And Then There Were Two - WebProNews Video

Yahoo and Microsoft have finally partnered in a search agreement. A deal has been anticipated ever since Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for 44.6 billion in early 2008. This current proposed deal however, looks nothing like that original offer. The companies have not disclosed all financial terms of the deal, but it does not appear that Yahoo received any upfront payment...

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In summary, Microsoft will power Yahoo Search and Yahoo will become the exclusive search advertising provider for Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. Microsoft’s AdCenter will operate self-service advertising for both companies, but each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.

In an interview with WebProNews, search industry leader Danny Sullivan summed up his thoughts by saying what the deal meant for each company. He said, “[A] big win for Microsoft, a lot of questions for Yahoo.”

The deal will likely face a close antitrust review from regulators especially regarding Steve Ballmer’s claim that the partnership would provide a stronger competitor for Google.

It is still early, but nonetheless, there are many unanswered questions associated with the deal. Could Yahoo have bargained a better deal? How will Google respond? Is the deal a good move for Yahoo? How will the partnership influence the future of online advertising? What are the impacts on the SEO industry?

Provided the deal is granted regulatory approval, Yahoo and Microsoft said they hope to have their partnership finalized by early next year.

Source: WebProNewsVideo

Checking Out What the New Firefox Has to Offer from WebProNews Video

Firefox 3.5 is here and loaded with a plethora of improvements and new features . Sometimes with all of the download upgrades and new features that we are bombarded with it is hard to keep track of what tools are really available to us. This week, our very own Mike McDonald sat down to give you a rundown of some of the top features, improvements, and a few things to look out for with Firefox 3.5...

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Some of the most buzzworthy features of 3.5 are its performance features. It leaves a smaller footprint, which means that it uses less of your computer’s memory while it is running. Firefox has also improved their graphics engine with improved Color Profile Support which, depending on the quality of your monitor, will make your images more crisp and vibrant. On top of that, page load is faster and memory management has been improved by continuously cleaning up any unused memory, but the top performance feature Firefox has added is the Super Speed feature. With Super Speed the browser is 3 times faster than Firefox 3 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2.

The new browser is also fully customizable. It has over 6,000 add-ons, which is a tremendous improvement from previous versions. In addition to being able to mold Firefox to fit your personal style, you can add different search engines, edit toolbar preferences, form the navigation buttons to your liking, and a multitude of other customization features.

The location bar, referred to as the Awesome Bar, has also been drastically improved. It now allows quicker navigation to the sites you like to visit, you can simply type in a site you’re looking for and it delivers all matching results. This feature is particularly useful for those hard to remember URLs. The Awesome Bar also offers one-click bookmarking and improved tagging.

Firefox 3.5 has a lot of handy features, but beware that compatibility has been an issue for some people, so before you upgrade be sure it is compatible with everything you need to run. Here we have just touched on several of the newest improvements but there are still many many more. To here more about these features watch the video above, and you can download Firefox 3.5 for yourself here.

How Much Are You Willing to Pay for News? - WebProNews Video

Recently the editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, made a statement that most newspaper websites will be charging for content within a year. It is no secret that the newspaper industry has been hurting lately. With so many people turning to the web for their news, newspaper sales are down and the newpaper organizations have been trying to figure out a way to earn revenue online...

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During his speech in London, Barber said that he is unsure of how newspaper organizations will be charging for content. He stated that charging on an article-by-article basis is an option, as well as charging a monthly subscription fee. Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation made a statement back in May proclaiming that his newspaper websites would likely be charging for content within a year as well, and a survey sent out recently by the New York Times asked subscribers if they would be willing to pay a monthly subscription fee of $5 for access to their news content online.

Another aspect to take into consideration is what charging for content will do to bloggers. Countless bloggers rely on the free news provided by online news organizations for their content. Can bloggers afford to pay the monthly subscription fees? But, more importantly can they really afford not to pay the fees?

A move like this will either make or break the newspaper industry. If a subscription fee is put in place news sites could charge more for online ads because the ads would be reaching a more targeted demographic of subscribers, but would the number of readers drop so significantly that it would not pay off for the newspaper organizations in the long run?

No matter which way you spin it, the newspapers have to do something to compete in the digital age, and maybe charging for content is just the ticket. We will just have to wait and see.

Google’s OS to Challenge Microsoft? - WebProNews Video

Googlers Sundar Pichai and Linus Upson announced on Wednesday that the company was embarking on a new project: the Google Chrome Operating System. After the Web browser launched last year, many people anticipated a Google OS as the company’s next move...

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Google Chrome OS is open source and will initially be intended for netbooks; however, the system is said to be equipped to power large desktop systems as well. The three main aspects of the operating system are speed, simplicity, and security. Although Google will construct its own windowing system, the new OS will run on top of the kernel from the open source Linux OS.

According to the Google blog post making the announcement, the OS will not be available to consumers until the second half of 2010.

As Google prepares to enter the operating system market, many questions come to mind. First of all, is this a direct attack against Microsoft since Bing appears to be making legitimate progress? Will Google’s OS exist as a serious contender to the alternative operating systems? How will consumers and computer manufacturers react? Will Google be hit with more antitrust investigations?

Although there are many unanswered questions associated with this news, one thing that is certain is that Google has just taken on a challenging mission.

Michael Jackson Dies: Twitter Tributes Now 30% of Tweets

The death of one of the world’s greatest pop stars is having a global impact, but social media brings into sharp focus the scale of the world’s shock and sadness. Previously, we might have learned of a pop star’s passing via TV, or a friend or coworker: now knowledge is immediate, and mourning has become more public than private: a collective expression of loss... Read more:

Michael Jackson Dies: Twitter Tributes Now 30% of Tweets

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Mobile Video is at a Tipping Point

Just this week, we’ve already seen a number of apps rush to take advantage of the device’s video capabilities, with Kyte updating its app to support video recording, editing, and upload, and Posterous creating a way to instantly distribute your mobile video across multiple social sites... Read More:

Mobile Video is at a Tipping Point

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Up Close and Personal with Bing Team - WebProNews Video

The buzz around the announcement of Microsoft’s new search brand Bing is still going strong. Users are commenting on everything from Bing’s interface to the quality of the results. WebProNews caught up with Bing team members Nathan Buggia and Ramez Naam to get some first-hand information on the engine.

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The three main areas of focus for the new search product were:

1. Best possible results
2. Organized experience
3. Key tools to help users decide

Ramez says the quality of the search results have changed and the speed of the engine is better. Bing is continuing to work to cut down on the user’s time searching by simplifying tasks. To organize the search experience, Bing has a 3-column layout and a “table of contents” in the upper left-hand corner.

With the table of contents, Bing looked at how searchers view results and refine their queries and created categories accordingly. For example, if you search for a Honda Accord, the categories could be reviews, recalls, repair, videos, and images. Bing also provides key tools to help users make decisions regarding specific tasks such as travel and product purchases.

One of Nathan’s favorite features about Bing is the Best Match capability. With this feature, if it’s positive that a query is a navigational query, Bing will hide the regular algorithm results and showcase the “best match.” For example, for a query for www.ups.com, Bing will highlight the UPS site and even include a search box directly on the results page to track packages. Bing is also doing Entity Extraction on pages to pull out user reviews and obtain a deeper knowledge of the content on the page. The purpose of this is to include more valuable content in the search result captions to better serve the users.

What about Bing’s impact on SEO? Nathan says because the content publisher’s goals and Bing’s goals are the same, it leads to more targeted traffic. The categorized results show up to 20 results per page, which means everyone isn’t fighting over the top 10 blue links and the small businesses have a better chance of being seen.

Bing is doing some pretty cool things, and it has already been given some good reviews. But as users continue to test Bing out and see all that it can do, the big question remains: “Does Bing pose a threat to Google?”

Proof That Social Media Efforts Pay Off - WebProNews Video

Arianna Huffington launched the Huffington Post as a news content and blog site in 2005. The site quickly became a strong advocator of community engagement and involvement thus turning it into a social news site. James Smith, the Chief Revenue Officer of HuffPost, credits the success of the site to that social evolution, saying:

“It’s [Huffington Post] almost a social media site with news as the topic of conversation.”

The site logs over one million comments each month.

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In the above interview, James encourages other content publishers to push for active communities as well. He explains how implementing polls, thumbnails, and popular statistics can all add extensive social value to content.

Publishers that use social media know that it requires close monitoring. Most of the time publishers closely monitor their social efforts in order to manage the negative response. But did you ever think about how you could also benefit from closely monitoring the positive response? James says publishers have the opportunity to take advantage of the positive surges by further promoting them.

Social Media and Online Video Top Growth Charts - WebProNews Video

Nielsen Online and Ad:Tech joined together to create a landscape report looking at the global online media. The report compiles Nielsen Online data in the areas of online video, social media, audience, mobile, and more.

Typically, the online space doesn’t change dramatically from month-to-month or even year-to-year. But according to Charles Buchwalter, the Senior Vice President of Research Analytics at Nielsen Online, in the past 5-6 years, “this industry has transformed itself.”

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The growth is evident not so much in the number of users, but where users are spending their time and how much time they are spending. Not surprisingly, the two biggest areas of growth over the last 2-3 years are online video and social networks. The significant growth of these two areas proves that innovation is still happening despite the current economic climate.

Additionally, there are other areas that are showing positive developments in the midst of the recession. Healthcare, packaged goods, and telecommunications were big spenders in traditional media and were slow to come online. However, those industries are now stepping up their efforts on the Web.

Video Optimization Tips From Ad:Tech San Francisco - WebProNews Video

Making a good video can be difficult enough; you shouldn’t have to struggle to get it in front of individuals and search engines after wards. So at Ad:Tech San Francisco, The Search Agency’s Drew Hubbard gave some tips on how to optimize video for search.

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One key point is that “it’s all about the content on the page.” For now, content producers should still assume that videos are invisible to search engines. Be sure to come up with good titles, good tags, and good keywords.

Otherwise, if you’re trying to decide between hosting a video yourself or turning to a site like YouTube or Vimeo, there are a couple of things to take into consideration. Going the DIY route will grant you a great deal of control over the clip. At the same time, letting YouTube handle things may save you money, and it can put also the video in front of a larger audience.

Hubbard pointed out that, according to some statistics-tracking firms, YouTube is actually competing with Yahoo for the title of number two search engine.

Don’t Assume Anymore: Select Keywords That Work! - WebProNews Video

Do your keywords support your site? Unfortunately, the answer is no for many people choosing keywords for search engine optimization purposes. According to Mike Murray of Fathom SEO, people depend too much on tools such as Keyword Discovery, Google Keyword Tool, and SpyFu. These tools can be helpful, but there is also a great amount of research on your part that needs to be done...

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There must be a web page to support every keyword. Similar words do not count; they must be exact. Make sure your keywords are a good investment. If you choose the wrong keywords, you’re going to lose money and waste time.

Mike refers to people who do this as “people with their heads in the clouds.” He says people who dream up keywords are not going to have success in their efforts and need to come back to earth and be practical.

Mike suggests looking at the following factors when selecting a keyword list:

- Keywords in domain name
- Website analytics
- Competitors’ rankings
- Inbound links
- Where you ranked today, which page ranked, and on what search engine

Also, look for value in your PPC campaign. If someone is paying for a keyword, then it should be taken under consideration for your SEO program as well. It is possible that the same keywords could work for both programs.

Lastly, don’t look at who is ranking number 1 or 2. Look where websites are ranking that are similar to your site. You could be comparing your website, which is operated by 3 people, to a website that is run by a large corporation. Mike recommends first looking at the website’s age, size, and other factors before taking action. You may need to address other issues on your website to compete effectively.

SEO is a long process and the investment into keywords should not be taken lightly. After looking at the above factors, let’s again ask the question: Do your keywords support your website?

Marketing Strategies for Mobile - WebProNews Video

As mobile devices become more and more popular, the importance mobile marketing becomes greater as well. Cindy Krum of Rank-Mobile always keeps us updated on what’s going on in the mobile market and this video from SES New York is no exception.

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Cindy actively promotes having only one website by making your existing website provide mobile capabilities too. The same goes with marketing strategies. Cindy suggests that businesses integrate their mobile marketing strategy into their existing marketing strategy to get the best results.

The mobile Web is not just the current trend; it’s here to stay. Not only Cindy, but also many others including Dr. Vint Cerf, believe mobile will play a large role in the future. Based upon that information, Cindy believes if you embrace mobile now, you have the opportunity to pull ahead of your competitors.

So how do you integrate mobile into your overall marketing strategy? Here are a few quick tips from Cindy:

- Follow all traditional and local SEO best practices
- Provide info relevant to mobile users
- Submit your site to mobile search engines and directions
- Don’t rely on: Embedded images, Objects, Scripts, Frames, Flash, Pop-up Windows, Mouse-over trends

There are many mobile applications for search, which are taking feeds from existing search engines and integrating results into their own. Determine where they are getting their data from and make sure you are ranking well there. For mobile SEO, Cindy suggests coding in XHTML, employing multiple style sheets, and using CSS.

SEO Tip: Create Different Landing Pages for the Same Product - From Tubetorial.com

Great SEO tip from Tubetorial.com...

If you sell a small number of products, it’s a good idea to create different landing pages for each product. Each of these landing pages should be optimized for a different keyword.

There are at least two benefits to doing this.

1. Your search traffic will increase because you’re targeting more keywords.

2. Your conversion rates will increase because your landing pages have relevant content related to the keywords. Relevancy is one of keys to increasing conversion rates.

Here’s a video that shows two sites that are using this SEO tactic...

What’s Happening with Social Media and Businesses? - WebProNews Video

Chris Brogan and Lee Odden have been teased about their striking resemblance to each other, so WebProNews decided to feed to the humor and interviewed them together. Both Lee and Chris are a lot of fun, and they are also very knowledgeable in the Internet marketing industry.

In this video from PubCon South, the two discuss social media and where it fits into marketing. Chris says that we are seeing more and more larger companies embracing social media.

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There are also many people using social sites because they think they can “get rich quick.” As companies determine how to effectively use social media, Chris predicts the number of “get rich quick” people will rapidly decline.

Lee agrees with Chris’s outlook and points out that companies are now discovering exactly where they are getting the most return and capitalizing in those areas. He says social media has now become a natural part of marketing.

There are however, risks involved in social marketing if companies don’t have a solid plan in place when they start their social efforts. Lee’s company, TopRank Marketing, suggests that companies construct a social media road map, which requires them to identify their audience, behaviors, and specific objectives.

After these factors are determined, companies can decide on what their social strategy is, whether it be blogging or social networks. From there, companies need to choose what tools they are going to use and decide how they will track their success. When measuring progress, Lee says it is important to measure goals in actual conversions and not simply by the number of friends or followers the company acquires.

Chris follows up on that point by explaining the importance of putting the “physical connector” back into social media. The overall marketing plan should contain traditional marketing tactics, which includes a physical side, as well as Internet marketing strategies and social media.

More older Americans are going online than ever...

The Internet Is Getting Gray...
More older Americans are going online than ever.
Source: eMarketer.com

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, from 2005 to 2008, the largest jump in adoption of Internet usage was by users ages 70 and older. Internet penetration among people ages 70 to 74 increased by 19 percentage points from 2005 to 2008. For people 75 and older, the increase was 10 percentage points.

What sets older Americans apart is their online activities. Older Americans aren’t as likely as younger users to play games, watch movies, use social networking sites or read blogs. What sets older Americans apart is their online activities. Older Americans aren’t as likely as younger users to play games, watch movies, use social networking sites or read blogs.

The majority of Internet users are people under the age of 45, but growing numbers of older Americans are going online. That is an opportunity marketers can exploit.

Read more at: eMarketer.com

Making Twitter Work for You - WebProNews Video

Most people dwell too much on the “rules” or accepted expectations for sites like Twitter. In this video, Michael Gray points out that there is no right way or wrong way to use Twitter. He says the only right way is when you are getting out of it what you want and what you’re putting into it...

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What works for one person or business may not work for you. Therefore, it is important to determine your goals early and to do whatever you have to do to meet your goals.

Michael does give some basic tips that everyone could adopt and practice to build their reputation in the community. They are:

- Be polite
- Make friends
- Start conversations
- Ask questions
- Answer questions

Most people prefer tweets that are not self-promoting. Michael says bigger brands have more flexibility in this regard, but even they should not take advantage of it. Twitter is about engagement and most self-promotions do not encourage it.

The value you receive from Twitter is ultimately determined when you identify your goals and work to meet them. It’s not about how many followers you acquire. What really matters is how many of those followers actually know who you are and are helping you meet your goals.

Search Marketing Evolution - WebProNews Video

As search has developed, the end user has also undergone behavioral changes. Universal and blended search have played a lead role in the user’s changes. Many times, searchers don’t know what they want when they search and the blended results offer a number of different options for them to choose from. Mike Grehan of Acronym Media told WebProNews in this video that we must look at these developments when we think about search in the present as well as in the future...

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Grehan and many others such as Bruce Clay have said that ranking is not as significant as it once was, especially after universal and blended search rolled out. Universal and blended search have also opened up a whole new playing field for people who before didn’t have the opportunity to be noticed. These users are now able to be seen and heard through their clicks, their tags, their ratings and reviews, etc. Grehan says these “signals” the end users are sending are very powerful to the search engines.

So what does all this mean to SEO? According to Grehan, it places a strong emphasis on “engagement” and “connectivity.” SEO will become more complicated because users will demand a much richer experience. Monitoring the results will become even more important than ever since users will be producing more of their own content and even interacting directly with brands.

All this information and more is compiled into Mike Grehan’s new book which is set for release in August. His thought paper “New Signals to Search Engines: Future Proofing Your Search Marketing Strategy” can be downloaded at www.acronym.com/thoughtpaper.

SEO Metrics to Replace PageRank? - WebProNews Video

Rand Fishkin and SEOmoz introduced their tool Linkscape at SMX East and WebProNews was there to get the story. We followed up with Rand at SMX West to get an update on the tool.

Rand prefaces the discussion by boldly stating that they are “a few months away from reversing Google’s algorithm.” If that does happen, just know that WebProNews broke the story. As we all wait on that to occur, Rand tells of a different approach that SEOs can implement...

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Traditionally, SEOs look at PageRank to determine how well they rank and how and why someone ranks above or below them. Rand says this methodology is not much better than random guessing. The actual correlation that SEOmoz found is that basing actions on PageRank is only about 3 percent better than guessing.

He instead suggests acting upon data driven metrics. Take advantage of third-party data to estimate traffic competitively. For this, Rand recommends sites such as Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast. There are also tools that Rand recommends for predicting search engine rankings. They are Yahoo Site Explorer, PageRank, and Linkscape.

Rand strongly advocates this idea of bringing mathematics and statistics into SEO. He does however, believe that not one single metric should be held as the key. Link popularity is still the most prominent factor by nearly 75 percent and is followed by keywords and content.

comScore Reports on Search Growth - WebProNews Video

According to comScore year over year data, the U.S. has a strong search market. (It’s great to read a sentence that has the words “market” and “strong” in it, huh?) In this video, Jenni Tafoy of comScore gives us a positive report based upon their data...

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To be exact, comScore found total U.S. searches to be at 18.7 billion, which is up 38 percent year-over-year. These numbers are a result of more people (7.1 million specifically) being online, people searching more days out of the month, and people conducting more searches per day.

Consumers are becoming more and more reliant on search. Search engines have seen a 32 percent growth and interestingly enough, non-search engines have also seen tremendous growth. Jenni says this research shows how marketers can expand their campaigns outside of the traditional search engines and into search areas such as video, local, image, and social networking sites.

YouTube has shown 100 percent growth, which is massive. Local has grown 38 percent, and image has grown 32 percent. Social networks driven primarily by MySpace and Facebook show 49 percent year-over-year growth.

Even with those statistics, Jenni still encourages marketers to continue their campaigns with traditional search engines. She advises marketers to utilize both search areas. Video search, local search, image search, and social networks will only continue to grow, but traditional search engines are also holding their own especially with the increasing growth of universal and blended results.

Make the Most of Your Online and Offline Marketing Campaigns - WebProNews Video

As a result of the economic crisis, retailers are more concerned than ever about the return their marketing dollars are generating. In this video from SMX West, Ryan Gibson of The Rimm-Kaufman Group explains how retailers need to understand which online and offline programs are profiting them the most and capitalize on those areas...

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Offline marketing interactions with customers involve TV, radio, print, direct mail, or catalogs. Online marketing interactions include social media, content/display, search, and email. Offline conversions come by phone or by going into the store. Online conversions occur through a website or by email.

In a perfect world, all customers would either react only to online marketing methods or only to offline marketing efforts. Unfortunately for marketers and retailers, it’s not a perfect world and customers mix it up. Customers may search online, place a call to the calling center, go to the website, or go into the store before they take action. Every customer behaves differently which makes if difficult for marketers to track their online and offline marketing programs.

Ryan says marketers and retailers have to understand their customers. Observe the customer and be aware when they’re talking about you. If they are talking about you on social media sites, listen to them first and maybe even connect with them.

Do not however, forget about offline marketing efforts. Understand the customers sequence of action and which programs they are using to find you. Once you realize where your value lies, maximize those programs to their fullest potential so that you do not miss out on any profit.