IS-online marketing

Business Owners: Are You Sabotaging Your Own Local Listings?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:21 GMT

As SEO rapidly becomes a core task for local business owners, there's a new temptation to build advertising messages or tracking mechanisms into business listings on the web. Typically, this might mean adding a slogan or campaign tagline to a business name or changing an office address to appear local to more customers. Unfortunately, this [...]

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Daily Search Forum Recap: November 6, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:00 GMT

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....

New Digg Feature: Trending Topics

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:28 GMT

Digg.com has always been known as “Reddit.com's news from yesterday”. It appears now they're trying to combat this issue…at least on a micro level.

A recent post from Digg explains:

…we’re launching a new homepage voting experiment called Digg Trends which will surface certain highly active stories as they’re trending to Digg’s homepage so people can vote on whether or not they feel the story actually belongs there.

How Does it Work?

Digg Trends identifies and highlights upcoming stories that have a high volume of activity (think Diggs, comments, favorites, shares, etc.). When we detect a new trending story, it will appear on the homepage for ten minutes. Based on the Digg and bury activity in those ten minutes the story will either become popular or not.

In addition, they have a new Twitter account in which they tweet the trends as they occur (@Digg_Trends).

Some breaking news and trending topics include:

The Real Men Who Stare at Goats” is trending
Shooting reported at Orlando high-rise – CNN.com
New Twitter Retweets Take A Little Peek Around
Verizon Droid Eris: Officially launching on Friday for $99

Some NOT SO breaking news topics include:

Disney Will Make Over Mickey — Why? To Make Us Like Him.
Piggy Trouble (INFOGRAPHIC)

In short, it appears that Digg is just focused on high-activity levels over focusing on strictly “breaking news”. Opens up a new portal for manipulation? We'll see… The question I have is whether or not they're taking into account share data on Twitter and Facebook. My guess is…”yes.”

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

New Digg Feature: Trending Topics

Search & Social Wants to Meet You at Pubcon

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:43 GMT

Five members of Search & Social will be in Vegas this week for Pubcon, and we are really psyched to meet SEJ readers and other people we have networked with online this year. The rest of our team will stay back and continue cranking out great content for SEJ and Internet Marketing initiatives for clients.

Our team is hoping to start the networking before we even touch down in Vegas, and maybe that can begin in the comments thread of this post.

Which five of us are going?

Loren Baker

Loren Baker is the Founder and Editor of SearchEngineJournal.com , he is also a crazy person. Recently he found out he was having a boy this April, and we are 3/5 of the way to a Search & Social basketball team. If you see him in Vegas you should really point out the size of his feet, which are pretty much the average length of snow skis.

Loren is speaking on two panels:

Social Media Measurement and Signals – 11/12, 1:30p – 2:45p

Social media is the fastest online marketing channel. Measuring those efforts is top of mind for those doing the engaging. This session will examine tools and practices for measuring results of social media marketing.

Search Bloggers: What's Hot and Trending? - 11/12, 2:55p – 4:10p

This session is a round-table discussion featuring several high-profile bloggers and reporters of search. How can blogs maintain their momentum as newer social media come into play? The panelists in this session will look at strategies to keep your blog in the game.

Jordan Kasteler

Jordan Kasteler is the Co-Founder of Search & Social, and one of the brightest minds in the industry. He also travels with more hair products than anyone else in the industry. I am not sure there is a correlation between hair products and genius though. Jordan is looking forward to meeting with industry leaders and other attendees about our new venture, Second Step Search, a game changer in terms of internet marketing workflow and quality.

Scott Polk

Scott is the Director of Operations for Search & Social. He is also an infamous industry party boy, so he is likely the member of our team that you will see most often in Vegas next week.

Scott is speaking on a few panels:

Organic Link Building (Lunch Table) – 11/10, 12:30pm – 1:30pm

SEO Design & Organic Site Structure -11/10, 1:30am – 2:45pm

This presentation is of a more technical nature looking at site architecture challenges of today's webistes. We'll discuss what works, what doesn't and how websites can be geared towards attracting a greater audience, and consequently, greater leads.

Interactive Site Reviews (Moderating) – 11/12, 1:30pm – 2:45pm

Get your Web site reviewed live by a panel of Search Engine Optimization experts in a session focused on dynamic sites. These sites often face challenges with duplicate content, customizing templates and databases, and indexing issues. Sites can be reviewed for SEM or SEO, examined for links, content, optimization, architecture, or other areas of interest. This is a great opportunity to learn from the successes and mistakes of others. It is also a great place to ask very specific questions about your own Web site or online marketing campaign.

Ryan Sammy

Ryan is Search & Social's social media analyst, and will basically be our do boy at the conference. He is a smart young kid, who has really been shining for as of late, which makes me even wonder if we should let him around the rest of the industry sharks. If you see Ryan, say high, he is a really great guy, and we are lucky to have him.

Me – Dave Snyder

I am the weakest link of the Search & Social team, BUT I am also the most attractive so I am forced to go to conferences and woo potential clients. It is not my fault I am so handsome, its a curse really.

I am speaking on:

Capitalizing on Twitter & the Microblogging Revolution – 11/10, 11:30a – 12:45p

Social media traffic is decidedly different from search traffic, newsletter traffic, or general link traffic. Knowing how to capitalize on this huge traffic potential is critical for social media players and those new to the space, too. This session will look at how to capitalize on social media outlets and monetize them. Our panel of Social Media Gurus will provide the ACTION steps you can take to make that happen.

Going For the Gold – Optimizing for the Social Media Pay Day – 11/11, 2:55p – 4:10p

This session will discuss the latest ways to engage social media and prove that it is a viable revenue source.

Interactive Site Reviews: Focus – Social Media – 11/11, 4:15p – 5:30p

Get your website reviewed live by a panel of Search Engine Marketing experts in a session focused on Social Media. Sites can be examined for marketing techniques, channels, links and more.

Bring your business cards to the moderator or any panelist at the beginning of the session.

Interactive Site Reviews : Focus on Organic – 11/12, 2:55p – 4:10p

Get your Web site reviewed live by a panel of Search Engine Marketing experts. Anything goes in this session, where sites can be reviewed for SEM or SEO, examined for links, content, optimization, architecture, or other areas of interest. This is a great opportunity to learn from the successes and mistakes of others. It is also a great place to ask very specific questions about your own Web site or online marketing campaign.

Bring your business cards to the moderator or any panelist at the beginning of the session.

Joking aside we really want to meet up with as many interesting people as we can this week, so get involved in the comments and let us know when and where we can connect.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Search & Social Wants to Meet You at Pubcon

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: November 6, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:37 GMT

Google shows about ten Sesame Streets logos over three days for their 40th anniversary. Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL and others dressed up for Halloween. Google's home page fade adds "this space left blank," and it is ridiculous. AdSense is testing...

Google’s Home Page Promotes Motorola Droid

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:21 GMT

Google really wants you to buy a Motorola Droid, the hot new phone that just hit stores today. In fact, Google is so enamored that it's advertising the Droid on its homepage: “The Droid is on sale now. Learn more.” Clicking the “learn more” link leads to this “mobile partners” page that touts the Google search [...]

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Search In Pictures: Halloween Edition

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:08 GMT

In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Random Halloween Pictures from the various search engines: This May Not Be Halloween Related:

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Retweet Function Rolls Out on a Limited Basis

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:01 GMT

Today Twitter rolled out its retweet function on a limited basis:

We've just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild. Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.

You may remember that we shared the mechanics of this feature with developers a while back so they could think about how to work it into Twitter apps. Now we're ready to start trying it on Twitter. The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we'll know right away. If things look good, we'll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%.

This is an interesting feature, because while it isn't something new to Twitter users, having it available on most applications, it could end up being a huge tool for spammers now limited by the duplicate tweet rule and the API conditions of the platform.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Retweet Function Rolls Out on a Limited Basis

SEJ Tools: The Advanced SEO Toolkit

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:56 GMT

Search and Social team is happy to announce the launch of advanced SEO toolkit allowing you to do multiple SEO tasks from one handy dashboard!

SEJ tools offer plenty of options allowing to build and promote multiple projects. It covers various tasks from content creation to link building and keyword position monitoring so that you didn't ever need to leave anywhere.

Most of the tools are currently powered by Raven SEO tools but we are adding new resources and tools which are exclusive for SEJ readers. Please share your thoughts and feature requests in the comments!

Research Any URL or Domain Page Rankings

Just go to “Research” tab, provide your domain, URL or a keyword and see the following data:

The keyword;
The domain Google position for this term;
Cost of the term;
Overall number of results for this term;
CPC for this term;
Average monthly search volume.

Further actions:

You can add each word to manager to further work with it or to SERP tracker to monitor its positions.

Below you can also see the paid search words the domain is ranked for as well as the list of top competitors in organic search.

Analyze Domain Basic Stats

For any domain you enter you will be able to see the following data:

The number of indexed pages in Google and Yahoo;
The number of link to the domain (via Google and Yahoo);
.EDU and .GOV links to the domain (via Yahoo);
Domain age and expiration;
Google PageRank;
Alexa traffic;
Dmoz listing.

Analyze On-Page Data

Provide the URL and see the following analysis (along with recommendations):

Semantic structure (the use of headers);
Page Lynx view;
Page content size;
Page download time;
Outgoing links; etc.

Manage and Monitor Your Link Building Campaign

The software provides solid ways to store, organize and manage your link building campaign: categorize links by tags, types of linking sites and types of the backlink itself (paid, organic, etc); monitor the link status change; estimate your backlink anchor text variety and activity.

First, add all the links you want to keep an eye on:

Specify the link status (if it is queued, active, declined, etc);
Provide the link details (anchor text, URL, type);
Link placement (where it is located, the type of the linking site, etc);
(Optionally) Assign tasks and add comments. If you're a task administrator, you can assign a link record task to another user on your account.

Further actions:

After you create the list of all (potential, active or deleted) links you want to manage, select the ones you want to keep track of and add them to monitoring;
Generate and export reports on your link building based on the time frames.

Add and Manage Content

The software allows to add content to your blog – it may turn really useful when you need to post to numerous blogs, so you don't need login to various dashboards.

Just go to “Blog manager” behind the CONTENT tab, click “Add blog”, provide your blog details (including admin login info) and you are done! You can also make the data public to let all the managers access the blog, save and publish content.

Monitor Your Reputation Across Numerous Sources

“Media Monitor” hiding behind SOCIAL tab tracks and alerts your brand mentions across numerous social media platforms. Moreover, it creates a handy chart representing your name popularity within the set period of time.

You can also perform the sentiment analysis of your brand mentions. Next to each listing you will be able to click an icon representing an emotion (positive, negative or neutral):

Monitor Your Brand Across Forums

You can also monitor your brand mentions (or any keyword) across forums and discussion boards (the feature is powered by Omgil):

Just enter your search term and see the results: the discussion date, title and the excerpt:

Check Where Your Brand Name Should Be Reserved

There are plenty of social media sites you may want to join (if not to participate, then at least to claim your brand name to protect your reputation). You can do that with SEJ tools by going to “KnowEm” link behind SOCIAL tab (the feature is powered by KnowEm) and providing your brand name (or the moniker you tend to use). After that you'll see:

Websites where your name has been already claimed;
Websites where this name is still available (for you to claim it):

Monitor Your Keyword Positions

The software allows to monitor key words and phrases in various search engines. Just provide your search terms (or upload the CSV file if you need to submit a number of them).

Reports can be downloaded as a PDF or a CSV file. The trend (gained or lost positions) will be represented with green and red arrows:

Additional options:

Set the search engines you want to track (You can set to track Google, Yahoo, Bing as well as numerous local versions of Google and Yahoo). The option hides behind “Search Engines” link in SERPS tab;
Add competitors and compare your rankings. The option hides behind “Competitors” link in SERPS tab.

Analyze Your Traffic Stats

To analyze your traffic stats, you'll need first to activate Google Analytics by authorizing a specific Google Analytics account so the system can access the data. The software will fetch and display the following data:

Top referrals;
Top keywords;
Top search engines.

Manage Reports and Users

The software allows to generate and schedule reports as well as create report templates. It also saves the report history.

You can also allow your whole team to work with the tool by creating new users and assigning various roles.

Create roles in “Role manger” (Unrestricted or Read-only roles);
Add and manage users in “User manager”

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

SEJ Tools: The Advanced SEO Toolkit

Twitter Finally Begins Adding Search Relevancy Features

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:28 GMT

The Twitter Blog has a short blog post mentioning that they have added technology “to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful.” Clearly, this is Twitter's first step in improving Twitter Search by adding relevancy and search quality factors to the search algorithm. Currently, Twitter Search [...]

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Google AdWords Makes Conversion Tracking “Easier”

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:18 GMT

The Google AdWords blog announced they have made it easier for advertisers to add and track the conversions for their search ads. Google has added to the AdWords interface sections for (1) Conversions, (2) Webpages, and (3) Code. The Conversion page shows you the conversion actions you're tracking. Web pages shows the web pages [...]

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Best Buy: “Would You Like A Google App With That?”

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:56 GMT

In the increasingly high stakes game of mobile search, Google is leaving almost nothing to chance. Take the company's very interesting new partnership with Best Buy stores for example. According to the Google Mobile Blog: We're happy to announce today that we've partnered with Best Buy Mobile to make Google Mobile App available through Best Buy [...]

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