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News Release Optimization: Getting Listed in Bing News

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

As part of a sound blended search optimization strategy, you should be optimizing your press and news releases. For the simple reason of reach, properly optimizing your news releases can help drive some additional traffic to your web site and provide yet another touch point for reaching your target audience.

Of course, when optimized properly, your news releases can get listed in Google News and Yahoo News thereby reaching a wider audience. As Google communicates,

If you'd like your news site or blog to be included in Google News, please send us the URL and we'll be happy to review it. Please note, however, that we can't guarantee we'll be able to include your site in Google News.

More on submitting your content to Google can be found here.

Getting listed on Yahoo News is not quite as simple, however you can get listed in Yahoo News by leveraging third party press release distribution options. As Yahoo states:

All press releases available on Yahoo! originate from other sources. We can't take individual press releases and add them to our service.

If you're interested in having your corporate press releases show up on Yahoo!, please contact PR Newswire, Business Wire, PrimeZone, or Market Wire. For Canadian corporate press releases, please get in touch with Canadian Corporate News, Canada Newswire, or BCE Emergis.

So with the launch of Microsoft Bing, how can you get your news into Bing news? Well according to Brett Yount, Program Manager | Bing Webmaster Center, they currently hand-pick news for their Bing News vertical. If you would like to submit your site for review, please email bns@microsoft.com. Additional updates can be found in Bing community forums.

Labels: Bing News, blended search optimization, news release optimization

posted by Jody @ 10:34 AM 0 comments

SEMPO Introduces Two New Courses: Link Building & Social Media

Yesterday, SEMPO Institute, the distance learning division of SEMPO, (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), http://www.sempo.org/, announced it is adding two new courses to its popular Effective Search Marketing online classes: “Linking and Brand Management” and “Social Media.”

Both courses are live online and available for immediate registration at https://www.sempoinstitute.com/search-marketing-enrollment/default.aspx
The courses are part of SEMPO Institute’s Effective Search Marketing series and are $299 each.

“SEMPO Institute’s growing menu of short courses fits the demands of busy search marketers who want to hone in on a particular topic that correlates with their job responsibilities, in order to increase their skills and add even further value to their client work,” says Adam Cohen, partner in Rosetta, a leading U.S. interactive agency, and a member of SEMPO’s Social Media course review team.

As an organization, SEMPO is addressing the impact of the proliferation of social media, from an education and editorial perspective. SEMPO recently released the first in a series of point-of-view opinions, this one focusing on social media. It is accessible at http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/editorials.

Effective Search Marketing: Linking and Brand Management will teach you:

Internal and External Linking
Links with Content
Anchor Text
Backlinks
No-Follows
Strategies for Inbound Links
Tactics to Attract Links
Brand Reputation Methods
Tools for Brand Reputation Management

Tracking Competitors

Effective Search Marketing: Social Media Marketing will teach you:

The Role of Social Media
15 Ways to Optimize Your Twitter Profile
Keyword Research
Keyword Strategy and Governance
Optimizing Social Media for Universal Search
Engagement Strategy
Defining Goals
Measuring and Monitoring Social Media
Tracking Competitors

Labels: SEMPO, social media

posted by Jody @ 10:28 AM 0 comments

How Technology Had an Impact on My Own Digital Native

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Well this is my first blog post after I became a new daddy on Canada Day, July 1. What an amazing experience. My wife and I welcomed a baby boy named Elias to the world on Canada Day. He arrived nine days early in what I suggest is a beautiful miracle as I was hoping for a Canada Day baby.

The entire day was fantastic, and technology played a key role in being able to communicate the events of the day. Earlier this Spring, I purchased an iPhone with the thought that it would allow me to stay better connected more easily... and while I was not one of those geeky Apple fans I must say that I love my iPhone. As we brought in a new digital native into the world, not only was I able to phone family members and friends about the birth of little Eli, but I was also able to take pictures and immediately post them to Facebook. This was important as my father and brother were making the trip to a family wedding on the prairies and were able to see Elias for the first time via Facebook. (Again he was nine days early). I was also able to post pictures allowing other family members and friends to see our new bundle of joy. This is something that could not be as little as ten years ago.

With technologies such as the iPhone, Facebook and Twitter I was able to communicate the birth of my son to family members and friends quickly and efficiently. I wonder about the technologies that will be developed in years from now, when my son turns ten or when he is twenty. As a little digital native, how long until he experiences the online world to find information, to learn and to experience.

In 2009, just the fact that I was able to use a phone to access and upload information online and be able to communicate the greatest day of my life through Twitter and Facebook is pretty remarkable. So while I may have missed the fireworks on this Canada Day in 2009, my son will have fireworks every year as he celebrates his birthday with the birth of the greatest nation in the world. When Canada turns 143 years old, my son will turn one. You can bet that the technologies and innovations as they allow us now, will in the future allow people like my son to find information faster and more efficiently via the Internet. Man, technology sure is cool is it not?

Labels: canada day, digital native

posted by Jody @ 10:09 PM 0 comments

Top 20 Search Engine Stories First Half of 2009

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Can you believe that 2009 is half over? Where does the time go? We though that it would be fun to compile some of the most memorable search stories for the first half of 2009. There has been a lot movement in the Search industry (as there always is), so it was difficult to narrow it down to just 20.

We factored in the "top newsmaker" stories as well as stories that we thought would have the largest impact on where Search is going.

Top 20 Search Engine Stores: First Half of 2009

#20. Google Penalizes Google Japan for Buying Links - still trying to artificially build your link inventory? In February of this year, Matt Cutts from Google reported that Google had penalized Google Japan for purchasing links. This is interesting as Google is still trying to work to address this issue. We think that is why we are seeing some of the recent tweaks to their algorithm in that we may be in for a major Google update similar to the Florida update of November 2003.

#19. The Obama Effect on Search - January 2009 - with the inauguration of Barack Obama, various web properties experience traffic spikes as the world goes online to learn more about the 44th President of the United States.

#18. Mobile is Coming! Mobile is coming! - In February, Yahoo announced that they were reorganizing and rebranding their mobile offering with the release of Yahoo Mobile. Yahoo, realizing the popularity of smartphones is looking to capitalize on things such as mobile widgets, a new mobile website and applications. http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-reorganizes-rebrands-mobile-offerings-as-yahoo-mobile-16598. ComScore has released reports that there are 63 million mobile users in the US with 35% online via their phones daily.

#17. Even the Search Engines are on Twitter - Twitter is all of the rage. In February, Search Engine Land posted about notable employees of the major search engines that are on Twitter.

#16. ASK Brings Back Jeeves in the UK - April 2009 - Ask tries to reinvent their brand by bringing back their retired butler Jeeves for their UK market. http://searchengineland.com/welcome-back-jeeves-17737

#15. Google AdWords Updates URL Policy - February 2009. Google announced the policy change regarding multiple display URL domains per ad group. According to Google, "... This will not only provide a better user experience for your potential customers, but will also allow you to better organize and track the various domains within your AdWords account."

#14. SEMPO Release State of the Search Engine Marketing Survey - April 2009 - There were some interesting findings from the SEMPO report including that 40% of advertiser respondents reported that they are actively promoting their brand on social media. SEMPO Releases State of Search Market 2008 Survey Results

#13. Microsoft Looks to Spend $100 Million to gain Market Share - in early April, reports started to come out that Microsoft would be spending $100 million to try and gain market share in the Search industry.

#12. Yahoo Releases Yahoo Web Analytics - April 2009. A couple years after Google released Google Analytics, Yahoo followed it up by making Yahoo Analytics available to search and display advertisers. Yahoo announced the release in late April. http://web.analytics.yahoo.com

#11. YouTube is now the second largest Search Engine - March 2009. Being communicated at SES NY in March, it was announced that You Tube is now the second largest search engine behind Google. This does in fact make sense with over 15 hours of video being submitted to You Tube every hour.

#10. Even the Search Engines fall prey to the Recession - various reports suggest that Yahoo. Microsoft and yes even Google will be having layoffs proving that the explosive growth experienced by these companies is slowing down as the economy and the recession impact the Search industry as well.

#9. Wolfram Alpha Search Engine Gains Momentum - April 2009 - an interesting and innovative approach to search with the Wolfram Alpha Search Engine. The goal of the project is to take any information that can be computed and combine and package it so that people can access this knowledge from a single source or search

#8. Google Updates Algorithm: Places more weight on brands - March 2009. Google who, in the previous year, claimed to make over 415 changes to their algorithm updated their algorithm one more time as they placed some emphasis on brands for given search queries. Call it relevancy (if you can call the brands relevant) but realistically if you do a search for say "car insurance" you do expect to see the Geico's and Progressive's of the world.

#7. Google holds their second annual Searchology Event – May 12. Google conducts their second ever Searchology day where they discussed Universal Search, new navigation and talked about Google Search Options. A full recap is available here.

#6. The increasing popularity of Twitter - March 2009 - I'm not sure if you can say that Twitter is the flavor of the week. Twitter is popular. The microblogging service continues to gain in popularity and now even Oprah and Perez Hilton are on Twitter. It's gone mainstream. As a result

it is only a matter of time until we see a flood of advertising on Twitter. 140 characters... brilliant, who would have thought this would become the phenomenon that it has? http://twitter.com/marketing_jive

#5. The major search engines release the canonical tag for addressing duplicate content concerns - February 2009. This is a big story from a Webmaster and SEO point of view as the canonical tag is a great way to identify canonical tags and communicate which pages you want to be the authority for the Search engines, thereby directing them to your canonical URLs and not duplicate versions.

#4. Yahoo Announces Carol Bartz as New CEO - January 2009. In mid January, Yahoo announced the replacement for Jerry Yang as former Executive Chairman of Autodesk Carol Bartz was announced as the new CEO for Yahoo (YHOO). Since then there have been a few moments of improvement, but overall it has been pretty quiet from the Yahoo camp.

#3. Michael Jackson's Death breaks on Twitter, cripples Google News and Freezes Wikipedia - June 25, 2009. When the news broke that the King of Pop has passed away, the Internet was buzzing with people trying to confirm the story. There was so much traffic that Google News was returning an "404 error type page" for 25 minutes thinking that the story was part of an automated attack. On Wikipedia, after an explosion of edits to Jackson's Wikipedia article, editors take the step of locking it down in "protective status". Yahoo reported that its Yahoo News property set an all-time record for traffic, registering 16.4 million unique visitors. That beats out election day, where site saw 15.1 million visitors. Complete timeline of events following the death of Michael Jackson.

#2. The world welcomes Microsoft Bing - June 3, 2009 saw the full release of Microsoft's latest attempt at Search with Bing. Ridiculed by some and tried out by many, the verdict is still out on Bing. Reports suggest that Bing has captured some initial market share in the Search industry but whether this will be permanent only time will tell. New features include a list of related searches ("Explorer pane") which is not really new in the world of Search, but new for Microsoft. Bing is dubbed "the search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions." You can take a tour of Bing here.

#1. Apple Releases iPhone 3Gs - June 2009 - while this is not Search specific, it does have a direct impact on Search. Simply put, it’s a phone, an iPod, and an Internet device in one. It gives you access to thousands of applications. And it’s built on technology that’s years ahead of its time. The iPhone phenomenon is just starting. With over 60,000 apps and with over 40,000 iPods and iPhones sold, the way people search for information and when they search for information has changed greatly with smartphones such as Apple's iPhone. Now you can pretty much search anywhere, anytime with a phone.

Wow, we continue to see a number of changes in the Search industry. We do expect some interesting happenings to finish out the year including some major index updates from Google and Yahoo. We can expect that the second half of 2009 will be as busy as the first half.

Labels: search stories 2009

posted by Jody @ 7:50 AM 0 comments

Image Optimization Reminders

Image optimization is not that difficult yet many fail to implement common best practices for optimizing the images on their web properties. With the search engine results pages (SERPs) moving away from traditional text results to more dynamic results pages such as the case with Google Universal Search and blended search, the importance of optimizing things such as video and image becomes increasingly important. As the engines continue to improve image results, simply uploading an image will not get you listed in image search results or in the main results.

Places where image search results appear, and can be indexable into general search engines' contextual results, include:

Major search engines - either within contextual search results or vertical image search (Google, Yahoo, ASK, Windows Live Search)
Photo sharing sites (Flickr, Webshots)
Social image sharing sites (MySpace, Facebook)

Image Size

The following guidelines should be considered when optimizing the images on your site.

Limit the number of images to a reasonable number that you have on site pages. Having a large number of images on your pages can reduce page and site load time.
Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics.
Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
As a general rule of thumb, try to keep your total size of images per page to less than 30K (30,000 bytes)

Optimizing Images

People are visual and need to see images if they are going to purchase something. Optimizing your images for search engines becomes a necessity if you are to intercept these people. Here are some image optimization tips:

Optimize Images for Size – as mentioned above, consider the size of the images that you use on your site pages.
Use Quality Images - make necessary resolution adjustments between your full size images and your thumbnails. Good quality images will entice more clicks from users. Use quality pictures.
Use Original Photos – just as search engines prefer unique content, they also prefer unique images. Brand them with your logo, trademark or URL.
Use Consistent Image Formatting – Save photos as JPG files, and other graphic image types as GIFs as search engines will interpret a GIF as a standard graphic image with 256 colors and JPGs as photos.
Optimize Image File Names - be sure to incorporate keywords into the file name of your images that accurately reflect what the image consists of. The image name will appear beneath the graphic image in search results. It helps to communicate to searchers that they are viewing the desired graphic image.
Tagging Images – Where possible, you should always tag your images. Take advantage of the many special contextual tags for social sites with image search. Not only are image names given more weight than regular search results, but you can also add special tags such as captions, comments, location, and themes. Try to put labels and captions on key graphic images.
Describe Your Images with “Alt” Text – use alt tags to accurately describe images utilizing important keywords in the alt text. Alt text shows up in Google Image search results. Proper syntax looks something like: alt="Keyword Rich Image Description"
Optimize Page Content with the image. Optimizing the page the image appears on is just as important (probably more important) as optimizing the image itself. It’s fair to say that optimizing the actual page for contextual search improves graphic images search.
Did You Know? The engines look at the text surrounding a graphic image to determine relevancy. Text within the anchor tag and next to anchor text will have a strong influence on image-search rankings.
Organize File Structure/Hierarchy – It is important to create an image folder on your web server space that's accessible to the search engines.
Factor in Usability - usability is very important in image search optimization and should always be considered when creating an uploading your images. Just because you show up at the top of image search results, does not mean that people will click on the link to the image and go to your site. Image optimization needs to accurately reflect the image.
Re-Upload your Images – be sure to revisit your images from time to time and consider re-uploading them so that the search engines can crawl them again. “Image freshness” can provide a hint for the search engines and might affect relevancy of your image search results.
Create an Image Sitemap on your site – create a separate sitemap page that is specific to your main images that you wish to optimize. The image sitemap would consist of links to the actual images and would contain alt tags for each image. This would help the search engines find your main images and should help with Universal Search rankings.

Common Image Optimization Mistakes

Below are some of the most common errors that are encountered on a regular basis as they pertain to image search optimization.

Copying Existing Photos – Prior to uploading an image that you may have acquired, be sure that you have the right to use them. Copyright laws will restrict usage in a number of cases.

Limiting Access to Image Files via robots.txt - Do not use your robots.txt to exclude your graphic images directory or limit search engine access to graphic-image files.

Avoid Javascript Links – avoid putting a 'click to see larger image' inside of a JavaScript link. When you do that, you are limiting search engines' access to that image file.

Avoid Burying You Image Folder within your site’s hierarchy – if you have an images folder you’ll want to ensure that it is accessible to the search engines. Just as with page content, if you images folder is buried 4 or 5 levels deep, the engines may not treat these images as authoritative and thus not rank your images as high as they could in the image search and universal results.

Image optimization will not only help you with the image vertical search results, but if optimized correctly can help improve visibility in the main search results of the major search engines. Image optimization should be a key component on your blended search strategy as it creates yet another interception point for your brand and your target audience.

Labels: image optimization

posted by Jody @ 12:01 AM 0 comments

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