Social media is changing and evolving. In essence, social media sites like the search engines of 8-9 years ago, are growing up. They’re learning from their mistakes, and are constantly improving.

Source: NWCreation.net

Of course, this constant evolution means that users of social media must too change and adapt to the fluid landscape.

For anyone hoping to get their submissions seen by the masses on various social media, this means continuously expanding your network of friends.

3 Reasons to Constantly Build Out Your Base of Friends:
In particular, there are 3 reasons to continuously build out friends in various social media:

Here it’s Friday, the weekend is at the door and you know what I’m thinking?

Now I can get some stuff done without all the stress…

That’s the weekend I’m looking forward to.

I want to read up, and search about, AIRWeb 2008 because honestly an "International Workshop on Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web" sounds just like my thing.

I want to revisit Word Order in phrase important? to parse some things Orion said there.

I want to spend some more time with Niall Kennedy’s proof-of-concept post sniff browser history for improved user experience.

What is ‘Authority’ with respect to SEO?

The answer may surprise you!

Here’s what most SEOs can say with utmost confidence; we know that the concept of ‘authority’ is an important one to rankings and traffic from organic search.

Its comical though, perhaps even sad. Over time, “Authority” has come to mean something completely different to Google, than it does to SEOs. This is no one’s fault … just a condition created by imperfect information, and the need to suffice.

The Engines’ Definition of Authority:
To Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, et al, links are the consequence of being an authority, they do not make you an authority.

Credit: Pixel Addict

Is Facebook Getting Too Close to Our Interests?

Recently, when logging into my Facebook profile, I was greeted with a very targeted ad that got me thinking - Can Facebook read my mind? The ad in question was along the left sidebar, and was for Hostgator, a popular shared hosting company. What’s rather astounding is that this ad was displayed on my profile, which has little reference to the nature of my job, and my interests as webmaster, seo, or social media specialist.

…and now here it is for everyone to see!

Leading digital world measuring company, comScore, Inc. released a report today announcing the major trends in U.S. Internet activity last year.  A great article on CNNMoney.com actually goes into some really good detail on who the top-gaining properties were for the year as well as site categories, and core search market growth.

Affiliate Marketing today is so much more than what it used to be, when simply having someone place your banner on their website to drive traffic was the norm.  Back in the day, your banner would catch someones eye, they would click on it, and you would pay the person displaying your banner for each click that came through to your site from theirs.  (Not so different from Pay Per Click on the search engines today).

Cartoon Courtesy of: http://www.marketingmentor.net

Microsoft has applied for a patent on technology that will enable computers to monitor user behavior “to facilitate managing and optimising the utilisation of various system resources”.   How scary is this and what kind of seeds are we planting for our employment futures?

Courtesy www.technovelgy.com

Lets look at it objectively.  Using infra-red sensors to measure the breathing patterns, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, etc of an employee can provide valuable information to an employer who is unaware that they are putting too much pressure on their staff or alert others on a project team that someone is struggling with their requirement, or even provide warnings of possible health issues arising due to stress or illness.

Credit: Joey Ganoza

As a follow-up to my previous post about the Just Do It Philosophy in Search Marketing, I will devote today’s article on how I go about planning and executing on my SEO goals. By following a theory of GOPST, or Goals, Objectives, Plans, Strategies, and Tactics, I am able to have a clear path in my mind towards achieving my short term and long term goals. Let’s begin my an overall look at this methodology:

Goals

The Scenario:

What will ultimately replace search engines?

This is a question I am asked frequently, and therefore have given considerable thought to. Ultimately, whatever it is, it has to compensate for the weaknesses of search though right? So, what are the weaknesses of search relative to the ideal search solution (he says knowing that we’ll never stop searching for things we need, so search itself will never die, only transform into something more efficient)?

Coupons are BIG BUSINESS on the internet today, and understandably so with more and more merchants trying to drive traffic to their websites.  Not only does it provide a nice incentive for shoppers to ”shop from home”, but it also gives the merchant a way of tracking and measuring the success of their efforts.  Just one more online marketing tool to increase qualified traffic?  Maybe…