Social Media Becoming The Next Content Discovery Tool

When it comes to succeeding on the internet, there’s not such thing as the ‘good ol days’. Either you keep up or you’re left behind to straggle for scraps. The latest hot commodity on the internet is social media. There has been a fuss made about how effective social media really is when it comes to business. Especially small businesses. The arguments go back and forth about social media and if it helps closing rates at all.

Nielsen has released a study that puts social media into perspective, and shows at its current state how it’s viewed by the people. The basic results state that while search and portals are still dominating, social media is making it’s way as a defining search method. Here’s a chart showing the percentage of people who use social media for searching the internet:
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If You’re Flying High On Yahoo, Be Sure The Same Is True For Bing

While most people strive for that first page in the search results of Google, others take a different approach. Many optimize for Yahoo, because sometimes a better response is found there. If you’re one of these people you might want to start planning now. For the Bing/Yahoo merger that is.
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Stop Worrying About Ad Position — So Says Google Expert

There are certain times in life where position is everything. Making sure you’re in the front of a buffet line, so your food is warm. Making sure you’re in a lane by yourself at a stoplight so you can burn off the line faster than anyone else. Up until now I’d venture to guess you thought your ad positions for Google Adsense made a difference to. According to Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, you couldn’t be more wrong.
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The Never Ending Saga of No-Follow

There are SEO experts out there that live and die by page rank sculpting. The art of driving traffic to a certain location on your website can pay off big time if you know how to do it. It takes a keen sense of content monitoring, and knowing where to no-follow.
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What To Do If Your Site Traffic Drops (Hint: Don’t Panic)

We’ve all been there. I don’t think there’s an expert out there in the world of site building that hasn’t had to face it. I’m of course talking about having to watch as your site declines in performance. It’s a tough thing to witness, especially if you’ve been updating it frequently, and doing all the steps you’d been told to do. Yet, your site’s performance continues to drop.
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If Microsoft Buys Yahoo, What Will That Mean?

The deal has been going on for about a year and a half. There are times where it looks like the deal to buy Yahoo is over, then we hear about it again. According to many sources, Microsoft buying Yahoo will be reality soon. Of course all could fall through, but there has to be a deal that can make this happen.
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Will The Chrome OS Change The Way We View Computing and Search?

It’s an understatement to say that Google dropped a huge news bomb on us the other day, with the unveiling of Google Chrome OS. Since the announcement there has been all kinds of wild speculation as to what a Google backed open source OS means, and how it will effect the market.

Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management, made this statement in the official announcement post,

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”

The interesting take away from the announcement, is how much the world of search is going to change with Google Chrome OS. Already, the internet has been taken over by the search engine. Now, our OS’s could potentially be dominated by the idea of search. I’ll leave you to ponder as to whether that’s a positive or negative.

Either way, as website owners and operators it’s vital to plan ahead and perhaps think of ways to take advantage of the potential change that Google Chrome OS will provide. For a good start, check out this article on Wired’s website.

Keep An Eye On Your SEO When Switching To CMS

When you first start a website, many times you don’t have a grasp as to just how large it potentially could be. Generally, you start with HTML which is fine for awhile. However, when content starts to be updated at a heavily frequent pace, sometimes change is in order.
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Use Twellow To Maximize Your Twitter Usage

Twitter, and actually social media in general is becoming the hot new trend when generating page traffic, and conversions. The problem with Twitter, is trying to find a cohesive market to target your brand towards. Certainly, you can go on Twitter and just search around. Why make things hard on yourself?

If you want to increase efficiency and ease of Twitter research, then try out Twellow. This service is basically a ‘yellow pages’ for Twitter. You can go in and search different categories, to find users associated with those keywords.
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Changes in Google Algorithms

For you SEO experts out there, you should know that a change in Google algorithms will be appearing soon. The news has been reported by WebProNews. The next obvious question is, ‘what does this mean for us?’.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a shining optimist, and the situation is no different here. This algorithm change, which is targeting Black Hat SEO can only be good for site owners, and marketers. Unless you do use Black Hat tactics, then you’re just SOL.

Of course, as with any change to Google there could potentially be unforeseen problems. Maybe the algorithm reads your site incorrectly, grouping it in with the Black Hat sites. I’m not saying it will, but it’s always good to be prepared.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this as it develops. As always, feel free to drop me an email or discuss this topic in the forums.

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