How Keyword Density, Frequency, Prominence And Proximity Affects Search Engine Rankings

In this article, I explain the difference between keyword density, frequency, prominence and proximity, and how they affect search engine rankings.
Keyword Density
Keyword density refers to the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page.
The preferred keyword density ratio varies from search engine to search engine. In general, I recommend using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%.
You may like to use this real-time keyword analysis tool to help you optimize a web page's keyword density ratio.
Keyword Frequency
Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page.
The theory is that the more times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page, the more relevance a search engine is likely to give the page for a search with those keywords.
In general, I recommend that you ensure that the most important keyword or keyword phrase is the most frequently use keywords in a web page.
But be careful not to abuse the system by repeating the same keyword or keyword phrases over and over again.
Keyword Prominence
Keyword prominence refers to how prominent keywords are within a web page.
The general recommendation is to place important keywords at, or near, the start of a web page, sentence, TITLE or META tag.
Keyword Proximity
Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. In general, the closer the keywords are, the better.
For example:
How Keyword Density Affects Search Engine Rankings


How Keyword Density Affects Rankings In Search Engine
Using the example above, if someone searched for "search engine rankings," a web page containing the first sentence is more likely to rank higher than the second.




source:
http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/marketing-tips/keyword-densities.html

New Version of HTML - HTML 5

HTML was developed by the W3C until 2004, when members of the HTML working group grew disturbed with the direction the W3C was going with HTML. They felt that the W3C was not paying enough attention to the real-world development needs of the language and focusing too much on XML and XHTML. So they formed a new group called WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) devoted to evolving the Web. They started by working on a new specification of HTML - HTML 5.

HTML 5 is a new version of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 focusing on the needs of Web application developers as well as evolving HTML and addressing issues found in the current specifications.

You Can Use HTML 5 Right Now

While the HTML 5 specification (also on the W3C as a Working Draft) is not finalized yet, you can use it with any browser that supports it or any part of it. For example, many Web browsers currently support the [a href='http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-canvas-element.html]canvas element. This element is used to draw graphics with scripting. It is currently supported by Safari, Firefox, Opera, and IE 8.

Why Should You Learn HTML 5

HTML 5 is the newest specification for HTML, and many browsers are going to start supporting it in the future. One nice thing about HTML 5 is that it attempts to stay backwards compatible. So if you don't want to learn it just yet, you don't need to.

If you build Web applications you will eventually want to learn HTML 5. There are a lot of new attributes and tags built just for Web applications. For instance, there are a number of new event handlers for drag and drop:

ondrag
ondragstart
ondragend
ondrop
And many more.

At this point in time, there is not a lot of support for HTML 5, but that support is growing all the time. By staying abreast of the changes you'll be prepared when they become widely available for use.

source:
http://webdesign.about.com/od/html5/qt/what_is_html5.htm

7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 hours

Most SEO’s will advise you to buy an existing site/domain (lots of age benefit), but there are times when you need to start from scratch with a fresh domain. It can sometimes take a couple of weeks to get a new domain indexed by Google (even longer to start ranking!). In order to speed up the process of getting your site indexed quickly, even in 24 hours, follow the steps outlined below:

1) Create 5 pages of content
Skip the “under construction” page and write several pages of real content, at least a few paragraphs.

2) Create Internal Links to your Pages
Put the content in a template with a menu structure to make this step easier. You can find free templates at oswd.org and other places, at least to get started. Link to the content through the menu, and if you have a major landing page, link to it from the content of a page or two.

3) Tag on Social Bookmarking Sites
After just a few minutes to create an account with these sites you can submit a link to your site. This gives you an instant way for Google and other search engines to find your site because these social bookmarking sites get visited by the search engine bots (like the Googlebot) quite regularly. A few bookmarking sites to recommend: Del.icio.us, BlinkList, StumbleUpon.com, and Furl. Make sure you tag them with common words, like those you find on their tag clouds (BlinkList has a good one, just scroll down on the page to see it).

4) Comment on popular and recent blogs (with your link)
Find 5 blogs that are fairly popular, relevant to your site, and have a recent blog post (last day or two). Read the post and add a comment that contributes to the discussion, including a link to your site in the URL field.

5) Create, Submit, and Ping your XML Sitemap
You can create a free XML sitemap here then upload the file to your site (just save it as sitemap.xml). Then ping Google with your sitemap by typing in the following URL in your browser, replacing the domain name with your own:

http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

Next, create an account with Google Webmaster Central, add your site, and submit your XML sitemap.

6) Install Google Analytics
Add Google Analytics (free) to your site. Don’t forget to verify your site with them to get the data collection started.

7) Run some Google Ads
Create an account with Google Adwords and start running some ads, even if its just for the domain name, company name, or some long tail keywords. Google has to go to your site because of their quality score, which includes “your landing page quality”. Just spend a couple of bucks and it can help jumpstart the indexing.

With these steps, you should see your site indexed fairly quickly. I can’t guarantee the 24 hours, but it is possible. At the very least it will speed up the indexing significantly (from weeks to days). Look for the “googlebot” to visit in your site analytics. Then look for your site to show up with Google by doing a search with the site: operator (for example, site:sphinn.com). Enjoy!

source:
http://www.soloseo.com/blog/2007/11/26/7-steps-to-get-your-new-site-indexed-in-24-hours/

Search Engine Marketing

WHAT IS SEM?

Search engine marketing, or SEM, involves using search engines to a company's best advantage, employing strategies to direct increased internet traffic towards a site and therefore enhance sales opportunities. For the most successful plans, SEM is grounded in detailed research. WebDynamic works hard to offer the most advanced resources and capabilities for analysis, providing the most effective SEM solution possible.

Because SEM is a new and constantly changing area, WebDynamic works to stay ahead of all the latest developments. For effective SEM Australia wide, call us now and see how an innovative internet marketing solution can help you achieve your goals.

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF SEM?

SEM offers you many benefits, allowing you to reach beyond the limits of traditional marketing techniques. When you choose WebDynamic to develop an internet marketing strategy for your needs, you get the advantages of:

Great leverage- Effective SEM enables you to attract millions of potential customers quickly and directly

Low risk, cost-effective solutions- SEM saves money and lets you avoid many of the risks associated with traditional marketing techniques

Measurable results- WebDynamic can monitor how well your strategy is working and track how and why your customers are finding you

Exact targeting- We allow you to reach precise demographic groups, targeting the right sort of visitor to your site to maximize sales opportunities

For quality SEM Australia wide, call WebDynamic now. Our experienced web strategists are waiting to show you how SEM can turn your business around.

HOW DOES SEM AFFECT MY BRAND IMAGE?

As well as giving you more sales opportunities, an SEM strategy benefits your company by creating a strong brand presence on the web, enhancing your image as a credible and reputable business. Your company will benefit from:

Visibility- SEM helps to make it easier for customers to find your services and contact details

Exposure- When more people hear about your business, SEM increases your chances for future sales opportunities

Credibility- SEM works to enhance your reputation as a legitimate and professional company

Brand awareness- Your name is more likely to be noticed and remembered when it is constantly popping up in search engine listings

ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS WITH QUALITY SEM

WebDynamic offers professional internet marketing strategies for all kinds of Australian companies, helping businesses to realize their goals. For an effective SEM plan tailored perfectly to your needs, call us now and speak with one of our qualified consultants.

WebDynamic is dedicated to providing the best possible SEM services for clients from all business sectors. Many years of experience has enabled us to fully refine our techniques and processes, so that we can offer you:

Expert procedures- Our experience has taught us the most successful SEM techniques, allowing us to implement your marketing strategy quickly and effectively.

Inside understanding- Our in depth knowledge of audience behaviours and internal search engine processes gives you an inside perspective and a unique marketing edge

Comprehensive research- We have the most advanced tools and resources for research and analysis, helping to tailor your SEM solution directly to your needs

Full in-house services- Avoid the risks associated with third parties- we offer a complete SEM solution package all in one place

ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS WITH QUALITY SEM

WebDynamic offers professional internet marketing strategies for all kinds of Australian companies, helping businesses to realize their goals. For an effective SEM plan tailored perfectly to your needs, call us now and speak with one of our qualified consultants.

Source:

http://www.webdynamic.com.au/sem-australia.html

Tri-fecta of social media marketing on the web

Twitter, Facebook, & MySpace 
These networks are the tri-fecta of social media marketing on the web. Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace currently dominate the social media game with the most users, the most activity, and the highest chance for a successful campaign. While not all businesses do well with social media, everyone should have some sort of presence on these three networks. Depending on your business and your time commitment, you may want to pursue activity on other networks as well, but starting out with these three is a great way to get used to the social media sphere and how to interact with users in this space.

We are going to go in depth with each of these networks, in order to give you the best idea of how to get started, and what to expect from growing your networks socially.

Twitter - What is it?
Twitter is a mirco-blogging network which invites its users to answer a simple question: What are you doing? This question is answered in 140 characters or less. The interesting thing about twitter is that it is not a one to one type of communication tool, it’s a one to many communication tool. So, you can send a message out, instantly to an entire community ready to respond in seconds.

Facebook - What is it? 
Facebook is a social networking site originally exclusive to college students. Building in popularity since it’s inception in 2005, now Facebook is THE social networking service and it’s available to everyone. Built around the idea of a profile, you can connect with former classmates, co-workers, friends, family, etc. It offers many exciting features and truly is the most popular social networking tool at the moment.

Myspace - What is it? 
The originator of the social media frenzy, Myspace is the first big player on the block. Very similar to Facebook, Myspace allows users to create a profile on their network, and connect with others via messages, comments, and group communities. While many businesses tend to shy away from Myspace due to its sorted past, it is still a powerful social network, and could be a good place for certain kinds of businesses to network.

source:

http://www.customermagnetism.com

Google Architecture

Google Architecture

Google Search Engine works upon its own algorithm to present the results for every search query. The algorithms are kept secret but there are certain rules which are followed and need to be understood keeping the website optimization in view. Following is a generalized working of Google’s search engine.

Google Architecture: Web crawling is carried out by several distributed crawlers. 

ndexing is done in three fundamental steps.

1. Parsing 

2. Indexing documents into Barrels

3. Sorting

Then the ranking system comes into play. Google maintains much more information than any other typical search engines like Yahoo & Bing. Every hit list contains position, font and capitalization info. Google’s ranking system is designed such that no particular factor is given too much focus. For a single word query google will look at the hit list for that keyword. The hits are considered as different types (title, anchor, URL, plain text large font, plain text small font….) where each has its own type-weight.

Google is successful in giving the most relevant results for different search queries because of such control measures and filter processes. So according to Google search engine news, keep it simple and original to rank better in their search results.

source:-

http://search-engine-news.blogspot.com

Three Tips to Better Manage Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

If you are still "testing the waters" when it comes to social media marketing, which are behind the times. Social media marketing has matured beyond the stage of trial and error and has become a critical component of any online marketing campaign. Some web marketers have even said they would be willing to give up their website through their social profiles if I had to choose (not something I do recommend, for the record). The point is that almost everyone knows they need to get a social media campaign marketing course, but many are still a little fuzzy on the details hard.

Here are 3 tips to better manage your marketing campaign social media:
1. Create bios first
All social networks, large or small, allows users to create a profile description of themselves. However, each network has a different idea about the kind of information you get to share and how much space you have to do in Facebook and Twitter See, for example. Facebook gives you a virtually unlimited space to present your company and your brand. Twitter gives you about two sentences. Both streamline the process of creating profiles on social networks and ensure that the information and messages are consistent, develop different profiles of different lengths before starting his campaign.

2. Decide who will be your "voice"
Almost all of the marketing department has a viable claim as to why you should manage your marketing campaign social media. PR says it should be in charge because they are accustomed to being the public voice of your company. SEO expert says it should be in charge, because he knows how to use social media to create a strong portfolio and brand relationship online. The creative team, brand manager, etc all have the same reasons. No matter what you decide to hand over the reins, just make sure that someone in charge and responsible for coming through their social profiles. Having one person in charge shall ensure that its brand remains intact and consistent in your messaging.

3. Emerge from the Big 3
You have to be on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but that does not mean you only have to be in such networks. There are literally hundreds of smaller niche networks, so you can develop a community. Just because they are small does not mean they are not valuable! It might even be a social network that appeals directly to his audience, making it potentially more powerful than any other network could join. Just remember that if you join a network, there is much value in taking time to really build a community around your brand. If only the creation of profiles for a link, you are not doing much to add real value to your campaign.

These three are just to get the ball rolling in campaign social media marketing. Obviously you need a lot of work and time to run a successful social media campaign. But this is a blog for another day.

Long tail keywords - PPC Beats Long Tail Keywords

After years of selling in Internet, we have come to realize that a more creative sales plan is PPC advertising. Adwords pay per click, however, has its drawbacks. If you think marketing has been really small keyword, mounts a chance of losing a lot of money. It is quite a surprising statement to tender for the same keyword with some knowledge of marketing, rather than having an income to outperform their competitors. That's one reason I suggest to broaden their horizons through the regulation of long tail keywords with PPC improved formula.

Long tail keywords are treasures that employers shadow home shopping operation mostly do not realize it. A keyword in the queue lengthens a password against a singular word. Instead of regulating a keyword related to the subject, you can put together for a long tail keyword as a way to get item. Long tail keywords have actually been in effect since not all people just dig a singular word, today the majority of Internet searches is an alphabet soup of mixed.

Living in famed make use of the word of long tail keywords in your PPC advertising campaign, regulating the collection of keywords as a tool for Google AdWords keywords and SEO Book. These supports have now been used to produce a volume of competitors to a current buzzword. You also will be means to find out how the majority of searches per month for each keyword is created. In more than help win a PPC keyword tool promotion costs of a series of keyword phrases, due to the momentum of his campaign.

Using long tail keywords usually do not help me to beat a price promotion despite PPC also helps me get the chain on the first page with my blogs and articles. Long tail keywords has been forced to sectors of the campaigns of PPC on my machine to create income online. Before dropping out of the regulation of pay per click promotion indicating a long tail regulate cruise keywords in your campaign.

How Can US internet providers hijack users' search queries ??

Searches made by millions of internet users are being hijacked and redirected by some internet service providers in the US. Patents filed by Paxfire, the company involved in the hijacking, suggest that it may be part of a larger plan to allow ISPs to generate revenue by tracking the sites their customers visit. It may also be illegal.

Reese Richman, a New York law firm that specialises in consumer protection lawsuits, today filed a class action against one of the ISPs and Paxfire, which researchers believe provided the equipment used to hijack and redirect the searches. The suit, filed together with Milberg, another New York firm, alleges that the process violated numerous statutes, including wiretapping laws.

The hijacking seems to target searches for certain well-known brand names only. Users entering the term "apple" into their browser's search bar, for example, would normally get a page of results from their search engine of choice. The ISPs involved in the scheme intercept such requests before they reach a search engine, however. They pass the search to an online marketing company, which directs the user straight to Apple's online retail website.

More than 10 ISPs in the US, which together have several million subscribers, are redirecting queries in this way (see below for a complete list). None of the companies would comment on the redirection scheme, but evidence collected by Christian Kreibich and Nicholas Weaver at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, who discovered the redirection and have been monitoring it for several months, suggest that the process generates revenue for the ISPs.

The Berkeley team has identified 165 search terms, from "apple" and "dell" to "Safeway" and "bloomingdales", that are passed to marketing companies and then redirected to the appropriate retail website. The marketing companies include organisations like Commission Junction, a Santa Barbara, California, a firm that retailers pay to supply traffic to their websites.

Organisations that provide Commission Junction with traffic, which may include Paxfire and the ISPs the Berkeley team monitored, receive a cut of any purchase their users make. The cut is typically around 3 per cent. Commission Junction said that it was investigating the behaviour identified by the Berkeley researchers.

source - newscientist.com

Do you know about“What do you love?” (wdyl.com) by Google

“What do you love?” (wdyl.com) by Google – Google Launches a Different Kind of Search Experience

Google has launched a site called wdyl.com. That stands for “What do you love?”. That is the all the site says with a search box and a heart button until you enter your query.

Once you enter it, you get a different kind of search results page. The page will show you a graphical interface with boxes for results in Image Search, Maps, Google Alerts, Patent Search, Google Trends, Product Search, Sketchup, YouTube, Books, Google Translate, Blog Search, Picasa, Google News, Google Earth, Google Mobile Search, etc. It also has boxes for various Google tools.

For example, if I tell Google I love “India” it will also show Gmail box telling me to email somebody about India, a Google Calendar box telling me to plan an event about India, a Google Voice box telling me to call somebody about India, a Google Moderator box telling me to organize a debate about India (a fantastic idea), a Google Groups box telling me to start a India discussion group (another great idea), and a Chrome box telling me to access India stuff on the web, faster.

For more details -

http://www.seo4world.com

History of Yahoo Search Engine

The Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web History

The two founders of Yahoo are David Filo and Jerry Yang started their Guide ("Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web") in 1994. And the more they worked on their guide, the more they had to split the website into more categories, and split into sub categories and more sub categories. This is the actual concept of Yahoo. A core and multiples road (categories) to lead you where you want to.

The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle".

Yahoo! got its first million hit per day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.

Yahoo! gets 2 millions investment from Sequoia Capital and a dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists in march 1995 and is Incorporated .

Yahoo received other funding in the end of 1995 from the investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank.

Yahoo! had its initial public offering on April 12 1996, raising $33.8 million dollars, by selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each.

in 2000 the radio news station CNBC reported that Yahoo! Inc. and eBay were in discussions to initiate a 50/50 merger.

In 2002 Yahoo acquired Inktomi and in July 2003 acquired Overture Services and its subsidiaries Altavista and All the Web. In 2004 Yahoo dropped Google Powered results and returned to using its own algorithm to provide search results and launches its own search engine technology.

August 11, 2005 Yahoo! acquires 40% of Alibaba.com for $1 billion US, and Alibaba will take over operation of Yahoo! China.

Nowadays in 2006 Yahoo serve 345 millions users each month with a budget revenue of 3.57 billions dollars and 7,631 employees (2004).

Google's budget is of 6 billions dollars with 5400 employees (December 2005).

For more informations about Yahoo History you can check on Wikipedia.com or Yahoo.com the history sections if you really are in fond of it. 

Source -

irkawebpromotions.com

Yahoo Ranking Algorithm

Yahoo is one of the major Search Engine on internet when visitors need to find relevant documents. It is also the major web portal on internet.

Yahoo Search Engine is as important as Google in term of search engine optimization, you must have a good ranking on Yahoo SERP's or you will miss some potential traffic opportunities for your website.

Yahoo provides informations to more than 350 millions users a month, it is more than Google.

Yahoo isn't only a search engine but has many different services such as Yahoo mail and Yahoo news!

Yahoo Ranking Algorithm

Yahoo Algorithm is not far from Google Algorithm but different at some points, Yahoo gives much interests in taking its web directory as part of the its Ranking Algorithm. It is sad but real, if you are not in Yahoo Web Directory, you can wait a long time before you appear in Yahoo SERPS. Zeal was the solution for a while if you didn't have the budget of adding a website in Yahoo Web Directory, now Zeal shut down, so submit your website to Yahoo.

If you have a business website you will have to pay $299 dollars annualy to remain inside Yahoo Web Directory. For organizations or informational web sites you can try to Submit freely your web site to Yahoo Web Directory.

Although it's not by applying a fast submission to Yahoo Web Directory and after forgetting about it that your web site will rank in the TOP 10 for each keywords you target! You will have to do some follow up with the Yahoo editors in order to get your website inside!

Also yahoo seems to love more site-wide linking than google.

The Yahoo Ranking Algorithm:

- The title of your website must contain your major keywords. The title is the biggest ranking factor of Yahoo's raking algorithm!

- The description you give when submitting to yahoo web directory should include your major keywords, however don't try to repeat them too much. Very important step.

- Click Popularity is part of Yahoo's Algorithm, Google doesn't put much on that to determines one website ranking. The more visitors click on your website from Yahoo SERP's, the more you'll get close to the Top Ranking.

- The category you are listed in Yahoo Web Directory should (if possible) contain some keywords. This plays a little with the ranking.

- Site-wide linking. Its a choice you have to make, you can get one link per domain in order to rank well on google search engine but you can also get a lot of site-wide linking from other site, Yahoo loves it.

Some people on internet say that Yahoo uses PageRank from google as part of its algorithm. Web sites you see appearing in Yahoo SERP's TOP 10 have sometimes PageRank and sometimes not. PageRank is only used for google search engine ranking and it's affiliates.

Yahoo Ranking Rules

You have to submit your website over yahoo web directory and search engines. Here are the links : Yahoo Website Free Request.

Do not submit all your web pages one by one, you just need to submit your home page, spamming the submission process can result to a ban of your web site on yahoo search engine and you might never appear on yahoo SERPS.

Source - 

irkawebpromotions.com

The Strategies of SEO Experts

Google’s Panda update in June sent a large number of websites plumetting down the search engine rankings.  This has left many SEO consultants and webmasters asking why is Google penalizing some good sites to get the bad ones?

There has been widespread discussion amongst webmasters and SEO experts as to what is the best approach to get their sites out of Google’s black list as soon as possible.

HubPages is a site which was hit hard by recent updates, so it has had to try to recover quickly. It found a solution by dividing their site into a thousand sub-domains and shifting the low quality content to some of these sub-domains. This way when the Googlebot crawls such pages it will penalize the low quality pages only rather then the entire website. However I question if this is a viable long-term strategy or will it only get you out of the Panda effect temporarily?

Apart from original, well written and grammatically correct content, there are other things you can do to your site to recover from Panda. SEOs and Webmasters on the WebmasterWorld forum have put together a list of tips they have used to recover from the Panda update which includes:

• Keyword density and its placement
• Site architecture and layout
• Right proportion of advertisement/ images/ content so that the page does not look spammy
• Studying the analytics and behavioral characteristics of the visitors on your site help in identifying the problem areas and making the subsequent corrections
• Choose quality of inbound links from reputed websites over quantity
• Continuously building backlinks for your site ensures your pages being visited by the Gogolebot on a regular basis
• Regular content, product description, rate updates also adds to the value of your site
• Block the GoogleBot from crawling the low quality pages, if any on your site
• Clean up your site for any broken links or webmasters tool errors
• The Page Speed Tool provided by Google is a good indicator of your website quality and what all areas need to be worked on

Though no official guidelines on ‘how to recover from the Panda update’ has been given by Google, these tips should .

Since we know that Google is making constant updates to its algorithm and that Google Panda is here to stay, a safe and reliable game plan will work best.

source-

ineedhits.com

SEO Preit Information: New Google Panda Updates

SEO Preit Information: New Google Panda Updates: "Official: Google Panda 2.3 Update Is Live Google has confirmed to Search Engine Land that late last week it pushed out a small update to th..."

SEO 3.0 - SEO News

If you follow changes in SEO, you have probably recently heard the term SEO 3.0. It was coined by an SEO professional named Mike Meyer in late 2010. It is an extension of the concept of Web 2.0 but specific to search engine optimization. For anyone who is not yet familiar, here is a quick primer.

SEO 3.0 is an identifier meant to help organize search engine optimization phases into chunks that fit into a timeline. This ensures you are using only the most current techniques because even some from just a year or two past can get you in trouble. Following is a basic breakdown:

SEO 1.0 (1995 to 1998): This is where it all began. Basically, there were no rules. This era is affectionately known as "The Wild West of Online Marketing".

SEO 2.0 (1999 to 2010): This is what most of us know today. Lots of rules that changed constantly.

SEO 3.0 (Oct. 2010 and on): This is what we need to know in order to succeed both today AND tomorrow. These are the new rules we need to learn and apply if we want to succeed after all the major search engine algorithm changes that happened in late 2010 and so far in 2011.

So what were the major changes? It's more like what weren't the major changes. There were more game changing search engine events between October 2010 and March 2011 than there had been in the previous decade combined. Let's look at a few of the biggest:

Number One: Bing Joins Forces with Yahoo!

In late October 2010, Bing and Yahoo! made good on their long-standing threat (or promise) to unite - at least as far as rankings go. Now Yahoo!, which has about 22% of the search market volume, displays nearly identical listings to Bing. Because Bing already had about 11% of the search market's volume, Bing and Yahoo! combined now control a full third or more of the search market.

So how does this affect you? Well, in the past many people did not bother optimizing for Bing because it accounted for so little of the actual search space. For those people, the money they spent optimizing for Yahoo! is gone with no return on investment in sight, and they have to start fresh with Bing. That is a big deal.

Tip One: Start paying more attention to getting ranked on Bing. Some of the more important things on Bing are:

Good titles that include your three most important keywords and your company name (optional) separated by pipes

(Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 | Keyword 3 | Company Name).

Descriptions that contains your three most important keywords.

Making sure each keyword appears on the written page about two to three times for every one hundred words, but no more than six times on a page.

Another big deal is SEO friendly URLs. So if your keyword was "search engine friendly" this would be a great URL:

domain.com/search-engine-friendly.html.

Number Two: Google Goes from Global to Local

For more than a decade Google has been proudly making the world seem smaller and smaller by being "the global search engine". Now, it wants to be the "local search engine". To accomplish this it has made all kinds of changes. One of the first, and biggest, was moving the Google Places '7-pack' listings from the upper right corner (where most people ignored them) to be integrated right into the main search results (where nobody could miss them!) Welcome to Google's latest and greatest "Place Search".

What does this mean to you? It means that if you do not have a Google Places listing claimed, your nearest local competitors will be eating your lunch online when local customers find them instead of you at the top of page one search results within Google Place Search.

Tip Two: Visit "places.google.com/business" to claim your free Google Places listing. When you do, complete the listing as close to 100% as possible and then try to get some feedback posted. This will go a long way toward getting the best results from your local search engine optimization efforts.

Number Three: Google Eliminates the Need to Click

Google might have borrowed this idea from Bing (actually MSN a couple years back). It's called Instant Preview and it makes it so potential visitors no longer have to click on your search listing to decide if they like your site. This is thanks to a small magnifying glass icon on each search result that, when clicked, turns on a preview mode that shows a large thumbnail view of your web page. If the visitor does not like the looks of it, they simply move on with having to commit to the click.

This means anyone can now really "judge your book by its cover" and never even glance at what you have to say. A few months ago all you had to worry about was compelling copywriting. Now you need to worry about getting a person to invest one second in actually clicking the link. The fewer people who visit your site, the lower your rankings will go. Yes. Google does keep an eye on site popularity.

Tip Three: If you start seeing a decline in the number of visitors to your site, try this simple test. Print out a nice color copy of your web page (usually the home page) and the closely ranked pages of your competitors. Now mount all of them on a matte board and cover it with another matte board. Then have someone unfamiliar with your site quickly glance at the (now uncovered) board with the pages on it. Reveal the pages for just 2 to 3 seconds and ask them to indicate the one they like most. Repeat this process at least five times with other volunteers. If yours is not the page the majority selects, consider revising it until it is.

source -

seo-news

New Google Panda Updates

Official: Google Panda 2.3 Update Is Live

Google has confirmed to Search Engine Land that late last week it pushed out a small update to the Panda filter.

“We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users,” a Google spokesperson told us. “This most recent update is one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year,” the spokesperson added.

Over the past week or so, I have been tracking the complaints in the various forums, including the large ongoing thread at WebmasterWorld.

At first, I felt the complaints suggested that Google was doing rolling updates of Panda, as opposed Panda updates being manually pushed out. I was wrong, they are still being pushed put manually, Google says.

Google told us “this update incorporates some new signals that help differentiate between higher- and lower-quality sites. As a result, some sites are ranking higher after this most recent update.”

Previous Panda Updates

So far, the Panda update schedule has been like this:

• Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 weeks later)
• Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about  4 weeks later)
• Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 weeks later)
• Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 weeks later)

The 2.1 to 2.3 dates are approximate. Google may have rolled them out just a bit earlier or later than those exact days. The bigger issue is that you can see a trend developing. About every month, Google reruns its Panda algorithm.

Each time Panda is run, there’s a chance some hit from the last update will improve, while other sites might see traffic drops. In between updates, changes people may make specifically in hopes of fixing a Panda problem won’t show any impact until the next update is run.

Source:

http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-2-3-update-is-live-87230