| | | A Great Analogy for SEO
SEO is like gardening. You plant the seeds and hope that you achieve a good harvest within a few months. If the conditions are just right, planting the seeds will bring you results without much trouble, just a little watering. If conditions are not right, you need to take extra steps such as adding extra fertilizer. If all your ducks, or seeds, are in a row you will get a great harvest.
Sometimes you expect a feast, but end up with just a few snacks. If you plant your seeds, then ignore the garden, the chances of getting a good harvest are reduced drastically, but it can still grow if you are lucky. If your soil is right and the weather cooperates, growing a great garden can sometimes be relatively easy.
Gardening and SEO are incredibly similar when you think about it. Rankings need links, just as a garden needs water. Sometimes people link to you on their own, sometimes they don't, and you have to go out and get them - just as sometimes it will rain, other times you have to get the hose, but more times than not, you really need the hose. Niche gardening, lets say cacti, as with niche SEO, say 'purple kangaroo shoes', sometimes wont require much water, or links, to grow nicely, but other factors such as soil conditions need to be there, and there is always the factor of time.
Gardening takes time, just as SEO does. Once the seeds are planted you need to wait for nature to do its thing, just as you need to wait for Google. Even the best gardeners can sometimes have failed crops if there is some kind of unknown hidden poison in the soil or if the weather doesn't cooperate - this translates to well hidden spam or search engine road blocks, or perhaps a major algorithm update. Given time however to unearth and correct any hidden problems, the garden will grow - it just may take some extra water, fertilizer, and attention.
Gardening and SEO are both things that can bring you success, but if you don't follow the instructions and common sense, and tend to your crop, the chances of that success will diminish.
by Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO
| | Bing Up by a Hair in June Search Figures
Its been nearly 2 months since the launch of Microsoft's highly advertised and anticipated Bing, and the market share figures for the first full calendar month since its launch are in. Microsoft is likely less than thrilled.comScore released the latest search figures late last week, and when comparing the data to May of 09, Microsoft has seen a very slight increase, stealing a bit of traffic from Yahoo and leaving Google unscathed.Google saw a 65% market share for both May and June of this year. Yahoo dropped in June from 20.1 down to 19.6 - a difference of 0.5. Microsoft managed to pick up 0.4% of this drop bringing them from 8% to 8.4%.While an increase of 0.4% is an increase none the less, it is still nearly a full percent down from where Microsoft sat a year ago in June 2008 (9.2%). Microsoft has a lot of work to do if they want to take Bing to the next level.by Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO
| | Posterous is an Intelligent Social Media Posting Tool
I recently wrote a half-teasing post about a branding issue Posterous appears to be having but I also noted that it is looking like another emerging winner in online social media and the reason is simple; it makes posting to a myriad of social media profiles as simple as  writing a single email or clicking on a share button in your browser. I thought of a variety of different ways to explain how it works but I found a video that did all of the work for me. The video from NBC's TechNow does an excellent job of illustrating how easy Posterous is to use and how it might help you manage your online social media persona.
Here is the link to the video produced by TechNow, a half hour television show about technology.
I am just getting into using my own account at RossDunn.Posterous.com so I still have some experience to gain but I have to say it is brilliantly simple. For example, I found out about the Arrington Crunchpad tonight and I decided to Share it on Posterous. All I had to do was click a button my browser to share it and add comments if I wished and voila! My Twitter, Facebook and personal blog Consider it Dunn all got updated within seconds with the latest post - brilliantly simple indeed. I am not quite ready to use it to publish to our StepForth Web Marketing blog yet but I can see the day coming where I will.
by Ross Dunn, CEO/Founder
| | Posterous Questions Answered
On July 14th's SEO 101 Internet radio show on WebmasterRadio.FM my co-host John Carcutt and I discussed how SEO relates to social media optimization (SMO). Near the end of the show I brought up  Posterous and how much I like it (see "Posterous is an Intelligent Social Media Posting Tool"). Amidst the conversation I noted an e-mail discussion I had with some Posterous representatives. In the discussion I asked questions that I felt were very important in determining whether to use Posterous as a core blogging platform for a business.Question 1) Is it possible to use a subdomain for my Posterous account? I know a domain is possible but not so sure about a sub-domain. I thought blog.mydomain.com would be great.Answer: "blog.mydomain.com works great."
My Take: A short but very sweet answer. I am not always a proponent of using a sub-domain for a blog but the fact that Posterous offers that capability makes it all the more alluring.Question 2) When will it be possible to use my own URL shortener? I would really rather not use yours so that I can keep all of my tracking in one place.Answer: "We will add multiple url shortener support soon. Totally understand that. It's probably a month or two away (lots of features ahead in the pipe)."
My Take: Excellent! I suggest that anyone considering a URL shortener (which is used to shrink long URLs for easy emailing/txting) use Bit.Ly because it is a great application and the company has some big aspirations that I think will pay off for its users.Question 3) What if, god forbid, your site is no longer around in a year or three and I have a ton of data and reputation heaped onto my Posterous account. Is there, or will there be a way to export everything in case I need to go elsewhere? This seems a valuable option for anyone about to rely on your system for a business presence.Answer: "We've got API's for all export that you could need, and if anything ever happens, we'll extend it and make it as easy as possible to get your data out. Heck, we'll autopost the whole site someplace else. That being said, we have no plans to die."
My Take: I couldn't have asked for a better answer than that one.Question 4) I saw a post on how to add tags to an email but how do I specify the category a specific posting should be set for in my Wordpress when you post there?Answer: "Any tags you send to Posterous turn into categories on Wordpress. They need to exist as categories on the Wordpress end first."
My Take: Okay, I just have to get used to using the proper syntax they require in the subject of any Posterous-destined email: (tag: apple, gadgets). Not bad I guess, but it is a bit of a pain to try and remember the categories I have on my site before posting; shoot, I have to use my memory again!ConclusionPosterous is really turning out to be a great application. Once the upcoming customization and theming options are added Posterous is going to be one very popular site.If you want to learn more about social media optimization check out this SEO 101 show which is available at our SEO 101 home page or via this link. by Ross Dunn, CEO/Founder
| | The Net Reality
Privacy Violation by Facebook: CTV reports that Jennifer Stoddart, Canada's Privacy Commissioner says Facebook is in violation of Canadian privacy law. The investigation into its privacy practices has been ongoing for 13 months, and Facebook is working with Canada's privacy office to address some concerns. Although Facebook has agreed to adopt some of the recommendations put forth by Stoddart it still falls short.
"The four areas of concern that Facebook has not yet agreed to address are:
· The excessive amount of personal user information given to third party application developers from all around the world.
· The inability of a user to delete their account, which would eliminate their personal information from Facebook servers permanently. Currently, users can only deactivate their account.
· The lack of information provided to users about how their friends can gain access to their personal information.
· The fact that personal information about non-users is collected and used within Facebook."
Google Voice: Google has reserved one million phone numbers from Level 3 Communications, an indication that it's gearing up for a big rollout of accounts. A post by Sam Diaz states, "Google Voice, allows users to use a virtual number that can be programmed to ring at any number of the user's choosing - home, office, cell or even temporarily at the in-laws place in the country where cell phone service is hit-and-miss, at best. It also allows users to send and receive SMS messages through the number and offers voicemail transcription services that can be delivered to users via e-mail or SMS text message.
The service has been in private beta since it changed from Grand Central, the name of the company that Google acquired back in 2007, to Google Voice back in March. The service is free and Google hasn't had much to offer in details about how it plans to monetize the service.
TechCrunch reported earlier this month that Google is testing number portability as a option, which would allow users to move an existing phone number - such as the home or cell number - to Google Voice, instead of getting a fresh number and sharing that with others.
It's tough to say when Google will unleash the service. But when it does, watch out for the mad rush of sign-ups. The service has received rave reviews."
World's Oldest Bible Online: Four scribes in the 4th century hand wrote The Codex Sinaiticus.
The Reuters article, by Stepano Ambrogi, notes "The Bible's remaining 800 pages and fragments -- it was originally some 1,400 pages long -- also contain half of a copy of the Old Testament. The other half has been lost.
"The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures," said Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library. The Codex ...is arguably the oldest large bound book to have survived."
Ambrogi says, "The ancient parchments, which appear almost translucent, are a collection of sections held by the British Library in London, the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, Egypt, the National Library of Russia and Leipzig University Library in Germany.
Each institution owns different amounts of the manuscript, but the British Library, which digitised the delicate pages of the entire book in London, holds by far the most.
The four-year joint project, which began in 2005 with the aim of "virtually reunifying" and preserving the Bible, as well as undertaking new research into its history, has shed new light on who made it and how it was produced.
The Bible, which can be viewed online free at www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/, includes modern Greek translations and some sections translated into English."
50 Excellent Health Search Engines: X-Ray Technician Schools has published on its site a plethora of 50 excellent search engines in the health and medical fields. They are categorized by health and illness, public health, health professional, health journal, general health, and health care. They say, "These amazing health search engines can help you diagnose illnesses, look up medicines and find a doctor or health insurance."
New Texting Champion: Last month AP reported on the third year of a texting competition, sponsored by LG Electronics Inc.'s mobile-phones division. "Let your kid text during dinner! Let your kid text during school! It pays off," 15-year-old Kate Moore said Tuesday after winning the LG U.S. National Texting Championship. For the Des Moines, Iowa, teenager, her 14,000 texts-per-month habit reaped its own rewards, landing her the competition prize of $50,000 just eight months after she got her first cell phone." She beat out 250,000 people.
By Bill Stroll, Sales and Marketing Manager
| | | | | | | | Top Web Marketing Articles from StepForth
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