SEO http://httpseo.com 10 SEO SEARCH-RANKING Sun, 08 Jan 2012 02:38:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 yahoo is for sale http://httpseo.com/2012/01/08/yahoo-is-for-sale/ http://httpseo.com/2012/01/08/yahoo-is-for-sale/#comments Sun, 08 Jan 2012 02:37:09 +0000 admin http://httpseo.com/?p=24 yahoo is for sale

]]> http://httpseo.com/2012/01/08/yahoo-is-for-sale/feed/ 0 Video Marketing Trends in 2012 http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/video-marketing-trends-in-2012/ http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/video-marketing-trends-in-2012/#comments Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:14:22 +0000 admin http://httpseo.com/?p=10 Read the rest]]>  

Video Marketing Trends in 2012

Greg Jarboe, 1 Comments

 

magic-8-ball-404-errorI’ve been asked to make a few predictions about the future of video. As Yogi Berra might have said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Nevertheless, I’ve learned a thing or two from the author of such books as “When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!” (2001) and “You Can Observe a Lot by Watching”(2011).

The first is: When you’re asked to make predictions, just say, “Thank you for making this day necessary.” And the second is: When you get around to making those predictions, remember, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”

So, with that clearly understood, let’s look at a couple of the video marketing trends that we can expect to see in 2012.

“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

According to comScore Video Metrix, 184 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in October 2011 for an average of 21.1 hours per viewer. A year earlier, comScore reported that 175 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in October 2010 for an average of 15.1 hours per viewer.

So, it’s safe to predict that up to 5.1 percent more Americans will be spending close to 39.7 percent more time watching online video content a year from now. That would be about 193 million Americans, who will be watching roughly 29.4 hours per viewer in October 2012. Hey, it will be an election year.

In addition, comScore reported that Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in October 2011 with 161 million unique viewers. Google Sites also demonstrated the highest engagement with 7.1 hours per viewer.

A year earlier, comScore reported that Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in October 2010 with 146.3 million unique viewers. Google Sites also had the highest average time spent per viewer at 4.5 hours back then.

So, I think it’s safe to predict that no other online video content property will be ranked No. 1 a year from now. But, will comScore still be referring to the top property as Google Sites?

YouTube.com already represents more than 99 percent of video viewing at Google Sites, while Google Videos represents less than 1 percent. And, “YouTube” is now featured in the new drop-down menu on Google, while “Videos” is now hidden under the “More” option.

So, I expect to see YouTube’s share of video viewing at Google Sites to rise up to 99.9 percent over the next year, while the share of Google Videos will wither away to 0.1 percent. As President Barack Obama would say, “This is not class warfare; it’s math.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again”

Back in August 2009, Yossi Matias, Niv Efron, and Yair Shimshoni of Google Labs, Israel, posted a paper entitled On the Predictability of Search Trends. Their paper included the following observations:

Based on the findings in this paper, Google introduced a forecasting feature in Insights for Search. For example, add the search term, snow, and you’ll see that web search interest in the United States is forecast to spike in February 2012 and again in December 2012.

Google Insights for Search
 
Gadgets powered by Google

Now, monthly search term volumes in YouTube are often different than the number of local monthly searches on Google. But, in a post entitled, “How Soon Till Spring? ,” Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends manager, observed, “According to YouTube data, searches for ‘snow’ videos generally peak in December, which could mean that while we like to take in the winter weather when it first arrives, we are not excited about looking at more if it after the holidays.”

So, what other search trends are we able to predict for the coming year? Well, Google Insights for Search forecasts that web search interest in April Fool’s Day, Earth Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Christmas will spike in the United States on those holidays in 2012.

This means video marketers can start planning now to create what the YouTube Creator Playbook, which compiles important tips, best practices, and strategies to build greater audiences on YouTube, calls “tent-pole programming.” In other words, they can plan to create and release content themed around tent-pole events like these holidays.

“It ain’t over ’till it’s over.”

Of course, there are a lot of things that I can’t predict. These include if or when YouTube will roll out any of the recipes and concoctions that its engineers and developers are working on inTestTube, its ideas incubator.

One that I’m hoping will make it soon is Insights for Audience, which helps you discover what different audiences like doing on YouTube.

Another thing that is hard to predict is which of the 100 new original channels that have already started to appear on YouTube will go on to be successful in 2012. Many in the mainstream media are betting that it will be the channels created by well-known personalities and content producers.

But I’ll bet that it will be the channels created by some of the most innovative up-and-coming media companies as well as some of YouTube’s own existing partners. They don’t need to read the YouTube Creator Playbook. In many cases, they created the plays.

Nevertheless, 30 years ago, when cable television expanded our viewing possibilities from just a handful of channels to hundreds, few predicted that MTV, ESPN and CNN would go on to bring us some of the most defining media experiences of the last few decades.

So, whether Yogi Berra said it or not, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future

]]> http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/video-marketing-trends-in-2012/feed/ 0 IBM Assigns Over 200 Patents to Google http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/ibm-assigns-over-200-patents-to-google/ http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/ibm-assigns-over-200-patents-to-google/#comments Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:11:58 +0000 admin http://httpseo.com/?p=8 Read the rest]]>  

IBM Assigns Over 200 Patents to Google

V3, 1 Comments

 

ibm-logoIBM has agreed to a deal that will see the company assign more than 200 patents to Google.

According to a blog post by Bill Slawski at SEO By the Sea that references US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) filings, IBM has agreed to give Google 188 granted patents and another 29 pending patent applications.

The patents include filings related to rendering pages, analyzing large-scale indexes and operating voice over IP platforms. Others relate to voice-activated search and social-networking technologies.

Some of the patents address a number of issues related to mobile devices, such as rendering web pages for mobile devices, porting applications to mobile systems and mobile advertising tools.

The acquisition of mobile patents has become a top priority for Google in the face of mounting legal actions from rival vendors. Apple has been especially aggressive in this regard, launching legal battles against Android vendors such as Samsung and HTC.

The acquisition of intellectual property is believed to be a driving force behind some of Google’s biggest strategic decisions in recent months. When the company announced its intent to acquireMotorola Mobility for $12.5bn, experts suggested a number a key patents were a major factor in the deal.

IBM refused to comment on the news when contacted by V3.

WWW.TOWCARS.COM

]]> http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/ibm-assigns-over-200-patents-to-google/feed/ 0 Search Marketers Value Social, Global; Plan to Increase SEM Tech Spend in 2012 http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/search-marketers-value-social-global-plan-to-increase-sem-tech-spend-in-2012/ http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/search-marketers-value-social-global-plan-to-increase-sem-tech-spend-in-2012/#comments Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:08:08 +0000 admin http://httpseo.com/?p=6 Read the rest]]> Brands recognize that search marketing has a strong ROI, with 72 percent of recently surveyed search marketers indicating they plan to increase their SEM technology spend this year over 2011. 26 percent foresee spending at the same level, while just 2 percent of respondents intend to reduce their investments in search marketing technology. The maturity of enterprise SEO platforms has reached mainstream adoption, notes BrightEdge in their 2012 Search Marketers Survey report.

Search Engine Watch reached out to a few members of the search marketing community to see if their experience and outlook is on par with those who participated in the survey.

Brightedge Survey on Social Signals

Search Marketing Manager Andrew Taylor of CitrixOnline spoke with Search Engine Watch (SEW) on how they use technology in search and social marketing: “We’re trying to monitor as many of those signals as makes sense. You can sometimes get so bogged down in all of those data points that you don’t give yourself time to draw conclusions.”

His insight mirrors the concerns of many, that search and social data can become overwhelming unless managed properly. “We’re trying to go at it in a logical way, so which social signals matter to companies in general and then which apply to us? We try to leverage machines and platforms to crunch a lot of the data for us… search changes over time, so there’s not always going to be a technological solution to processing data to look at it at a high level and make decisions,” said Taylor. “When we can, we use technology solutions to save time so we can bring in the human element to look at the data and go from that point.”

Security & Global Support Increasingly Important

Brightedge Survey on Social Signals

As they plan to invest more in SEM technology, 83 percent of respondents indicated they foresee enterprise-grade infrastructure becoming more important to their marketing organization in 2012. Companies are becoming savvy about cloud applications and expect the same capabilities as the larger vendors offer, notes BrightEdge. The need for scale has evolved to making sure the cloud computing platform the company is using is scalable but also secure.

72 percent of respondents said their organization targets markets in more than one country, while 78 percent said it will be more or much more important in 2012 to have a marketing solution that can provide global support. ClickZ expert Crispin Sheridan, of SAP Marketing, agrees and told us it’s “very important; we really can’t use tools that aren’t global.”

Dawna Olsen, Corporate Marketing Director at Epicor, said, “One of our biggest challenges from a global SEO perspective is to define the right set of long-tail keywords for each region and language, then accurately update the global sites as quickly as we have new content.” Epicor works with a global translation company, but as Olsen explains, part of the challenge is “having someone locally in the environment to actually go in and make the proper updates to the sites, and also to have someone in the market to understand the proper keywords in that region.”

Search Marketers See Value in Social

Brightedge Survey on Social Signals

Fully 98 percent of search marketing respondents agreed that social media matters to their organization’s marketing strategy. BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu told SEW, “Last year, we saw a lot of the theme was around tracking ROI, organic search and better quantifying ROI. This year, it’s a lot more about social signals on SEO. As enterprises and brands have developed ways to understand the value of organic search, they’re expanding their footprint.”

Each of the search marketers we spoke with agreed. Sheridan shared with us that SAP Marketing considers social a very important part of their marketing strategy, with six of their team members now working on it.

Olsen explained her organization’s use of social media as a part of their marketing strategy. “We started social a couple of years back and it’s an evolving educational process when it comes to executive buy-in,” she said. Social can be challenging, she notes, because it is very resource intensive. Epicor continues to focus on it and has evolved from “getting out there and establishing/protecting our brand to starting in on more full-out engagement and the things that are going to offer the most SEO benefit.”

Performics CEO Daina Middleton tells us, “Search in general is at a turning point.” The web has turned into a participation vehicle, she says, explaining, “It’s not just about your own assets, but about any assets that potentially benefit the point that you’re trying to get across.” Performics is “incorporating social into everything we do; we used to do this with digital, we talked about it as something separate. Five years ago, people were saying, I want to do something social. We just don’t think of it that way anymore.”

Predictions for Social Signals in Search

Brightedge Survey on Social Signals

Yu noted that one of the major themes in free-form responses gathered from survey respondents was the impact of social signals on search rankings. “Search and social are coming together and that’s a key dimension of not just what Google is doing, but how the customer experience is coming together,” he said.

He predicts the larger volume of signals around relevancy will increase the impact of social signals in search, over time. Just as on-page factors are a great look into relevancy, social activity (Shares, Likes, +1s, etc.) are going to be major signals in ranking, according to Yu.

Sheridan agreed that social in general will be more important to SAP Marketing’s SEO in 2012. He believes Likes, tweets and other social signals will be far more important this year than they were in 2011.

“For 2012, we’re looking at a larger budget for social and spending a little bit more with search,” said Taylor. “We feel that social signals in search already are fairly important and it’s likely that their algorithmic importance might rise over this next year and the years to come.” CitrixOnline has social media managers and community managers in-house and are currently on the three major social networks, Facebook, Twitter & Google+.

He would like to see more resources allocated to social and community building, which he believes spills over into strengthening the brand and brand identity. According to Taylor, “Right now it’s more about the indirect; we’ve definitely seen increases in organic traffic, but we’re not seeing the type of return that we would see by investing in other channels right now. I think that might change.”

Do you agree with the outlook for 2012 as put forth by survey respondents? Let us know in the comments.

]]> http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/search-marketers-value-social-global-plan-to-increase-sem-tech-spend-in-2012/feed/ 0 Holiday Tales: 10 SEO Search-Ranking Myths http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/holiday-tales-10-seo-search-ranking-myths/ http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/holiday-tales-10-seo-search-ranking-myths/#comments Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:58:27 +0000 admin http://httpseo.com/?p=4 Read the rest]]> Reach Over 4 Million Webmasters & Site Owners!

Mixing up cause and effect is one of the most common things new SEOs do. If it were affecting only their own work, it wouldn’t be so bad, but unfortunately, the clueless often spread their misinformation to other unsuspecting newbies on forums and blogs, which in turn creates new myths. It’s always interesting to see how people are so willing to believe anything they have read or heard without ever checking it out for themselves.

Myth 1: You should submit your URLs to search engines. This may have helped once upon a time, but it’s been at least 5 or 6 years since that’s been necessary.

Myth 2: You need a Google Sitemap. If your site was built correctly, i.e., it’s crawler-friendly, you certainly don’t need a Google Sitemap. It won’t hurt you to have one, and you may be interested in Google’s other Webmaster Central Tools, but having a Google Sitemap isn’t going to get you ranked better.

Myth 3: You need to update your site frequently. Frequent updates to your pages may increase the search engine crawl rate, but it won’t increase your rankings. If your site doesn’t need to change, don’t change it just because you think the search engines will like it better. They won’t. In fact, some of the highest ranking sites in Google haven’t been touched in years.

Myth 4: PPC ads will help/hurt rankings. This one is funny to me because about half the people who think that running Google AdWords will affect their organic rankings believe that they will bring them down; the other half believe they will bring them up. That alone should tell you that neither is true!

Myth 5: Your site will be banned if you ignore Google’s guidelines. There’s nothing in Google’s webmaster guidelines that isn’t common sense. You can read them if you like, but it’s not mandatory in order to be an SEO. Just don’t do anything strictly for search engines that you wouldn’t do anyway, and you’ll be fine. That said, the Google guidelines are much better than they used to be, and may even provide you with a few good tidbits of advice.


Top 10 Exposure for Your Ads on 225+ Search Engines


Myth 6: Your site will be banned if you buy links. This one does have some roots in reality, as Google likes to scare people about this. They rightly don’t want to count paid links as votes for a page if they can figure out that they are paid, but they often can’t. Even if they do figure it out, they simply won’t count them. It would be foolish of them to ban entire sites because they buy advertising on other sites.

Myth 7: H1 (or any header tags) must be used for high rankings. There’s very little (if any) evidence to suggest that keywords in H tags actually affect rankings, yet this myth continues to proliferate. My own tests don’t seem to show them making a difference, although it’s difficult to know for sure. Use H tags if it works with your design or content management system, and don’t if it doesn’t. It’s doubtful you’ll find it makes a difference one way or the other.

Myth 8: Words in your meta keyword tag have to be used on the page. I used to spread this silly myth myself many years ago. The truth is that the Meta keyword tag was actually designed to be used for keywords that were NOT already on the page, not the opposite! Since this tag is ignored by Google and used only for uncommon words in Yahoo, it makes little difference at this point anyway.

Myth 9: SEO copy must be 250 words in length. This one is interesting to me because I am actually the one who made up the 250 number back in the late ’90s. However, I never said that 250 was the exact number of words you should use, nor did I say it was an optimal number. It’s simply a good number to be able to write a nice page of marketing copy that can be optimized for 3-5 keyword phrases. Shorter copy ranks just as well, as does longer copy. Use as many or as few words as you need to use to say what you need to say.

Myth 10: You need to optimize for the long tail. No, you don’t. By their very nature, long-tail keyword phrases are uncompetitive; meaning that not many pages are using those words, and not that many people are searching for them in the engines. Because of this, ranking for long-tail keywords is easy – simply include them somewhere in a blog post or an article, and you’ll rank for them. But that’s not optimization.

]]> http://httpseo.com/2012/01/07/holiday-tales-10-seo-search-ranking-myths/feed/ 0 Hello world! http://httpseo.com/2012/01/06/hello-world/ http://httpseo.com/2012/01/06/hello-world/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:07:22 +0000 admin http://httpseo.com/?p=1 Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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