Bing may have a chance to gain market share against Google now that the partnership between the search leader and Mozilla has expired. For years, Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser has featured Google as its default search engine as the result of a profit-sharing arrangement. That deal and the popularity of Firefox resulted in a windfall for Mozilla that has fueled its success. More than three-quarters of Mozilla’s revenue comes from Google’s payments. No Comment Neither Google nor Mozilla have commented about the lapse of their lucrative deal, and they would not indicate whether the agreement would continue. On one occasion, a Mozilla spokesman observed that the company has agreements with several search engines; on another he suggested that negotiations with Google were in progress. Global Adversaries Google and Mozilla began an amiable relationship long before Google launched a competing product. Now, the search giant has its own browser that has now surpassed Firefox in market share. By many accounts Chrome – Read the full article
Yesterday Yahoo! Site Explorer decided to retire from business. It has left many amateur SEOs, and some professional SEOs too, at a bit of a loss. Many SEOs and agencies have been using the back link service in Yahoo! Site Explorer to monitor, analyse, and generally try to copy the link building actions of their competitors. As someone who has been involved in SEO for over 5 years (not so much by choice but by necessity) I have used Yahoo! extensively, and seen my competitors use it against me, too! I manage several sites across various niches, and some of my sites do interlink with each other, wherever a connection really does benefit a reader. I have seen people leave comments on all my blogs, and doing so in the order of Yahoo! backlinks for my main website. SEO Stalkers are gonna have a harder time I have also seen the same people leave comments on other blogs where I – Read the full article
Last week we published a guide on how to monitor Google Places reviews, Web updates, and content changes. It was well-received by our readers, so we’d like to build on the post and share info this time on tools for online reviews monitoring and management. Hopefully, this list will help you track online reviews of your brand, product, establishment, service, or business – and enhance your reputation as more customers talk about you on Google Places, Yelp, online directories, local business listings, and social media sites. Or, if you’ve used any of the online reputation management tools below, do let us know by leaving a comment below and sharing with us your experience. ReviewPush Texas-based ReviewPush markets itself as an “online review management tool for small to large businesses”. It offers a dashboard for monitoring / tracking reviews, protecting your brand and reputation, engaging with customers, and enhancing product offerings and promotions (such as coupons). ReviewPush features include: Continuous social – Read the full article
Magento is an ecommerce script which is said to be more authoritative for ecommerce and was developed by Varien. Magento uses Zend PHP and MYSQL databases and is said to be an open source program. It is said to be more flexible in nature along with the modular structure and is totally capable of being scaled and also possesses a vast range of management options which most of the users of magento are fond of. Magento is more superior in nature and presents your products in a very powerful manner. You can create your products catalog easily and also manage it. Varien previously worked with osCommerce and they intended to diverge osCommerce but then decided to redraft and rephrase it and hence it resulted in the formation of Magento. Magento was started to develop in 2007 and in the month of august in the same year, a public beta version was announced and in 2010, Magento mobile was made available – 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
Small businesses have a daunting task as they compete with larger companies that boast more resources and staff. How can a small business compete for a share of the search engine market with so much stacked against them? Here are some tips on creating an SEO strategy for your small business: Learn from the Competition Promodo’s SEO specialist Anna Moseva suggests starting your small business SEO strategy with a thorough analysis of the competition. You’re probably familiar with piecing together keywords on Google in order to figure out what people are searching for and what’s already out there by way of content, but Moseva advises that you take the top 20 results in Google and analyze their Alexa Rank with the SEO Quake plugin for Firefox. Once you know the top sites among your competition, you can analyze the kind of traffic they generate and which keywords and adwords are linked to their sites at SEM Rush. This technique will – Read the full article
From humble, open source beginnings, WordPress now powers over 61 million sites worldwide. The extent to which it has grown in popularity not just for bloggers but professional designers and developers is evidenced by Smashing Magazine recently launching an extended, dedicated WordPress section. I’m currently one of these working in web design in Chicago. The Project I recently had a very simple project of launching a blog with a small shopping cart installed in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup held in New Zealand. Wait-of-Nation.com went live a little over two months ago. The Client With a background in PR/Advertising my client was well versed in getting himself out there, which in a country of 4.5 million people really isn’t that hard to do. He had a good product (sports blog of the most popular sport in NZ), with a niche message/ slant (“Home of New Zealand’s crushing expectation” – that the All Blacks – the National team – – Read the full article
YouTube as a free hosting site offers a wide array of handy tools for marketing Internet video content. What YouTube also offers is a quick route to Page 1 placement in the Google search engine rankings. The following article explores the six essentials ways to use YouTube’s features to benefit your Internet marketing and search engine ranking efforts. 1. Put Keywords and Phrases In To Your Video Titles & Tags The titles and tags on your video are perhaps the most influential pieces of information for search engines. Search engines frequently use titles and tags to find videos and bring up videos of a similar nature. By optimizing these fields and filling them in with appropriate keywords and phrases relevant to your brand, business, or niche you can help Google pick up your Internet video content in its regular search results. 2. Use Your Video Description Field To Your Advantage Descriptions are there to give information about your video. Use – Read the full article
