Yesterday, Goldstein Media creative director Seth Goldstein was fortunate enough to speak on a panel about SEO and Paid Search at the SCORE eBusinessNow conference. Along with moderator Neal Wiser, of Neal Wiser Consulting, Glenn Gabe, of G Squared Interactive, and Lance Bachman of 1SEO, the discussion focused on how small businesses can get the most of optimizing their content for the search engines.

The eBusinessNow conference is put on by the SCORE Association, which is an organization that helps counsel America’s small business owners on how to get the most out of their business. It was a free  event and more than 300 small business owners were in attendance.

To learn more about the eBusinessNow conference and when it will be coming to your town check out their Website.

Image Credit: DeviceMag.co

Yesterday’s big announcement of Google Instant has left many in the SEO and Web community in general with lots of questions about what this new feature means for search engine rankings.

Google’s head of Web Spam, Matt Cutts, has published a blog post where he attempts to answer some of these questions.

(more…)

Google’s Matt Cutts recently posted a video on the search giant’s GoogleWebmasterHelp channel on Youtube answering an irate question from a Google user.

Ed, from the Caribbean wrote:

How can linking remain a major part of a search algorithm when the majority of Internet users are unable to post a ‘followed’ link on the World Wide Web? For example Twitter, Facebook, wiki etc. are all ‘nofollow’. It seems only a very small percentage of links count.

I was very pleased about Matt’s response.

(more…)

Google has released a major revision to it’s search index. They call it Caffeine. At the Search Engine Land conference/expo SMX, SEL founder Danny Sullivan interviews Google’s Matt Cutts about the changes.

(more…)

These are my links for January 8th:

• Google Toilet Paper : Optimize Your Wipe | Search Engine Journal – Here’s a fun Friday post about what could be easily mistaken for a new Google product launch to accompany the Nexus One and other new Google products : Google Toilet Paper (which gives a new meaning to “just Google it”).
• MediaPost – news and directories for media, marketing and online advertising professionals – If you were on vacation, similar to me, during the end of December you might have missed Twitter's big announcement. The company acquired Mixer Labs, the creator of GeoAPI, which provides developers with the ability to query data. That data can come from about 16 million businesses and thousands of points of interest. The technology also offers developers a layer on which to handle complex geographical queries and location-based services.
• National Weather Service: Twitter Storm Reports – GeoTagging is the act of associating geographical information with something, and Twitter has recently added the capability GeoTagging individual Tweets. This allows the NWS to correlate each Tweet to your location when it was sent. This capability will help to enhance and increase timely & accurate online weather reporting and communications between the public and their local weather forecast offices.
• Wanted: Your Weather Reports, Geotagged and Tweeted – If your natural reflex when the weather gets rough is to tweet about it, that reflex can now help the National Weather Service do its job better thanks to a new Twitter storm reporting program.
• Social Media Today | Social Media Policies of 113 Organizations – With companies searching for and developing standards for social media usage, many of them have come up with social media policies of their own.
• Top CMOs on Twitter – These are the top 63 Chief Marketing Officers around the world who 1) provide useful content and consistently engage with their followers on Twitter, 2) truly "get it" when it comes to the best ways to use Twitter and other forms of social media, and 3) were active on Twitter as of January 7, 2010. Please let me know if I have missed any CMOs who have 500 or more followers. After the review and confirmation process, he/she may be added to this list, which is updated regularly.
• The Dawn of Facebook’s People-organized Web – GigaOM – In 2010, Facebook is setting out to structure a social layer of the web, indexing web pages and objects by harnessing what its users say about them, including whether those users like them or not, and what they tag within them.
• Apple And Verizon: Are Two Star-Crossed Lovers Ready To Consummate? – Apple and Verizon. Two star-crossed lovers.

  A few years ago, when Apple originally set out with the idea of giving the iPhone to one carrier exclusively in the U.S., they first went to Verizon. But the network balked at some of Apple’s demands, which at the time of complete and utter carrier dominance in this country, must have seemed like a joke. So instead, Apple with with AT&T, and the rest is history.

• Anxious Yahoo BOSS Developers To Speak With DOJ About Microsoft Deal – In July 2008, Yahoo announced a radical new product called BOSS, or “Build Your Own Search Service” that lets developers tap into Yahoo’s core search index with an unprecedented amount of flexibility. Now, in light of the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal that was announced last summer, the future of BOSS is uncertain. That’s bad news for the many developers who have built projects on the BOSS APIs, some of whom are building businesses off of the service. Now, after being met with months of silence and uncertainty, some BOSS developers are taking action: they’ve scheduled a conference call with the Department of Justice to discuss their concerns.

These are my links for January 8th:

• Apple Seizes 16 Domain Names From A Guy In One Fell Swoop – When you own domain names associated with the trademarks of a large company, more often than not, they’re going to file a complaint with the ICANN UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy). And more often than not, they’re going to win control of the name. Such was the case yesterday with 16 names related to Apple that one man happened to own.
• Pioneer to Bring Pandora to Your Car Radio … For $1,200 – Pandora and Pioneer — manufacturer of car audio systems — are partnering to bring Internet radio to your car.
• Qualcomm Chip to Power Verizon iPhone [RUMOR] – Qualcomm’s CEO Paul Jacobs has openly expressed interest in inserting a Qualcomm chip into Apple’s popular iPhone. New rumors reported by TheStreet.com indicate that Qualcomm’s endeavors were successful: A Qualcomm chip will power a new version of the iPhone on Verizon in the summer.
• DASH: Sony Reveals Pocket Internet Device – Sony has revealed details about their Internet device at the CES – Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Read on find out more.
• Vimeo to Launch Support for 1080p – In case 720p wasn’t enough for your gorgeous, transcendent works of motion picture art, Vimeo will begin hosting 1080p videos by the end of this month.
• The Rise of Digital Music & The Return of the Record – According to the report, sales were up 2.1 percent in 2009 from 2008, with consumers snagging 1.16 million digital tracks (an 8.3 percent increase from ‘08) and 76.4 million digital albums (a 16.1 percent bump). In fact, 40 percent of all music purchases in 2009 were digital.
• Tweetdeck Infiltrates the News Room – Sky News — a 24-hour UK news site owned by News Corp. — is changing up their entire newsroom to focus more on Twitter.
• Boxee Beta Goes Public and Boxee Box Specs Revealed – Today on the company blog, Boxee revealed the specs for the Boxee Box and announced that the Boxee Beta is now officially open to the public.
• Near Me Now: Google’s Mobile Homepage is Location Aware – Go to Google.com in your iPhone or Android browser and you’ll see a small new addition to the homepage: a tiny Near Me Now option below the search box. The new functionality turns your location into an automated search query and makes finding or learning about places in your immediate vicinity a no brainer.
• Bra Color Facebook Status Updates Go Viral, But Why? – Facebook is quite the colorful place today. An odd meme — bra color status updates — has made its way around the network, but no one really knows how or why the what-color-is-your-bra meme took off.

These are my links for December 29th through December 30th:

• LEAKED: New Details and the Price of Google’s Nexus One – The Nexus One, also known as the Google Phone, has been causing a stir this month after details began to emerge about the project. Earlier today, we learned that the phone will likely be revealed on January 5 at a Google press conference (which we will be covering).
• The Complete National Geographic Collection on a Hard Drive – National Geographic, the legendary yellow magazine that’s been an important part of many a young nerd’s childhood, has been around since 1888. Even if you have a very large room dedicated to storing the magazine, that’s a lot of issues.
• Facebook to Seppukoo: Die! – Remember Seppukoo, that nifty little service that lets you kill your Facebook identity? Well, Facebook doesn’t appreciate the idea.
• Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Journalists – Navigating the journalistic seas this past year has been a particularly challenging/exciting task. As many a publication foundered in the economic benthos, others rode the wave of new technology into previously uncharted waters.
• Comedy Duo Hopes Social Media Power Will Secure Slot on Showtime – Undoubtedly, social media is a powerful force. It can be used as a way to spread breaking news, organize political protests or energize campaigns, and, of course, to promote various brands and individuals. But can social media help a TV pilot ascend from reject bin to series pickup? Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo — the stars and creators of Ronna and Beverly — sure hope so.
• Weather Channel Marriage Proposal: Touching With a Chance of Viral Status [VIDEO] – First Twitter, then Foursquare, now the Weather Channel? People are broadcasting their wedding proposals all over the place these days.
• LinkedIn’s New iPhone App: The 3 Worst Things About It – Business social network LinkedIn made a major upgrade to its iPhone app tonight but coming from a service with such incredible potential, there remain some major disappointments.
• Twitter 2.0: API Rate Change Could Lead to a World of New Apps & Features – One of the best things about Twitter is its wildly creative ecosystem of applications built by people outside the company. Those apps have been constrained, though, by technical limits imposed on retrieving data from Twitter. Those limits are just about to be raised much higher and developers tell us that a whole new world of applications and features may become possible.
• Google’s 2009: A Glimpse of the Web’s Next Decade – In 2009 the web as we knew it changed dramatically. Twitter graduated to become a media darling and a mainstream communication staple. Facebook became the most significant social network of this day and age. And Google changed the way we search.
• 10 Things to Do Before the New Year – Whether you work for someone or yourself, things tend to slow down for many of us in the final two weeks of the old year. What better time to do a little business sprucing? Here are ten things to do before the New Year to feel invigorated and ready to whatever comes your way.

This is the Daily Link Report for December 2nd

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Digg Makes it Easier to Get Dugg – Digg has announced that it is revamping its API so that developers can create more feature-rich applications for the social content-sharing site and write/contribute data using OAuth. The new API will also let developers write tools that give users the ability to Digg, bury or comment on stories.