Factoring Time into SEO

We all know that it takes time for your rankings in the SERPs to change. Although they do fluctuate frequently, long-term improvements in your SERPs rankings take time to produce.
Some time needs to pass before the Search Engines are confident you deserve increased rankings. Things that can happen during the days, weeks or months before you see some real results include:
  • Increase in aggregate traffic – if more unique visitors are landing on your website, then that means there's a bigger trend of searchers looking for you, therefore your website is more relevant, so the more traffic you have, the more you're seen as authoritative
  • Increase in links pointing to external pages linking to you – this has a snowball effect because you receive more link juice from one link linking to you when other websites are linking to the page that's linking to you (hope that wasn't too confusing)
  • Increase in the amount of clicks from searchers – search engines have a general idea of the percentage of clicks the #1 position for a keyword should get (i.e. the #1 result should be getting 40% of clicks, while #2 should get 20% – arbitrary numbers), so when there's an imbalance of clicks (if the #2 result starts getting 40% of clicks while the #1 result receives 20%), the results in the SERPs are re-ordered (the #2 result would be bumped up to #1 to see if it can maintain the 40% of clicks it has been receiving)
  • Increase in age of domain – as your domain ages, and you continue to renew your domain for at least a few years until expiration, your website's authoritativeness increases because it's an older source of information
  • Increase in age of backlinks – as the age of the backlinks pointing to you increase, search engines believe that your website is more authoritative because the links serve as past proof that your website is worth checking out. While search engines love fresh content, they also highly respect older content
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Factoring Time into SEO




Add Images to Your Google Sitemaps Extension

We all know how important site images our when trying to optimize our websites for search engine indexing, right?  When highlighting important website content on our site, we use sitemaps. But sitemaps often preclude images we used on our site – leaving search engine not to notice or find them.
This is particularly true for images that are only accessible via JavaScript forms, or for pages that contain many images but only some of which are integral to the page content.
Now Google is making it easier for webmasters to add images to sitemaps extension.  That is for each URL that you list in your sitemaps, you can now easily add additional information about important images that you have on your website.
The good news is that you don’t need to create a new sitemap. Google now lets you just add information on images to existing sitemaps you use on your sites. To add images to your sitemaps, follow the instructions here. Or if you want a simpler method just check out the statement below and replace information that are appropriate to your sites.



http://example.com/sample.html

http://example.com/image.jpg


Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Add Images to Your Google Sitemaps Extension




Location-Based Marketing, Resources and Tools

With the evolution and wide-spread use of smartphone devices, it was only a matter of time until location-based applications and services would start to be developed. By definition location-based media delivers content to a users mobile device depending on where they are located. It is a new way to deliver a targeted marketing message to users in a specific geographic location.
There have already been a number of location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt that are the trend setters for this new type of mobile marketing.

Location-Based Mobile Applications

Foursqure
Using your smartphone, users can “Check-In” to places they visit, notifying anyone that is following them of their whereabouts. Earn points and unlock badges as you start discovering new things and places. If you have visited somewhere more than anyone else, you can become the Mayor and earn freebies and specials. Leave feedback and recommendations for people that are looking to try a new location, earn promotions/discounts, and explore your city in a new and exciting way.



Gowalla
Very similar to Foursquare, Gowalla allows you to “Check-In” to places by using your smart-phone, notifying your friends and followers of where you are. You can earn pins for accomplishing things, plus items you can pick-up and drop for discounts.



Loopt
Loopt is a mobile social-mapping service that lets you use the location in your phone to discover the world around you. Find and enjoy the friends, places, and events around you right now. Using the mobile application you can:
  • Ping friends to get updates on where they are
  • Discover local places and events
  • Check-In and share where you are with friends
  • Get coupons and exclusive deals from local retailers

Brightkite
Brightkite lets you meet people around you, keep up with your friends, explore and discover new places. Become friends with people who go to the same places as you do, vote if you like or dislike recommendations/reviews, share with your other social networking sites, and control what you want your friends to be able to see.



Yelp
Yelp has typically been known for its robust local directory with features like customer reviews, store information, and place recommendations. Now Yelp is getting into the location-based application business. They have added a check-in feature to the application that allows you to notify users where you are. Share your location with friends, twitter and facebook.


Whrrl
Check-in and put yourself on the map, so your followers can see where you hang out and visit. Upload photos and leave notes for places you have visited for others to see. Join the community and get recommendations of new places to go, from people that have the same interests. Earn points by checking in and becoming part of a society. By checking in you can unlock exclusive offers from real merchants like restaurants, bars, hotels, salons and more.


Other Location-Based Applications

Location-Based Syndication

Check.in

The people at Brightkite are introducing a new syndication service for all of those location-based applications. Check.in will essentially allow you to update your location from one centralized place and send it out to all of your favorite location-based apps. The service has been compared to Ping.FM for social media websites.
Sign-Up for to receive a notification when check.in is available.


Location-Based Coupon Sites

Coupon and Promo Code sites like RetailMeNot and SlickDeals have been around for a while now. Now we are starting to see location-based coupon sites pop up all over the place. These are sites that deliver local coupons to the user based on where you live.
Groupon
An innovative concept to help increase sales, Groupon leverages the power of the community to give incentive-based deals and special offers. In order for a deal to be valid, there must be a minimum number of users who take advantage/purchase the offer. If there are not enough users to buy, the discounted offer will not be valid. This is a win-win situation for both the business and the consumer. If the business can sell a large quantity of something, it can reduce the cost, while the consumer reaps the benefits of purchasing a product/service at a significantly discounted price.
Daily offers are localized for a specific city. This lets businesses focus there marketing efforts on potential customers in the local area.

How it Works [Video]

Living Social
LivingSocial.com offers daily deals with up to 90% off at local restaurants, bars, spas, and more. Everyday LivingSocial will send an e-mail to you with the daily offer. You simple click the link to bring you to the offer and click the “Buy Now” button to purchase. You can also share the deal with friends by email, Facebook or Twitter.


Postabon
Find deals on the go, wherever you are. Share deals you your friends and have them be able to take part in the exclusive offers from retailers in your local araes.

Other Location Based Deal Sites

Location-Based Marketing Resources & Tips

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Location-Based Marketing, Resources and Tools




Yahoo Searches Gain 3% of Market Share

Hitwise has just released the summary of all U.S. searches conducted for four weeks ending March 27.  While we were not surprised that both Google and Bing’s market shares went down, what’s quite surprising is the fact that both Yahoo and Ask.com gained a significant percentage of  all the searches.

Google search accounted for 69.97%, down from 70.95% in the previous month. Yahoo search increased to 15.04%, up by 3%, Bing search with 9.62% down by -1% and Ask.com’s searches increased by 21% from 2.84% to 3.4%.
On a positive note, Google remains to be the greatest source of traffic to key U.S. industries, while Bing saw continued growth among search verticals.
Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, Shopping and Social Networking categories increased their share of traffic from search engines. Google’s upstream traffic was greater in Automotive, Shopping and Travel Categories. While Yahoo Search was big with the Automotive industry. Bing also enjoyed double-digit growth in the said three industries.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Yahoo Searches Gain 3% of Market Share





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