Which of the following have you heard of?

More people have heard of paid search / AdWords than have SEO / link building. One of the big issues with this question is that since it had numerous check boxes it had a lower response rate (roughly 10% vs an average of closer to 16% to 18%) & took longer for the answers to come in. In the future I can see Google adding quality score styled factors to quizes where pricing is in part based on response rate & they charge premiums for quicker responses…

The day Google+ opened up brand pages, I anxiously refreshed my Gmail inbox all day long until I finally got the email inviting me to create a company page. I knew that by creating the page under my personal account that I’d be the only one able to manage it for the near future. But I really didn’t care; I was just so giddy to get the page set up.

Remember that feeling? I bet you ran out and did the same thing, right? But then what happened? Are you still as excited about it as you were back then, or do you now dread having to go in there? I mean not only do you have to keep up with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, HackerNews, and [insert social platform here], but you have to have a strategy for Google+ as well…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Yelpy Insights: Yelp Adds Two New Search Filters, Looks To Add More

  Is there a battle brewing in the area of searchable local content and reviews? Foursquare has been making some interesting moves in this area, and today Yelp has announced two new search filters that it says will let users more easily find the right local business…

In the below poll we didn’t make any distinction between AdWords & organic SEO investments. If we did I am not sure how it would have impacted the voting.

How do you feel about people paying for placement in search engines?

Nearly 2 in 3 people dislike money manipulating search results.

response

All (1201) 
I think it is deceptive
65.4% (+3.3 / -3.5)
It is good if it is relevant
34…

Google recently launched a consumer insights survey product, which quizes users for access to premium content.

How do users get access to these poll questions? Google locks premium content behind them, likeso:

Google has long stated that “cloaking is bad” and that it was deceptive & users didn’t like it. Earlier this year Google also rolled out an algorithm to penalize sites that were too ad heavy:

We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience…

If you've been in the SEO world a while, you're undoubtedly employing search queries to help discover and earn links (e.g. this blog post, this search query cheatsheet PDF, our LAA tool in Labs, etc). Query lists are handy to help in the manual link building process, but most of what's out there is designed for very direct, obvious link acquisition methodologies. This post is to help with some more obscure, less direct link building tactics…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Consider The Ends To Justify The Means In PPC

  “En toute chose il faut considérer la fin.” (In everything one must consider the end) – Jean de La Fontaine, 1668 It seems that every initial conversation with a prospect, or a new client, seems to start out as follows: Me: “What are your business goals?” Client: “I want more {clicks, actions, conversions} at […

As part of Google’s ongoing GoMo initiative, we hosted a live webinar a few weeks ago to help publishers learn the benefits of creating mobile-friendly sites, hear tips and case studies, and tap into new resources to get started. If you missed it, no problem! You can watch the recorded video or download the slides below.

Watch this webinar to learn:

1. Why go mobile?
Your users have gone mobile in a big way, hear why you must follow suit…

When last I wrote, we had added the ability to see local universal search results along with your campaign rankings. I'm happy to let you know that we just launched an update that adds sitelinks, video, and photo results as well. Now you can get even better visibility into exactly how good that organic link position is, and see how well your universal and enhanced search results are helping you improve your presence and visibility in a SERP (search engine results page)…

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

I love SEO tools. I’m sort of a pack-rat when it comes to Google Docs tools and Excel add-ins. I went absolutely nuts when Tom Critchlow posted his Google Docs SEO tutorial on distilled…

As publishers we tend to be quite concerned with the over-promotion of Google+ because it carves up the search landscape, is potentially another hoop that we have to jump through, and in some cases, the Google+ hosted version of a page will outrank the legitimate original source – which screws up the economics of online publishing.

But do users care about how Google+ was integrated directly into the search results? Generally no…

No, not the rainbow tin-foiled chocolate things you hide in the back yard for your kids, virtual Easter eggs are hidden messages and inside jokes baked into TV shows like the Simpsons, video games like Guitar Hero and Halo 3, and even software like AutoCad, Photoshop, Mac OSX, Skype and Microsoft Paint.

Google, Bing and Wolfram Alpha have cracked their share of Easter eggs, like Google Calculator’s Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference:

It’s even slipped through to some ecommerce product pages (though in this case it may be the workings of a rogue employee)…

I’m frequently asked: “How should I host my videos for SEO purposes? Is it better to use YouTube, Vimeo or third party hosting?”

My response to this question is invariably terse, along the lines of "it depends on the style of your content and what you want to achieve with it". Each situation calls for a nuanced approach, defined by the marketing aims of the company and the audience base the content will appeal to…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Yahoo In A Fight For Its Life

  According to Reuters on Tuesday next week the already embattled new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson will lay out his vision for the company. The pressure will be on to deliver a coherent and convincing plan — emphasis on convincing…

Last night we had to delay the Linkscape index launch date yet again to April 27th as can be seen on our release schedule. This is the second time we have had to adjust the launch date this processing cycle meaning there will be almost two months between index releases. We know this has a major impact on the SEOmoz community, so we felt like we owed you all a detailed explanation.

Back in December, Rand and the Linkscape team decided to ambitiously try to grow the index to over 100 billion URLs…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Group: Google Should Halt All Online Dating Ads Until They’re Sure None Are Fronts For Human Trafficking

  Google says it’s spending “millions of dollars” to police AdWords ads to ensure they’re not contributing to human trafficking, but the head of a victim’s rights group seems to believe that’s not enough…

Is your website hurting because of over optimization? It's a question every SEO faces at one time or another. Over optimization penalties have been around for awhile, but Matt Cutts recently announced Google will soon crack down harder on sites that take SEO too the extremes. How do you know when you've gone to far? In this week's Whiteboard Friday, we explore what happens when certain SEO techniques stop delivering value, and when you should switch your strategy to more productive activities…

Get organized this spring with new location features in AdWords and share your storiesOver the past 30 years, California Closet Company has grown from the brainchild of a college student organizing his dorm room closet to a successful business with more than 77 franchise locations. To reach customers across the U.S. and internationally, the company centered their digital marketing strategy on creating locally relevant campaigns…

When we launched advanced location targeting in March 2011, we provided you with more control over how you geographically target your ads. Based on advertiser feedback, we’re implementing four additional enhancements that will make location targeting options clearer and more powerful. Here’s an overview of what’s changing.Location targeting is now easier to understand.First, we’ve reworded the options to help make them clearer…

We’ve blogged before about Google Affiliate Network, which helps you earn more from your site with ads that pay based on conversions. While all AdSense publishers around the world are eligible to join Google Affiliate Network, we’re happy to let you know that this network has just expanded to more UK advertisers — meaning that if you’re located in the UK or have UK-based readers, the promotions available in Google Affiliate Network will soon become more relevant and interesting…

This week’s Infographic Friday is Bazaarvoice’s Conversation Index.

Click image to enlarge

The data is collected from 11 million consumer conversations. While it’s interesting to see data across a large number of businesses, the important thing is how does this apply to your business.

12% of all reviews include product suggestions – are you mining yours? Use your own data to answer these questions:

• What about the old version do customers / users miss?
• How do customers compare your products against each other? How can you do this to merchandise, price and describe?
• What features need improvement? What FUD do you need to overcome in your copywriting?
• What’s on your customer “wish list”?
• What do on-site searches reveal about customer intent and preferences?

Customer reviews are not just for beefing up the keyword count on your product pages…

Recently we announced the most significant enhancement to our contextual engine ever: the the ability to optimize GDN campaigns down to the keyword level using Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting. These new controls will help advertisers fine-tune their campaign performance on a completely new level – like upgrading from a standard engine to a 6-speed manual gear-shift race car. For advertisers that prefer to put their campaigns on cruise-control and let Google technology do the heavy lifting, our suite of automatic optimization tools maximize the performance of your GDN campaigns while saving you valuable time and resources…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Looking Back At Larry Page’s First Year At Google’s Helm

  Two articles appeared today that reflect on the first year of Larry Page’s return to the CEO role at Google. Bloomberg’s Brad Stone does a Q&A with Page in which he discusses the larger competitive challenges Google faces and some of his management philosophy…

What does creativity look like in a digital context? What does it mean for your business, your campaigns, and your customers? This issue of Google’s Think Quarterly explores these fundamental questions and more — a must read for digital marketers! As the internet comes of age, technology is catching up with our wildest imaginations. We can realize ideas that simply weren’t possible merely five years ago…

Every week, without fail, I hear someone ask where they should put their SEO budget – in on-page tactics or in link-building. Unfortunately, there are plenty of SEO companies and consultants lining up to give them the answer – and that answer just happens (“coincidentally”) to be whatever the company/consultant is good at. When you’re an expert with a hammer, you start to think you can nail anyone (wait, that’s not right)…

If you’re audience targeting (or considering it), customizing your ads for your audience can yield better performance. Here are the top tips for audience targeted creatives learned through the collective experience of hundreds of Google AdWords account teams.1. Make your ads a helpful step in the user experienceMake audience specific recommendations, differentiate yourself from the competition, and provide new information…

They say March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, but the tech world just keeps cranking out big news — from the launches of iPad 3 and Google Play to Twitter’s acquisition of Posterous and Facebook’s Timeline transition for brand pages. At the end of each month, we like to highlight notable articles from around the Web for ecommerce professionals. To follow shared links throughout the month, please follow us on Twitter @getelastic…

Internet Marketing Ninja Jim Boykin has promoted link building since before I even knew what SEO was. Nearly a decade later so many things have changed in SEO (including renaming We Build Pages to Internet Marketing Ninjas), but he still sees links as a key SEO driver (as do I). I recently interviewed him about links & the changing face of SEO.

so, links links links … these were the backbone of ranking in Google for years and years…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Google’s March Updates: Anchor Text, Image Search, Navigational Search & More

  Google’s latest round of search quality updates is now available, and — at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old SEO — this month’s seems even more difficult to grasp than normal…

When it comes to the Internet, I imagine it as the warehouse where the Ark is archived at the end of Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Ark is that outstanding content someone has produced and that no other will be able to see again, because it is forgotten and hidden between gazillions of other contents.

Apart from the gigantic volume of pages present in the Internet, for a long time, search spam has been making the discovery of reliable sources difficult; and – let's be honest – Social Media has enhanced this issue, because it added even more noise and dispersion…