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.
Google Rolls Out New Format for Image Results – According to an announcement on the Official Google Blog, the search engine giant is rolling out a new format for their universal image results. Set to go live over the next 24 hours, the updated format will now feature one larger image alongside multiple smaller images. Because of this new layout, you'll be able to see "more pictures than before," writes Google Software Engineer Alex Petcherski in the blog post.
Facebook, Google & Twitter Unite for World AIDS Day Around the Web – Thanks to efforts from Facebook, Google, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, AIDS is a more visible topic today than perhaps at any other point in the history of World AIDS Day. Read on to see what each site has done and the impact this joint campaign is having on users.
This is the Link Report for November 25th through 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 Microsoft Launches its own Twitter… in China – Microsoft is making its own Twitter… in China. They are capitalizing on the popularity of their Instant Messenger client in that country.
Facebook’s Road to 350 Million Users – Mark Zuckerberg’s note about Facebook’s latest privacy changes also contained an announcement about another important milestone for Facebook: 350 million users.
Facebook CEO: Prepare for Some Big Privacy Changes – In a rare open letter, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a series of privacy changes, starting with the removal of regional networks.
What Will Comcast-NBC Mean for Hulu? – It looks like Comcast's purchase of 51% of NBC will not kill he online video site Hulu. Though we might be paying for the content in 2010.
Twitter Ads Are Evil: Here’s Why – Advertisers are frustrated. You’re all having direct conversations with friends on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the rest while totally bypassing the mass mediums they understand. Rather than consuming content all day on TV, in newspapers and on the radio, you’re engaging, one-to-one, with individuals you trust. They can’t get in the middle of that. They hate it.
Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs – As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it’s more useful. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs.
Small Businesses Look to E-Mail and Social Media – eMarketer – Three-quarters of small businesses will increase their spending on e-mail marketing in 2010, while nearly seven in 10 will put more dollars toward social media, according to VerticalResponse data.
If you’ve been in the working world for more than a few years you’ve probably come across one of them. They are cocky and like to boast about how they can magically make your dreams come true. That’s right, the snake oil salesmen.
Back in the late 19th and early 20th century, salesmen used to travel across the country selling all kinds of potions and contraptions. These salesmen would make wild claims that their wares would cure everything from a constantly icky toe to the measles. Often times, like today, when a customer bought these items they did far less than what was promised.
Fast forward more than a century and you’ll find that not much has changed. Their are still people hocking their wares, claiming to be able to solve all of life’s mysteries. Now, you’re probably asking yourself what does this have to do with Web design or Internet marketing. Sadly, the Internet trades are not immune to these slithery, slimy characters. If anything, the Internet is the new frontier, where these vermin thrive.
Recently, I was courting a client for a Website design. Like most of my customers they were interested in being found on Google and the other search engines. They already had a site made for them by one of the ma-bell outfits. They didn’t know much about the Web, but did they know that things as they weren’t working. So like many brave business owners they ventured out into the frontier of the Web and began talking to Web designers and Internet marketers to see what options they had to offer.
This is when we first met.
We met at a local cafe and I explained to them my philosophy of design and development: Clean, schematic, and readable sites that promote natural rankings in the search engines. They looked at me dumb founded. “Naturally?” they asked. Apparently they were led to believe that somehow a Website and Search Engine Marketing (pay-per-click) were one in the same — you couldn’t do one without the other.
I explained to them that even though they were in a competitive keyword and market they could still rank high in the natural listings. They were shocked and felt betrayed by the other designers and salesmen who steered them wrong.
When I first heard what they were being told, my blood boiled. Yes, there is a place for PPC in every Web design and Internet marketing strategy. PPC isn’t always a waste of money, if it’s done correctly. But it certainly isn’t the be-all-end-all.
I explained to them that I could do a number of things for them. Besides building them a custom site, coded correctly, I could get them ranked for keywords that were being searched for regularly and without PPC and in the end these prospective customers became clients.
A few tips for going at search engines naturally
Going after a competitive keyword like, let’s say, Pizza Shop, you are competing with more than 36.6 million other listings. Remember that a broad search term like this is pulling up listings from all over.
What you can do is go for Pizza Shop Philadelphia or Pizza Shop Yardley. The first one might still be hard to break into, due to the fact that others have been there much longer and the fact that Philadelphia is a large area, but the second one is definitely attainable.
If you have a small company that is regional or even local, don’t go after the broad key terms. You’ll never be able to compete with the giants in that space. Go after your surrounding zip codes and local towns.
If you have a regional or even national company, you can go after the broader key terms, but be prepared to spend lots of money and time getting there without any guarantee of success. What you can do though is go into the more regional or local spaces and compete on those levels for those key terms. It might be more work, but you’ll have a better chance of ranking.
The moral of the story beware of the low hanging fruit and those snakes that tell you to eat the apple. Do your homework and be an educated consumer. If something sounds way too good to be true it probably is and sometimes doing a little extra work pays off in dividends later on.
This is the Link Report for November 8th through November 12th:
Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below
To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at What the duck? Aflac gets quackin’ on Facebook | Social Business | ZDNet.com – Whether or not you are an Aflac customer, you’ve at least once tried to mimic the Aflac duck’s quacking of “Aflac” at the end of its commercials. After its commercial success, Aflac has taken to Facebook with a two-fold approach: increase its brand awareness through a fan page for the famous Aflac Duck and through a presence in the “Causes” application on Facebook for the Aflac Cancer Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the same city in which the company is headquartered.
The Do’s And Don’ts Of Creating Original Video | paidContent – Just a few years ago, web video was the great unknown. Media and tech companies agreed that it was the next big thing, but no one knew what kind of content actually worked on the web. Early adopters watched music videos online, but the average consumer wasn’t ready to reach for the computer instead of the TV remote. Content owners and creators, meanwhile, either clung for dear life to traditional development and distribution models, or threw ideas against a wall to see what would stick.
The fall of the Berlin wall in digital media | Media | guardian.co.uk – Digital media are playing an important role in today's celebration of the fall of the Berlin wall. It is interesting that much of the mainstream press have left their historical medium behind for their online coverage, as each have chosen the format which is best for a story. For example, the Guardian has put some impressive films online in which Berliners describe how the city was divided while, readers of the New York Times submitted magnificent photos and memories of the wall and the BBC has displayed in a map how far pieces of the former wall have spread around the globe. In addition to an interactive mainstream coverage, there are several social media projects worth looking at.
LinkedIn and Twitter link up | Technology | Reuters – LinkedIn and Twitter have linked up. Starting immediately, users of LinkedIn and Twitter can cross-file to each other's services, by checking a box on either Twitter or LinkedIn.
The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave – Google Wave is a new web-based collaboration tool that's notoriously difficult to understand. This guide will help. Here you'll learn how to use Google Wave to get things done with your group. Because Wave is such a new product that's evolving quickly, this guidebook is a work in progress that will update in concert with Wave as it grows and changes. Read more about The Complete Guide to Google Wave.
This is the Link Report for November 5th through November 7th:
Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below
To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Change the Windows 7 Taskbar to Work Like Vista :: the How-To Geek – While many think the new taskbar feature in Windows 7 is a great improvement, others may not want to use it. Today we take a look at how to get the Vista style taskbar back on Windows 7.
Security Fix – Poking at Google’s new privacy Dashboard – Google this week unveiled a new feature called Dashboard, intended to give users a way to view — and in modest ways limit — the breadth of information the search giant collects about our online lives.
Social Media, Meet Search – ClickZ – We knew it was going to happen eventually, but many digital marketers were taken somewhat by surprise when it happened all at once. Seemingly overnight, the era of social search dawned. Bing just started to incorporate tweets into search results, with Google right on its heels.
Social Status Generator – Choose a keyword from the tag coud, and the generator will automatically give you a message you can add to Twitter, Facebook, Friendster, …
Google Dashboard: Now You Know What Google Knows About You – There’s no two ways about it: if you use a lot of Google services, then Google knows a lot about you. Google has received a solid amount of criticism because of this, and they’ve decided to alleviate the issue by launching Privacy Dashboard; a one-stop-shop with all the information that Google knows about you and your online habits collected in one place.
Google Dashboard: A Closer Look – PC World – Google showed Thursday it's getting more serious about privacy when it launched a tool called Google Dashboard that aims to give you more control over your personal data stored on Google's servers. From your Google Dashboard you can view the company's privacy policies, easily access your most recent activity for each Google service you use, and manage settings for those services. My initial impression is that Dashboard is a quick and easy way to get greater control over your Google Account activity, and even clean up any services you may have forgotten about.
YouTube Gives Partners More Control Over Video Blocking – Basically, there are two new buttons in the interface for partners. One says ‘Block by Country’ and provides content partners with the ability to geo-block a single video rather than an entire account, an oft-requested feature that allows partners to restrict the geographical rights for specific videos.
Do Follow – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Most blogs are "No Follow" meaning no link juice is passed from the blog to the linked site. But some blogs are "Do Follow" read more to find out more.
This is the Link Report for October 31st through November 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 Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell – These games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience.
Google’s Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years – Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time. Figuring out how to rank real-time social content is "the great challenge of the age," Schmidt said in an interview in front of thousands of CIOs and IT Directors at last week's Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009.
Video SEO Tips – Getting Started – Online Marketing Blog – If you’re attempting to improve search rankings for your web pages, these days it’s no longer an option not to optimize digital assets. With search engines incorporating video, images and news into standard search results, marketers have the opportunity to achieve increased visibility by implementing video SEO principles.
This is the Link Report for September 30th through October 29th:
Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below
To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Facebook Revamps its Privacy Policy – Earlier this year, Facebook was hammered for changes it made to its Terms of Service. The result was an uproar that eventually led to the Facebook Democracy, an initiative by Facebook to let users vote and comment on its governing documents.
Rand Fishkin: SEO, Mentors & What Pisses Him Off » aimClear Search Marketing Blog – Rand Fishkin is a singular personality and, to those in the SEO industry, needs little introduction. Having “started playing” with Microsoft FrontPage WYSIWYG web page software in 1993 as a high school student, he’s grown his company SEOmoz to take its place amongst the most recognized brands in search.
iMedia Connection: How to be a good social media listener – At this point, most digital marketers understand why they need to monitor the conversations that are happening on the social web. But in doing so, are they really listening? It's one thing to know what is being said about your brand on social networks. But it's quite another to draw actionable insights around which future campaigns and communications can be crafted.
Mobile And Social Platforms Want To Be The King Of Local Search – The study shows that the web generally, but in particular mobile and social network search, are increasingly factors fueling growth in the overall search market. This grew to 21.9 billion total US searches in June 2009, a year-on-year increase of 31%.
10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips – Begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.
How to Earn Respect in Social Media – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Just because you sell a product or a service that is the top selling or highest rated in the industry doesn't mean people will listen to you when you arrive. Announcing your arrival doesn't gain you immediate respect. You won't suddenly have a band of followers once you strike up a conversation or answer a question or two on a topic.
Facebook’s ‘Reconnect’ Strategy is Brilliant – Recently, in addition to giving you suggestions to which friends you might add to your profile, Facebook also started enticing users to reconnect and engage less active users. The campaign has partly backfired, as some of the recommendations were dead people and ex-lovers, but I still think it’s brilliant, and a good sign that Facebook has a clear strategy laid out for the future.
Initially rolled out for select images only, the capability is now being rolled out for what seems to be the majority of images in Google image search. This is particularly useful when search terms include homonyms, we think; and we applaud Google for removing a major pain point in our searches for pics of Tesla the band as opposed to Tesla the scientist or Tesla the automotive brand.
BuddyPress.org – BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.
Leo, really doesn’t have to worry about SEO, like us non-tech celebrities do. He has such a loyal and large following (myself included) that he is making millions in advertising dollars. But Leo, those small mom & pop shops who have tons of competition do need SEO. They need to be competitive in their space both online and in life in general. Take it from someone who is in a very saturated marketing. I’m a Web designer in Philadelphia and I rank really well for some topics and not so well for other topics. The latter are improving because of my efforts in SEO.
Many of my clients ask me to explain what SEO is. I tell them that it isn’t some type of voodoo or anything dishonest (though some tactics if used the wrong way can get you in trouble. SEO is, when you boil right down to it, simply helping the search engines, whether it be Google, Yahoo, Bing or any others, index and rank your site better.
Leo mentioned that all most people need to do is a few things and they will rank well. It’s not that easy. And what bothers me most is that Leo, who had a big following is spreading this wrong information.
When you learn SEO, however long it takes (after all it’s constantly evolving), you’ll learn it’s more about marketing than spamming the system. And in marketing you sometimes have to take creative approaches to find a solution and this is a big part of SEO. It’s not just changing meta tags and file names. Heck, I wish it were that easy, but it’s not.
Yes there are bad people in the industry that take advantage of the less knowledgeable, but the majority of SEOs are honest hard working people.
I wouldn’t blindly take sides in this debate especially when you carry so much clout.
Danny Sullivan says this in response to Derek’s attack:
Let me be clear. I totally agree with your core advice. Build a site for visitors. Have great content. These are the keys to success, not just with SEO but with anything you want to do. In fact, we just had an article on our site here reinforcing this.
Still, sometimes people have problems. And the stuff that you think isnt rocket science that anyone knows is indeed a mystery to others. They want help, and sometimes they cant find that web developer who also understands SEO issues. In the same way, you sometimes dont find web developers who are also designers. Or designers who understand conversion issues. Or conversion experts who understand web development.
With my company, Goldstein Media, I am lucky to work with some really intelligent people in the SEO space and in the Design space and I can tell you right now, that they aren’t dishonest, snake-oil salesmen that you and Derek have made them out to be.
Now I’m sure Leo’s gotten a fair amount of response to what you said. And like I said before I’m a huge fan of his and will continue to be, but he really shouldn’t belittle a whole industry just because you don’t need it or one person makes a damning case against it.
Twitter Blog: Soon to Launch: Lists – Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you've created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.
A Dozen Social Media Applications – Social media gets lots of attention these days. The NFL banned players from using Twitter. Bing integrated Twitter results into its search engine results pages (SERPs). When Michael Jackson died the site handled an estimated 5,000 tweets per minute and, proving Twitter's global reach, a state department official asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance due to the critical role the site played in the recent Iran elections.
Software Polices Employees’ Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Posts by Wall Street & Technology – How to let traders, salespeople, customer service reps and investment bankers use social networking in a beneficial way (to attract customers, fix problems, share tips, collaborate, etc.) and be certain that confidential information about the firm will not be leaked, that no employee will ever post an inappropriate comment on a social network, and that no rule will ever be broken (for instance, FINRA's rule requiring customer communications to be monitored and archived) — is a challenge to compliance and risk managers on Wall Street.
Social Networking Entrepreneur Taking It To The ‘Next Level’ – Venture Capital Dispatch – WSJ – Steve Ressler, a former IT auditor with the Department of Homeland Security, spent a lot of time studying the world’s terrorist networks. He later developed a keen interest in different kinds of networks, and founded Young Government Leaders, Washington, D.C.’s premier professional organization for government employees. Ressler also started GovLoop, an online social network for government workers that numbers about 20,000 members.
3 New Facebook Strategies for Building Your Personal Brand – With over 300 million users, no one can deny the power of FacebookFacebookFacebook. In fact, 50% of users log in every single day and spend over 6 billion minutes on the platform. What are they doing on it? Depending on the intent of the user, they’re sharing personal stories and updates, staying connected to friends and colleagues, and even building businesses. Many people only use their profile to keep in touch with friends and family, and form a brick wall so no one else can come inside. This strategy won’t help your career, but if you choose, you can also leverage Facebook to build your personal brand.
Google Wave Invites: How To Get Them – The web is buzzing with excitement and anticipation. In less than 24 hours, Google Wave will launch to 100,000 early adopters. The real-time communication platform has been making headlines ever since it was announced back in May as a result of its potentially game-changing features.
Dropbox Meets The iPhone; Access Files On The Go – Dropbox, the easy to use file access manager which syncs your files across all your computers and the web, has introduced an iPhone application to make it even easier to access your files anywhere in the world. After almost 7 weeks of waiting, Apple has finally approved the application. With this new iPhone app, users will get access to all their Dropbox documents, PDF’s, pictures, videos and much more. Dropbox also introduced offline viewing in the iPhone app, with “Favorites.” If you add a file to your ‘Favorites’, they’ll be accessible at any time. To do so, just hit the star at the bottom of any file, and it’ll be added. Otherwise, your files stay in the cloud.
Sean Parker Joins Yammer’s Board Of Directors – Sean Parker is no stranger to Internet success. He’s 28 years old and has already helped start four very well-known services on the web: Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and of course, Facebook. And now he’s taking his impressive resume to Yammer, where he is joining the enterprise microblogging service’s Board of Directors.
FCC’s Broadband Plan: A Need for (Actual) Speed – U.S. broadband policy must take into account real network speeds, which lag advertised speeds by at least 50 percent, according to the FCC task force charged with helping to develop a national broadband plan. But just how policy should address the differences between the two is far from clear.
Metered Broadband Is the Future: Verizon CTO – Verizon Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said today that in the coming years, wired broadband will likely be sold in packages based on the amount of data a person wants to consume, much like wireless broadband is sold today. In comments made to press at the 2009 Fiber to the Home Conference Expo in Houston, Lynch stressed that he wasn’t announcing a shift in pricing for Verizon, but that: “We’re going to have to consider pricing structures that allow us to sell packages of bytes, and at the end of the day the concept of a flat-rate infinitely expandable service is unachievable.”
STUDY: 80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me – Rutgers University Professors Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase set out to analyze the content and characteristics of social media activity. They dubbed communications systems like Facebook and Twitter, “social awareness streams,” and then took to examining user behavior.
SEOmoz | Design Trends: The Single Purpose Homepage – This post focuses on a design style that's both retro (it's been around a long time) and emerging (the popularity, at least to me, feels like it's on the rise) – the single-purpose homepage.
Twitter Tips to Help Brands Stay Authentic and Transparent – Online Marketing Blog – Any marketer who’s successfully made the move to social media will tell you the rules of traditional marketing have to be reexamined. That’s particularly true with Twitter, where brands have just 140 characters to inform, evoke emotion and inspire action. One of the most basic and critical rules for brands on Twitter? Be authentic and transparent in all you do.
Five Search Marketing Tips For The Holidays – What is unique for holiday season 2009 are the specific strategies online retailers must take this year to reap the most sales possible. With lessons learned from last year’s bloated inventories and fire-sale prices, many retailers this year are restricting inventories and fine-tuning merchandising in an attempt to lure shoppers to purchase earlier and at higher prices. And, of course, the best way to get potential shoppers to your site is via search engine marketing. 82% of holiday shoppers polled by Google said they find search engines “extremely or very useful” in making their purchases.
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If you’ve been in the working world for more than a few years you’ve probably come across one of them. They are cocky and like to boast about how they can magically make your dreams come true. That’s right, the snake oil salesmen.
So I was listening to 
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