There’s a new social media darling in town. And – like Facebook and Twitter – it’s bringing in tons of buzz and millions of new users. (Around 11.7 million users so far, in fact.) Pinterest is what it’s called, and, as the name implies, it’s a pinboard-style social photo sharing website, which, since its launch in March 2010, has taken the Web by storm. We wouldn’t be surprised if you decided to integrate Pinterest as part of your search engine optimization and social media marketing efforts. After all, where the people go to is where the business is. We do hope you do it right, though! That’s why we came up with a list of best practices and fantastic tips for using Pinterest to improve your SEO performance. Enjoy! Using Pinterest for SEO Post fresh, repin-worthy stuff. It doesn’t matter if it’s on Pinterest, Facebook, or Twitter: people will only share your stuff if they think it’s cool and fresh – Read the full article
Google may be a multi-billion dollar company, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have fun. Since the company was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1997, they’ve risen to dominate the world of Internet search and kept huge smiles on their faces throughout the process. The Early Days Let’s start with some funny facts about Google’s origins, which helped them steal a march on their competition, albeit unintentionally. One of the things we all love about Google is the clean interface we’re greeted with when we go to the homepage. Many people think that this was a conscious decision they made to maximize usability, but it was actually came about because the co-founders didn’t know any HTML. And you could even say that the Google Doodle Phenomenon had accidental origins. It was essentially a way forBernand Page to tell visitors they were out of the office at the Burning Man Festival. Changing the logo temporarily let them know – Read the full article
Have you ever asked yourself what happens when you write a query in the search engine of Google? “Uncle Google”, as you see it now, is far more different from the one that is born in 1998. The search process is constantly being upgraded, throughout the tube for the past 14 years there are more than 7000 major algorithm changes. Do you remember the first time when you were typing something in Google and he gave you suggestions for your query? Don’t you think it is even cooler that now he gives you not only suggestions for the landing page but also the option to preview it without actually visiting it? At first sight these commands seem simple to you but actually they are parts from the huge and complicated maze of tubes behind the curtains. With those and many other interesting and important changes in Google’s algorithm you can get familiar in the following infographic. (Just click this link – Read the full article
When we look back at the present year events that affected the SEO world, we would realize that it has been more remarkable than we would have thought it would be. This year has actually marked a decisive point in the efforts made by Google to improve the quality of search engine results that are served to the Internet users. The focus with which Google went about its task of cleaning some of the damaging and poor quality sites from the search engine indexes is pretty well-known. Unlike the gentle avatar that a Panda is considered to be, Google’s ‘Panda’ update literally sniffed out thousands of sites in a matter of couple of weeks from the web’s most powerful search engine. While many analysts saw a sort of devastation in the making for some time now, the intensity of the impact left everyone guessing about the company’s motives. All sites that were built on duplicate or re-written content were penalized. – Read the full article
For those of you who are Google addicts like myself, you should find this piece choc-a-bloc full of Chrome apps for you to gorge yourself on. Whether it’s gaming you are looking for or an app to help your business run more smoothly, you should find something here to satisfy your taste buds. The Google Chrome Store makes me feel like a kid in a sweet shop at the best of times, and if you haven’t checked it out already you will find it hard not to after reading below. Bear in mind that you need to be using the Google Chrome browser (to enjoy these apps), so download it now and start browsing in the shop and on the Internet. Google Chrome apps for small business One of the best apps I have found on the Google Chrome Web store is the ZOHO Invoice app, which I now use religiously to process all my invoices and keep track of – Read the full article
It’s not uncommon for businesses today to use social networks – namely, Twitter and Facebook – as a platform for engaging with customers and managing customer relationships. This development has given rise to an increasing number of social media solutions and dashboards, each promising to streamline all tasks and bring a new level of ease in customer engagement. Let’s take a look at the best of these solutions and their features. MediaFunnel MediaFunnel is a social media suite for businesses and enterprises, with a host of features designed to make Twitter and Facebook accounts easier to manage. One of these distinguishing features is Multiple User Roles, or the ability to assign Administrator, Publisher, and Contributor roles and grant various levels of permission to review or publish tweets and Facebook posts (for greater editorial control and efficiency). Apart from monitoring Twitter and Facebook for mentions and tracking the performance of links via Bit.ly and BudURL, MediaFunnel also enables you to – Read the full article
There are ways to monitor changes and updates to your favorite websites, blogs, social networks, classifieds, and local business listings (including Google Places pages) – without having to watch the Web 24/7 or pressing the Refresh button every minute. And while RSS is today’s most popular way of syndicating content automatically, not all websites have it. (And not all users prefer it.) That’s where this list comes in: to be able keep up with what’s happening (in real-time) on any place across the entire Web; to monitor what customers and competitors alike are doing and saying; and to listen and respond to reviews and feedback as they are generated. Here are some of today’s best tools for monitoring changes to any website. Page2RSS Page2RSS is a free service that lets you create feeds for web pages you wish to follow or monitor – pages, specifically, that are static or don’t offer any RSS/Atom feeds. Page2RSS also serves as a way – Read the full article
Google’s quest for perfection in search results has led the tech giant back to the drawing board to once again tinker with its AdWords algorithm. The goal remains the same: to deliver users to the most relevant content available that fits their chosen search words while also attracting advertisers by delivering superior return on investment for online advertising. Google Adwords auctions control the “promoted search results” seen at the top and to the right of the organic search results; however, Google and businesses lose customers when those results are of poor quality, because people have no use for spam and will use other search engines. To avoid this, Google offers lower prices to advertisers who have higher rankings as determined by its algorithms. In short, this keyword auction wherein advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their businesses is the way Google makes ad revenue without disappointing search clients. This process is somewhat contentious considering that the real high-quality material should – Read the full article
