Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Your Successful SEO Campaign Starts with a Blueprint
The Online Marketing for Marketers blog has a goo blueprint that you should adhere to if you're looking for a successful search engine optimization campaign. Your blueprint should include: * Defined goals * Keyword and competitive research * A content outline * Evaluation of technical issues * Offsite marketing Then, you need to lay out the action plan. Who in the team is responsible for what? Would you add or remove anything from this blueprint? - Microsoft adCenter Upgrades More Than Just Their Logo
Two days ago, we reported that adCenter has a new logo. It looks like Microsoft is not stopping there in terms of giving adCenter new enhancements. These include: Campaign Management: you can now pause/resume ads/keywords. There's more geo-targeting options, and performance reporting has gotten enhanced. Editorial Improvements: You'll know much sooner why your ad has not been approved and get inline notifications on exceeding limits imposed by the system. User Management: You can now add - Link Building is Like Picking Up Girls
At the Web Build Pages blog, Jen writes about how link building is like picking up women. She explains the parallels: * The opening line is everything -- not much else needs to be said. * That the right circumstance are also crucial (you need finesse) -- women who are surrounded by friends are harder to get than women who are alone. You need to find the sites that are small and accessible. * Insecurity - Does Google Use ICRA Sitemap Tags for Adult Oriented Website Material?
Earlier this week, we had a webmaster ask how to tell Google that they have adult-themed images (mixed with regular images) and didn't want Google to filter out their site because of the few questionable images. Now, we're seeing a related issue to the extent that the webmaster actually has an adult-oriented page and he wants to denote this in his sitemap file so that the crawlers could process this accordingly. JohnMu says that crawlers - AdWords API Sandbox "Wigging Out" Due To Bad Data Refresh
If you are a big Google AdWords API user and you have been messing around in the API's Sandbox yesterday or today, you may have been experiencing some issues. Many API users are reporting weird glitches with the sandbox. Errors are being returned to API users after API calls. The errors are all over the place, but you can see a few mentioned in the Google Groups thread. Jeff Posnick of the AdWords API Team - Google AdSense Pays Publishers Wrong Amounts Again! Exchange Rate Issues
I am shocked this happened once again! Just a month ago, Google messed up and paid out Indian based AdSense publishers the wrong amount, a lesser amount, due to exchange rate conversion issues. Yes, they went back and paid the difference to those publishers, but now I am hearing new reports of these same Indian based publishers being paid the wrong amount again! A WebmasterWorld and Google Groups thread reports Google is paying out a - Google SearchWiki : Google Expands Web Results Voting Test
About a year ago today, we wrote about a Google experimental test for voting up web results. Well, it seems like Google is now pushing that test out to users. Several folks are now seeing it. We have a WebmasterWorld thread with some people noticing it. We have blog posts from Justin Hileman, Garett Rogers, Alex Chitu and a German blog noticing this. Here is a video that demonstrates it all: Alex notes that all - Google Alerts Adds RSS Option: RSS Comes To Google Web Search (Kinda)
As expected Google has quietly launched RSS feeds as an option to Google Alerts. Google Operating System discovered this last night. All you need to do is login and click on manage your Google Alerts. Then you can set up new alerts or modify current ones to be via RSS. Here is a screen capture of several RSS based Google Alerts I set up, plus at the bottom, I show how to add a new - Google Can Process More Than a 100 Links Per Page
There has always been this myth that Google and other search engines cannot crawl or process more than 100 links on a single web page or document. That truth is that Google and other search engines can and do crawl over 100 links per page. Yes, the Google Webmaster Guidelines page says keep it under 100 links per page. But the reason behind Google adding that as a guideline is for usability purposes. Typically, a
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Catch-22 Backlinks, Google Groups
- Dealing with Unhappy SEO Clients, Sphinn
- Adsense ads with typos/mispellings, DigitalPoint Forums
- Directories Are Important For Good Position?, HighRankings Forums
- Google Settles Book Scanning Copyright Suit, WebmasterWorld
- Microsoft, Yahoo In Alliance To Combat Lottery Scams, WebmasterWorld
- Microsoft, Yahoo In Alliance To Combat Lottery Scams, DigitalPoint Forums
- SEO Project Management & Educating Clients, Sphinn
- Twitter As a Terrorist Tool?, Sphinn
- Yahoo's Zimbra Goes For 'Cloud Computing', WebmasterWorld
