Social Media Optimization: The Power of Popular Opinion

Why should I care about Social Media Optimization?

You should care about Social Media Optimization (SMO), because you care about your company’s image. There’s an old saying that goes something like, “A happy customer will tell one other person about his good experience. A disgruntled customer will tell ten people about his bad experience.” Good or bad, that’s powerful marketing. Social Media Optimization gives you the power to take an active role in managing your brand by interacting with your current and potential clients by discussing your products, their comments and concerns and continually promoting your brand.

Social Media Optimization Defined

In its most basic form, Social media optimization is any method used to raise your website’s online visibility through meaningful communication. SMO opens a dialogue between you and your clients, using the power of popular opinion to fuel your marketing campaign. The open format strengthens your search engine optimization efforts by fostering a mutual connection with your clients through the myriad of online communities, also called social media sites. Current examples of SMO include:

· Creating profiles in social media communities such as MySpace, Facebook, and VIRB.
· Participating in and/or creating blogs.
· Disseminating your blogs or articles using RSS feeds.
· Creating and sharing content through community based sites like Flickr, YouTube and more.

Not to incorporate unnecessary buzz words, but SMO is a very Web 2.0 approach to Search Engine Optimization. Of course, Web 2.0 merely refers to the perceived second generation of Web-based communities and hosted services - the social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies, which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. SMO allows you to become an active member of your online community, quite an important aspect of marketing your brand. Through participation, you establish yourself or your company as an industry leader and increase your online visibility.

As you can imagine, Social Media Optimization is most effective when the viral nature of the technique and its communities are utilized in a positive manner. Creating legitimate content, building relationships and instilling trust in your community is the very backbone of SMO. You may initiate the process, but effective SMO will take on a life all its own. A true forum is bred through the act of continual communication between your company and your online audience.

Of course, not everyone plays by the rules. In every aspect of life, you will find those who would cheat the system to receive short term gains. Like most schemes, the underbelly of SMO may seem attractive to anyone looking for a quick fix, but don’t make that mistake. Just as it’s true with SEO, erroneous SMO will backfire. Using questionable techniques will very likely yield the exact opposite results you were hoping to see.

SMO Etiquette

Legitimate SMO techniques are centered on sharing information and exposing your community to your interests. As such, you want to focus on promoting proper SMO etiquette. The MySpace super friend, the guy or gal who adds anyone and everyone, would be a good example of improper Social Media Optimization. The whole concept behind Social Media is to create a community with similar interests for meaningful discussion and let the power of popular opinion increase your online visibility. Of course, you may belong to several different communities and you may even have some of the same friends in those different communities. That’s perfectly fine. The idea is to remain active in your communities by adding friends and contributing relevant content. Adding friends in bulk, for no reason, is no way to optimize.

Communal sites like MySpace and Facebook, or even YouTube and Flickr to some extent, are indeed popularity contests. However, simply trying to catalog massive amounts of unrelated, uninterested “friends” is totally counterproductive. Let the high school kids worry about who has got the most friends. For the purpose of SMO, you should concern yourself with quality, not quantity.

Using unsavory SMO techniques is the Web 2.0 equivalent to spam. Unfortunately, we’re all far too familiar with spam. Unsolicited bulk messaging and link heavy advertisements instead of useful comments are two of the more prevalent methods of Social Media spamming. However, Social Media spamming is even more atrocious than email spam, because the offending text is visible to everyone on the site. It doesn’t hide in your inbox, so it can really dilute the appeal of the site. Your kindergarten teacher was on the right track. If you don’t have something relevant to say, don’t say anything at all.

Is SMO right for my firm?

There are many different types of Social Media sites currently available. To put it in perspective, think about all the different interests you have in life. Now, consider the possibility that there is at least one Social Media site for each of your interests. Of course, you’re not the only person on the Internet, so it’s a safe bet there are literally millions of sites dedicated to countless interests around the world. Believe it or not, there is a group out there looking for your company, product or service. You just have to make it available. Therefore, understanding how to submit to and maintain your content on each community is absolutely crucial when developing a successful SMO strategy.

A few examples of the different Social Media genres include:

• News - These sites allow users to submit news articles. Once an article is published, users can submit their comments and vote to promote the story and/or author. Examples include Digg, Propeller and Newsvine.
  
• Media - These sites allow users to upload and share a variety of different media files. The overwhelming majority of these sites are dedicated mainly to photo and video files. Examples include YouTube and Flickr.
  
• Wiki - These sites allow users to add and edit informational articles as determined by the individual users. Examples include Wikipedia, WikiHow and Million Dollar Wiki.
  
• Networking - These sites allow users to create profiles and network with others according to similar traits, tastes and interests. Examples include MySpace, Facebook and Virb.
  
• Bookmarking - These sites allow users to compile public bookmark collections of sites they find interesting, informative or helpful. The more a site is bookmarked, the higher the ranking. Examples include StumbleUpon, Technorati and Del.icio.us.

When executed properly, Social Media Optimization can be quite a beneficial marketing tool. However, SMO may simply not be the right fit for your organization. Some questions you might like to consider before launching your SMO campaign are:

• Most SMO sites share very specific information. Would your products benefit from this type of content specific market?
• The audience for most Social Media sites is more of a young, tech savvy group. Would your company, product or service appeal to their fickle nature?
• Does your website contain a blog, or similar media outlet, you can regularly update with relevant content?
• Given the fact that community based sites focus on individual profiles and commentary, are you comfortable with developing unique profiles across multiple sites?

In Summary

Social Media Optimization has become a successful marketing tool for one simple reason. It works. The gap between old media and new has gotten smaller and smaller with the majority of the prominent television and print media outlets finally embracing the Internet by launching sites of their own. The different Social Media sites, like MySpace and Facebook, have exploded with profiles for everything from 8^th graders discussing their favorite bands to full scale ad campaigns for Blockbuster movies.

If done correctly, SMO can expose your brand to markets you never thought possible. Whether it is used alone to drive a campaign or in conjunction with your current interactive marketing strategy, Social Media Optimization offers you a significant advantage.

Source: www.techlinks.net

The Dark Side of Social Media Optimization

Rand came out with a kick ass post on Social Media Optimization for those of you who lean a little more towards the dark side, here are some things to think about.

One of the most common uses for this type of behavior is for reputation management and parasite SEO. One thing to be aware of is you can very often get a double listing to appear. If you’re not careful or have done some advanced planning it’s pretty easy for a competitor to do some “virtual drafting” and appear directly behind or underneath you. Another point to notice it takes a lot more work for you to get that first listing than it does for the second guy to grab onto your coat tails.

Maybe you’ve gone through MySpace and built an excellent list of actual relevant non-sock puppet friends. Well what are you doing to prevent your friends list from being scraped? Almost all of the bot programs for myspace come equipped with a friend scraping feature. You do all the work they get almost as much value with much less effort.

Got yourself or your company a great profile in wikipedia? Are you fully prepared for a criticism section? If someone can create a less than favorable “body of work” externally, and if they are articulate and careful enough they can insert some nuetral point of view criticisms citing that critical mass of negative work. The goal here isn’t to make them switch to another company, just to put enough doubt into their minds that they may not be making the right decision and not purchase from you. It’s especially helpful if the profile making those criticism’s has a history of doing good things, like deleting spam and removing vandalism (of course lots of wikipedians won’t ever consider you created that spam and vandalism with another disposable sock puppet account to make yourself look good).

Trying to get more out of Yahoo Answers, again running sock puppet accounts to ask questions you have the perfect answer for is so easy everyone thinks of it. Using sock puppets to “rig” the voting and get your answers voted the best is slightly more sophisticated. How about using RSS to “stalk” some keywords or phrases, giving you laser targeting on your question, answering and voting methods.

Looking to goose up those bloglines subscription numbers, why not set up some catch-all email addresses on some domains you’ve killed, create bloglines accounts, subscribe at will, lather rinse repeat.

Somewhere on Digg, newsvine, and almost every other user generated content site out there is some policy about “not submitting your own stories, websites or blog postings”. Well I see those kind of things kind of like handicaps in sports, they make the rest of kids think they can run with the big dogs, and just don’t apply to me. So what if I happen to be mildly schizophrenic, and have lots of imaginary friends who are very net savvy? Are you going to discriminate against the people who are reality challenged?

Web 2.0 opens up a whole new game for those creative enough to use to use it. For heavens sake delete your cookies and use proxy servers

Source: www.wolf-howl.com

Social Media Optimization - Bring Closer And Closer

Other than Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization (SMO) can also drag more and more audience to your websites. Through this facility, your site would get a good ranking on the search engine. Internet has become a strong weapon to fight against unsocial factor. Via internet, we can share our ideas and knowledge with others. Moreover, communication has become quite feasible through internet. It is basically a method of generating publicity through online processes, communities and websites. Uploading videos, blogging, forums, discussions enhance the effect of it. It has brought people nearer to each other.

Through social media optimization, people can advertise any of their products or services. This utilizes the techniques of social bookmarking, video, photo sharing and blogging. Today, the gift like Orkut and Facebook are receiving much popularity. Social Media Optimization is an effective tool of advertising. Any new product or service are reaching people's ear very instantly. Internet makes people get the product and services. Through this people are becoming more and more social. You can also get yourself updated with any new happenings. It has made life very easy and hassle free. Everything happens very instantly. The process makes communication very easy.

Three ways to excel at social media optimization are -

(1) Generate interesting contents, write what you feel, people are more interested to know your feelings,
(2) Know your target audience and plan things accordingly and
(3) Your content and product should be very interesting and should had the capacity to drag more and more audience. Linkage is an important factor of social media optimization.

Five rules for conducting an SMO for a client's website are-

(1) Increasing linkability,
(2) Add bookmarking sites and tag your article,
(3) Reward inbound links,
(4) Submit your content on relevant sites and
(5) Encouraging mashup.

People are coming out with their views and opinions. They are updating themselves with any new happening. New options are opened for the internet surfers. Interaction has become quite easy through social media optimization. Exchange of ideas and opinions are getting prominent. Through this, many businessmen are able to popularize their products. Your site receives popularity only through this service. Social media optimizing requires proper planning and strategies. Booking of tickets or availing loans is all possible though internet.

Online business is flourishing day by day. Your website will reach the top only when your site is visited time and again. Spamming is quite common and steps should be taken to get rid of spammers. Spamming may cause a big harm to your site. This is a blessing for one and all.

Steve Waganer has specialization in web marketing. He is expert in Search engine marketing,search engine marketing firm,search engine optimization, social media optimization, comet search engine marketing. To get the SEO tips from, SEO firm for your website to get high rank and top position in major search engines.

Source : www.ezinearticles.com

Yahoo! Gets More Social with Applications for Bebo

Socializing isn't quite what it used to be. For many people, it's no longer just about catching up with your pals at an evening happy hour; it's also about staying connected to a wider group by using the web as a networking tool. Not only do social networking sites help keep us in contact with connections near and far, they also make it easy for us to share our daily lives, interests and personality with friends and family. And today, Yahoo! UK & Ireland is helping to improve the socializing experience for users on the leading UK social networking site, Bebo, with the integration of Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Music.

With the addition of Yahoo! Answers to Bebo's new application platform, Bebo users are now able to tap into each other's knowledge and expertise, benefiting themselves, their friends and the wider Yahoo! Answers community of millions of users. Bebo users can publish and share their Q&As with their friends and promote their reputation and participation in the Yahoo! Answers community via a module displayed on their user profile. They can also ask and answer questions directly within Bebo, and view Q&As from their Bebo friends.

We've also launched three new Yahoo! Music video channels -- Top Music, Rock and Urban -- so users can subscribe to the latest videos or add their favorite songs to their Bebo profile for all their friends to enjoy.

By making Yahoo! products and services more accessible off of the Yahoo! Network, we hope you find it easier to interact and share interests with your own communities. Don't forget to let us know what you think by commenting here.

Source: www.yahoo.com

Google India Women in Engineering Award 2008

Diversity at Google means having a workforce that reflects the diversity of our customers' perspectives, ideas and cultures -- one that thinks and acts inclusively, and fundamentally values people's similarities and differences. As part of our ongoing commitment to encourage women to excel in computing and technology, the India team has taken our first steps: in December we launched the Google India "Women in Engineering Award" to recognize women in the field of computer science and engineering.

In its inception year, we have extended this award to recognized engineering schools across India; it is open to any woman student in computer science engineering who meets the application criteria. This initiative has been received positively, as has been indicated by the inundating queries and subsequent applications. The last date for applying is January 31st and we are looking forward to hearing from even more applicants.

After our panel reviews all applications, the winners will be announced in a little more than a month, on February 29th. The winners will be invited to visit the Google engineering office in Bangalore during first week of March for a conclave comprising of keynotes, panel discussions, tech talks, breakouts and an award ceremony.

We hope this award will encourage students to take up computer science engineering as their study, and perhaps inspire some of you to take this up as a career too.

Source : www.Google.com

Google Announces Launch of Google Maps for Mobile With "My Location" Technology

Google today announced the release of version 2.0 of Google Maps for mobile, its innovative and widely used mobile mapping and local search application. New in v2.0 is a beta version of Google's "My Location" technology, which uses cell tower ID information to provide users with their approximate location, helping them determine where they are, what's around them, and how to get there.

Google is committed to providing users with quick and easy access to the information they need, no matter when or where they need it. Location information makes mobile mapping and search faster and more convenient, but the most common source of location information to date -- GPS technology -- is supported on fewer than 15 percent of the mobile phones expected to be sold in 2007. With Google's new My Location technology, users who don't have GPS-enabled mobile phones will now be able to take advantage of the added speed and convenience afforded by location information. The My Location technology also complements GPS-enabled devices, as it delivers a location estimate faster than GPS, provides coverage inside buildings (where GPS signals can be unreliable), and doesn't drain phone batteries as quickly as GPS. Whether users are trying to locate a restaurant in an unfamiliar neighborhood, get directions to the nearest hotel while traveling, or just find a place to grab some coffee while shopping for the holidays, Google Maps for mobile with My Location can help them get what they need quickly and easily.

The My Location technology takes information broadcast from cell towers and sifts it through Google-developed algorithms to approximate a user's current location on the map. This approximation is anonymous, as Google does not gather any personally identifiable information or associate any location data with personally identifiable information as part of the My Location feature. The feature can also be easily disabled by anyone who prefers not to use it. The My Location technology is available on most smartphones, including all color BlackBerry devices, all Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition devices, most Windows Mobile devices, newer Sony Ericsson devices, and some Motorola devices.

Google Maps for mobile, first launched in the US in November 2005, enables users to view interactive maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, get point-to-point driving directions, and view live traffic updates, all while on the go. The application is now available on and optimized for a wide variety of platforms, running on most J2ME-enabled devices; all color BlackBery devices; Windows Mobile devices with Windows Mobile 2003, 5.0, and above; Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition devices; and Palm devices with Palm OS 5 and above. Google Maps for mobile is being actively used by millions of people in more than 20 different countries around the globe.

Source : www.google.com

Google Making Public Records Available

Google recently announced that they will soon be helping state governments make public records easily accessible to Internet users. The company has partnered with Arizona, California, and Virginia to remove technical barriers that had prevented search engines from accessing public records pertaining to education, real estate, health care and the environment.

These newly available records will not be exclusive to the search engines owned by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Officials from states partnering with Google have expressed hope that this initiative will make it easier for average citizens to navigate agency Web sites.

Currently, government computer systems aren’t programmed in a way that allows commercial search engines to access their databases. Google plans to fix this problem by creating virtual roadmaps which will allow search engines to find the databases that store public records. They’ve been working on this technology for approximately six months according to the AP.

Many privacy advocates are concerned about this movement due to the personal and confidential nature of the documents that will soon become available so widely. It’s been pointed out that Google is embroiled in controversy surrounding privacy issues at this time. The EPIC recently filed complaint with the Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation of Google’s practice of tracking Internet search users who access government date in order to target ads at them. The publication of personal social security numbers is also a major concern of some.

Source : www.seohelp.net

Google's new position 6 penalty

A discussion in an online webmaster forum indicates that Google might have invented a new ranking penalty for websites that rank well for popular search terms.

What has happened?

During the last few weeks, some webmasters noticed that some of their long term position 1 or position 2 rankings in Google suddenly ranked at position 6.

The problem affected well established websites with a long history. The dropped web pages had long time rankings for popular search terms, usually on position 1.

Why has Google done this?

It is not exactly clear yet which factors cause that ranking drop in Google's results. There are two theories:

1. Google now considers usage data when calculating the rankings.
2. Google now has a better understanding of word and phrase relationships.

If different usage data is the reason for the change then web pages with a higher click-through rate would get higher positions. However, some webmasters reported that even web pages with high click through rates have been downranked.

The penalty also seems to affect web pages that are listed with an appealing title and a description that is very relevant to the search term so it might be that the click-rate is not taken into account.

We think that it's more likely that the word and phrase relationships are the reason for the ranking drops. It seems that web pages with too many inbound links using exactly the searched keyword as the anchor text were affected by the filter.

If the link to a special web page always uses exactly the same anchor text then the word variety is probably extremely low compared to the competing websites in the top results. That indicates a manipulation of the anchor texts and Google applies the filter.

What can you do to avoid that filter?

When you build links to your website, make sure that you use different but related keywords for the links to your site. If you overuse the same link text, Google might discover a manipulation.

If you use different but related keywords, then ranking algorithms will consider your web page relevant to a special topic. Use IBP's inbound link analyzer to get further information about the inbound link structure that leads to top 10 rankings.

Source : www.free-seo-news.com

Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) may soon see a surge in spam coming from Yahoo Mail accounts.

"John Wane," who identifies himself as a Russian security researcher, has posted software that he claims can defeat the CAPTCHA system Yahoo uses to prevent automated registration of free Yahoo Mail accounts.

CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It's a technique that presents an image depicting distorted text that people, but not machines, can identify.

Large e-mail service providers like Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Yahoo present CAPTCHA images to users signing up for new accounts to make sure that there's a real person behind the registration information. These companies do so to discourage spammers from using automated methods to register thousands of free online accounts to send spam.

CAPTCHAs are also used to prevent spam in blogs and other online forums, automated ballot stuffing for online polls, and automated password guessing attacks.

"Few months ago, we received information that [a] Yahoo CAPTCHA recognition system exists in the wild with the recognition rate about 30%," Wane says in a blog post. "So we decided to conduct few experiments. We explored Yahoo CAPTCHA and designed a similar system with even better recognition rate (about 35%)."

Various automated methods exist to defeat CAPTCHA schemes but the CAPTCHAs used by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have remained difficult for computers to crack.

If the software works as advertised, and it's not clear that it does, it could force Yahoo and other companies to spend yet more money to defend against spammers.

"We are aware of attempts being made toward automated solutions for CAPTCHA images and continue to work on improvements as well as other defenses," a Yahoo spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement.

John Orbeton, strategic product manager for IronPort, said that if the software works, "it could be used for spam. It could be used for phishing. It depends on the motivation of the attacker." The claimed rate of success, 35%, he said, "could create a fairly significant number of e-mail accounts."

It is ironic, Orbeton added, that image-recognition technology, which is being used to defend against the current generation of image spam, should be used by spammers to create more spam.

Not that there's any shortage of the stuff. "In 2007 we saw spam volumes increase 100%," Orbeton said. "That comes out to around 20 spam messages per day for everyone on the planet, whether they have e-mail or not."

Source: www.informationweek.com

The worlds first hand-held printer

PrintDreams, the developer of the Random Movement Printing technology RMPT(tm), has announced the release of PrintBrush(tm), the world's smallest and only fully format-independent printer. PrintBrush(tm).

The printer has the length of a normal ballpoint pen while its width and height are more or less equivalent to the width of a modern mobile phone. The total volume is less than 300 c.c. and weights around 350 grams. This first version of PrintBrush(tm) was designed to roughly fit into a shirt pocket while it still remains a clear potential for size and weight reduction in coming versions that will allow an even more comfortable fit.

Internet content, SMS, pictures and other information is downloaded to the PrintBrush(tm) from PDAs, mobile phones and laptop computers through a Bluetooth(tm) wireless link. Then, by following the RMPT(tm) principle, the device is hand operated by sweeping it across any type of print media, no matter its shape, size or thickness. The printout will then start to appear right behind the sweeps.

The device takes into account all thinkable parameters of the hand movement, including rotation and sudden changes of speed and acceleration. The result image on the printed media is always very much alike its digital counterpart.

Since the first prototype was showed last year at the CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, the RMPT(tm) technology has been developed fast onward. The great breakthrough came for few weeks ago when the company released its OptoNav sensor, which is an extremely accurate optical navigation sensor aimed to push further the RMPT(tm) technology into a greater level of print quality and performance.

"PrintDreams business model is to license RMPT(tm) technology to OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) that will develop, manufacture and distribute the final products under own brand name. We have during the last year established contacts with global manufacturers that recognize the potential in RMPT(tm) based printer products for various applications. The PrintBrush(tm) represents an essential step in our go to market plan by demonstrating performance and functionality that meets user expectation for a truly mobile printer. We are expecting the first RMPT(tm) based printer products to be launched on the market early 2005" says CEO PrintDreams Jan Erik Hedborg.

Source: www.21stcentury.co.uk

10 Effective Methods To Bypass The Google Sandbox

What is the sandbox?

For this article the Google Sandbox Effect is defined as the situation where the results of Google's main ranking algorithms (PageRank, TrustRank, HillTop, whatever is in place) are initially inhibited when applied to a new property due to one or more temporal algorithm procedures taking effect. Put simply, when it's obvious your recently launched site deserves a decent rank based on typical factors, but instead it's nowhere to be seen.

Does the sandbox really exist?

Google engineer Matt Cutts has essentially acknowledged that a sandbox effect exists and that it's a product of their algorithm, and at least one other anonymous Google engineer is reported to referred to a "probation" period for new sites. Despite some differences in terminology, the sandbox as an abstraction for a specific sum of parts in Google's larger algorithm is almost certainly existent.

Who does the sandbox affect?

Sites most affected by the sandbox effect usually appear to fit one or more of the following key criteria:

1. Newly established
2. Target a highly competitive and/or commercial industry
3. Have attempted optimization, especially link building

By our definition, at least number one has to be true, otherwise you can label virtually any aspect of Google's algorithm that dampens rankings the sandbox, and the discussion would become too general. We can't be sure the above are actual trigger factors (i.e. a cause and not simply an effect), we only know that sites fitting this criteria are plentiful in the "sandbox."

How long are sites sandboxed?

The reported sandbox period is extremely variable; ranging from 3 months to indefinite, the typical range though seems around 6-9 months, and one Google engineer has reportedly stated the actual range is 6-12 months. Many have observed that the period appears to correlate with industry competitiveness/popularity, with the most popular and commercial industries having the longest "probation" period.

10 methods to bypass or escape the sandbox

Note: I've avoided listing methods aimed at only minimizing your time in the sandbox—as opposed to methods of actually escaping it—as those are basically paramount to good SEO practises, which is obviously way beyond the scope of this article.

• Buy out old domains—Even if a domain is low on inbound links, the age factor will almost certainly be enough for it to have expired the sandbox; typically a year is good age to ensure a domain is sandbox free; if possible negotiate with original owner keeping the WHOIS record as similar as possible to prevent triggering a fresh sandbox cycle. Domains never indexed in Google, no matter what how early registration date aren't likely to avoid being sandboxed.
• Buy recently expired domains—Some theory as above, but applied to domains that have actually expired. There is some evidence to suggest very recently expired domains can avoid a fresh sandbox cycle. A good measure might be domains expired but still indexed in Google.
• Collect the low hanging fruit—While sandboxed you aren't going to rank well for competitive terms, but you may be able rank for low traffic ones. Large quantities of low traffic terms can be just as rewarding, and if you target the right ones you'll be strengthening the theme of your site for when your more competitive terms are freed from the sandbox.
• Drag your competitors down to your level—We really don't condone or recommend this; it's listed here for completeness sake, and to make you aware of tactics that can be used against you: If you can't aspire move upwards, the second option is to drag your competitors downwards, into and below the level of the sandbox. StuntDubl summarizes the main blackhat tactics at the disposal of those who willing to cross the line. Even if we did recommend this, logistically it's a non-option since you'll no doubt have hundreds or thousands of competitors' pages ahead of you, not to mention that each one of those competitors can use the same tactics against you.
• Buy your way in—Irregardless of sandbox status, you should almost always consider doing at least one PPC campaign for each of your targeted terms, in order to estimate the ROI before spending resources targeting terms organically.
• Explore non-Google traffic sources—Getting sandboxed clearly illustrates the danger of putting your eggs in one basket. Consider using your time in the sandbox to explore and make full use of other sources of targeted traffic, learn to survive without being at the whim of Google.
• Hijack your competitors rankings—Again, we don't condone or recommend blackhat tactics: Performing a 302 redirect to one of your high ranking competitors from a non-sandboxed domain (preferably of higher PageRank/trust than theirs) can sometimes succeed in hijacking their SERP listings. So that the traffic can be gleaned, the redirect can be cloaked for the benefit of the Google-bot, with regular visitors being redirected to your sandboxed site. Again, we do not recommend this, and only on small number of occasions have such tactics been publicized to work.
• Use subdomain from developed site—According a quite a few experts; since sandboxing appears to be based on 2nd level domain, hosting your site on a subdomain of an already established domain will avoid the sandbox. If you redirect all pages to the new domain once the site appears thoroughly indexed; it should reportedly maintain a non-sandboxed status.
• Acquire "trusted" links—A fair amount of SEOs have claimed to have escaped the sandbox by acquiring enough "trusted," high quality authoritative links. The most often cited source for links capable of freeing a site are high profile news sites; .gov, and .edu sites; and dmoz.org. That this method can immediately free you from the sandbox is somewhat contested, but most seem to agree that it can either a) avoid being initially sandboxed, or b) shorten your stay. At least one Google engineer is reported to have supported the theory that high quality backlinks can negate the sandbox.
• Perhaps you aren't sandboxed after all—Consider and research into the possibility that you aren't sandboxed and instead simply suffering the effect of a very ineffective SEO campaign. For this purpose SEOMoz.org offers the Sandbox Detection Tool.

Source: www.webmasterbrain.com

The influence of semantic indexing on your search engine rankings

Semantic indexing is getting more and more important to search engines. What exactly is semantic indexing and how does it influence your search engine rankings?

What is semantic indexing?

Semantic indexing means that search engines try to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages. For example, Paris and Hilton are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, Tiger and Woods are associated with golf.

How can search engines find the relation between words?

For example, Google has billions of web pages in its index. If Google finds that many web pages contain both the word Paris and the word Hilton then Google might assume that these keywords are related. The other words on these pages could give Google a hint that this special word combination is about a woman.

Words that frequently appear very close to each other could get a tighter connection. Google has a lot of algorithms that allow them to calculate the relation between different words.

How does this influence your search engine optimization activities?

If you want to succeed on Google then it is important that you show Google that your website is relevant to your topic. Here are some things that you can do to show search engines that your site is relevant:

• Use a meaningful site architecture
  
  Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on your web pages.
  
  Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your website and that it's easy to find the different categories.
  
  
• Use web pages that use different relevant search terms
  
  If you're targeting the search term "used cars" you should also create pages that are relevant to "auto", "suv", etc.
  
  
• Get links from pages that are semantically relevant to yours
  
  If you're selling cars then the "Cars" web page that links to your site should not be about the movie. Links from topically related pages will be semantically beneficial to your site.
  
  
• Find out why other pages rank higher than yours
  
  If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search terms then you should analyze the inbound links of the top ranked pages.
  
  The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However, it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically related pages.

Don't focus on a single keyword when optimizing your pages. If you want to prepare your website for advanced search engine algorithms then you have to create a website that has been optimized for many different but related search terms. In addition, it's important that the links to your website come from topically related pages so that search engines put your website in the right context.

Source : www.free-seo-news.com

Google Checkout Adds Trends

Google is now revealing some seriously important market data via its Google Trends service. Whereas before, Google Trends just revealed search volume, trends that while certainly of interest did not necessarily reflect anything beyond a measure of the internet popularity of a term we now have Google Checkout Trends.

The new Checkout Trends service does reveal important information, namely, the sales data of merchants in Google’s Checkout sales network. This data is extremely valuable and usually hard to come buy; often researchers have to pay firms like the NPD Group a lot of money to know how well their competitors are doing in retail stores; but Google is giving away all the information for free.

Sure, Google Checkout represents only a subset of the entire marketplace, not including any brick-and-mortar stores, as well as thousands of major internet retailers (like Amazon.com, or the websites of Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy), but Google’s data certainly has significant value for market trend research.

Data goes back to July 2006, and does not reveal actual revenue, but rather revenue trends as measured on an unspecified scale. Items can be filtered by price, and multiple products can be compared against each other.

Also worth noting: Google Checkout will finally start charging for all those credit card transactions it’s been making on February 1, 2008, after 13 months of giving the store away. Will Checkout finally start making money (or at least losing less of it), or will merchants stop using it, now that Google isn’t paying them anymore to keep the service?

Source: www.google.blognewschannel.com

Google Knol: Encyclopedia, Not Wikipedia

Expanding on our coverage of Google's Knol encyclopedia, there arises a critical but subtle difference between Knol and its most immediately recognizable sibling, Wikipedia:

In contrast to Wikipedia's contribution system, which is overseen and moderated by anonymous committee, Knol's articles will not be continuously editable. In theory, Wikipedia's model should have been superior, allowing information to be continuously updated and accurized; however, as anyone who's ever spent much time browsing Wikipedia can attest, the theory often fails when put into practice.

Knol's model of data collection fits with the more traditional, more professional and more authoritative model, where the data is collected from expert sources, fact-checked and verified. Rather than being the end of Wikipedia, however, Knol may very well improve and reinforce the accuracy and verity of Wikipedia's articles by providing easily found, higher quality source and reference material.

Another crucial difference for Knol is that its contributors will not be anonymous -- authors will be bylined as well as compensated from a share of ad revenue. This compels authors to compete to have their work featured on Knol, and this competition should further ensure that articles of the highest quality will appear there.

Source : www.increased-online-traffic.com

New MSN search offers up refreshing results

Well it's not perfect, but MSN's newly enhanced search engine offering is definitely offering up its own brand of "relevant" results. That's not a bad thing as long as those results get users to the most useful and accurate information available.

MSN seems to be doing just that with their latest offering based on the test drive that I gave it last night. Although, still in the beta stage as of Tuesday night, MSN allowed users to preview by visiting live.com; A site Microsoft launched back in November of 2005 to boost its "Windows Live" offerings.

The first search that I did was for a college sports team that I take an interest in: "Texas A&M Aggies". The results were not what I was looking for at all. Although there weren't any obvious "spam" sites in the top five, the first few results directed me to sites that were only loosely associated with the Texas A&M University, much less its athletic program. In fact, position #4 was occupied by a site that dealt with southwestern cooking tips!

Still, MSN's new and improved engine offered very Google-like results in terms of featuring authority content sites with fresh content, but also offered a slightly different spin on the top five search results. It's was refreshing to see, because it seemed like the previous incarnation of MSN search was nothing more than a Google emulator.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for Bill Gates as he tries to catch up in what seems to be a hopelessly uncompetitive race between Microsoft and its two main rivals, Google, Inc. and Yahoo, Inc. This is currently a race in which both Google and Yahoo are lapping the software giant, but MSN has not let up on the accelerator just yet.

Source : www.seoproject.com

Understand Backlinks from Search Engines

Most Search Engine Optimizers understand the importance of the backlinks in order for a website to succeed. Most search engines take into account of the backlinks quality for their ranking algorithm. We will cover the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) here and discuss how they treat backlinks from their point of view.

The most popular search engine, Google, places great emphasis on backlinks. In fact, relevant backlinks is all a website needs to achieve a high ranking in Google result page. Google, however, does not shows all the indexed backlinks when user queries with the link: operator. In addition, Google does not update their backlink index as frequent as their search results.

It is believed that multiple backlinks from a same domain does not have the stack effect in Google. For example, links from forum signatures and directories will have minimum weigh in Google's ranking algorithm.

Yahoo, on the other hand, chooses to display all the backlinks to the users. A search with the link: operator often reveals most of a page's backlinks to screen. Although they display most of the backlinks, it does not mean that they value them as much as in Google. Unfortunately, backlinks are not as important as they are in Yahoo than in Google.

Yahoo has introduced a site explorer interface to aid the webmasters in locating the backlinks and other useful information. Yahoo also provides one of the best API for the web masters' usage.

MSN also offers to display all the backlinks to the user with the link: operator query. The backlinks update in MSN also seems to be the most updated among all the three search engines. It may seems that MSN focus a lot on backlinks but this is usually not the case. Backlinks are not as important as keyword domain in MSN's point of view.

In conclusion, Google is the only search engine that put a lot of focus on backlinks in their ranking formula and since they are the most popular search engine, backlinks are important for every website. It is recommended to use Yahoo or MSN to check for backlinks because they show a more complete listing.

Source : www.useseo.com