SEO News
Google Empire to Invade Online Travel Market
Monday 5 July, 2010Google Inc. is invading the travel business as it has acquired ITA Software Inc., a Boston-based company, delivering flight information to various web sites, for $700 million in cash. Since ITA Software is the biggest travel search company, some say that Google, being the biggest search engine on the web, might be struck by antitrust lawsuits. However, Google’ CEO, Eric Schmidt is sure the deal should not raise any antitrust concerns, as his company does not currently compete against ITA or any other travel search company, since Google is not and will never be ‘a travel agency’. Founded back in 1996, ITA is the brainchild of MIT graduates who came up with a...[more]
Blackhat SEO Targets Popular Website
Friday 2 July, 2010An unfortunate side effect of being the biggest, the best, or at least the most noticeable, is that it makes you a target for the less scrupulous. This is where popular Chinese entertainment and information site, Mop.com, found themselves the object of a blackhat SEO campaign. It seems that only visitors to the site who are directed by search engine Baidu.com are affected by the malicious hackers. Mop.com is an immensely popular Chinese website, especially with those who play World of Warcraft. The site has over 50 million registered users and receives four times that many page views daily. It is the 274th most visited website in the world, according to Alexa...[more]
Twitter’s New Enhancement Good for SEO?
Thursday 1 July, 2010Effectively using social media is a new must for businesses. Social networking sites like Facebook and microblogging sites like Twitter are both enormously popular with consumers, and if used well, enormously effective in helping businesses increase traffic and build their online brand. But using Twitter has its limitations: how can you reach potential consumers, clients, and contacts using only 140 characters per tweet? A new enhancement that will soon be available to developers will help businesses optimize their tweets and provide more information for consumers and search engines. The new Twitter feature will allow businesses to embed annotations into...[more]
BP’s Use of Social Media and SEO Techniques
Wednesday 30 June, 2010One could almost feel sorry for BP if not for the images of black plumes of oil spewing into the ocean. The energy company is taking a very public flogging for their handling of the oil spill, and, indeed, for the occurrence of the spill in the first place. Ironically, some of the most damaging video comes directly from BP’s own site from their ROVs, or remote operated vehicles. BP has been hoping to counter their PR nightmare by employing SEO tactics and using social media sites, including Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook. If you visit BP’s Flickr site, you will see photos of workers cleaning beaches, treating water, and cleaning oiled animals. You will also...[more]
To Succeed in SEO Chase After the User Experience
Tuesday 29 June, 2010"Instead of chasing after the search engines, chase after the user experience because the search engines are chasing after the user experience" -- Matt CuttsNow we are heeding caution to those tempted to condemn Cutts’ slogan as propaganda devised to distract from the real ranking factors, one of the most important of them being link-building. No way is link building going away, as it is the primary and most precise factor in determining website relevance. Nevertheless, it’s quite obvious that the importance of incoming links is being isolated by other, newer components.The truth is search engines are moving towards pursuing the user experience, which...[more]
BP Damage Control: SEO
Monday 28 June, 2010Global energy company BP is taking a beating in the press, but if you Google the company, you will find the first several search results are positive. They include BP’s official site, an “About BP” page, and basic stock information from Yahoo Finance. Only further down on the first page will you start to see news stories about the horrific oil spill that threatens the southern coastline of the United States. As oil has spewed into the Gulf of Mexico for some fifty-one days, BP is embarking on a major cleanup. It’s not for the ocean, though. It’s for their reputation. Online reputation managementcan be tremendously useful for both companies and...[more]
Google Thwarting Blackhat SEO?
Friday 25 June, 2010Google’s Beta version of https://www.google.com, or its secure search site, is up and running. When visitors opt for this version of Google’s search engine, their searches are encrypted. Your search goes through an SSL (secure sockets layer) connection. By creating a secure connection with Google, users are able to keep their searches private (or at least private between Google and searchers). If you opt to click on a link, that too is kept private. The site that you link to doesn’t receive information about your IP address or other usual referral information. It is thought that the encrypted site will put a damper on SEO poisoning. If you search the...[more]
Deep Linking to Enhance Usability and Rankings
Thursday 24 June, 2010Deep linking is a powerful SEO tool. In the Information age, web presence is a matter of online visibility. If a page cannot be accessed or widely viewed, it is virtually non-existent. Whether your objective is to boost traffic from a target audience or traffic in whole, deep linking is a very efficient tool in the webmaster’s armoury to enhance frequency and direction of visits and subsequently to improve sales and public opinion. There are two types of deep links in search engine optimization. Internal deep links interconnect relevant pages within a single website, guiding the reader smoothly throughout associated content. Internal deep linking enhances...[more]
Will New Twitter Shortener Affect SEO Efforts?
Wednesday 23 June, 2010URLs can be up to hundreds of characters long, which obviously makes them impossible for people to enter in manually. But it also makes it difficult to attach in emails or on sites like Twitter, where you get 140 characters. Those wishing to include a link on this particular microblogging site need to include their message and URL in that small space. A URL shortener does just that: it shortens the web address so it can fit within the confines of your tweet. The tremendously popular Twitter is set to introduce a new shortener to users this summer.t.co, the new shortener, will automatically cut URLs down to size. An excellent feature of t.co is that your link...[more]
Google’s Market Share Keeps Growing
Tuesday 22 June, 2010Experian Hitwise, a leading competitive intelligence company, just published its Search Market Share report. As can be expected Google is still the most popular among the top three search engines and is even the only search engine company that gained market share in May 2010. According to the report Google accounted for 72.17% of all U.S. searches, carried out in the four weeks ending May 29, 2010. This presents a 1% increase as compared with the previous month. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask on the other part, managed to grab 14.43%, 9.23% and 2.14% of all searches in the U.S., respectively. Both Yahoo and Bing are suffering a loss in market share compared...[more]
