Reasons Bing is Becoming a Bigger Player

As we talked about in a recent WPN article, it's time to start taking your Bing optimization seriously if you haven't been already. For one, Bing will soon power Yahoo search. For two, Bing deliver's Facebook's web search results, while Facebook is giving people more reasons to search with them.

Bing is making changes of its own. It's been a very big week for the search engine (or "decision engine") if you will. It's up to you to decide if any of these changes will have a direct effect on you, but some of them may attract more users in general, and if nothing else, that gives you even more of a reason to give Bing a fair amount of your focus.

Bing has made some design changes and added a bunch of new features. For starters, the quick tabs have moved from the left pane to the just below the search box.

"Secondly, you will see a new design aesthetic applied to Bing," says Bing Corporate VP Brian MacDonald. "We have tried to bring you an experience grounded in clear readable typography that helps you find your way and organize information. With the new design the rich content in Bing really stands out from pages that are clean, light, open and fast. Result pages are not presented in a one-size-fits-all-layout - instead, Bing results pages are richly and visually organized, making the whole search experience feel dynamic and alive."

Bing has launched some new entertainment features for music, games, TV, and movies. In addition to an entertainment hub at bing.com/entertainment, users can now find richer search results in these categories.

"76 percent of people use search to help find and navigate their entertainment options online, but only 10 percent say they have a trusted place to go," says Bing Senior VP Yusuf Mehdi. "So we see a great opportunity to help customers make important entertainment decisions -- from deciding what movie to buy or see, which TV shows to watch online or on your TV, what music to listen to, how to find and safely play your favorite casual games - Bing is making a first step today to help make entertainment on the web easy and fun, so you spend less time searching for entertainment and more time doing the stuff you love."

Bing is now putting lyrics to songs on the search results page, as well as full length streaming of over 5 million songs (in partnership with Microsoft's Zune branch). Users can stream any of these songs once at their full length. After that, the song will allow for a 30-second preview. Of course users are given the option to buy songs from Zune, iTunes, or Amazon.

Bing is now providing info on over 35,000 games, including reviews, cheats, and walkthroughs. In addition to that, Bing is offering about 100 games that can be played right from Bing.

"Just Search, Click. Play . So you can now search for your favorite casual game, and with one click, be playing the game," says Mehdi. "This is cool for a couple of reasons. First, it's easy. Second, hosting the games inline means you can be sure they are actually games and not malware. Finally, the Microsoft Games team included some fun social features that allow you to actually invite friends from your social network to play with you right from the game."

Bing is now offering thousands of episodes from over 1,500 shows (including some HD). They also provide guide information.

Bing has also enhanced its search experience around categories like autos, finance, and movies, and health is reportedly getting an overhaul as well.

Bing has posted a closer look at some more new features including Bing News, Bing Finance, Combined Flight Answers, Auto Suggest, and Visual Search here, and here's even more specifically on Finance. Here's a closer look at new Shopping features.

Bing is also available as a default search option on the new iPhone, and Microsoft has been heavily encouraging users to switch to it. That could be another factor in increased Bing usage. Here are some more reasons the future looks bright for Bing.

Here is the direct link to this article http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/quality-links-to-your-site.html

A popular question on our Webmaster Help Forum is in regard to best practices for organic link building. There seems to be some confusion, especially among less experienced webmasters, on how to approach the topic. Different perspectives have been shared, and we would also like to explain our viewpoint on earning quality links.

If your site is rather new and still unknown, a good way marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic. Interact and contribute on forums and blogs. Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it. If you offer long-lasting, unique and compelling content -- something that lets your expertise shine -- people will want to recommend it to others. Great content can serve this purpose as much as providing useful tools.

A promising way to create value for your target group and earn great links is to think of issues or problems your users might encounter. Visitors are likely to appreciate your site and link to it if you publish a short tutorial or a video providing a solution, or a practical tool. Survey or original research results can serve the same purpose, if they turn out to be useful for the target audience. Both methods grow your credibility in the community and increase visibility. This can help you gain lasting, merit-based links and loyal followers who generate direct traffic and "spread the word." Offering a number of solutions for different problems could evolve into a blog which can continuously affect the site's reputation in a positive way.

Humor can be another way to gain both great links and get people to talk about your site. With Google Buzz and other social media services constantly growing, entertaining content is being shared now more than ever. We've seen all kinds of amusing content, from ASCII art embedded in a site's source code to funny downtime messages used as a viral marketing technique to increase the visibility of a site. However, we do not recommend counting only on short-lived link-bait tactics. Their appeal wears off quickly and as powerful as marketing stunts can be, you shouldn't rely on them as a long-term strategy or as your only marketing effort.

It's important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site's reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they're likely to have no positive impact on your site's performance over time. If your site's visibility in the Google index is important to you it's best to avoid them.

Directory entries are often mentioned as another way to promote young sites in the Google index. There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes.

It can be a good idea to take a look at similar sites in other markets and identify the elements of those sites that might work well for yours, too. However, it's important not to just copy success stories but to adapt them, so that they provide unique value for your visitors.

Finally, consider making linking to your site easier for less tech savvy users. Similar to the way we do it on YouTube, offering bookmarking services for social sites like Twitter or Facebook can help spread the word about the great content on your site and draw users' attention.

As usual, we'd like to hear your opinion. You're welcome to comment here in the blog, or join our Webmaster Help Forum community.

Came across this article today that offer some valuable insight into the amorphous issue of marketing via social media.

Basically there are seven tips to staying on top of social media. Here are the summation of the 7 points:

1) Look for more content to be produced by “others”. This means look for the rise of the "professional" content creators masking as citizen journalists. There will be more fake reviews and articles to help maintain a company's reputation.

2) There will be more niches in social media.

3) Mobile you must. Mobile marketing will be THE social platform.

4) Social data will impact your future business engagements.

5) Engagement strategies will be different on every channel because of the data returned from #4.

6) Do damage control AHEAD of time. Mitigating loss of control in social media will continue to be underserved and undervalued.

7) Search will still rule, but social search will drive future customer engagement.

Here is a link to the full article http://www.onlinemarketingconnect.com/frame/index.php?url=http://directmarketingobservations.com/2010/10/15/7-tips-for-staying-on-top-of-the-social-wave/

How to Restore your Lost Rankings on Google by David Web of Web Pro World

Is your website Out of Google Index ? Are you thinking that backlinks have effected your website's position on Google? Think Twice.

We have observed various cases where websites which were not being optimized in any way moved out of Google index. So we know 100% that it was not a case of paid links, back links, or free links. However, with careful analysis of one of our client website we observed that some competitor created a duplicate website and VOILA search engine ( The Mighty Google) threw the client's original website in Supplement index. The duplicate version of the website started to show on search results and the original one was out of Google index.

I assured the client that your penalty has little to do with paid links. We immediately asked the client to change their content on the homepage and then it was Bingo ! The site jumped back within 15 days flat.

We have seen various factors which are completely unrelated to SEO and can seriously affect your website.

In case your website is out of Google index, follow these simple guideline:-

a) Check if someone has copied your content or you have copied content from somewhere. There are cases where your content writer might copy content from some website without your knowledge. Some people argue that supplement index is not penalty, but I can assure you supplement index means out of Google Index.

b) Check if you have overstuffed your pages with your target keywords.

c) Remove Meta Keywords from your main pages if you have overstuffed meta keywords tag.

d) Ensure that you have keyword density of around 2-3% for 250-500 words page.

e) Remove excessive H1, H2 tags from your website.

f) Check if you have added duplicate listing in Google Local Business or Google Places.

We also observed one of our client website being moved out of Google Index because someone from their office submitted a duplicate Google Places listing using a new number. The moment we removed the duplicate listing from Google Places, the site jumped back to previous position within 15 minutes [It was faster than Bullet Train]. I was wondering either God must be crazy or Google must be crazy to add these sort of rules in their algorithm.

We have personally observed that Google does not necessarily give you penalty for back links. There are several vulnerable areas in Google and if you happen to be close to any of these areas, your website will move out of Google index.

Analyze each and every aspect of your website. If most of the websites move out of Google index for purchasing links then any competitor can get another competitor penalized on Google. This is not always the case, so if you find your website moved out of Google index, simply analyze each and every aspect of your website whether it is content, keyword density, affiliate links, or even Google Places Listing.

Best of Luck with your website's Optimization

Multi-State Investigation Launched Against Google
Wi-Fi probe may involve over 30 Attorneys General

Google may be in big, big trouble. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who was the first Attorney General to scrutinize the company over its collection of sensitive WiFi data, is now leading a probe in which officials representing more than 30 states have expressed interest.

French data protection agency claimed that Google managed to collect people's passwords and comprehensible parts of emails, not just random 1s and 0s.

REF: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/20...against-google

Google has defended its collection of the data saying it was done "accidentally". Google boss Eric Schmidt said there was "no harm, no foul" in collecting the snippets of information.

Keyword Discovery compiles keyword search statistics from all the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) world wide to create the most powerful Search Term Suggestion Tool.

Over 80% of all online transactions begin with a keyword search.  To compete, you need to target all the relevant keywords.

Keyword Discovery can tell you the search phrases people use to find products and services, as well as the search terms that drive traffic to your competitors.

SEO Prodigy recommends Keyword Spy.  It an awesome seo and pay per click research tool.  It unveils your competitors' most profitable Ad copies and keywords.  Learn from time-tested Ad campaigns.

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I read an excellent article from Bryan Clay about getting deeper into Google Analytics.   There is a method to configure Google Analytics to understand user behavior on your website.  Read more

SEO prodigy recent came across an excellent article title "5 Social Media Marketing Best Practices for B2B" from the respected Inside Techology Marketing publication.   We echo many of the strategies and approaches to social media marketing that is explained in this white paper.

http://www.btobonline.com/assets/pdf/CT6644283.PDF?title=5+Social+Media+Marketing+Best+Practices+for+B2B