 | The Submit Express Newsletter | Jul 2009 |
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 elcome to the reinaugural edition of the Submit Express newsletter! It's been awhile since the last edition of our free newsletter, but we're back with more search engine news and tips on search engine optimization, Internet marketing, and social media. We will be sending new issues once or twice per month, so be sure to check your inbox. If you're not currently a subscriber, visit www.submitexpress.com/newsletters to become one. Subscription is free.While the newsletter has been on hiatus, Submit Express has been focused on a number of exciting new developments. Most notably, we've re-launched our iClimber website (www.iclimber.com) to offer social media marketing and content writing services. We felt it was appropriate to offer these services under a different website and brand; however, iClimber is a part of Submit Express, and iClimber services will meet the same level of excellence. iClimber services include:
We also encourage you to visit the Free Webmaster Tools section at www.submitexpress.com and try out our latest SEO tool, the Reciprocal Link Checker. This tool will check which sites are linking to your website. It is a great tool for keeping track of your reciprocal links and making sure your partners have not removed your link. With the Submit Express Reciprocal Link Checker, you can check up to 100 URLs at one time without having to visit each site individually. In this issue of the Submit Express newsletter, you will find: |
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 The growing prominence of social media has brought renewed attention to the important role that content plays in search engine optimization and Internet marketing. Whether it's used to supplement an SEO campaign, promote goods and services, or build online relationships with customers, written content is a low-cost marketing tool that has a big impact.Here are just a few of the ways in which content marketing might enhance your SEO and Internet marketing efforts: Blogging Does your company have a blog yet? A recent study cited in Retailer Daily discovered that one-half of blog readers find blogs useful for purchase information. Your company's blog doesn't have to be strictly about products and services. Many businesses use blogs to provide industry-related news that their customers would find useful or interesting. Optimized blog content is doubly useful, because it provides helpful information via original, keyword-rich content. A blog could also add personalization to your company's online marketing. Blogs are often valuable tools for interacting with clients and visitors and answering their questions. A blog would provide an opportunity to more actively build relationships with clients via blog comments and email. Article Writing Like blogs, articles appeal to both search engines and human readers. Regularly posting original content articles to your site or elsewhere on the Internet will help search engines to perceive your website as relevant to the keyword terms that are important in your industry. As an added benefit, creating well-researched and well-written articles will help to establish your company as a trusted source of information. As your site's article collection grows, it will draw traffic from a broader range of search engine users, increasing your company's marketing reach and the perception of your business as a subject matter expert. Link Development Good content attracts attention. On the Internet, "attention" means traffic and inbound links. Increasing your content—be it on your company's website, a related blog, or popular article directories—is one of the most effective ways to raise your company's profile and attract links to your content and/or website from interested bloggers and consumers. Thanks to the rise of social news and bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, and Reddit, popular content can receive even more exposure. For effective organic link development via written content, the key is to provide articles and blog posts that are original and useful. Instead of just promoting your company or brand, find an informational need that your customers have and try to meet that need through content development. Content marketing is a two-way relationship. Offer something of value and you'll receive value—in other words, traffic and links—in return. | |
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 Within days of launching, Microsoft's new search engine Bing managed to nab the number two spot in terms of market share, overtaking Yahoo in the United States and worldwide, according to data from StatCounter Global Stats. The company reports that Bing has grabbed market share from Google as well. As of last Thursday, Google had 71.47% market share in the U.S., followed by Bing with 16.28% and Yahoo with 10.22%. Globally, Google's market share stood at 87.62%, while Bing had 5.62% and Yahoo was close behind with 5.13%.Of the rise of Bing, StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen said, "It remains to be seen if Bing falls away after the initial novelty and promotion, but at first sight it looks like Microsoft is on to a winner. Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years. Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo! at a cost of $40bn, it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated." If Bing continues on an upward trajectory, it could pose a challenge to Google as well. An informal survey by News portal One News Page suggested that 55% of users plan to replace Google with Bing as their main search engine. Bing's branding also seems to have taken off--65% of respondents claimed to like the name, while 90% said they would use the expression "to Bing it" as a colloquialism for searching on the web. Studies have found that user loyalty to search engines is low. A 2009 Forrester Research survey revealed that more than half of respondents used more than one search engine to locate information, and despite Google's online dominance, only 20% of users searched with Google exclusively. The key to capitalizing on shifting loyalties, the survey found, was to offer different search services than just simple information retrieval. With Bing's positioning as a "decision engine" and Wolfram Alpha's recent launch as a "computational knowledge engine," market share among search engines may continue to shift. |
 Last week, Google began to experiment with incorporating local businesses into its product search results. This feature, which is intended to benefit both local businesses and consumers who want to purchase products locally, is now open to all participants.According to Google Product Search Manager Paul Lee on the Google Base Blog, interested businesses can submit their store locations using the Google Local Business Center, which allows business owners to control the content of listings for their businesses that appear in Google Search and Google Maps. Business owners will also be asked to verify ownership of their store locations before inclusion in Google Product Search results. Lee added, "As a bonus, the Google Local Business Center just released the Local Business Center dashboard, a completely free feature that allows business owners to view a range of information about how Google users find their business listings on Google—from the number of clicks your listing received to the zip codes from which users are driving when they request directions to your store." However, this information is available only to business owners who can verify each store location via phone or postcard. |
 A group of web companies--Yahoo!, AdaptiveBlue, DERI (NUI Galway), Faviki, Freebase, Zemanta, and Zigtag--have created a new tagging format for Web pages called Common Tag. The new format, according to the official press release, enables publishers to use semantic tagging to improve their content by making it more "discoverable, connected, and engaging."While tags have long been used to organize, share, and find content on the Web, the advantages have been limited. For example, a tag for the word jaguar could represent the animal, car company, or operating system. Additionally, in many cases individual things are represented by several tags, making it hard to organize related content. Common Tags, on the other hand, are references to specific concepts, equipped with metadata and their own URLs. Content related to jaguar the animal is therefore tagged with one concept for jaguar the animal. The new tag also connects users to helpful metadata that defines each concept and explains how they are related to one another. Ultimately, Common Tags will help users, publishers, and developers create topic groups, share their content, and improve their pages with free data, images, and widgets. Peter Mika from Yahoo! Research said, "Semantic tagging is an important next step in the evolution of the Web. When we add semantic meaning to tags, the content that is tagged becomes significantly easier for machines to understand. That in turn allows for the development of more intelligent applications for aggregating, searching, and browsing the Web." To use the Common Tag format, publishers can employ automated tagging tools such as those provided by Zemanta or tag their content themselves. In addition, social tagging services such as Faviki and Zigtag also allow end users to tag content using this new format. |
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