SEOsk.com

Posted by randfish

I was browsing on Technorati today (mostly because Google Blog Search has gone down the toilet in the past 3 weeks) and came across one of the first banner ads to have caught my attention in years:

Now, I'll admit, I'm a complete sissy. I've been in precisely three fights in my life, all of them before the age of 18 and I only won one (and that was because two other nearby kids happened to hate the guy I was fighting just as much as I did). Plus, I've got an affinity for deliciously sordid British phrases like "I'll do you like a kipper," which I assume is some kind of fish that Britons enjoy kicking to refresh their briny scent. Imagine my utter dismay when I reached this page:

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What the hell, Toyota? Not only are you a car company (having nothing to do with the glorious pasttime that is pub-fighting), you're also not even trying to relate your content to the ad I clicked. At least show some olde tyme ass-whoopin' moves that I can pull on Sir Rubbish-the-Barstool-Tosser and Lord Knicker-Bottom before they turn my groin to pudding.

What's the lesson here? The right ads can attract even the savviest and most jaded of web surfers. And the wrong content can actually make them less likely to buy your products through negative branding. Think carefully ad designers - those clicks are hard enough to come by.

p.s. Yes, I actually did write this post myself; it's not secretly by Rebecca.

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What is a quality incoming link? This article describes the key characteristics of a perfect link. For explanation purposes, the sample company is a shoe retailer called John's Sports, and the keyword phrase being optimized for is "red Reebok tennis shoes".Webmasters and search engine optimisation (SEO), practitioners appreciate that quality links from other web sites are one of the foundations to getting found on the Internet. Without quality inbound links, it is highly unlikely a web page more...

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Ask.com became the latest victim of the challenges confronting the search market. In the wake of announced layoffs the number four search engine said that it would change its focus to concentrate on its core market. What that means exactly seems to be a topic of debate....
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If you're following the PEW studies on Internet Life and Campaign '08, then you know the Presidential election will be won or lost online - or by whoever drinks the most wheatjuice on the campaign trail.

The election won't quite be "Go Vote at TNA Wrestling!" or counted by the TNAwrestling.com boys. (Except, maybe, in Florida.)

Politics makes strange bedfellows (Eliot, David, Jim) but nothing makes stranger bedfellows than social media and politics.

We're often asked by readers how they can prepare for a career in search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and social media optimization (SEO). Well there's one way even we didn't think of: politics.

So here's a quiz you'll never get right without searching online:

1. Which director of social media is the former press secretary to the former Governor of the great state of Florida? (pictured while in office below)

2. Which social media panel is he or she speaking on in the next couple months? (Hint: think Wikipedia)

3. Where and when is the conference? (Hint: $100. off if you register by March 31)

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When you have parts of your site that you don't want the search engine spiders to index, you let them know using a document called robots.txt. But for the coding-challenged, creating that document has not always been easy. Thankfully, Google has created a robots.txt generator as part of its Webmaster Tools.

Once your document is created, you can test it with the robots.txt analysis tool. Google points out that not every search engine recognizes robots.txt. They recommend securing truly sensitive material with password protection.

It's a big week for the Google Webmaster team. Today, they're hosting the first ever Google Webmaster chat, which begins at 12pm EST/9am PST. The chat will feature a site clinic and also discuss image optimization.

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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 phones. It seems like BlackBerry and AT&T are testing the new AdWords video ads. Here is a screen capture:

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A privacy law taking shape in the New York legislature will make it a crime for internet companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent. And because of the generally boundary-free nature of the internet, it would effectively set a national precedent for companies collecting data about internet use.

The New York Times says that if the law is passed, computer users could request that companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft, which routinely keep track of searches and surfing conducted on their own properties, not follow them around.

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