Newsrooms are cutting staff and reporters and editors are hard pressed to do more with less. Tools like search engines and social media make available a tremendous amount of information in real-time.  The news world is a world of deadlines and it would seem the use of search and social networks to source experts or people/companies that fit a story angle would be ideal. Even respected news organizations like the BBC are encouraging their journalists to embrace social media.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/02/journalists-search-social-media/

If you’re using Google Analytics and are new, learn both the basic and deeper functionality, such as creating advanced segmentation. It’s critical to understand your tool before you get into creating reports. Inevitably after making reports questions will arise asking for specifics, so you’ll want to know how to answer them. Smashing Magazine has a fleshed out guide to Google Analytics that will give you a crash course in the app.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/02/web-analytics-reporting/

The major news networks are all covering the disaster in Chile, and Pacific reaction to the tsunami warnings, via social media feeds from residents in the Chilean area, and tweets from Hawaiians and locals from other Pacific islands. Twitter is tracking the Tsunami warnings with the hashtag #Tsunami. Looking at the Twitter results, we can see that the Hawaii Red Cross is proactively reaching out to native Hawaiians via Twitter.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/tsunami-warnings/18279/

Although Google’s undoubtedly best known for dominating the traditional search market, the company’s no slouch when it comes to mobile. New stats from Opera indicate that Google has a huge lead over its closest rival, and that its other well-funded competitor barely enters the equation.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/25/google-trounces-yahoo-bing-in-mobile-search-report

Now Google’s real-time search results include (as listed by Danny Sullivan) Facebook, MySpace, Twiter, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, TwitArmy, Google News links, Google Blog Search links, new web pages, and freshly updated pages. At this point, Google generally only shows the real-time results for newsy/trending topics.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/25/your-facebook-page-is-in-googles-real-time-results-now

Information architecture supports findability and usability. It can also support organic SEO practices related to on-page content and word usage. Information architects use terms such as taxonomies and semantics to help describe what they do. Simply put, they organize categories of information into something that makes logical sense. A usability oriented person is interested in the same thing because words can create momentum or promote frustration.
http://searchengineland.com/its-a-fatal-mistake-to-copy-successful-web-sites-36855

Things in the Local Search space are out of the control of the typical small business owner; even if they know about the Google Local Business Center, Yahoo Local Listings, or Bing Local Listing Center, they’re only covering half their bases (according to last year’s 15 Miles survey.) And other portals and data companies typically don’t push updates live with the same alacrity as Google and Bing.
http://searchengineland.com/local-search-complexity-smb-frustration-36839

Google added the ability to refine your searches with the “Nearby” tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don’t have to worry about adding “Minneapolis” to your query and missing webpages that only say “St. Paul” or “Twin Cities.”
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/refine-your-searches-by-location.html

Mobile search continues to explode. According to eMarketer, mobile search spending will grow 81% over the next two years. So there’s no better time to get a jump start on your mobile search campaigns.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-steps-to-launching-a-mobile-search-campaign/18153/

Search engine optimization is never in a void. It is never a best case scenario. As long as there are budgets (clients, in-house, agency) there are going to be limitations to any SEO program. If you read the blog-o-sphere, took some courses, no matter how you keep on top of things, it is generally the whole ball of wax approach. This can be a flawed business model.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-priorities-%E2%80%93-task-roi/18196/

If you travel much and still need to keep your blog active, you will definitely find these tips useful: they will show you how to post to your blogs from email (and thus from your mobile phone). You can use the huge advantage of Posterous is that you can email it anything – text, photos, mp3’s, videos, documents – and it will automatically uploaded and posted to your site.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-ways-to-blog-from-your-email/18020/

Yahoo has announced a fairly substantial overhaul of how Yahoo Answers looks and works — and as a semi-regular user of the site. The primary functional changes involve a new set of navigation tabs and a new way of browsing the categories on Yahoo Answers. Yahoo has also changed the general look and feel of the site, and made backend upgrades, as well.

http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-answers-gets-a-new-look-36895

Chinese scientists say their research will be dramatically compromised if Google shuts down its search engine in China. One scientist says it would be like going blind: “If I lose Google, it will [be] just like a man without his eyes.” Another says it “would be like life without electricity.”

http://searchengineland.com/losing-google-chinese-scientists-say-like-going-blind-36890

Companies like Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc. couldn’t let users upload content, which essentially means social media couldn’t exist. User-generated content couldn’t exist. That’s why Google is not only upset about the ruling against its

Google announced via Twitter, that public status updates from Facebook are now included in the search engine’s real-time search feature. That means the largest social network in the world is getting play in Google’s real-time search alongside Twitter, MySpace, and others.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/25/your-facebook-page-is-in-googles-real-time-results-now

It is not a good blogging objective to earn a massive amount of Google AdSense income. In that situation, a blog is NOT a content-based blog; rather, it’s more of an affiliate blog which can be classified as “spam” in an extreme case.
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/How-to-Increase-Google-AdSense-Revenue/

Twitter seems to be getting on every search engines lately. It has already struck deals with both Microsoft and Google whereby Twitter streams will be integrated into search result pages. And now, it just agreed on a content sharing deal with Yahoo.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/yahoo-twitter-agree-on-content-sharing-deal/18184/

Facebook Insights shows demographic details and interactions on your pages BUT limited to show information of fans only. It is far less sophisticated and comprehensive when compared to the free Google Analytics. One of the limitations of Facebook Fan pages is that you can only run limited Javascript on it and Google Analytics needs Javascript code included to correctly track visitors.
http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/

Simply sharing your location has simply become a way of sending out a generic query, and local businesses have some tremendous new opportunities as a result. Potential customers sharing their locations means businesses can provide a real-time call-to-action to get them inside their establishment while they’re nearby.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/24/why-even-local-search-is-becoming-more-real-time

Consumer Watchdog today called on the Justice Department to guarantee that its ongoing antitrust probe of Google’s business practices include an investigation into if the company is manipulating its search results to favor its own products. The nonprofit advocacy group said it sent a letter to Christine Varney, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Division, after news that the European Commission had received three complaints against Google alleging the company manipulated search engine results in an anticompetitive way.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/24/advocacy-group-asks-doj-to-probe-google-search-results

The outer web is where the best practices of landing page optimization and post-click marketing shine. Users have more flexible expectations on landing pages, especially when responding to specific, targeted offers.
http://searchengineland.com/the-5-rings-of-conversion-optimization-36205

B2B marketers work hard to target the right keywords, create compelling ad copy, and drive potential customers to click on their ads, all with the hopes of capturing them as a lead. But unfortunately, conversion rates often fall short of what they could be. Desperate to make up ground, many B2B marketers ramp up their paid search spend to drive more traffic, and in doing so, end up maintaining their dismal conversion rate.
http://searchengineland.com/5-landing-page-tips-to-boost-your-conversion-rate-36395

Google specifically scroll different websites according to their business logic. As per Google rule, it keeps details on number of times it found fresh content on any particular website. If any website update content within a span of 2-3 days, then google crawler will frequently visit that website. Google search crawler is thirsty for good content and is always in search of those websites which produce quality content on regular basis.
http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs/about74792.html&sid=c0dd61e2ed2608cf587e211bdec3c92d

Content optimization is not the only way to optimize landing pages. In fact, when it comes to boosting your conversion rate, it may not even be the most effective method.
http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs/about75041.html&sid=c0dd61e2ed2608cf587e211bdec3c92d

SEO is done for one reason — gaining the attention of the search engines. You want your site to appear in results when certain keywords are typed into search engine browsers,

There really is only one way to react to personalised search [besides encouraging people to jump through hoops and volunteer to search for you in Google rather than simply typing in your web address] and that is by improving the quality of search listings to maximise click through rates. This should be part of your SEO task list already, but it is now more vital than ever to ensure that your search listing is as enticing as possible to ensure you get that first click.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/writing-for-attention-ammunition-for-personalised-search/17968/

By applying the long-tail concept to driving website traffic, you can achieve greater traffic by leveraging multiple sites, instead of just the 3 major search engines. Here is a great place to start to find the most important and highly visited sites on the web.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-leverage-traffic-besides-using-organic-search/18100/

Keywords and search queries are two very different entities. While keywords are the inventory an advertiser buys, search queries are the actual words people type into a search engine. The distinction is important, because search queries typically cover a significantly longer tail than keyword buys, and there is a lot of value in mining search engine query data.
http://searchengineland.com/short-vs-long-tail-which-search-queries-perform-best-36762

Google’s massive computing power and bandwidth give the company an undeniable edge. Some observers say it’s an advantage that essentially prohibits startups from trying to compete. But Manber says it’s not infrastructure alone that makes Google the leader: “The very, very, very key ingredient in all of this is that we hired the right people.”
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1

Yahoo’s been busy in Nebraska. This week, the company announced the opening of both a data center and a call center in the state, and apparently the celebration was a big deal, with Jerry Yang and several high(-ish) ranking politicians all showing up. One possible interpretation of all this activity is that Yahoo’s very optimistic about its future even as Microsoft’s stepping in to influence the search and advertising side of things.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/18/yahoo-opens-data-center-call-center-in-nebraska

Google continues to invest in DoubleClick, the ad management system it bought in 2007 for a whopping $3.1 billion. Today Google released a major upgrade to the ad server that includes a new interface and new features designed to make it easier for publishers to manage ad campaigns across multiple Web sites, including when they want them to appear.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3866486/Googles+DoubleClick+Ad+Server+Gets+Major+Upgrade.htm

Optimizing for Yahoo is not going to be limited to showing up in Bing’s results. That’s not to say that showing up in Bing’s results won’t have its advantages for Yahoo search, but there is a lot more going on at Yahoo than that. The company has been stressing that it is still very much focused on search, and under the deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will still be controlling the user experience at Yahoo.com.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/22/will-bing-powering-yahoo-make-seo-easier

Microsoft has spent a lot of money promoting Bing since its launch, and Bing’s usage has grown by millions of people since then, but it still has a long way to go to reach the top of the search market share mountain. Google is still sitting comfortably atop that mountain of course, but Google doesn’t really have to lose for Bing to win.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/18/why-bing-may-be-on-the-road-to-incredible-growth

If “Content is King” and “Links are Queen” when it comes to SEO, ecommerce sites must be like America – no king and no queen (but there is opportunity)! To put it another way, the typical medium or large e-commerce website faces substantial challenges to SEO – both from a content and a link perspective.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/7-ways-to-beat-the-challenges-of-seo-for-ecommerce/18057/

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently undertook a massive task (for the fourth time): predicting the future of the internet. Combine the sense that generally, searchers seem to assume high ranking results are truthful ones with the data showing that searchers trust organic results more than paid ones and a clear case emerges for an investment in organic search for overall brand credibility.
http://searchengineland.com/the-future-of-the-internet-search-looks-bright-36585

Google confirmed two different discussions taking place in the webmaster and SEO community over the past few days. The first is that MySpace results are now included in Google’s Real Time search results feature. In addition, Google launched real-time search in Russian and Japanese.
http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-myspace-to-real-time-results-images-site-command-updates-36657

In a recent study conducted by Conductor, Inc reveals that although Fortune 500 companies spend a massive amount of online spend on paid search, their organic search results perform very poorly. Only 2% of the domains (not companies) surveyed showed a significant number of their terms in the top results. All of these positive domain scores were offset by other owned domains with significant visibility issues.
http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2010/02/half-of-fortune-500-have-no-natural.html

There’s no perfect length for a blog post. It’s like the idea of keyword density in SEO; there’s no magic number for keyword density on a web page, and there’s no magic number for how long your blog posts should be.
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/how-long-should-a-blog-post-be/2817/

Press releases are just another version of article submission. But the main differences are news will be taken from main sites to blogs, feeds and other smaller news networks, so if your news is a good one you will get lots of links. Press releases will bring more (more than double) traffic than articles. Articles will do best with link building, but if you are good at press releases, the same kind of link building can be done here also.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1698995&page=2

Google announced a new Android application called Google Shopper. Shopper lets you find product information quickly by using your phone’s camera. It can recognize cover art of books, CDs, DVDs, and video games, along with most barcodes.
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/02/shopping-smarter-with-google-shopper.html

No matter how popular Gmail is, not everyone is still aware of what he can do with it. Search option is one of the most awesome features of the service which (together with some external utilities) is a great fun to use.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-gmail-search-tips-you-will-be-thankful-for/17726/

The big mobile search engines are still serving up old-fashioned lists of desktop (i.e. full web) search results on touch devices. They are assuming that the full desktop web page is the best result for every search. Search engines that can crawl and index the touch-friendly web will improve upon today’s mobile search services in four crucial ways.
http://searchengineland.com/touch-phones-changing-the-way-we-search-36556

VentureBeat reports Twitter has increased their traffic by 9 percent from December to January. After deeper insight from ComScore and Hitwise, it appears that most, if not all, came from Google. When Google added real-time results to their search interface in December, it had a major impact on people discovering Tweets in the search results. Google will show real time results from Twitter and other sites based on if that is a trending (hot) query.
http://searchengineland.com/twitters-traffic-up-9-thanks-to-google-36509

With the imminent release of the Apple iPad, the publishing industry is about to take yet another giant leap into the digital space. Just as with the iPhone, the tablet will not support Adobe’s proprietary format. The pad instead favors the potent HTML 5 standard for interaction and H.264 or MPEG-4 for movie viewing. And in the process you’ll likely increase the SEO of your site.
http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/optimize-website-preparation-ipad

Some WordPress websites are hosted in a very limited environment that won’t allow the creation of more than one database. However, creating multiple databases can be useful for diverse WordPress applications (such as having a separate MySQL database for English language content and another for customized French-based content).
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/WordPress-Database-Tutorial-Security-Backup-and-Efficiency-Tips/

Some tips for getting traffic towards website or blog is including subscription on blog page. It helps people to get updates from your blog, so that they can visit your blog again and again whenever you update your blog page. Another one is video distribution which has now become one of the most lethal weapon for attracting people. Share your video on all video sharing platforms with a link back to your blog page. Using numbers in title of the post generates good traffic too.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1698301

A comment from DigitalPoint forum says that regardless of the PR of the site (which is just for showing the authority – not for SERPs) the best thing is to put single key phrases with url (like ‘SEO Services’ and so than putting ‘SEO Services with guaranteed results’). But there is a small difference in this. If you put ‘SEO Services’ alone (the keyword alone) you will get extra weight there but SEs point only for the exact keywords (searches for ‘SEO Services’ alone) and if you put the entire phrase like ‘SEO Services with guaranteed results’ there is a chance to get more pointing towards your site than the other, but here the weight of the link will be comparatively less.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1698995

There are no doubts that reviews effect ranking factors on the major search engines, as well as a number of IYP’s (Internet Yellow Pages). This issue has a very high “agreeance” among local SEO’s. “Yahoo Local has said there’s a threshold for the number of reviews and that once you reach that threshold, the reviews begin to factor into your rankings. Reviews are a very good trust factor to prove the validity of a business, but they can be semi-easily fabricated by guys with black hats and dark sunglasses. At this current time, and for the foreseeable future, reviews affect rankings.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/an-extremely-nifty-guide-to-reviews-and-local-search/17853/

Despite spending millions of dollars on paid search, Fortune 500 companies continue to fail when it comes to natural search visibility. That’s the conclusion of “Natural Search Trends of the Fortune 500: Q4/2009,” the latest study released today by Conductor, a New York-based SEO services/technology firm. Collectively, the Fortune 500 spent about $3.4 million per day on more than 97,000 keywords, but they show up in the Top 50 of natural search results for only 25% of those keywords.
http://searchengineland.com/fortune-500-still-clueless-about-seo-36420

Microsoft and Yahoo announced today that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to beginning the process of implementing the deal. Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Yahoo-and-Microsoft-to-bw-2356666634.html?x=0