Most Important Tricks of Google Search

1. Google Squared Searching for a comparison chart on a certain topic? Try using Google Squared for a collection of information. For instance, try searching Google Squared for "roller coasters" to see a chart of the top 20 tallest roller coasters, or check out chart of hurricanes for images, descriptions, and damage estimates of recent hurricanes.




2. Wonder Wheel Not quite sure what you're looking for? Google's Wonder Wheel gives another way of looking at the related searches near what you're looking for. Located in the left-hand sidebar, Wonder Wheel produces a circular chart with searches that other people have done recently that are related to yours.




3. Search history Need to find something you have found on Google before? Try searching your own Google search history. Sign into your Google account and enable web history. Run your searches and then visit www.google.com/history to see your search history and revisit previous searches. Search history also syncs to your mobile device.




4. Google Voice Search Google Voice Search lets you speak your search queries into your mobile device while on the go. Google Voice Search app is available on iPhone, BlackBerry, and Nokia S60 V3 phones. If you have an Android phone, search for the "Voice Search" app in Android Market.




5. Timeline For those who want info from a certain time period, Timeline option is a sure shot help. Located in the left-hand toolbar, the feature lets you zoom in on any time range and see news pulled from assorted sources, including books, news, and web pages. Searching for the Anglo-French Wars, for instance, brings up a timeline that runs from 1600-2010, stepping down into individual years, then months.




6. Google Images Want to filter your results in Google Images. Try searching for a word that could be found in a range of images, such as names like heather or raven or cliff. Towards the bottom of the left-hand sidebar in Google Images, you will find a dedicated option to only clip art, photos, or line drawings.




7. Searching files Trying to find a particular type of file? Google doesn't only look for HTML. Type what you're looking for and then add 'filetype:tag' on the end. For instance, 'filetype:doc' will only results with those types of file. This search supports PDF, Microsoft Office formats, Shockwave Flash and so.




8. Google Suggest To compare different Google Suggest results side-by-side, go to http://hint.fm/seer/ to get a visual comparison of two search prefixes. Though not a Google product, Web Seer was built by two Googlers and gives interesting insight into Google results.




9. Search in the URL If you know there's a specific string of letters or words in the URLs of pages you are looking for, you can use "inurl" to find them. For example, many websites with public webcams have URLs that contain "view/view.shtml". So search for inurl:view/view.shtml and your search results will display the URLs for webcams around the world.




10. Searching websites You can search a wide variety of sites by inserting > before the type of site you want to search. For example, [penguins site:>.edu] searches for penguins across all .edu sites. [crater image site:>nasa.gov] searches for crater images across nasa.gov.

Blog by techgig.com

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The Google First Page Lie and the Necessity For Creativity and Quality

Did you know the only businesses that make money on the Internet are those on the first page of Google?

Oh, you already knew that?

So you're not the least bit surprised by my statement?

What's that you say? You've been hearing for years how important it is to be on the first page of Google?

I see. So my statement just reinforces what you knew all along.

Well, that's good. That's very, very good.

Except for one thing...

It's a BIG lie!!!

The Google First Page Lie

That's right, it's a big lie!

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE TO MAKE MONEY ON THE INTERNET!!!

I repeat...

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE TO MAKE MONEY ON THE INTERNET!!!

I'll explain why in a moment. But first...a little history lesson in marketing.

Marketing lies didn't just start with search engine rankings. Long before the advent of the Internet, businesses were climbing all over themselves trying to get the best ad placement in other types of major media:

The Major Media

*Newspapers

*Magazines

*Direct Mail

*Yellow pages

*Radio

*Television

*Internet

Let's touch on each of these briefly...

Newspapers

The prime real estate in a newspaper is the general news section. Followed closely by the sports and astrology sections. But what if you can't afford prime placement? Does that mean your ad is doomed to failure?

Of course not. Ads in other parts of the newspaper can be successful as well. Heck, even the classified ads get read. The key is being creative enough to make your ad stand out, regardless of where it's located.

For example, I remember reading a very interesting newspaper article about how lint balls in clothes dryers are extremely flammable and can cause major house fires. Only after reading the entire article did I realize it was an insurance advertisement placed by a local independent insurance agent.

That advertisement, designed to look like an article, definitely got my attention. By the way, that advertisement was buried way in the back of the newspaper with a bunch of other ads, and it still managed to stand out.

Magazines

When it comes to magazine advertising, apparently size matters. According to Entrepreneur magazine, A two-page spread attracts about 25 percent more readers than a one-page ad. A full-page ad attracts one-third more readers than a half-page ad.

As far as ad placement is concerned, it really doesn't matter whether the ad is located in the front of the magazine or the back in terms of the ability to get noticed.

But what about all those other ads in the magazine? Are they doomed to failure because of their smaller size? Of course not. Just like with newspaper advertising, even the classified ads get read. Again, the key is being creative enough to make your ad stand out, regardless of where it's located.

Whenever, I think about magazine ads, I always think about Joe Karbo's classic The Lazy Man's Way to Riches. The secondary headline really struck a chord in readers: Most People Are Too Busy Earning a Living to Make Any Money.

Out of the thousands and thousands of magazine ads I've read over the years, that's the one that continues to stand out in my mind all these years later.

Direct Mail

Even with sky high postage costs, a properly executed direct mail campaign still provides a solid ROI (return on investment).

Cooperative direct mail companies such as Valpak make launching a direct mail campaign easy and affordable, for even the most budget conscious small business.

So what exactly is cooperative direct mail? Cooperative direct mail simply means you share an envelope with 35-40 other advertisers. Sharing an envelope with other advertisers reduces your costs significantly.

Obviously, it can be a challenge to get noticed in an envelope full of ads. But one resourceful direct mail advertiser found a way around that problem. This was one of the cleverest and most effective direct mail pieces I've ever seen. It was a simple, light yellow postcard with black print that read:

"Dear David Jackson:

I've sent you a very special gift. It will be arriving in a few days in a light blue Valpak envelope. When you receive it, please sort through the envelope immediately and claim your free gift. Tape this postcard to your refrigerator as a reminder."

I waited with anticipation for that blue Valpak envelope to arrive, and when it came, I tore it open, completely disregarding the dozens of other offers in the envelope and went fishing for my free gift. Talk about an advertiser jumping to the front of the line...brilliant!

By the way, in case you're wondering what my free gift was, it was two free movie passes from a local furniture store. Did the free gift work? A month after receiving those movie passes, my girlfriend and I purchased a new living room set from that very same store.

Yellow Pages

Just like in magazine advertising, size matters. and all things being equal, a bigger ad does get a greater response, as well as the best placement. That being said, all things are rarely equal in marketing. And a smaller ad that uses basic copywriting fundmentals can be just as effective as a huge ad that is placed at the front of the category. Once again, the key is being creative enough to make your ad stand out in the crowd.

One yellow page ad in particular that stands out was that of a local pizzeria. The ad featured a picture of a flying saucer with the headline: Our Pizza is Out of This World!

Radio Advertising

When it comes to advertising on the radio, prime time is known as is "drive time", which is the time when most people are in their cars driving to and from work.

Morning drive time is typically 6 am to 10 am, and is traditionally the most expensive air time because that's when more people listen.

Afternoon drive time, is 4 pm to 7 pm.

But what about all those other radio commercials that are aired at times other than drive time. Are they doomed to failure? Does anybody hear them?

The answer is an emphatic YES!

Millions of people listen to the radio at work, in the office, while exercising, in their homes, etc. And while drive time is preferable, it's certainly NOT necessary to be successful. What is necessary, however, is being creative enough to make your radio commercial stand out...regardless of when it's aired.

I heard this commercial when I was visiting relatives in Houston Texas. That commercial sticks out like a sore thumb!

Television

It goes without saying, prime time is the most coveted advertisng time for advertisers. Prime time is weeknights and Saturday from 8 pm to 11 pm. Sunday prime time is 7 pm to 11 pm. But what about all those other commercials that air at times other than prime time? Certainly, they're doomed to failure right?

Wrong! Many commercials do well in other time slots. In fact, late night television has been extremely successful for many businesses. Again, it's all about being creative enough to make your commercial stand out regardless of when it's aired.

I remember watching this tv commercial as a child. It still stands out in my mind.

So there you have it. Real life examples of companies that were creative enough to make themselves stand out - regardless of the competition - regardless of their ad postioning.

The Internet

Which brings me back to why being on the first page of Google simply doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because something exists that is more powerful than even the almighty Google. That something is called word-of-mouth advertising.

Word-of-mouth advertising is what caused visitors to flock to Alex Tew's Million Dollar Homepage and enabled him to generate over a million dollars in income for himself.

If you are creative enough to come up with an idea that offers both value and quality, it will capture the imagination of visitors, and you will be the beneficiary of the type of game-changing word-of-mouth advertising that money just can't buy.

Focus your time and energy on coming up with creative ways for getting your website found on the Internet. For example, chances are you didn't use Google to find this website - although it is highly ranked. You either visit this site regularly, heard about it through word-of-mouth, or you're a newsletter subscriber.

So, what does that prove?

It proves there are other ways of getting found on the Internet other than Google. There are other ways to stand out. Videos, e-books, newsletters, press releases social media, podcasts, seminars or a variety of other methods.

The point is, there are any number of ways you can get your website found on the Internet without being on the first page of Google. You are limited only by your own imagination and creativity.

If you're not the creative type, or need some help with coming up with creative ideas to promote your business, I highly recommend Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing website.

In closing, while being creative may attract visitors to your website initially, at the end of the day, it's quality content that will keep them coming back!

by David Jackson

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Website Architecture Analysis

Unless a web page is indexed, it cannot generate any traffic to the website from search engines. If you could have more than one listing in the phone book for all of the products and services you offer, you would. Indexing is very similar. It's the way that search engines include pages in their database and is the starting point for evaluating overall search marketing performance.

Depending on how your site is built and the value it provides to an audience, the search engines might index one of your pages, or they might index thousands of them. Search engines crawl the World Wide Web to include web pages they find relevant within their search engine index.

Today, it is estimated that only 20% of all material published online is being indexed by search engines. If your website has two-thousand pages, but only ten of them are indexed, only .5% of your website is available to people searching. The more pages you have indexed, the more keywords you can compete for. If 100% of your website is indexed, these pages represent hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to be found. Pages can't rank in search results if they aren't indexed!

Some of the items that can impact your website's ability to get fully indexed are:

• Global site navigation
• Footer links
• Site maps
• Form based navigation
• Multiple query parameters within URLs
• Spider traps
• Indexing of identical content
• Session ID's
• Javascript links
• URL length
• Directory structure
• Content publishing
• Use of cookies
• Search engine exclusion protocols
• Robots.txt
• Meta-robots tag
• Javascript content
• Spam characteristics
• Invisible text
• Text embedded in "hidden" code
• Text in comment tags
• Internal link flexing
• Domain spam
• Cloaking strategies
• Use of redirects

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Page Speed Service: Web performance, delivered.

By Ram Ramani, Engineering Manager

Update 7/29/11: We were notified of a bug in the measurement tool that sometimes causes incorrect measurements. If your results indicated a slowdown on your pages, please run the tests again, and make sure you specify a fully qualified domain such as www.example.com. We apologize for any inconvenience and confusion this may have caused.

Details:

Measurement tests run for bare domains (such as example.com, without the prefix www) previously indicated that pages were loading more slowly, rather than speeding up, when using Page Speed Service. The test results page now prominently notifies you of this when you visit this page, if this error applies to you. Please check your old measurement results page if this bug applies to you. Running the tests again with the fully qualified domain such as www.example.com usually fixes the issue and gives you the correct measurement.

Two years ago we released the Page Speed browser extension and earlier this year the Page Speed Online API to provide developers with specific suggestions to make their web pages faster. Last year we released mod_pagespeed, an Apache module, to automatically rewrite web pages. To further simplify the life of webmasters and to avoid the hassles of installation, today we are releasing the latest addition to the Page Speed family: Page Speed Service.

Page Speed Service is an online service that automatically speeds up loading of your web pages. To use the service, you need to sign up and point your site’s DNS entry to Google. Page Speed Service fetches content from your servers, rewrites your pages by applying web performance best practices, and serves them to end users via Google's servers across the globe. Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times. Now you don’t have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, gzipping resources or other web performance best practices.

In our testing we have seen speed improvements of 25% to 60% on several sites. But we know you care most about the numbers for your site, so check out how much Page Speed Service can speed up your site. If you’re encouraged by the results, please sign up. If not, be sure to check back later. We are diligently working on adding more improvements to the service.

At this time, Page Speed Service is being offered to a limited set of webmasters free of charge. Pricing will be competitive and details will be made available later. You can request access to the service by filling out this web form.

Ram Ramani is an Engineering Manager on the Make the Web Faster Team in Bangalore, India. He is a believer in "Faster is better".

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

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Is your website fast enough?

Recently Google added one more product to its portfolio- Page Speed Service. As has been mentioned time and again, Google PageRank accords higher importance to web pages which have a faster download time. Thus Search Engine Optimization and faster download time go hand in hand.

To help web masters achieve this feat Google has come out with Page Speed Service. Currently offered for free to a limited set of webmasters, Google is planning to come out with a paid version of the same soon.

It has kept the whole process very simple and easy. When one signs up and points the site’s DNS entry to Google, it will enable Google to fetch content from the server on which the site is hosted and rewrite those pages according to web performance best practices. It then serves these pages from Google’s own servers.

The visitor does not see any changes except that the download time is reduced 25% to 60% (atleast that’s what Google claims).

From a webmaster point of view, he no longer has to bother about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching and all the accompanying paraphernalia.

Critiques however believe that sharing data, specially credit card numbers and personal information of a customer, with Google might not be such a great idea. Also with upcoming technologies like Rails 3.1 and the available option of hosting a site on CDN, Page Speed Service becomes somewhat redundant.

Posted by Shilpi

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5 Little Known Ways To Generate Free Traffic

Most people have the notion that generating traffic is a one-off event, and it involves spending huge sums of money on advertising.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

First of all, it's possible to open up streams of autopilot traffic geometrically, surely and steadily over time.

Secondly, it costs next to nothing to do it, if you know how.

Here are 5 instantly implementable methods to open up new traffic streams without needing to spend a dime.

Free Traffic Method #1: Contribute Content

Writing an ebook is a time consuming and arduous task. In comparison, writing a chapter of rock solid content is much easier and more achievable.

I've personally been invited to contribute content to many people's info-products, usually in the form of 'chapters', and this has resulted in a lots of quality traffic that is not only free, but presold.

While I understand that a person who is little known might not receive invitations to contribute, one can always solicit permission for your content to be included by publishers.

It's all a phone call and email away, and if your content is good and your approach is right, a rejection is unlikely, and even if it happens, it's not gonna kill you, so just tell yourself 'next' and move on.

Free Traffic Method #2: Give away Free viral Reports

Put your best content into reports and give it away.

Articles are great, but when you package them as Portable Document Files, there is a greater "perceived value".

Give away free reports. Allow people to give away your free report to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the internet.

Obviously, your reports will have to be 'viral' in order for that to happen.

The best way to make your reports viral, is to include a monetary incentive.

The links within the reports can be made brandable, and it'll be to your advantage to find some sort of multi-tier affiliate program that will increase your earnings exponentially, because you make money when the person giving away your reports makes money.

It's a win win situation, and also allows you to use these magic words "make money by giving this report away".

Free Traffic Method #3: Help Other Publishers

It may surprise you, but your own website visitors may be info publishers as well.

Help them help you by using these magic words, "Use Our Free Content On Your Site Or In Your E-zine" Allow your visitors to use your articles on their own web site or in their e-zine. Just ask them to include your resource box. This will spread your advertising like wildfire all over the internet.

Free Traffic Method #4: Offer Testimonials

If you're reading this article, chances are you're an info-junkie. If you've bought lots of info products, why not offer an unsolicited testimonial to the info-product creator?

Simply include your URL under your name when giving the testimonial, and if it's used, you'll have additional exposure, and traffic.

Obviously, you'd only give a testimonial to a product that you think has value and is good, and not endorse anything or everything under the sun.

Testimonials can bring you traffic and top of the mind awareness, so don't underestimate the use of something as simple as this.

Free Traffic Method #5: Syndicate Your Content

A word of caution: don't use JavaScript. Why not? Because search engines don't 'see' JavaScript, so JavaScript feeds are useless for SEO. To make newsfeeds visible to search engines, their text has to be embedded into your page.

FACT: If you view the source of your page and you don't see the actual text of the newsfeed, then search engines aren't going to see it either.

Intead, do try using Real Simple syndication, or RSS. It's the buzzword on the Internet. RSS is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing things like news headlines and other web page content.

You have a variety of opportunities for increasing traffic to your website. Publishing your own feed is a great way to cut through all the noise and clutter and get your message directly to your target market. On the other end of the spectrum, importing feeds from other sites or even other parts of your own site and displaying them on your webpages can increase your search engine rankings by automatically keeping your website full of fresh, relevant information

If you're a little lazy and not too motivated, you'll be glad to know that regardless of what topic or subject matter you've built your website around, there's valuable content out there... articles and information written by an "expert" in that particular field.

Because a large portion of it is available through the magic of RSS feed capability - YOU don't have to create the content yourself! Yes, you can profit from other people's content.

There you have it, 5 easy ways to start getting free traffic fast.

From: Copyright 2004 Jo Han Mok

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Specially Tips For Adsense Beginner

[1] Find long tail keywords with a CPC of atleast $2.00 and make sure these long tail keywords have the higher competition and searched for keywords within them. The Secret (Shhhh): Targeting the long tails will also target the higher level ones too. By the way, a long tail keyword is NOT how many words it has in the phrase. Long tails deal directly with how many searches it gets and these get less searches than higher level keywords and therefore less competition. And yes, a lot of these will only get 1-2 searches per day...USE THESE...but I guarantee most of you will not, because you dont know how to think outside of the box. That will be at your expense.

[2] Place your ads near the top of your pages, and get them off of the bottom spots. This will greatly increase Adsense CTR.

[3] Use double-block ads. (2 ad blocks right next to each other on a page)

[4] Maximize your use of the 336x280 ad block as this is one of the most popular and revenue generating ad blocks.

[5] Use a theme which makes it easy to incorporate your ads into the aesthetics of your website.

[6] If you have a search field on your site, replace this with an Adsense search bar. These are clicked less often but they do get used so take advantage everywhere you possibly can. Look up at this forum's search box in the top right corner. This is an Adsense search block used correctly.

[7] SEO your Adsense pages and site structure to bring even more targeted traffic in front of your ads. Google is very good at optimizing their ads for your pages when the content makes sense.

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4 SEO Tips to Make Your Website Rank High in Search Engines

Are you building a website to market your products and services? If yes, then your main objective will be to do SEO. It will help you bring traffic to your website if it ranks higher in major search engines such as, Yahoo and Google. You should employ search engine optimization techniques to make your website rank high in major search engines. Check out 4 search engine optimization tips which you can follow to make your website rank high in major search engines.

1.Brand your website

One of the best ways to improve search engine optimization efforts is to brand your website by displaying same logo in each and every webpage. It will give a distinct identity to all the webpages in your website.

2.Upload informative content

People visit your website to get information. So, upload quality and informative content. Also try to upload new content as spiders get attracted to it thus making your website rank higher in the search engines. Do you know that once your website is indexed by a search engine, it will revisit only when something new is uploaded? So, try to modify existing ones and upload fresh content from time to time.

3.Use right keywords

Choosing right keywords in one of the major aspects of good search engine optimization. Moreover, the keywords should be rightly used and distributed in the webpages. However, keep in mind to not exceed keyword density. It should be within 4-6%.

4.Create backlinks to your website

Creating backlinks to your website will help achieve better results in search engine optimization. When other websites give a link to your website, the search engines give value to your website. The more the number of links to your website, the higher is the value of your website. In turn, it helps achieve better rankings in major search engines.

Apart from following the strategies mentioned above, creating a sitemap will also result into better search engine optimization. A sitemap helps a search engine to read and index your webpages. In turn, it will help bring more traffic to your website.

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7 Blog SEO Tips To Get Your Posts To Rank

1. Research a keyword before you write the post! Use the Google External Keyword Tool and type in words until you find a relevant keyword with low competition and a decent amount of searches.

Type a potential keyword into Google and see what other sites are ranking. If other blogs or articles from article directories show up, you have a shot of ranking. But, if the top spots are Wikipedia or Amazon and sites like that, it’s probably best to move on to another keyword.

2. Take that keyword and place it in the title, tags, description, and several times throughout your post. Your keyword density should be 1-2.5%.

3. Use H1, H2, and H3 tags with the keyword (in WordPress, it’s very easy to see what these mean and how to use them).

4. Use your keyword in the first and last sentence of the post.

5. Use the keyword as the name of the picture in your post.

6. Make sure the keyword is in the permalink.

7. Write articles and submit them to article directories with a backlink to the post.

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Social PR Fashion Statements: What’s In, Out and Trending

Social PR fashion trends for fall seem to be brightening up from a sea of Facebook blue and white to a burst of rainbow as Google+ enters the social network scene with a vengeance. Will Google+ take center stage as the born again social media fashion darling?

If you think blue hues are dull; we now have another social PR color trend for you to choose – adding bright details to your social media plugins and sharing is definitely IN. But what else is on the Social PR Fashion lists of Ins, Outs and Trending?

What’s IN

* Niche Twitter Chats: Monday night duos #socialchat and #journchat give Social PR pros a chance to tweet and mingle with journalists, PR, SEO and social media experts in one fluid hour. Sarah Evans #journchat kicks off Mondays at 8 p.m. ET and #socialchat is hosted by @aknecht and @socialmicheller on Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.

* Scores of Influence: Sizing up clout (and passing it out) can now be added to your Twitter stream. Both Klout and Peerindex can give unique insight into a brand’s influence, specialty, and personality. Are you a thought leader or a broadcaster? Although beware: Klout is not very forgiving, going on a one week vacation can bring down a score. So much for social media time “off the grid.”

* Facebook Sponsored Stories: A pay to play Social PR lift, Facebook sponsored stories allows you to go beyond the Facebook newsfeeds. The page post sponsored story allows you to get in front of fans with current wall posts and the post ‘like’ storylets you reach the friends of your fans.

* Local: Optimize for the locals, they are your bread and butter for online rank and reach. Pay attention to reviews and what locals are saying about your brand. You don’t want to end up on the worst dressed, worst service, worst list.

What’s OUT

We’ve all made the social media fashion faux pas, so let’s just agree nobody is perfect. In case you need some social media “don’ts,” here’s the memo:

* Social Media “Experts” and “Gurus”: Will the real social media expert please stand up? OK everyone sit down. “Getting caught up in who is a social media expert versus who isn't can also be unproductive,” says #Journchat Founder Sarah Evans. “Focus on getting great work done.”

* Brochure-ware websites: Think of your website as a publication versus a one-shot a year online marketing tool. Keep it fresh with frequent, newsworthy, and well-balanced content that adds credibility, leadership, and share-ability.

* Press releases announcing your brand's new: Website, blog, social network presence. I agree with @prsarahevans, It just makes you seem outdated.

* Fighting over who owns social media: SEO, marketing, advertising, customer service, PR – we are one. Share the effort and treat it as an integrated approach...think hub and spoke.

What’s Trending?

* PRGenie: More than a message in a bottle, PRGenie brings together a newswire, media relations, social networks, and SEO all in one shot.

* Triberr: Have blog, will follow. Jason Yormark turned me onto to Triberr at SES Toronto when we shared the Social Media on a Budget panel. This is a way to share in thought leadership. Find a category, pick a tribe, ask for an invite and dig into the circle of love. Your clout and Klout will get a boost.

* G+ Hangouts: Bad timing for Twitter, good timing for Google+ with the recent Twitter outages right in the middle of #journchat and #socialchat sessions this week, making it an easy segue to explore Google+ hangouts as a forum. As Google+ stampedes into the “It” crowd, watch for chats to possibly become known as hangouts.

The Social PR Fashion Forecast

So what is the little black dress (or suit) of social media this season? The can’t go wrong, must have? Seems to be the daily fashion report comes via Facebook, Twitter, and G+.

The social PR fashion forecast: Add bright accessories to your look, (think Google+). Be smart and keep the balance. Too many social media colors in one look is proactive, playful, and interesting, but can become brand delusional.

Lisa Buyer

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How to Write an Effective Blog and Website Review

There are many writers in the market but it is really tough to get quality writers now a days. Here are very useful tips for writers who want to write effective website review or blog review.

(1) Start with initial impression of blog or website. This part will include how website or blog looks at first sight. It is very important for any website that at a glance user should get general idea about website.

(2) Design, Layout and Navigation: Then look at design, layout and navigation of website or blog. All these three features play vital role in making website or blog attractive. 

(3) Content and Usability: Here examine website for grammar, language and usability of content. Website with poor grammar and tough language can never attract visitors. Also it should not content too complex technical words for any newbie.

(4) Message to Convey: Any website or blog is created with some purpose or some message to convey. It is very important that that purpose should be fulfill with all Web Pages and blog posts.

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The Agency's Guide to Building Links and Expertise with Guest Placement Campaigns

Guest placement campaigns for link and expertise building require perseverance, remarkable content, and a ready supply of potential publishers. Not every client or market is suited for such a campaign.

This article will help agencies gauge the viability of a high/mid quality level guest placement campaign, as well as the scale of campaign your target market can reasonably allow.

1. Know Your Audience's Name

It's rare to talk with an SEO link builder who's targeting a specific audience - most have specific keywords in mind that they want to rank for. To gauge the viability of a guest placement campaign you must first translate these keywords into a target audience. Let's say your client wants to rank for [web hosting] and they specialize in hosting for small online business owners.

2. Brainstorm More Target Audiences

Starting from their target of "small online business owners" you can parse out some potential audiences. This is done primarily by "thinking like a directory" and determining what categories a resource for "small online business owners" could fit into. It's well worth visiting a directory to help the brainstorming process.

For example:

• Small Business
• Online Business
• Ecommerce
• Web Design

Also, take a pass at your audience keywords with this suggestion scraper tool. Once you have your audience keywords figured out it's time to run a quick viability check.

3) Quick Viability Check - ["Target Audience" + intitle:"write for us"]

Take your target audiences and combine them with [intitle:"write for us"]. Pages that have "write for us" in the title tag indicate a demand for content. Assuming you have effectively named your target audience, the quantity of results generated with this query along with the number of viable prospects in the top 10-20 will give you a sense of whether a guest placement campaign is viable and at what scale.

If you see 2-300 results for each query, with 3-5 definite opportunities in the top 10, you can reasonably estimate 10 guest post placements per query run (based on 20 percent conversion). This quick test will let you know whether you need to really conduct a full inventory, or if you need to go back and think a bit further about your target audience.

You may find that there isn't significant volume and quality of opportunities for SERP impact at all, or recognize that you need to supplement with other higher volume opportunity types.

4. Identify the Volume of Placement Opportunities

If you're seeing strong signs of content demand you can start to expand your querying into a full blown inventory – or at least set up the queries for someone else to do the prospecting for you.

Here is an excellent rundown of queries for thoroughly prospecting for guest publication opportunities. Remember to keep your eyes peeled for the footprints of prolific guest posters in your vertical – they will lead you to other opportunities. If you find guest posters with footprints across hundreds of sites then set those aside for high-volume, low value placement opportunities. They're out there, and you can definitely get to larger scale with them.

By measuring the volume of opportunity you will know how many writers you'll need for cover all the available opportunities.

5. Gauge the Quality of Placement Opportunities

Quantity isn't all you need to look at, especially if you have your eyes on branding and reach. Here are some thoughts on gauging the value of a guest posting opportunity:

• Copy and paste the title of a 2-week-old article and search for it in quotes. Where does it appear? Are there scrapers, is the title in Twitter, does the site syndicate their RSS feed, etc. This will give you a bit of insight into how wide the reach is for a given publication.
• Check how many tweets, shares, and +1’s articles get on a site – this will show you the social reach that the publication has developed.
• Check the quality and quantity of comments to get a sense of the community surrounding the site.
• Does the publisher aggressively link from within the article to their own pages? Check for it – it's fairly common and could affect the SERP impact of your efforts.
• Scan their backlinks – are there any recognizable sites linking in? This will give you a sense of who's reading and linking to the publisher.
• Are guest posters using exact match anchors or brand names? This can be an indicator of site policies.
• Do they require/request an ongoing content commitment? This can indicate a strong editorial hand, which usually means a higher quality publication.

In investigating these items you will get a sense of the characteristics your content will need to have to make it "placeable."

6. Quantify the Level of Expertise in Existing Guest-Published Content

Now that you have your targets it's time to figure out what level of subject matter expertise you'll need to meet your audience's information needs. Find out how readily available subject matter expertise is - are there forums, books, PDFs, etc., that you can use for research? Often when there's strong content demand, as exhibited by the presence of "write for us" pages, there's a ready availability of pre-packaged expertise you can research and cite. If you're planning to "go big" it's also worth investigating how much or how little tip-based content exists. Note - you can use your audience keywords in your tip research as well.

7. Gently Cross-Examine the Client Before Signing That Contract

Guest placements certainly build links, and that's often what gets SEOs interested in the first place. However, if you're publishing on the right sites with the right content you can begin establishing expertise within a given category. To really deliver on this expertise building you’ll have to get access to the organization's subject matter experts and get buy-in and sign-off. Here are some questions to ask before you get that contract signed.

• Is perceived brand expertise really a factor in the purchase decision?
• How involved can the client be in content ideation?
• Are there experts available for interviews?
• Does the client have published expertise (tools, PDFs, presentations, videos) that's suitable for promoting within guest placements?
• Is there unique market data available (that can be published)?
• Who has to approve content?
• How social media active is the client do they intend to grow this?
• Can you get an @client.com email address (in under 3 months)?
• Whose name will be on the placements?
• Are there any do-not-contact publishers?

If it seems that the client is unable or unwilling to demonstrate expertise and build credibility, then guest placements (especially at high/mid quality publishers) are probably not a great direction and may not be suitable for inclusion in the overall link building campaign design. If they can see the value – the publicity, branding and reach value – of guest placements and are eager to share their expertise with the market then you should see fantastic results.

Garrett French

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SEO Pyramid

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Understanding the 98 Google Local Ranking Factors

David Mihm has released his annual Local Search Ranking Factors list, which compiles feedback from 33 local optimization experts. The 98 resulting local ranking factors can, however, be overwhelming. This article walks you through the key takeaways

The LSRF: History & Methodology

David Mihm, a highly respected local SEO expert, first released a comprehensive list of local search ranking factors in 2008. Inspired by SEOMoz's search engine ranking factor list, and prompted by changes to Google's approach to local in January 2008, Mihm concluded "it was time to undertake a similar enterprise specific to Local Search." At that time he received survey feedback from 20 industry experts.

Around the middle of the year each year since, Mihm has released an updated version of the LSRF. Each version has included new ranking factors, taken into account major changes in Google's local search ranking, and added new industry experts to the list of those surveyed. Mihm also collects open-ended written feedback from the experts.

In previous years, the surveyed industry experts provided a number between -5 and +5 for each factor. However, "this year featured a drag-and-drop numerical ranking system in an effort to make the survey results both more precise and easier for the participants to complete." Participants were also asked to give separate feedback response for pure local listings (such as those found in the three-box or five-box at the top of search) and "blended listings" (which integrate Google Places directly into the SERP).

In total, 98 factors were examined, with 79 being positive and 19 being negative. We won't bother replicating all 98 local ranking factors here, but you can check them out on Mihm's site.

The Basics: Immediately Actionable Items

There are two different ways to look at the top local ranking factors: what matters and what you should work on. Several of the key factors to ranking well are out of the typical company's grasp, so a list of top 10 recommended action-ready factors were compiled in addition to an evaluation of the ranking factor list itself. Those actionable factors are:

1. Your physical address matching/listing the city where you're located.
2. Manually verifying your ownership of the company's Google Places page.
3. Having proper category associations for your page and citations.
4. Having a large number of "traditional structured citations" for your business (on sites like Internet yellow pages and local place aggregators).
5. Having your address listed on your company website, and make sure that address is crawlable.
6. Having a well-ranked (PR) company website.
7. Having high-quality inbound links to your company website.
8. Having your phone number listed on your company website, and making sure that phone number is crawlable.
9. Having an accurate local area code listed on your Google Places page.
10. Having your city and state listed in the page title for your Google Places landing page.

The items listed above can be treated as a checklist for establishing bare minimums for local search optimization.

Key Takeaways

The top factors overall may not be items you can immediately tackle, but it’s important to have a good sense of a long-term game plan. Here are some key items to take note of (including a couple minor repeats from the actionable list above), including both positive and negative factors.

Helpful Things

• Be thorough, accurate, and complete on your local listings. Include your full address (including ZIP code), phone number, relevant business categories, and relevant service / product keywords in your Places page description.
• Include your service or product name in your business name listing. If at all possible, include your relevant keywords in your business listing title (e.g., "Bob Smith's Tire Service Center" will do much better than "Bob Smith's Supermart" when it comes to searches for tire-related companies).
• Build a presence on local listing sites. Make sure you're present on Google Places, manually verify your page, and build citations on other local sites. It's also very useful to be cited on blogs, articles, and other web properties.
• Build a website. Include your phone number and address on a crawlable website that is properly optimized.
• Get reviews. Note that I didn't say "good reviews." Items 6, 14, 15, and 16 from the list of 79 positive ranking factors are all about reviews - but none of them look at whether the review is good. A high volume of reviews (and especially reviews native to Google Places) help a lot more than a lower volume of top-notch reviews. Whenever you can influence review content, try to have those reviews include category and location keywords.

Harmful Factors

• Being inconsistent. It hurts to have phone number or address mismatches across your citations or when comparing your Places page to your website.
• Being invisible. Not listing your address or phone number on your Places page, or not having a crawlable address or phone number on your company website, hurts.
• Duplicate or inaccurate content. Listing the same phone number for multiple Google Places pages, having multiple listings with very similar titles, using inaccurate categories, or stuffing keywords into your business title will harm you.
• Using an 800 number. The experts agree that, while it's less harmful than it has been in the past, listing an 800 number on your Places page hurts your local ranking.
• Bad ratings. While volume is the key to ranking when it comes to reviews, having a low average rating (especially on native Google Places reviews) or negative statements in the reviews will harm your rank.

A Few Final Thoughts

I haven't personally seen this study in years past, which is honestly a shame: it's one of the most comprehensive sets of data on local information, and especially current trends, that you can get. The sheer complexity of the study, as well as some divergent opinions, also makes it clear that local optimization is gaining the sort of industry position that SEO has long had.

The two (SEO and LSO) are also very tied together, with the blended search results overtaking many standard SERP listings and highly optimized company sites having an evident impact on local ranking; it's a synergy, and one that shouldn't be ignored by any local business.

I was hoping to discuss the overall trends with David Mihm himself, but when approached, he declined to comment (at least as of yet). That leaves the rest of us to banter and speculate as we see fit. So, what are your thoughts on local search in the 2010s?

Rob D. Young, July 18, 2011

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SEO Process Tips to Rank in 2011

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most trending word in online marketing. Google always keeps changing their algorithms and SEO Professionals will break their heads to run with the latest algorithms. Good SEO Professionals always suggest using White hat methods as they will help to stay longer in search engine results. Here are few white hat SEO tips to follow according to the latest search engine algorithms in 2011.

1. Research and pick the right keywords which drive quality traffic, leads and conversions
2. Analyze competitors who are running with success in similar business and checkout the methods they are following and the keywords they are optimizing
3. Pick the right Domain extension based geo – targeted business like ‘.in’ for India, ‘.com’ for USA, ‘.co.uk’ for UK etc.
4. Plan a user& search engine friendly design & navigation with good link architecture
5. Hire a professional content writer to write good quality content to catch user as well as search engine attention
6. Plan different sub sections with relevant content for most targeted keywords
7. Make sure that site has no broken links, timed out urls, high loading time etc. Tools like Xenu and extensions like Pagespeed, Yslow will help us to develop technically clean site.
8. Use robots.txt file to block all unnecessary pages which are indexing by the search engines.
9. Create Xml & HTML sitemap for users and search engines
10. Submit Xml sitemap to search engines webmaster tools account and fix the errors if any
11. Build only quality back links using White hat link building methods.
12. Analyze traffic and plan or change the strategies to drive quality traffic which will convert to sales

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Instant SEO Analysis Tips

Usually Managers assign a task to check SEO status of a site and they will come back in 10 to 15 mints for the response. Is it possible to check SEO status of a site in 15 mints? I hope, Most of the SEO's will say No. However i would say YES.

SEO's might face the same problem while attending an interview, interviewers might ask you to analyze a site for 5 mints and requests to explain positive and negative factors of the site. There is a possibility to check all these factors with the help of few free tools.Following are the list of respective factors which needs to be analyzed for a quick review:

Basic SEO Factors for Instant Analysis:

• Domain Extension
• Page Loading Time
• Page Rank
• Alexa Rank
• Google, Bing & Yahoo Indexed Pages and Back Links
• Domain Age

• Canonical Redirection
• Title & Meta Tags
• Header Tags
• Image Tags

• Xml sitemap
• Html sitemap
• Robots.txt

• Google analytics account
• Google webmaster tools account

Each above factor will be explained in-detail in upcoming posts.

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When It’s Time to Revisit Your Keyword Research

The Internet is not a static thing. With billions of pages already published and more being created every day, there is more available content that could possibly be consumed in a lifetime (or even several lifetimes). User behavior changes over time as well; mobile search has exploded, social networking has forever altered the way people connect online, and search is getting more and more personalized. A big part of SEO is being able to adapt to these changes and adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.

That is why you should take the time to reevaluate your keywords.

When was the last time your optimized your site? Unless you only recently began your SEO strategy, it was probably a while ago. That means you haven’t conducted any keyword research in a long while as well. How do you know those keywords are still relevant? Hopefully you’ve been keeping an eye on your site analytics, which can tell you what keywords visitors are using to find your site. Does your site target keywords that aren’t producing any traffic? Are you missing any new keywords that seem to pull in visitors? If you find yourself asking these questions, it’s time to do another round of keyword research.

Just because you have to start the keyword research process again doesn’t always mean that you failed the first time. You may have been spot-on with your first series of keywords. However, as user behavior changes, so do their search phrases. What worked two years ago might not be the best available keyword today.

How has your industry changed since the last time you conducted keyword research? What new phrases have been incorporated into the industry jargon? For instance, before HubSpot came along, there was no such thing as “inbound marketing.” Now inbound marketing is a well-known term in the world of online marketing. Sometimes industry specific keywords don’t have a lot of search volume, but it is important they be incorporated onto your site.

You can also look internally to see what kind of new keywords you might need to incorporate. Have you rebranded your company? Launched new pages of content or released new products? Each of these things requires its own set of keywords. Remember, keywords have to be page specific. If the central theme of webpage changed, you need to target new keywords that match it.

It’s important that you give your keywords some time (a few months) before you decide if they do or don’t work. It takes time to rank well for a new keyword, so don’t expect to see immediate success. You could accidentally remove a keyword that was working for you.

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

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Using StumbleUpon To Drive Traffic to Your Website

For the time being, StumbleUpon is still doing quite well at driving traffic to sites. We can attest to that first-hand. Here are a few tips that may help your content do better:

1. Create content that people are likely to find entertaining, interesting, important, or just plain cool.

2. Build a network of StumbleUpon friends.

3. Don’t just stumble your own stuff (though I personally don’t think it hurts to do it sometimes). I wouldn’t do everything you create though.

4. Find things that haven’t been submitted to StumbleUpon yet, but you think others will find interesting, entertaining, important or cool, and submit them.

5. “Like” things that have already been submitted that you find interesting, entertaining, important or cool.

6. Use as many relevant topic categories as makes sense when submitting something. This should help target it to the right crowds.

7. Reviews are optional, but it can’t hurt to write them.

8. Making content visually appealing with use of pictures or videos can lead to more stumbles.

9 . Use the Stumble button on your content

10. Promote your own StumbleUpon presence.

11. Use StumbleUpon’s paid options.

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Basic key terms and concepts to understand SEO

B2B  Stands for Business to Business. When businesses sell products/services to other businesses and not to consumers.

B2C  Stands for Business to consumers. When businesses sell products/services to consumers.

Call to action  A CTA is a phrase written to motivate the reader to take action. (sign up for our newsletter, book car hire today etc.).

CAN-SPAM  The U.S. law that regulates commercial email. It stands for "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003."

CRM  Customer Relationship Management.

Database  In email marketing, the database is the list of prospects to whom emails are sent. It also contains additional information pertinent to the prospects.

DNS (Domain Name System)  DNS converts a domain name into an IP address.

DomainKeys  An email authentication system designed to verify the DNS domain of an email sender and the message integrity.

Double opt-in  The act of getting subscribers to confirm their initial subscription via a follow up email asking them to validate their address and hence opt-in again.

Hard bounce  The failed delivery of email communication due to an undeviating reason like a non-
existent address.

House list  An email database that a company generates itself without purchasing or renting names. HTML  HyperText Markup Language. HTML emails usually contain graphics and can be interactive.

IP Address  The Internet Protocol (IP) address is a exclusive number, which is used to represent every single computer in a network.

ISP  Internet Service Provider - this is the company that is providing you with access to the Internet e.g. MWEB, AOL, Yahoo! etc).

Open rate  The percent of emails determined as opened out of the total number of emails sent. Opt-in  Give permission for emails to be sent to you.

Opt-out  Also known as unsubscribe - The act of removing oneself from a list or lists so that specified information is no longer received via email.

Sender ID  A method used by major ISPs to confirm that emails do originate from the domain from which it claims to have been sent.

SMTP  Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a protocol for sending messages from one server to another.

Soft bounce  The failed delivery of an email due to a deviating reason like an overloaded mail box or a server failure.

Spam  Email sent to someone who has not requested to receive it - EVIL!

SPF  Sender policy framework is an extension of SMTP that stops email spammers from forging the "From" fields in an email.

Text  Text emails or plain text emails do not contain graphics or any kind of markup.
Unique forwarders  This refers to the number of individuals who forwarded a specific email on.

White list  A list of accepted email addresses that an ISP, a subscriber or other email service provider allows to deliver messages regardless of spam filter settings.

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