Search Engine People

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Are you reading the wrong metrics?

by Jeff Quipp.

Estimate your site’s health by reading the wrong metrics and you get the wrong impression.

It’s as simple as that.

Whether it is for setting a price for on-site advertising or establishing some kind of baseline when negotiating SEO or SEM services, traffic measured in absolutes such as Page Views, Visitors and Unique Visitors has a hold on The Market it really doesn’t deserve.

Technology has surpassed most of these metrics.

Think about it.

You might be reading this in your feed reader. Are you a Unique Visitor? Does the Page View get increased somewhere? Or maybe you’re subscribed by email: same questions apply.

Social Media in China

by Tom Tsinas.

The use of the Internet keeps growing in China. The country now has more than 160 million Internet users and at least 1.3 million websites. But the promise of free expression and information has been nixed by the Chinese government’s online censorship and surveillance system.

According to Reporters Without Borders and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a Chinese Internet expert working in IT industry has produced an exclusive study on the key mechanism of the Chinese official system of online censorship, surveillance and propaganda.

5 Reasons Your Business Blog Should Be Hosted on Wordpress

by The Guy.

Business Blogging 101

The inclusion of business blogs are slowly but surely emerging as a growing trend across the spectrum of SMB, mid-size, and large corporations. No matter what the size of your firm, taking the steps to implement a few blogging best practices can help you test the waters, and be prepared for the future with a scaleable solution should you plan to promote your corporate blog heavily.

Mobile Marketing Survey Says…..

by Tom Tsinas.

Hot off the heels of Google offering free Mobile Adwords until mid November and The Kelsey Group boldly predicting mobile search to generate more than $1.4 billion in ad revenue by 2012, comes a new survey from Nielsen/NetRatings and WebVisible, which shows a whopping 92% of 2000 U.S. Internet users surveyed, felt that receiving local business ads on their cell phones would be “irritating.”

This doesn’t bode well for mobile marketers and SEO’s who are hoping to cash in on the mobile hysteria, particularly when the same survey revealed that nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users believe they are overexposed to advertising.

SEP Blog Improvement Thoughts

by Dev Basu.

I was tagged recently by Shana Albert (author of a great post recently on Social Media being the New BAD Boy … its a fun read) at AllWorkAtHomeIdeas for a Blog Improvement Meme. Personally, I’m a fan of anything that forces my hand. If it takes a blog improvement meme for get me to finally make some much needed improvements to our blog, then so be it. I’ll take that task to hand … well maybe next week.

Yellow Pages to resell Google AdWords

by Tom Tsinas.

Hot off last August’s announcement that R.H. Donnelley (No. 3 Yellow Pages publisher in the US) had begun selling ad placements in Yahoo! Local, comes today’s news that Canada’s Yellow Pages Group will begin reselling Google AdWords advertisements.

Its agreement with Google allows Yellow Pages approximately 425,000 advertisers to appear alongside Google search results. Previously, Google Local or ‘Maps’ would display only names and addresses of Yellow Pages’ businesses next to results from searches on local information.

Yellow Pages Group has been working with Google since 2004, when they struck an agreement granting the Internet giant access to its databases and, quietly I may add, began embedding Google AdWords on its websites earlier this year.

You Benefit using Twitter

by Jeff Quipp.

The best thing to come out of Google buying the social site Jaiku is that it has put Twitter on the attention map of many people again. Every second article, report or blog post about the Jaiku acquisition draws a comparison with the service offered by Twitter.

And that’s good. Because Twitter deserves a lot of attention: your attention.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a place where you can post short (140 characters max., a limit directly related to the 140 max. limit of SMS text messages) status updates on what you’re doing, thinking, eating, reading, etc.

Everything Old Really Is New Again

by Jennifer Osborne.

It’s been forever since I’ve posted anything and it’s probably going to take me a while to come back up to speed, but in the meantime, I’ll start with the proverbial babysteps.

So, guess which magazine is making it’s long overdue comeback?

While it may be old news from CNET, I for one welcome the return of the Industry Standard.

Gosh, how I remember cutting my baby SEO teeth on the standard.

There was just some ineffable thing that made it completely accessible and crunched down to Internet time, making it the perfect in transit reading.

Theory of Types and Stages of Online Professional Relationships

by Dev Basu.

Establishing a strong Social Media Profile necessarily means establishing networks of (professional) friends/relationships online (aka online professional relationships … OPR) that can be called upon to help you when needed. In some cases, your goal will be to befriend individuals that are influencers in a given sphere; when needed you can count upon them to use their powerful sites and networks to drive traffic and/or business to your site. In yet other cases, your goal maybe to enlist your network to stumble or digg particlar articles. Your effectiveness at each of these efforts is a function of the strength of your OPRs … since many require different levels of trust given the potential risk to the OPR. And yes, risks do exist! Accordingly, the remainder of this post will discuss our SEP interpretation of the stages of online professional relationships, and what OPR efforts can be expected at different stages.

Social Media By the Numbers: StumbleUpon

by Tom Tsinas.

Of all the social media sites out there, StumbleUpon is by far my favorite.

From an SEO standpoint, I’ve used it to generate instant traffic and awareness of client websites and, from a personal standpoint, I’ve used it to discover hundreds more websites than I ever could through traditional search.

This week I’m taking a look StumbleUpon, by the numbers:

• StumbleUpon was created in 2001 by three friends who were still finishing off post-graduate studies in Calgary, Canada.

• Silicon Valley investor Brad O’Neill assisted with a move to San Francisco and the initial round of $1.2 million in fund-raising.