SEOsk.com

Link development, before search engines polluted the process into a currency for search engine rankings, was all about promotion. Links were simply a natural side effect of promoting your website. And one of the most tried and true methods of promotion is PR (as in Public Relations, not Pagerank).

"The American Heritage Dictionary defines PR as "the art or science of establishing and promoting a favorable relationship with the public." A public relations firm does this mainly by promoting favorable news." - Wikipedia

Link development is essentially an online PR campaign that promotes favorable content to the public (who are also known as the linkerati) in an attempt to foster goodwill (which, if we're lucky, results in links as well).

Click to continue reading...

More: continued here

A big part of my responsibilities at TopRank involve the wonderful world of social media. As with search marketing, there is both an “organic” and an advertising component to marketing on social networks, news and media sharing sites.As social media usage increases month over month, marketers have found a way to use these popular sites [...]

More: continued here

Google Israel went black on Thursday to celebrate Earth Hour and today in the United States, Google has gone black here in a global effort to remind cities and people to turn off their lights for one hour and spread the awareness of energy conservation.The Google Black concept was first started to try and convince [...]

More: continued here

Below is what happened in search today, as reported onSearch Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Report: Microsoft To Up Bid For Yahoo To $34 Per Share
  Silicon Alley Insider reacts to Wall Street Analyst Mark Mahaney's note that he anticipates Microsoft will raise its bid for Yahoo from $31 to $34 dollars per share. Barring an 11th hour alternative for Yahoo, this should move toward Yahoo's public position that the original Microsoft bid undervalued the company....
• Google Founders Take $1 Salaries Again; Tell Investors To Say No On Anti-Censorship Proposal
  Google founders: $1 salaries, $13B in stock from CNN Money reports Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with CEO Eric Schmidt, renewed their contracts again at a $1 per year salary, in 2007. You would think that with the falling stock price, the founders might want some extra...
• Google AdWords Video Ads Now Live & In the Wild
  A few minutes ago, I posted screen captures of Google's new video ads in the real, live, and wild search results. These were announced back in February but only now appear to have really gone live. Searches that triggered this result for me included cell phone or smart phones or...
• Is Hiding Content With "Display: None" Legitimate SEO?
  If you're doing SEO on a site with thousands or tens-of-thousands of pages, it's likely you're working with some sort of content management system (CMS). However, CMS systems frequently cause problems with search engines. The great majority of the time these problems arise through ignorance on part of the CMS...
• B2B Marketing Priorities 2008
  Let??™s face it, life is about priorities. There??™s never enough time, money, or resources for everything. Consequently, we must prioritize. Doing so forces us to choose between what we want and what we actually need. And marketers are anything but exempt from such choices. When times are good—and we...
• SMX Advanced Agenda Up! 2 Days, 3 Tracks Of High-Level SEM In Seattle
  The agenda for Search Marketing Expo - SMX Advanced is now available here. Advanced takes place June 3-4 in Seattle. If you're an experienced search marketer, SMX Advanced is the event for you. This intimate, cutting edge two-day event features sessions addressing issues that you won't find discussed anywhere else....
• Public Relations: The Other Important PR In Link Development
  Link development, before search engines polluted the process into a currency for search engine rankings, was all about promotion. Links were simply a natural side effect of promoting your website. And one of the most tried and true methods of promotion is PR (as in Public Relations, not Pagerank)....

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• GMail Trends, Googlified
• New Toolbar and Menus, Official Google Docs Blog
• Service links Gmail and Outlook, bypassing Exchange, News.com

Business Issues

• Proxy Watch: Google: $1 Million Stake In Comsenz; $20 Million For Peakstream; Salaries; Human Rights, paidContent.org
• Google's five-year plan to hit Enterprise continues (Cemaphore helps Google out), Scobleizer
• Sloan Foundation to support Wikipedia's quality and growth initiatives, Wikimedia Foundation

Local, Maps & Mobile

• IconFactory 1.0: The Easy Way to Make Your Markers Meaningful, Google Maps API Blog
• Loladex: Local Search With A Little Help From Your Facebook Friends, TechCrunch
• Yahoo Local's Affiliate Spam: "Unique Case", Small Business SEM

Link Building

• Dofollow Blog Commenting Netiquette vs a Barbecue Party, SEO 2.0
• Reference Pages: How You Can Use Them to Attract Links and Traffic, Dosh Dosh
• Think Beyond The Link: How Exposure Building Trumps Link Building, Search Engine Guide

Paid Search & Contextual

• Paid Search Lessons from David Szetela, SEOmoz
• PPC - SEO Continuum, McAnerin Muse
• adCenter Editor Beta (ACE), Search Engine Roundtable
• AdWords API Version 12 Now Available, AdWords API Blog
• Does Exact Match in Google AdWords Override Broad Match?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Adds Two More AdSensePro Reps: Brian , Search Engine Roundtable
• Google AdSense's Advanced Reports Having Major Uptime Issues, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Power Of Online Campaigns, And The Sad Downfall of Jericho, SEOmoz
• What's New With adCenter Analytics? - adCenter Analytics, adcentercommunity.com

Searching

• Making search better in Catalonia, Estonia, and everywhere else, Official Google Blog
• Five Excellent Mobile Alternative Search Engines, altsearchengines.com
• Search Within a Search: Where's it Leading?, Search Engine Watch
• Yahoo and the Future of Search, Search Engine Watch

SEM Industry

• Go to Search Marketing Salon SF Launch Party, Search Engine Watch Blog
• UnOfficial Sphinn Store Now Open!, Jordan Kasteler

SEO & SEM

• Local Search Engine Optimization Doesn't Exist, BruceClay.com
• Frankly Page Rank --- I Don't Give a Damn!, Bob Massa
• Google's New Search Box Within Search Results Increases Traffic, Search Engine Roundtable
• How Google Sets Works, SEO By The Sea
• Is There a Way to Prove ROI from Search Engine Optimization?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Launching a New Site : With SEO in Mind & as if Search Engines Did Not Exist, Search Engine Journal
• What "Internet Marketers" Can Teach Search Marketers, SEO Fast Start

Social Media

• FriendFeed API: Extend and improve FriendFeed, FriendFeed Blog
• Three Underrepresented Skills, SEOish
• Jeremy Wood of Google Discusses Gadget Marketing, SEOish

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube finally starting to "Get Smart" about advertising?, VentureBeat
• Narrowcasting, Kitchen-Sink ID3, End to End Podcast & Audio Search Optimization!, AIM Clear Blog
• Online video traffic up 178% in a year, Hitwise

Other Items

• Google Japan Doodle, Google Blogoscoped
• Daily SearchCast, March 25, 2008: Google's New Wireless Push; Microhoo Likely? AOL's Decline, Chatty Google , Daily SearchCast
• Japan: URL's Are Totally Out, cabel.name

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• How to Use PPC to Capitalize on Unexpected Offline PR
• Local Search Engine Optimization Doesn't Exist
• New Google AdWords Video Ads
• SEO Those Descriptions For More Google Traffic
• SEO/SEM Job Market Growing?
• 25 Paths to an Insanely Popular Blog
• Change Your Address In The Google Plusbox In 5 Simple Steps
• 5 seo/smo services that promise, but don't deliver
• Three Recession Proof Tactics You Can't Afford to Miss
• Public Relations: The Other important PR in Link Development
• 38 Must Reads on Online Reputation Management
• Why you really should care about social media marketing
• 5 Ways To Make Fellow Bloggers Egg-Static With You
• How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog
• Mixx Puts Breaking News In To Social Media
• The Ready, Fire, Aim, Reload Strategy for Social Media Success
• What is Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?
• All SEOs Are Living With Adult ADD
• How To Set Up Google Ad Manager On Your Site or Blog

More: continued here

It looks like Verisign is increasing fees to $6.86 for a .com domain and $4.23 for a .net domain. Around this time last year the fee went from $6.00 to $6.42 for a .com domain and from $3.50 to $3.85 for a .net domain. The new fees become effective October 1st.

More: continued here

While I am presently an offline/online media relations guy, my background spans a variety of media and tactics. As such, I have always been fascinated with the phenomena of SuperBowl advertisements. What other event allows you to generate buzz simply by making a media buy?When it comes to search, it is nearly [...]

More: continued here

Let??™s face it, life is about priorities. There??™s never enough time, money, or resources for everything. Consequently, we must prioritize. Doing so forces us to choose between what we want and what we actually need.

And marketers are anything but exempt from such choices.

When times are good—and we have a bit more money to work with—we can be creative and try some new things. But when times get tough and we need to tighten our belts, we??™re often forced to determine what initiatives we can??™t live without. And posthaste.

Click to continue reading...

More: continued here