After about 11 weeks or so of being closed to new members, I have caught up on a number of projects and we have decided to re-open again. We increased the price again to try to help manage demand, as it is far easier for me to keep adding more value to x members than to have 2x customers. There are

Google announced product listing ads today, a cost-per-action ad program that shows images in the search results: Product Listing Ads is part of our effort to simplify the advertising process for merchants with large product inventories. Some of the key features of Product Listing Ads include: Pay

In the past many SEOs have called organic search results the results on the left side of the page and the pay-per-click / AdWords results as the results on the right side of the page. As Google has grown more aggressive witht promoting vertical/universal search I think a better way of defining the p

The Free Credit Report ads have caused such user confusion in the marketplace that the government has felt the need to create a spoof site with $100,000 worth of amateur video to mock Free Credit Report.com. And yet even if you search for the official website [Annual Credit Report] to this very day

Search marketers know that if the title of the ad matches the searchers keyword query, they stand a good chance of getting the click. This mirroring strategy works for obvious reasons. The visitor already has a psychological attachment to the phrase - after all, they typed it in! Making Sure You Ge

Posted by randfishWARNING: Get ready to read with this one. There arent a ton of fun graphics or quick bullet points, but I do promise that if you read through, youll feel much more knowledgable about the topic, and likely get more value from organizing, speaking or attending an event. Over the pa

Posted by randfishDespite being a seemingly simple topic, this one seems to stymie even experienced SEOs. Theres a natural conflict that creates the issue - the more keywords you target on a single page, the less you need to link build and optimize (for both search engines and user experience/conve

Posted by RobOusbeySearch Engine Optimization covers a huge range of tactics - all of which can bring direct benefit to a website. In this post, Ive shared examples of different tactics used at different websites, and the effects that have been seen. If youre considering an SEO campaign for your

Posted by randfishThis week, despite still being seriously under the weather (see this weeks sad WB Friday), I flew down to SMX West to speak on the Link Building Strategies panel. Although Id wanted to put more work in and deliver a better presentation, I received some very kind words afterward a

Posted by great scott!Sure, you use Twitter as a social media tool, but have you ever considered it as an SEO research tool? No? Well watch and learn this week to find out how you can harness it in a whole new way. Now that social signals (particularly Twitter) are becoming more important in the en

Note: This post is fairly self-serving, but I promise watching the videos will help you make your site better. You can skip all the reading and just watch the totally FREE FULL videos (part I, and part II), or skip to the next paragraph for the details of the awesome video that Avinash (aka [...]

Ted Ulle aka "Tedster" surpassed a mind-blowing 26,000 posts at Webmasterworld where he has been an adminstrator for years as one of the unsung heros of SEO. Tedster is an administrator at WebmasterWorld who has contributed a mind-boggling 18,864 posts to what many consider the web’s m

I can’t help it. I love the bay area. I’m going to be living here in California for a while longer. More speakeasy, burritos in the mission, and general cali goodness for several more months minimum. Thanks to everyone who asked, and cares…hopefully I’ll have a chance to

Hey folks, if you’ve ever read something you liked here, please take JUST 30 SECONDS to vote for me for a social media SEMMY here. It’s super easy, and I will forever appreciate the shiny new badge I’ll be able to hang on my site. Matt and crew have done an awesome job [...]

A Google AdWords Help forum announced the addition of two additional AdWords support representatives to the forums. Both representatives have been working at Google for "several years" and decided to take the plunge in forum help. The names are AdWordsPro...

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....

A week or so ago, Google announced the availability of free online courses to learn more about AdWords. There are both live courses and on-demand courses. The first live online course is being given tomorrow, the 17th at 11am-12pm (PST)...

Remember, a few months ago, I wrote how some Google Maps reviews were being posted on competitors Google Local Business listings? In summary, a Doctor was complaining that his competitors were obtaining his reviews, even though his business has a...

No one will deny it, not even Google. Viruses, malware, spyware and so on, is currently a major issue on the Internet. Google and other search engines has stepped up how they detect and block malware from showing up in...

As many of you know, Microsoft is conducting a major ad blitz in the UK in order to capture market share for Bing, their search engine. Bings product manager sent me a link to one of the new commercials, which...

If you visit MSN.com today, you may notice a new look and feel for the site. The beta design is now the new official look for MSN. Like it or not, this is the new look for now. Greg Sterling...

An updated Google Webmaster Help thread has confirmed reports from Googles "sreeram" that Google is updating the Site Performance reports in Google Webmaster Tools. During this update, Google has temporarily stopped updating the existing reports. The Googler said: We are...

I am finally back from my trip to Israel and one thing that kind of bothered me while I was there was that whenever I went to Google.com, it redirected me to Google.co.il. I know, that is how it should...

Android powered TV search boxes are being tested by Googlers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Google Inc. is testing a new television-programming search service with Dish Network Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, the latest development in...

Happy Thanksgiving! The whole office just came together for a serious cornucopia of a potluck lunch. If by the end of this post my eyes arent rolling to the back of my head as I succumb to a food coma, Ill consider this an incredibly successful day. (Though my tummy...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danagraves/CC BY-ND 2.0 SEM Synergy and its accompanying blog post are usually reserved for Wednesdays. But since its a short week and youve got a Thanksgiving-themed recap coming at you tomorrow, the SEM Synergy Extras blog post is yours a day early. Youll still have

Its a short holiday week for most, but if youre a retail business owner or an SEO of a small retail business, this week holds little rest for you. Days away is Black Friday, the mega shopping day that falls the day after Thanksgiving and ushers in the winter holiday...

Welcome back to Friday, friends. There was no major news this week. Oh, wait. There was that one minor blip on the radar -- a.k.a. the release of Twitters new, official retweet feature. The long and short of it is that no one likes it. Lisa Barone dissects the many...

Conferences are a hub of learning, growth and progress in the SEO industry. Theyre part of the glue that connects members of the community, offering a cherished opportunity for forging relationships and friendship. And no matter how many conferences theyve been to, most attendees almost always wal

Ed Berrera contends that as Facebook advertising gets more niche, it will become less profitable to Facebook… methinks he be wrong. (And methinks further that writing like a pirate be good. Arrrh.) Ed’s article confuses short term inefficiencies and arbitrage - eg, Facebook selling ads a

Eric Schmidt of Google famously remarked last year that “The internet is fast becoming a cesspool where false information thrives” and that brands were the way out. Well Eric I’m going to show you not only did you get it wrong , but you got it very wrong, not only are big brands ju

Rule Number one of operating a web 2.0 user generated content website, if you don’t have someone involved in your development process who thinks about how to abuse the system, and put steps in place to prevent it, someone else will publish a handy step by step guide on how to abuse your system

So you’ve been blogging for a while, your getting some links, traffic is growing, but your blog isn’t making any money. While you do like blogging maybe it’s getting kind of hard to justify the amount of time you put into it, if it’s not putting any money in your pocket. For

A few weeks ago I made the mistake of wondering aloud when someone would start offering cash prizes for twitter followers. I had seen people offering physical prizes before, but never cash. A few random people decided to have some fun with me and start saying I was offering cash, so I just decided t

In a previous post I covered how to link to a specific timestamp in a YouTube video. The short version looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s The “#t=31m08s” takes you to 31 minutes and 8 seconds in a video. I just found out that you can also start embedded

Google has been working on some new algorithms and tools to tackle linkspam and we’d like to ask for linkspam reports from you. If you’d like to tell us about web sites that appear to be using spammy links (e.g. paid links that pass PageRank, blog spammers, guestbook spammers, etc.), her

I’m three weeks into a new 30 day challenge: no iPhone. When I got a Nexus One in December, I spent a few weeks carrying both phones around in the pockets of my jeans. It took a little while to adapt to Android, but I’m very happy with my Nexus One and I don’t plan [...]

Last year I tried to limit my travel but still ended up making about ten (!) trips in 2009. This year I’ve resolved to travel less for work. Right now, here’s my current speaking/travel plans for 2010: March 2-4, 2010: SMX West, Santa Clara, CA. I’m doing a “Ask the Search En

Okay, someone tell me if this device exists (or build it!). I want a device where I can pay $10-15 to get a gadget in the mail. The gadget would sit in my pocket for a week wherever I go. The device would record cell phone signal strength for each of the four major U.S. [...]

Looking for a great present for that special SEO in your life? We’ll you’re in luck as the next DVLA auction has some fantastic personalised number plates just in time for Christmas! There’s the run of the mill Web option – a snip at a reserve price of £450 Then we have the

I was thinking about the different types of content the other day and how you to organise your approach to it – in terms of both building content and acquiring links from that content. And now, I present to you the result of my deliberations: The Content Pyramid. The Originators At the top of

So someone called “Wholesale TV Bracket” decide last night to leave last night to leave a few comments on my blog actually they get my : Dick from above for hitting so many of my blog posts that no way could they been “under the radar” while spamming me : Dave

What seemed a very simple and I mean very simple conversation ended up taking 1 hour of my life away, in a preamble to this story you need to know a few thing, Ant is an inhouse seo that just bought his first house in Ripon, Bronco the company I own give all staff if [...]

Google still catches me off guard sometimes. Looking at ‘online bingo’ results today, I was surprised to see this result and mistook it for Google News (cut me some slack – it was 8:30 and I’d had no coffee). Had we written about bingo anytime recently? I didn’t recall

The long winter days seem to have kept quite a few folks inside, considering the large amount of great in-depth link building articles I came across last month. When even Bing starts writing about link spam, you know it must be pretty cold outside… Although I don’t spend as much time on

Everybody who owns a website gets them, and usually several a week: link requests. Especially when your site jumps to a PageRank of 5 or higher, all kinds of webmasters suddenly seem to feel that their website is related to yours. And since they are, why not swap links, right? Over the years, I must

Great content is the solid foundation of a good website, a positive user experience and (hopefully) some nice incoming links. This, in turn, usually leads to good rankings, a continuous stream of traffic, conversions, and -eventually- a fat bank account. Easy, right? Well, what if you can’t co

Since there wasn’t a Link Building this Month in December, because of the yearly recap, this month’s edition basically is a double edition. In 2010, I will be putting the bar even higher than it already was. We’ve all read the same stuff over and over again, so I’ll try only

Just like last year, SmallBusinessSEM’s Matt McGee is hosting the SEMMYs, an annual awards event for search engine marketing content. So in case you took a sabbatical last year and want to catch up, I would advize you to take a look at all the great stuff that was nominated this year. Until th

Now that the heat has been turned up on Digg, scrutiny is also spilling over to all the “up-and-coming” services who have decided to jump on the “justifiable framing bandwagon.” One of those services is BurnURL. The concept of BurnURL is pretty simple: You input a url and it

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been getting the urge to get back into blogging a bit. However, when it’s been awhile since you’ve attempted to construct a thought longer than a 140 character tweet, actually doing it is a bit harder than you regular bloggers might imagine. I

I am not sure when this feature was added, but I just discovered it thanks to a stumbler friend of mine giving me the tip. (Thanks Roby!) Basically all you need to do is go to your ‘favorites’ then hover over the image and then a ’share’ button appears. From there, you can

A misconception about web pages that lingered for a long time on the Web was that most people who visit your web site will enter your site on your home page. Another one is that the meta description you choose for a page will usually be what a search engines shows as the snippet, [...]

Sometimes when you search at one of the major search engines, you’ll see an extra set of links showing up under one of the listings in those search results. Referred to as either quicklinks or site links, most often those will show up for the listing at the top of the search results like in [.

A new patent filing from Apple may be a sign of changes to the way Apple presents music recommendations at the iTunes store. That change was hinted at last December when Apple acquired the streaming music site, Lala. The patent application lists Ryan Dixon, Digital Album Content Manager at iTunes,

One of the words that often appears when someone describes how search engines work is relevance. A search engine attempts to show searchers web pages and other results that might be relevant to the words that they used when they perform a search. Yet, there are a number of different ways that you c

Charles Knight, who is now the Search Editor at Nextweb pointed me to a Bloomberg report at BusinessWeek, Google, Yahoo Sued by Xerox Over Search Query Patents. The patent infringement complaint contains claims that specifically name the following programs as infringing Xerox’s patented tech

A top mobile service harnesses its strengths to compete in the mobile ad space.Click to read the rest of this post...

According to Outsell, spending on online advertising and marketing will overtake print in 2010 for the first time. The research and advisory firms annual forecast predicts companies will spend $119.6 billion on online and digital strategies, from search engine keywords to webinars, while committin

Catching up on a week of new stuff from the GOOG.Click to read the rest of this post...

Previously the executive director of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), Mike Levin has been tapped in the same role - but this time at the Web Analytics Association (WAA). Click to read the rest of this post...

Prepare to be green with envy.Click to read the rest of this post...

Hi All, realestateinworld(dot)com is one of fastest growing real estate directory website and its completely free now so be hurry and put your lis

Hi,I am new to SEO and computer. These days I am TRYING to learn how to build backlinks for my website.It it is difficult for me...No matter how hard

Google used to be simple. search results were obvious and clear. Google is getting more and more complex and showing more and more irrelevant stuff on

The page names of one of my Websites are to be changed with keywords in it. But the pages are already indexed in google. Can I use a 301 permanent red

I read this forum since 2 weeks and now i have decided to register to share with you my ideas.

Theres a growing divide between online marketers who enjoy organic search and those who prefer paid search. What do your preferences say about you? ...

SEO is a best practices game. Understanding how not to over optimize is an important part of the mix. ...

Some survival tips for when youre asked to work with your clients other agencies. ...

At some point in your career as an SEO manager, you may decide to leave your current employer for greener pastures. How you help your soon-to-be former employer during this time says a lot about you as a professional. ...

Tips on MSN search, blocking referrers, choosing your network, and a look at some promising Yahoo betas. ...

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Social media or networking or whatever it is you want to call it continues to grow at exponential rates of speed. With the “announcement” of Facebook getting its own location based service in place the concerns over privacy and safety of information continue to grow as well. Twitter

Facebook is going to be joining the frenzy to help everyone not only know what people are thinking but also where they are thinking it. As we move more toward a world of this total view of another’s life you can be sure that Facebook wants to be involved. With the rising popularity

Unlike last time, there’ll be no snafu about whether the time is right to reveal the new MSN Homepage–it’s now officially live for all. New features include: TrendWatch – Highlights the day’s top trends and movers on Twitter Hyper-local Tweets – Uses the power of

Flying under the radar with your affiliate income is about to get a lot harder for US tax payers. Starting next year, the IRS will be tracking all online payments made through credit, debit and electronic payment processing like PayPal. The new 1099-K form will be provided by any ba

Facebook and Eventbrite already have a relationship—Facebook tapped the event site to sell tickets to its f8 developer conference, as confirmed by TechCrunch last week. A TechCrunch reader then noticed that facebook.eventbrite.com was up and working: So, TechCrunch speculates

Time Warner Inc. will cut 10 percent of its workforce, or as many as 700 jobs, from its Internet services group AOL, in order to help curtail losses brought about by a weakened online advertising market, AOL chief executive Randy Falco wrote in an internal memo Wednesday.

Microsoft, the maker of the popular Web browser Internet Explorer, has released a free tool for users of Mozilla Corp.s open source rival browser Firefox that provides search engine suggestions for Live Search, the Redmond, Washington-based software makers search service.

Google has updated its virtual world mapping software, Google Earth, to include vast amounts of new imagery of the earths underwater regions along with new features to observe changes in satellite imagery over time and additional images of the planet Mars, the Internet giant announced Monday.

Internet media firm IAC/InteractiveCorp. released fourth quarter earnings Tuesday that showed a profit slightly short of forecasts and cited a drop in the number of Web searches at its Ask.com and other online properties as a factor in revenue that fell by 19 percent during the quarter.

Google has asked Time Warner Inc. to either buy back the 5 percent stake in Time Warners AOL that Google bought for $1 billion in 2006, or to spin off the ailing property and take it public, Time Warner executives said Wednesday.

Intrapromote has been selected as search and social media agency of record by Schumacher Homes, one of the countrys leading home builders.

I firmly believe it can be used as an effective social media marketing tool if the correct strategy is implemented. I have been an avid user of Linkedin for the last 4 plus years and know that great things can happen when connecting properly with other users of this platform.

If you have an eCommerce business and you want to gain extra traction for your products you need to be utilizing a platform that enables users to spread the word about your products online. I am not talking about social sharing services like AddThis, but a service that lets users send your product i

There are a variety of ways to utilize YouTube as a marketing channel and Ive seen some very creative videos take social media marketing to the next level. A great example is Blendtec, they have been promoting their products on YouTube for quite some time now. The most memorable instance I can reca

When was the last time you checked your Facebook privacy settings? Do you know what your profile and activity look like to the rest of the world? Is Google indexing your personal information? Follow along as Social Media Strategist Jen...

Every smart marketer knows the importance of community. Interacting with your main consumer is a delicate skill. Many times a community can be infiltrated "below the line" by using poor methods engagement.

A look at Greg Finn and Chris Winfields speaking schedule at the annual SMX West conference this week in Santa Clara.

Many developers are familiar with problems of making a perfectly standard website display properly in Internet Explorer 6 browser. Usually a development process would consist of testing the site in Firefox or another standard compliant browser. Then, after opening it up in IE6, one would need to fig

Some niche social networking sites can seem tough to break into and become a part of the community. One of the best ways to get involved is to study what people in the community are doing and simply join in! Sometimes just hanging around and observing will give you a taste of the language or formali

Here are 5 easy steps that will help you learn where and how to start finding these magic portals of consumer engagement and information.

RT @sengineland Do You Know What Your Customers Say About Your Business? http://bit.ly/6NUqoS # Just back from grocery store. Walked thru 'seasonal' aisle. Valentine candy is already out. Get your sugar hearts now. # 15 Best Places for Designers to Get Free Stock Photos Online – http:/

5 Things On My B2B Wishlist For 2010 – http://bit.ly/8mcQ4E # My head is exploding! apophenia: spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective – http://bit.ly/6Hklmg # Social Media Today | Advancing the Discussion of Social Media & ROI – http://bit.ly/6Oded6 # Middle S

photo credit: kevindooley “If you can’t be thankful for what you receive, be thankful for what you escape.” – Unknown Wishing you and yours a Merry, Merry. I’ll be seeing you – and you know who ‘you’ are – at the dim sum buffet and Avatar tomor

AltaVista Irrelevant? Not to Other Search Engines – PC World – http://bit.ly/5mBbFp # Why can't a man be more like a woman? http://ow.ly/OIw1 # RT @sengineland Choose Your Paid Search Landing Pages Wisely http://bit.ly/6vZn90 # Reading: "Clash of the Titans: SEO vs Social Media –

photo credit: zoonabar” … but will you love me tomorrow?” I spent part of the past weekend crafting my first ghost blog post for a tech start-up client. Believe it or not, I have never (ever!) written a single word under someone else’s photo and byline before. I won’t r

Are you ready for this? Pubcon 2009 in Sunny Las Vegas is almost here. And for the first time ever, I’m taking the podium. Runnin’ with the big dawgs. It’s in a few weeks and I still have yet to complete my presentation. I’m screwed. But at least my session is the first one,

Melanie Nathan (follow her on Twitter @MelanieNathan) recently had a kick ass little contest to get people to participate in her brand new blog, which worked like a charm. Just check out all those comments. She LITERALLY just launched Canadian SEO at the time of that post, which I guarantee will tak

Today I am proud to announce Link Insight and the Link Insight Beta Program, offered exclusively through search intelligence firm AdGooroo.For many years I have wanted to find a way to take what I have learned over the course of 14+ years of link building and link marketing, and turn it into a diagn

Ahhh, Link Diversity...Linkmoses loves it when a seemingly technical and complex concept can be broken down and simplified, and Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz is one of the best at doing this. Give him a whiteboard and I do believe he could solve global warming. Ive embedded a video of his that beautifull

In the wake of the recent news Danny Sullivan covered excellently at SearchEngineLand in Google Now Personalizes Everyone’s Search Results, some of you may be in a bit of a link building panic.Ill refrain from a big I told you so and go with a small one. I told you so. I do feel a sense of vindica

Many of you have already heard about BuzzStream, a wickedly cool tool for managing the processes of link building and buzz monitoring. Im one of their advisers and have been thrilled with how they continue to improve it. To that end, this week BuzzStream announced a series of improvements and feat

I read today about how all three major search engines have removed the Geocities.com domain from their search indices. A site:geocities.com search on Google, Yahoo, or Bing shows that, as Matt McGhee illustrates here, geocities.com is "dead and buried".*Sigh*Once upon a time, in 2001, back in the

I have a few domains running on a ZZ Hosting account. Until now it’s been a pretty good hosting service for low traffic domains. But my Web sites vanished over the weekend, and apparently... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

I’ve been seeing an increase in risky linking behavior over the past year. That may seem counter-intuitive to people who are knowledgeable about Google’s anti-link spamming efforts... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

David Castle has absolutely nothing to do with hacking for links. I just don’t have time to do two separate posts here today. David Castle, known to many people in the SEO community as CTABUK,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

You manage a large Web site with thousands or millions of pages of content and sometime in the last two years you resorted to using rel=’nofollow’ on internal links in the hope of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Disclaimer: Any links that may appear in this post do not necessarily constitute endorsements, recommendations, or referrals for any particular Internet services, service providers, or... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

How do YOU measure up? Over the last 6 months of writing the SEO Geeks newsletter (http://www.huomah.com/dojo/seo-newsletter.html) Ive been collecting a wide variety of posts dealing with web analytics... Just for fun, I thought to wrap them all up, with some that didnt make it into the newsle

Hey gang just a quick note to let you know that Ive put together a repository of search related videos (http://www.huomah.com/dojo/Videos/) in the Dojo that is open for all. Over the last few months Ive included videos into the weekly SEO Geeks Newsletter (http://www.huomah.com/dojo/seo-newsletter

Finding link spam via search marketing Forums OK, sure... the title is a bit egregious, but in many ways so is the patent that came out from the folks at Microsoft last week. As I was perusing my feed reader on Thursday I noticed a patent that DEFINITELY caught my attention (and I even laughed

Modeling Googles Florida Update and Universal Search A number of papers have come out of the SIGR conference and for me one of the most interesting is the paper from the Microsoft research team using Conditional Random Field (CRF) and contextual analysis (http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/81350/s

How search engines consider link relevance A good friend of mine sent me an interesting question a while back, "Dear Dave, can you give me some pointers on how search engines determine link intent?" Well sheeeeit... its hard to say what constitutes `intent when it comes to various aspects

At long last the Link Spiel has a new home and new look:http://www.linkspiel.comIf you have this blog bookmarked or in your RSS, be sure to note the changes. :)Thanks!Debra

Ive had the opportunity to work with a variety of businesses through the years from tiny one-person small businesses to huge international companies. While there are many similarities in working with different sized companies, there are also important differences.

If you had an extra 20 hours a week, what would you do with them?

New Affordable SEO Small-Business Package.

Do image links have the same weighting engines as text links?

This week Im heading out to Arizona to do some in-house SEO training for a company there and will be visiting some more universities, but this time with my daughter Corie, whos looking into a couple of law schools there.