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How to Find Your Writing Niche – Even in a Saturated Market

cgseo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:24:37 +0000

When I first started blogging, I made a huge list of topics I knew quite a bit about and could help others with.

Track Your Brand Name Across Social Web with SEJ Tools

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:44:56 +0000

Haven’t I told you SEJ Toolset is a one-stop destination when it comes to all types of your web campaigns? This week I’ll show how to monitor your online reputations from the same handy dashboard. Social Media Monitor is a service which lets you track what people are saying about you, your client, or your brand. It aggregates user generated content from across the Internet into a single stream of information. Step 1: Add a search to track social media

Google Tracks Flu Trends in 121 US Cities

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:04:38 +0000

We all know by now how bad the strain of influenza that hit the world last year was. And if the CDC warning is to come true, we might be experiencing a second spike of flu activity anytime this year. The CDC is basing its warning of course to the similar event that happened in 1957. So, to prepare for this event or any other influnza strike, Google has released flu estimates of 121 cities in the U.S. The city level flu estimates is being carried out by Google in consultation with public health officials. With this initiative, Google is hoping to help people understand the spread of flu. Google’s flu estimates were based from the tracking of popularity of several Google search queries. Through this search queries, Google is able to estimate flu levels in a real-time fashion. The trends is updated on a daily basis and could also detect early signs of flu activity. Although not yet validated by U.S. authorities, the flu estimates are somehow reliable if not more useful than traditional flu surveillance systems which usually takes days or weeks to be collected and processed. In addition, Google’s estimates were created in the same way as the U.S. national estimates were made. So, hopefully, this tool would help cushion the impact of future flu strike. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Tracks Flu Trends in 121 US

Google Will Stop Censoring Search Results in China,

cgseo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:13:44 +0000

Google has issued an official statement regarding its business operations in China, specifically its Chinese search portal – google.cn. Specifically, Google told Chinese authorities that it will stop censoring search results on the Chinese Google site. And dependeing on how things will turn out, Google might later be foreced to shut down the said site. In a long post at its official blog site, Google gave three recent discoveries/incidents that prompted its decision to stop censoring search results from its Chinese site. The first one being the fact, it was found out that recent attacks on its corporate IT infrastructure originated from China and that those attacks were not just meant for Google alone. Some other business companies were also targeted. Making things worsts is that based on Google’s investigation, it was also found out that the main objective of the attackers was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Although the attackers were not successful in achieving their target, thanks to Google’s high level of infrastructure security on its products, two Gmail accounts were jeopardized although the activity was limited only to non-essential matters and not the content of the emails. And worst of all has got to be the fact that Google also found out that even accounts of U.S., China and Europe human rights activities were accessed by third parties through malware, phising and other malicious activities. Given these conditions, Google has no recourse but to stop censoring the search results on its Chinese site. But that is of course if Google and the Chinese authorities will agree. If not, then that’s the time when Google will be force to close its Chinese site. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Will Stop Censoring Search Results in

Bing Makes Search Healthier

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:14:38 +0000

Bing is enhancing its Health search facility by focusing on enabling users to quickly obtaing relevant information and make better decisions related to their pressing health issues/problems. By providing more content from its new partners, Bing is augmenting instant answers with health data that helps users gain more information when they conduct health-related searches on Bing. So now, when you do a health-related search on Bing, it will cull its library of health resources and pull out relavant documents and presents a brief, informative summary above the regular search results. According to the Bing search blog, the search engine derive this information from analysis of index of medical sources and extraction of meaningful data automaticall. So, you can rest assure that the health information provided by Bing are authoritative. This is of course very important for health related information. This new Bing instant answers covers not only the general type of health queries but specific ones as well. It allows users to quickly explore other point of interest relevant to the health search query. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Bing Makes Search

Yahoo! Goes Shopping With PriceGrabber

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:44:12 +0000

If you’re an avid Yahoo! user, you probably love the functionality of the homepage. Click any one of their tabs, like ’shopping’, and you’ve got a world of products at your fingertips. Well yesterday, Yahoo announced that as of March 11, 2010, Yahoo! Shopping is partnering with PriceGrabber . Moving forward, Yahoo! shoppers will be asked to sign up with PriceGrabber in order to take advantage of product searches and do what they love best: go shopping! What’s interesting here is that the Bing/Yahoo search deal didn’t cover Yahoo! verticals like shopping, travel, health, finance, etc. Brian Smith of SingleFeed tells us that “Here’s an example where Bing Cashback would have been a very good partner to ‘power’ Yahoo Shopping, but Yahoo decided to go a different route instead and partnered with a competitor to Bing. Not sure if this has happened with Yahoo’s other verticals.” What does this mean? Other Yahoo! tabs will probably start outsourcing their services by partnerning with related sites. Think Yahoo! Travel partnering with Kayak . And Yahoo! Health partnering with webMD . … You get the picture. Read the official letter from the Yahoo! Shopping team. Read more from Comparison Engines about the new partnership between Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Yahoo! Goes Shopping With

Bye Bye Baidu : China’s Largest Search Engine Hacked

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:58:18 +0000

The Iranian Cyber Army has done it again. Their clever team of hackers has taken hostage of Baidu.com , China’s largest search engine. Baidu, pronounced “Bidu” is to China what Google is to the rest of the English-speaking world. Sources say those in China trying to log onto Baidu.com are currently being redirected to the Iranian cyber Army’s splash page, while people in other countries are still able to log onto Baidu. Some are speculating the search engine was targeted due to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Although nothing has been confirmed, we are leaning towards the idea that the Iranian cyber Army is an undercover Google coy, in which case Google insiders are having a field day. After all, Baidu has led the way with a market share of over 77% , but perhaps not for long. The breaking news comes after the “Iranian cyber Army” (aka Google hackers) successfully hacked Twitter last week. So who’s next? Read more about Baidu, Google’s biggest competitor in China. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Bye Bye Baidu : China’s Largest Search Engine

Covario Acquires NetConcepts

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:36:18 +0000

The San Diego based search marketing services and software firm, Covario , has acquired NetConcepts, the SEO agency which was founded by Stephen Spencer . Many in the Search Marketing industry know Spencer from either his speaking engagements, his contribution to the Art of SEO and his endless supply of WordPress SEO plugins. Stephan Spencer is good people. Covario are good people. We’re very happy to hear this news for both NetConcepts and Covario, as two companies Search & Social highly respects. And now for the press release : Covario’s acquisition strengthens its industry leading position providing SEO solutions to the world’s largest advertisers. The combined company will have nearly 100 customers in key industries such as high tech, financial services, ecommerce, retail, consumer electronics, media, life sciences, and consumer packaged goods. Covario will leverage the acquisition by integrating Netconcepts’ GravityStream™ technology into Covario’s SEO consulting practice and Organic Search Insight™ software. Netconcepts, founded in 1995, is the leader in driving online sales for the retail and ecommerce space through management of natural search engine rankings using its GravityStream technology. Key clients include Cabela’s, Northern Tool, Ann Taylor, Deckers, Woolrich, and Builder’s Square. The merger will help these retail clients, and other clients, gain access to Covario’s software and team of service experts to better synchronize their paid and natural/organic search efforts to create efficiencies, improve results for both channels, and ultimately improve their return on investment (ROI). The technology is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) web content management solution that allows an advertiser to deploy SEO strategies in a scalable and cost effective way. “With the acquisition of Netconcepts and the GravityStream technology, Covario is bringing a unique solution to advertisers to help them accelerate their ability to present their brands on all the major search engines globally,” said Russ Mann, Chief Executive Officer of Covario. “By coupling Covario’s Organic Search Insight with NetConcepts’ GravityStream technology, advertisers will be able to identify the SEO actions that drive better rankings, and also deploy those strategies quickly, and in a highly scalable way to achieve their ROI goals.” The growing importance of SEO in advertising is a key factor behind Covario’s acquisition of Netconcepts. According to Forrester Research, advertisers would spend approximately $2.5 billion on SEO in the U.S. alone in 2009, and this is estimated to double to $5.0 billion by 2014 [Forrester’s July 2009 US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009-2014]. “Marketers looking for clicks at a cost much lower than paid search are joining those who return to SEO after mastering paid search programs,” according to Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst for Forrester. “Nearly two-thirds of all marketing spend to manage search programs is for advanced technologies or outsourced partners — an indication that search programs are gaining maturity and investment.” Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Covario Acquires

How to Predict Traffic from Google

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:43:34 +0000

Google gives you plenty of really good tools at the moment to predict the traffic to your website from Google rankings. In this post I will show you how you can make a guestimation of the %age of traffic that a particular rank will give you, this is something that I have been trying to figure out for a long time now, and with Google’s wealth of tools available we can use these to get quite fair estimations (Well I think so anyway.). So what do you need to do this: Google Adwords Keyword Tool Your Analytics Package Daily Rankings Reports Google Insights for Search Firstly some caveats, This is an estimation tool remember this and make no promises based on the results, Results can depend on many other factors other than just this such as how appealing your result looks to the searcher, Results do not take into consideration the number of sponsored listings on the page or local search results and the maps with them, real time search box and Shopping results. Collecting the

Link Building Strategies: Time to ACT

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:18:43 +0000

Everything in life that is worth anything takes a lot of effort and action. When I was in High School my Dad bought me an old 66’ Ford Mustang that was really beat up. For three years I worked on that old car and made it look like a million bucks. Because I worked hard and took action the car was amazing and it meant a lot to me, a lot more that if my Dad would have just bought me a new car. The point is you have to ACT to receive what it is you want. Link Building is no different. If you want links (which you should) then you have to take some specific actions to get links. If you think they are just going to come because you have a cool website, then I am afraid you will be very disappointed. Link Building in regards to Search Engine Optimization is not going away anytime soon, and for this very reason if you don’t have a strategy it will be very hard for you to rank for the keywords/phrases that you so desire. Below you will find some specific actions you must take to build up your link juice. These items are not the only steps you need to take (there are hundreds – even thousands) but they will tell you what actions you need to take today to start your Link Building campaign. A.C.T. stands for Ask, Content, and Timing. You must A.C.T. to build links effectively. A –